Our life does not start at birth. It starts at death. To understand life, one should first understand death.
Every living creature is in a higher state of organization than the non-living ones, that is a person living has greater order than a person dead. On death, our bio-degradable bodies disintegrate to their constituent parts and in so doing go to a lower order and remain in that state confined to earth only, regardless of how the dead bodies are disposed of. (Here, earth includes the land mass, the water mass, the air mass and the inside of the earth, that is the total earth.) These component parts are hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, potassium, sulphur, calcium and their compounds. These substances mix with the eco-system depending upon local factors and conditionings and, of course, governed by the natural laws. When plants take in nutrients from soil, water or air, these constituents naturally enter their systems. In the next step of this life cycle, these substances enter our systems through ingestion when we breathe air, drink water (hydrogen + oxygen) and eat food (plant or animal products). So in this sense we are immortal. But this immortality is NOT as we, but as NOT we.
It is true to say that we have been on earth for hundreds of thousands of years and will continue to be here for many more years . But, every time we dis-assemble and reassemble, we are not the same. As a matter of fact we are never what we were in our previous lives. There is NO INCARNATION in the sense we have been taught, in the sense it is commonly understood. Incarnation is the language of mythology which writers and poets use to exaggerate or deify certain individuals and things.
