Reincarnated

Thanks to everyone who has encouraged me to get back on the blog bus. In the spirit of starting new after a long absence, I've decided to tackle the subject of Reincarnation, which was handed to us as an anagram in the last episode, "This Place is Death."











Canton-Rainier = Reincarnation

Reincarnation is not so strange a concept. It may sound esoteric to westerners, but the majority of the people on the planet believe in it. And certainly, anyone who would go around saying "Namaste" on a regular basis (a sanskrit word that means "the divinity in me honors the divinity in you" ) would believe in it.

I'll also point out that reincarnation is not the same as resurrection, which is where someone comes back to life in the same body they died in. Lazarus was resurrected, not reincarnated. I'm assuming that this means Locke isn't going to come back to life once his body gets back to the island. But he will come back at some point.

I'm guessing that anyone born on the island (or conceived on the island?) contains the possibility of being a reincarnation of someone from the island's past. Aaron then could be someone incredibly important (possibly Jacob?), as could Ji Yeon.

This is why Ben wants to take Aaron, why he stakes such an importance on being born on the island, why all of the children from the crash were kidnapped, and why Ben so completely freaked when Alex was killed. In fact, I'm guessing that Ben himself is probably masquerading as someone important from the island's past who was reincarnated, which is why he said he was born on the island, when in fact he wasn't.



When Richard Alpert went to visit Locke when he was a child, he gave him a test which was much like the test given to a child when trying to determine who is the next Dalai Lama. They come to the child with objects from the past life, and ask them "which of these objects is already yours?"

So anyone who dies on the island or at least end up with their body on the island (Christian Shepherd, Yemi) could end up reincarnated there. This would explain why some of the Others seem so willing to die (Bea, Mikhail), why Locke will be convinced to undergo death, and why they need to get his body back.

So why do we keep seeing dead people on the island? I'm guessing that they're all currently in the Bardo, which also might explain where the whispers come from.

On a side note - maybe only the people who are special and/or needed by the island will get reincarnated: this may explain the rationale for dividing people into the good ones vs. the bad ones, like the people on Jacob's list. This could also be the rationale behind the "the purge:" Let the island sort out who belongs there and who doesn't (which is also probably the reason for the Smoke Monster's existence).

Other references to reincarnation (thanks to Lostpedia):

• On the Season 1 DVD bonus featurette "Lost: On Location", director/producer Jack Bender says that Lost is "All about redemption and rebirth."
• In the episode "Outlaws," Sawyer believed that the boar was a reincarnation of Frank Duckett, and in the same episode, Locke tells the story of a golden retriever that his foster mother was convinced was the reincarnation of his foster sister.
• The black horse that Kate sees twice appears to be a reincarnation of Wayne.
• In the episode "Do No Harm," Boone died at the same time as Aaron was born, and the scenes were juxtaposed with one another to show the endless cycle of life.

• On the Hanso Foundation website, it was written, "the work of the Hanso Foundation has always been intended to bring rebirth to a dying land and a dying people."