When we first began investigating the afterlife nearly 30 years ago, the idea of reincarnation was highly controversial. British Spiritualism largely rejected it unlike the Spiritists in France who had embraced it since Allan Kardec's The Spirits' Book in 1857. Many Spiritualists considered it a cruel teaching, imagining that it meant that when we die we could well find our loved ones had reincarnated and were out of reach. Or they felt it was not true because many spirit communicators claimed that they have never met anyone who had been reincarnated.

In recent times, the evidence suggesting some kind of reincarnation for at least some people has increased. We now have large numbers of cases involving: children who remember past lives, dreams of past lives, past-life regressions, between-life regressions, and pre-birth memories. At the same time, we are hearing accounts of reincarnation coming up in near-death experiences where experiencers are told that they 'signed up' for difficult life experiences in after-death contacts in readings by mediums in out-of-body journeys and in teachings by enlightened masters.

However, there has also been a development in understanding that our loved ones will always be available to us on the other side and that while part of our soul may reincarnate, part of us always remains in the spirit world. We are also told that we incarnate voluntarily with other members of our soul family.