completing the circle with some essential buddhist wisdom, which even most buddhist influenced people just ignore: there's just ONE soul in this universe, we are all the same, all the living beings we see around, are just our past or future selfs, what human intelligence cannot understand really, because our mind works 3-dimensional, is the complexity of time which is the 4th (dimension)... the chronological timeline as we understand it, going from A to Z, is just a small part of the whole thing, (and just a circle) as long as catched in a body capsule we cannot look beyond - time does not exist really in this way - your next life can be in the mid age or in stone age as well as in the next century, or just at same time as your present one... hard to understand and please don't ask me if i believe in this or not - i just understand, when there is any karma (re incarnation), it must be much more complex as human creature WANT to believe... there is either an uncountable amount of at least dying souls risin' - or there's just one eternal soul, something between is impossible - and not logical... and: a release of it? forget it, enlightement can just be understanding, and perhaps it's better not to understand everything...
yeah, i know people believe what they want to believe, not what is logic - 'to believe' means 'not (want) to know' that's the fact how all different religions work and why they are so popular to be used to manipulate people...
OM