Hinduism identified the reasons for the repetition of birth as follows:

The soul departed from the body without exhausting its passions or achieving its goals—these being passions and desires tied to the material world.

Just as it left burdened with many debts to others and attachments with them, it must return in other lives to satisfy its lusts and taste the fruit of its marks.

The well-known man of letters and researcher Dr. Ahmed Shalaby says on (p. 68) of his book Greater India the following:

"The material body of man is that which is born from the bodies of the parents; however, that which moves it, activates it, and controls it is a 'subtle body' composed of the fundamental forces, the senses, the moving divine powers, the subtle elements, and the mind. When what we call death occurs, the body dies and stops, but the subtle body does not die. Rather, it departs and operates for a period of time in the subtle horizons of the universe—which resemble our dreams—where it experiences the Paradise and the Fire spoken of by religious books. Then, preceded by its previous inclinations and actions, it returns once more, donning a new body with which the soul begins a new cycle; and this new cycle is the result of the past cycle."