Every atom you posses has almost certainly passed through several stars and been a part of millions of organisms on its way to becoming you.  We are so atomically numerous and so vigorously recycled at death that a significant number of atoms - up to a billion for each of us, it has been suggested - probably once belonged to Shakespeare.  A billion more each came from Buddha and Genghis Khan and Beethove, and any other historical figure you care to name.  So we are all reincarnations - albeit short-lived ones.  When we die, our atoms disassemble and move off to find new uses elsewhere, as part of a leaf, a  part other human being or a drop of dew 

- Bill Bryson