What is Karma?

Many people talk about karma a lot. Have you ever been in a situation where you have felt that the event you are experiencing had happened before, and you seem to know what is going to happen next.? Maybe you have caught the eye of a stranger across the road, only to suddenly feel as if you know them intimately?Or perhaps you have walked through an unknown street and seen a house that you feel you once lived in long ago?Many of us dismiss these things as co-incidence, or a strange quirk of time, but for many others there is another explanation which seems to make a lot of sense. This explanation is founded on the belief that every individual is born more than once - in fact many times - in order to gain the necessary experience to reach perfection.Not all these things can be traced back to a hidden childhood experience, and for many there seems absolutely no rationality at all. Yet, those who believe in the philosophy of reincarnation say there is a simple explanation for these things - that we are reliving part of a memory that comes from another life in another time and another place, where events such as drowning or other such things have taken place.
The theory of reincarnation is not a new concept. The Hindu and Buddhist religions, to name but a couple, believe that we are all souls travelling through time, using as many bodies as is necessary to gain the right experience. They believe that it is totally impossible to experience everything, and learn all there is to know about life in just one incarnation.