The same point as heaven and hell. Anything to keep the ego going will suffice.
"The belief in reincarnation is born out of the demand that something will continue after your so-called death. It is the same mechanism which wants to know what will happen after death. For some reason that mechanism, that movement of thought, does not want to come to an end. But, if you want to know if there is anything beyond, you have to die now." UG Krishnamurti
I agree, and only note that reincarnation instead of heaven, satisfying this desire is the more reasonable choice in that it does not need as many unfounded postulates as the Christian answer does. Both need a death surviving spirit / soul / consciousness (or what ever you wish to call this enduring, massless, invisible thing.) but the believers in reincarnation don't need to also postulate the existence of heaven (and hell if not all go to heaven). Quite possibly they don't even need to postulate any God - reincarnation is just a natural part of the birth process.
Your last sentence reminded me of Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, especially these verses (freely translated by FitzGerald* to keep both the spirit and the rhyme in English.):
The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.
And, as the Cock crew, those who stood before
The Tavern shouted--"Open then the Door! ......................... Much of the poem praises wine, women and song; but I quote only a few of the parts concerned about fate.
You know how little while we have to stay,
And, once departed, may return no more."
And that inverted Bowl we call The Sky,
Where under crawling coop't we live and die,
Lift not thy hands to IT for help--for It
Rolls impotently on as Thou or I.
Up from Earth's Centre through the seventh Gate
I rose, and on the Throne of Saturn sate,
And many Knots unravel'd by the Road;
But not the Knot of Human Death and Fate.
'Tis all a Chequer-board of Nights and Days
Where Destiny with Men for Pieces plays:
Hither and thither moves, and mates, and slays,
And one by one back in the Closet lays. ............................ Note, this is very consistent with reincarnation, as "Destiny" repeatedly plays this game for 1000s of years.
Strange, is it not? that of the myriads who
Before us pass'd the door of Darkness through,
Not one returns to tell us of the Road,
Which to discover we must travel too.
As well as a great philosopher and poet, Omar was a great mathematician too. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omar_Khayyám
Not only did he know and describe many things, even non-Euclidian geometry, and the connection between algebra and geometry using both to solve complex cubic equation, published "Pascal's triangle" {coefficients of (a+b)^n for all n}, and dozens of other results, ~800 years before Europeans learn them.
* FitzGerald made many translations, over a 30+ year period. Poem has been translated by others into more than a dozen modern languages and most agree the beauty of the original is not possible to fully capture in translation.
