In my opinion, we create our own fears. Mankind has always been a cowardly species, going right back to the beginning. We cowered in our caves while the leopard snarled in the dark. So, now millennia later, we are still inventing more and more things to be frightened of. We cannot believe that life is simple so we invent complications and then get frightened of them. Much of New Age thinking just about qualifies as a psychological illness - channeling, aliens from god-knows-where, etc, etc. We seem prepared to believe every quack who comes along, so add gullibility to our cowardice. We are still the scared-stiff lemur cowering in the dark, except when we actually were scared-stiff lemurs, we had reasons to be scared stiff - we were on the menu for a whole variety of more powerful predators.
We probably developed intelligence as a defense mechanism to bolster our fragile egos. Heaven only knows how we, as a species, survived to become so neurotic !
Life is simple - it obeys the Laws of Conservation. "Matter [and Energy] cannot be created or destroyed, however it can be converted". Looked at in that light, then reincarnation is a given. We are in permanent recycling. There is no judgement or reward/punishment, it's all down to you - cower in the corner or just live life.