We read in John 3:3 that: "…Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God," and further in response to Nicodemus' question as to how a man could possibly be born again, the Messiah replies, "…Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit." (John 3:5-6). These wise words of Jesus are words that must be taken to heart, for it is these very words that should open our eyes as to the understanding and thereby the prime importance that the re-birth that Jesus mandates has nothing to do with our physical bodies but everything to do with our spirit.
While there are many people that are familiar with these words, and some that confess that they have been born again through having been baptized, or through some other religious experience or activity, that they have been thereby re-born, are often missing the very point of this particular scripture. The most important point, that Jesus makes very clear, is that a true re-birth that Jesus here refers to, necessitates a fundamental new perspective on life which indicates that you no longer suffer from the delusion that the body is all, nor even that your mind is all, but that spirit which is immortal, is your actual being and the recognition of this re-birth, is the recognition that the spirit, and not the flesh, is now the preeminent thing in your life and your actions thereby display this foundational belief.
A person, any person, that claims that they are actually re-born, will not, by definition, be the same person that he was in the past, he will have broken free from the chains of self-identifying with his flesh and will instead see himself as of the spirit, by the spirit, and for the spirit; recognizing that even before he was formed physically in his mother's womb, he was spirit, and henceforth when he is walking here on earth, he will recognize intuitively that he is indeed spirit, though encased in a body, but innately capable of being outside of the body, and thereby the master of that body.
The failure to understand that we are spirit in conjunction with believing that we are just the material body is catastrophic, because that failure hinders greatly in adhering to the straight and narrow path that will enable us to become a returning member of the kingdom of God. Those that build their castles on this material plane, will truly reap what they have sow, for good or for bad, but in either event, they are bookended by their inevitable life followed by death, whereas those that are spiritually re-born will create treasure in heaven.
Those that recognize in their re-birth that we all are made, without exception, in the image of God, will find it far easier to see God in others, and by that attribute, will behave in their actions with a true reflection of this view. To be re-born is to re-recognize as if for the first time, that we are co-heirs in the kingdom of God, a kingdom without beginning and a kingdom without end, to which our return will be seen as the re-arrival of the prodigal son, re-birth into the loving bosom of his God.