The first recorded case of NDEs

What are known as NDEs (Near-Death Experiences) are those experiences where a person is considered clinically dead and then inexplicably returns to life, recounting experiences from the afterlife. Today, we won't delve into this fascinating subject but instead will rescue from oblivion the first written record of an NDE, which takes us back to the time of Plato...
 
The story of the Armenian soldier Er, also known as Er the Armenian, is detailed by Plato in his dialogue "The Republic," specifically in Book X, and can be considered the first documented NDE.
 
Er was a soldier who fell in battle. After ten days, when they were collecting the fallen bodies for burial, they found that Er's body showed no signs of decomposition, and just as they were about to burn him, he came back to life and recounted the following:
 
Er described how his soul, along with others, was taken to a place where the dead were judged. Here, souls were judged based on their earthly actions; the righteous ascended to a place of light and joy, while the wicked descended to an underground place of darkness and torment.
 
These souls were then led to a place from where they could see the entire universe - stars, planets, galaxies...
 
After witnessing the judgment and the cosmic cycle, these souls could choose their next life, and according to Er, they chose based on their past experiences, often making the mistake of selecting lives that seemed attractive at first glance but turned out to be difficult or unhappy.
 
Finally, in Er's case, he did not drink from what he described as the "river of indifference" (Lethe), which caused souls to forget their past lives, and thus, he was sent back to life to recount his experience as testimony of what happens after death.
 
Plato drew clear lessons from this story:
The immortality of the soul.
Cosmic justice.
Free will and responsibility, as the choice of the next life implies that individuals have some control over their destiny, though this control can be misunderstood or misused.
 

An enthralling story of love, friendship and honor in the Olympic Games (2,600 years ago)
“Life debt” (Vicente Fisac, Amazon): https://a.co/d/hono34C