Reincarnation in Dharmic religion and the myth of Er

 Reincarnation in Dharmic religion and the myth of Er

The belief in reincarnation (or rebirth) is a central tenet in Buddhism, Jainism and most forms of Hinduism. In Indian (or rather Dharmic, as Buddhism is now found mostly outside India) religions, the cycle of successive lifetimes is called samsara and the ultimate goal of spiritual practice is to escape from that ultimately meaningless cycle. The cyclic existence, however, is governed by a sort of 'moral law', in which future lives are (at least partly) determined by the actions (karma) made in precedent lives. 

In Ancient times, the belief in reincarnation was seemingly quite widespread even in the 'West'. The belief in metempsychosis in Antiquity was accepted by Pythagora and the Pythagoreans, Orphism, Empedocles, Platonists and some Gnostic Christian sects. One of the most famous tales about metempsychosis is the myth of Er found in Plato's Republic (10.614-621): https://eurosis.org/cms/files/projects/Plato_Republic_HB.pdf 

In the myth of Er, Er is a soldier that is seemingly fatally wounded and later resuscitated. He then, according to the story, proceeds to recount what seems to be a tale of a Near Death Experience (NDE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-death_experience ). An interesting feature of the myth of Er is that most souls, with the exception of the 'incurably wicked' who never leave the hellish Tartarus and the blessed, will at some point reincarnate and choose the life in which they reincarnate. This is a rather different picture from the Dharmic reincarnation/rebirth in which the next life isn't consciously chosen but rather determined by the 'fruits' (phala) of past karma. These souls are then depicted to drink a beverage that makes them forget their previous existence.  

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