Exploring all that the Afterlife can mean for you.
The afterlife is the belief that the essential part or essence of an individual's identity or consciousness continues after the death of the physical body.
According to various ideas about the afterlife, the essential aspect of the individual that lives on after death may be some part, or the entire soul/spirit, of an individual.
What does this mean for personal identity? How can one believe in the afterlife as opposed to oblivion after death, as commonly held by atheists.
Several views exist on how this afterlife manifests itself. Some believe this continued existence or manifestation takes place in a spiritual realm, while in other popular views, the dead may be born again into this spiritual world to begin the life cycle over again. But what happens to memory? Can relatives have deja-vu or perhaps experience the individual reappearing in both human and/or animal form?
Rebirths and deaths may take place over and over again continuously until the individual merits entry to a spiritual realm or Otherworld.
The answers can be found in religion, metaphysics, or esotericism. Science has precious little to offer on the afterlife.
Some religions hold that the dead go to a specific "plane of existence" after death, as determined by a diety or God. Which plane can vary depending on the religion. In some cases, everyone goes to the same place. In others, the quality of ones existence is taken into account and effectively "judged". Reincarnation, such as those in the Indian religions, holds that the nature of the continued existence is determined directly by the actions of the individual in the ended life, rather than through the judgment of a spiritual being.
Different religions have different beliefs to offer: