If your belief system is not based on any religion, what do you believe will happen when you die?

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I believe in a realm that is called the Unmanifest, it’s characterized by the lack of physical rules and matter to organize and define it. Rather than matter, instead consciousness creates its own forms to have experiences as.

Since I don’t know what actually happens, my thought proceeds along two ‘tracks’. The first path ends in reincarnation, the second ends in ‘joining God’. There are contradictions involved in both pathways, but I continually refine my understanding to remove them.

The reincarnation track holds that non-physical minds eventually lose the will to exist, and so falls apart. The being’s soul then projects into another material body.

The joining God track holds that there is enough structure in the afterlife for anyone to exist indefinitely should they want to. The eventual fate for souls that do not want to incarnate again is to proceed to a realm of endless pleasure and joy. The only problem here is creating meaning. When such a being can no longer find meaning in being a part of God, do they stop existing entirely? Reincarnate?

There’s no reason to believe that they are mutually exclusive. But what are the ultimate purpose of souls? They’re collecting and evolving our consciousnesses, for what exactly? We as conscious beings obviously care about our souls somewhat, but we by definition can’t care about the finer points of their surroundings, any more than a dog can really care about the finer details of its master’s life. Is he happy? Is he petting me? Am I getting food? Different questions than, say, what’s the history of sidewalk ordinances in the county that made it so there’s no sidewalk to walk on here? The specifics are less important to the dog than the mere fact that there’s no sidewalk. That’s the spirit in which I inquire about grander reality. I don’t expect to find anything more than fascinating history.

Reincarnation feels like a default option, consciousness takes time to evolve to the point to where a being can sustain itself in a realm with nothing intrinsic to derive meaning from.

I used to think that humanity was a “low” form for consciousness to exist in, that we could eventually ‘graduate’ from it into more complex modes of existence. Eventually I came to understand that consciousness, and humanity, is far more sophisticated than we give it credit for. Existence can always expand to offer opportunities for meaning making, even in this brute physical realm.

One needs an order of magnitude more consciousness in order to exist in a ruleless realm. And there’s far more structure in human society than we give it credit for. Becoming more conscious does make you more capable of dealing with undifferentiated ideas, but it also makes you gravitate even more towards structure. My trance work improved immensely when I realized that I was building more structure when I was trancing, not trying to remove it.

Ultimately this will be resolved in my mind as I refine my understanding of the process of consciousness growth more.