What do you believe happens to you after you die? (Not what is believed by others). I was hoping for creative ideas, interesting personal beliefs. Obviously the body decays and blah blah blah. Put some creativity in your answers.

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I believe what happens to each individual is highly personal to them, it’s going to depend mainly on two factors. a) their belief systems in life and b) their level of spiritual development.

First, the underlying fundamentals. You can model our universe as merely a place with rules. If you strip away the physical rules but leave consciousness, that’s what it’s like to exist after death. I believe consciousness is localized to the individual, it evolves and grows during the time we’re alive.

To get a sense of where I’m coming from here, you can think of another, similar realm, the Star Wars Expanded Universe. You can study the rules of the Expanded Universe much like you would physics or any other literary canon. The afterlife has a lot in common with imagined realms such as the ones reached through lucid dreaming or so-called astral projection. (AP is just a kind of lucid dreaming)

Once you strip away the reality of the physical universe, imagination dominates. It is believed that ghosts can interact in certain ways with living beings, this may or may not be true, I do not have an opinion on the subject. I do believe that consciousness continues, it’s just up in the air as to exactly how.

Your imagination is the only thing at this point holding you together. Strong belief systems like those of monotheistic religions can keep you around. You might experience purgatory or hell or heaven depending on how you feel about your life on Earth, assuming you’re a Christian. God does no judgment, it’s just the individual judging themselves.

If you have a high level of spiritual development then you might be able to keep yourself around in an extended lucid dream. This can last a long time if you want it to.

Eventually your consciousness will simply fall apart. Human-level “consciousness/soul” pairs simply aren’t strong enough to hold together after the body dies. The problem is mostly boredom. We require an external reality in which to locate a sense of self. Without it we just don’t know what to do. The soul does not need this, it will pick up the pieces of the disintegrated consciousness, reintegrate it back into itself, and then look for another body to attach to.

The process of spiritual growth is effectively the process of learning how to discard the need for external realities. The spiritually advanced quickly ‘reattaches’ to their eternal “soul-self” during life. For me this happened in my mid-twenties. The less-advanced typically never discover this aspect of themselves.

I don’t think there is anything worthwhile “out there.” It’s my goal to live forever. I believe my soul put me here with that goal in mind, and that we’ll have the scientific breakthroughs needed to attain immortality.

Interestingly enough, the problem of immortality is the same as the one of the afterlife. I believe most humans will simply get bored and only a few very spiritually-advanced humans will be able to take advantage of real immortality.