I wrote a post on Deism yesterday and a bit about my amateur religious scholar background. I was asked by 
If you missed the post yesterday. It is kind of a lead up to this one.
I used to ponder afterlife a lot more than I do now. Awhile ago I chose to look at life as an adventure. Each thing that happens good and positive are but pieces in this adventure. I decided that when I die that will hopefully be nothing more than another step in the adventure. This may not be the case, but if it is not then it is not something I would need to worry myself over. Since, I began approaching it more as something I'll some day get answers to I've speculated on it less.
I am quite good at making up completely new approaches to such things. I believe it came from writing, and from making games that had afterlife components, playing role playing games, studying a lot of religions, and discussing the subject with many people both sober people and not sober people.
I don't believe any written words about the afterlife are likely to be an accurate description of the afterlife. I do not believe in revealed religions as the post from yesterday (and above) explains in more detail. This does not mean these speculations may not have elements of the truth.
I have had some strange experiences in my life that have made me believe that there is something that occurs (or perhaps can occur) after we die. Some of my older posts that touch upon strange unknown things... Fair warning: I do not personally try to restrict myself from being able to ponder anything...
GHOSTS 001: Looking for ghosts was my adrenaline rush since I was very young - before they became popular and then overdone
Why the link salad above?
Those are all posts covering a variety of thoughts, and a variety of life experiences. You need not read them unless you are so inclined, but they do give hints that could relate to speculations on the afterlife. They could also tie into the reality as a simulation discussions that I have towards the end of this post.
I have several ideas concerning the after-life that could make sense with different information, observations, and discussions I have encountered in my life. It is possible multiple of my ideas could actually operate in tandem, or none at all.
Oblivion
When you die it ends. Game over. I've had enough hints that there are things that sometimes occur after death related to those that have died that I believe this is not necessarily true. I believe it may be true for some people. More on that later.
Dream Like
I've been so moved or been thinking so much about a thing before when I fall asleep that the thing I was thinking about invades my dream. If our brain and body are simply a tether for something else whether you want to call it your soul, your mind, your spirit, your astral body, your ethereal body, etc is irrelevant to me for this purpose. It is easy enough to consider there is something. What if when you are no longer anchored in your body the afterlife becomes more dream like? What if the things you believe at the deepest levels are the things you will experience, but more as a dream like state? So if perhaps you truly believe in oblivion, perhaps that is what you will experience. If you believe in heaven and hell and for some reason you don't tell people you secretly believe you deserve to go to hell. Perhaps that is what your dream like afterlife would be? If you believe in the Happy Hunting Grounds, perhaps that is what you will see. If you believe in Valhalla and the coming of Ragnarok then perhaps Valhalla is what you will see. If it is truly a dream like state how much of what we perceive may be shaped by our thoughts? Also, would this be endless, or would there be a point where you realize it is a dream and you voyage to a deeper truth that transcends these human literary creations for the afterlife?
The Body as a Tether
There is a radiant energy from our bodies. There are also those that believe in Chi, Ki, Kundalini, etc. Could our bodies trap us within a certain frequency of perception? Could the afterlife be the returning to a greater perception? Is returning a proper term? Perhaps if there is anything to reincarnation. Yet, it could also be viewed as awakening rather than returning.
If you have ever experienced ghosts or other things that are not easy to explain but so many people have described the same thing all over the world without interaction to be polluted by the imaginations of others then that leaves some questions. What are they? How did that happen? How did you know that name? It is easy to give into an Appeal to Authority for purely comfort reasons and accept an explanation from a fellow human. Yet people rarely ask, how does that person know this? Usually, it starts as a speculation, and at some point they believe their speculation is true. They do this with no actual evidence, testing, proof, etc. It is comfort. Some people are very uncomfortable with things they cannot explain. So rather than fighting to find an explanation, most of the time they settle for comfort. Perhaps it helps them maintain sanity. I don't know because, I am not like this. I am completely comfortable with encountering things I don't know. For me that just reinforces my idea that life and hopefully the afterlife are an adventure. Those are hints that there is a new mountain range I have never hiked somewhere off in the distance, as for a moment the clouds in the distance parted and I could see part of their peaks. This is true when I see the unknown as well. There is some hint at some new possible adventure in the future. This gives me comfort.
Mind is more than the brain
I wrote about this somewhere before, but I don't know if it was in the link salad I included on this post or not. We have heard cases of transplant recipients taking on traits of their host. This could be suddenly liking a certain food, certain music, etc. This happens when the organs are NOT the brain. We haven't managed to pull off a brain transplant. Yet that is also a strong indicator that we may not fully grasp what the MIND actually is. We like to describe it as being housed in the brain. I do believe the bulk of our memories and such are tethered/stored within the brain. Yet it also seems that we store memories, and other things in other parts of our body as well. Perhaps all parts. So if the MIND is a much bigger thing than we realize, do we know with certainty it is completely contained within our bodies?
World as a Simulation
The concept of reality as a simulation is a popular topic these days. It is being spoken of as profound and in many ways it is. Yet it also does not change much. If God(s) (choose a religion) created this then technically that would be very similar to a simulation anyway. The profound change with the simulation hypothesis is that if we are in something more akin to a computer simulation then it can leave the strange things that occur, and the way reality works more firmly understandable by science and by those of us alive. It becomes something that we ourselves could also be doing in the future, as our technology is on that trajectory. Yet it also opens up new fears. What happens when the person playing the simulation gets tired of watching it and decides to turn it off, or start over? I have little fear of that, because if that is indeed the case then when/if that happens we would likely all be instantly oblivious to it happening. All the knowledge gone (unless they saved...) all the creations torn down. That leads people who play things like "The Sims" to ponder the sadness of the worlds they destroy each time they erase their game and start over. ;)
If we are in a simulation it'd be difficult to know. I talk about this in some of the links below. Yet if we were to be able to detect it then we would need to look towards infinity. It should be at the edges of the MINIMUMS and MAXIMUMS that strange things happen. You could also look for glitches. Some of the things I wrote about above like the Underhill phenomena. Could those be glitches?
This is one of those subjects I could probably put myself into an endless cycle of going deeper and deeper and pondering new and bizarre ideas. I could also find some ideas that people will believe are safe.
If there is something to afterlife, ghosts, etc then once we have found a way to replicate consistently communication with such entities or a place we might get more viable answers. Until then all we can do is joyfully, or fearfully speculate.
I personally don't believe any books written on the subjects are the truth. They MAY hint at the truth. Yet I see them as people attempting to speculate on the unknown. There is nothing wrong with that. It only becomes wrong when a person changes speculation to TRUTH without any supporting proof or evidence.
Steem On!