The Afterlife:
Prepare it While You Live

Last Update: 9 May, 2024

What This is About:

Human consciousness is not mortal, but eternal, even though the human body is mortal. That is to say, the spirit continues to live after death, which is an Afterlife.

Where you go depends on what you did.

Why It's Important:

Whatever you think about the Afterlife, the sheer eternal duration of it means that it is well worth whatever preparation you can make. You wouldn't go to spend a day somewhere without a hotel reservation; where will you spend your eternity?

Background:

Unfortunately, although the Afterlife is of such extreme intensity and duration of effect to all life on Earth, our society has discouraged attention on it, or pursuit of the truth on it, due to:

Keeping cultural focus on issues of immediate security and comforts, including measuring people's success by these. Government and business have an incentive to mobilize people to produce, purchase, and obey, not to think about their Afterlife. In fact, if we followed Government and business on how to live, we would live only for the now. Many people die without even waking a Will, as if they were immortal.
Portrayal that concerns about what happens after death are childish.
Trusting in unreasonably certain religious guarantees about the Afterlife, typically taught by humans who have nothing directly to do with the administration of the Afterlife. These assurances alleviate the natural alarm we should have over our limited lifespand and approaching end of life expectancy.
Portraying it as offensive to talk about publicly, being an immoral challenge to others' choice of beliefs. It should have been alarming that the different religions have very different views on the Afterlife, in terms of what we will find there and how we should prepare, and they are not compatible, even though humans are fundamentally the same and should therefore face a similar reality. Rather, in the face of these many beliefs about the Afterlife, based in religion, and since it's offensive to say that anyone's religious beliefs are wrong, the popular solution is to proclaim everyone's beliefs as equally valid. Unfortunately howevermuch this works to encourage inter-religious harmony, it also logically discourages anyone from pursuing the truth about the Afterlife: if any belief is equally valid, there's no reason to pursue the truth.

Definitions

The Afterlife is the continuation of your consciousness without your physical body.

Delusions in this Issue:

Extreme indifference has become popular on this issue, as though most people would rather talk about literally anything else.
Our Society Leading People Away from Focus on the Issue. Our society is notorious for leading people away from things which have lasting impact to things which have no lasting impact, making it quite fashionalble (praised) to think that way, and condemned as morbid to think about death. In particular, watching other people play professional is portrayed as the second most important thing you can do with your life (second only to playing those sports yourself), even though, by design, the direct outcome of those games cannot cannot change anything in society for anyone: the results are limited in impact to the area and usually to that game. For example, if a baseball team even wins the World Series, to the attention and cheer of millions of people, that accomplishment doesn't directly help anyone with anything: it doesn't feed a hungry person, or cure cancer, but is only highly glorified entertainment. In contrast, our society has given no attention to the Afterlife, as though only crazy people think about that, even though we're all headed there, we cannot comee back on our own power, and it is a forever change. Ultimately, the reason most people don't think much about the Afterlife seems to be that other people don't think much about the Afterlife, and they feel safest doing what most people are doing. As Jesus put it in the Bible Gospel, there is no spiritual safety in following the Majority:

13 Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat:
14 Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.
(Holy Bible, KJV, Matthew 7:13-14)

Cop-Out of the Issue as Requring Effort. The main excuse on this path is that since there are so many conflicting theories of the Aferlife, that 'no one knows for sure', as though that means that it's not worth investigating. What it really means is that it requires effort to investigate which they're not willing to give. In particular, this argument that 'no one knows' fails in the following ways:

Some people actually do know for sure because they have medically died, experienced another reality, and come back. Many of these are misnamed near-death experiences when they are actually post-death experiences. The fact that people could have such vivid experiences, and remember them, when their brain has no oxygen supply (which requires both heart and lungs to be working, among other things), suggests the existence of consciousness, and therefore life, beyond the physical body. Moreover, some of these people report specific observations during this period which they could not know through their physical body alone even if alive.
Whether you're sure or not of what is in the Afterlife, you're definitely going there, so you squander your opportunity to prepare now if you don't. The Afterlife is not like learning about legendary places, such as Camelot, which we have no reasonable expectation of ever encountering, so we simply dismiss them with a statement like 'no one knows for sure'. Since we're going to the Afterlife, we need to find out. It cannot be ignored because it will be faced. It's not a question of if it's important, of if we will see it, but how prepared we are.
We know we can't expect to come back (even if we do, very rarely as discussed above, it's only to go to the Afterlife forever). That makes preparation even more important. There is no 'undo' button for being misprepared.

Entitlement. The main danger with humantiy facing the Afterlife seems to be that too many people have bought into either a sense of total impunity for their deeds or belief systems which understate their spiritual responsibility. Poplar religions tend to make promises of eternal spiritual security on condition of very little: usually just membership int he religion and paying your dues. It leaves a lot of people looking forward to the Afterlife as a reward for nothing done and without any accountability. For example, in some popular interpretations of Christianity, you supposedly are guaranteed to go to Heaven (a place of eternal bliss) so long as you believe in Jesus Christ, no matter what you did or didnt do, because He paid the price for you to be entitled to that. Really.

The reality is that our Creator has the right to demand an accounting of every act, word, and thought of ours, and it's very dangerous to embrace some theory of salvation which ignores or sidesteeps that accountabilty.

Facts about the Afterlife:

Here is what we know for sure:

The time after this life is infinitely longer than the time of this life. It's like comparing 1 to infinity.
There is abundant eyewitness testimony of life after death. Many people report vivid experiences in another form and place who hae come back from death. Many of these experiences are past medical death, and should not be called near-death experiences, which terminology denies the reality of going beyond the medical end of life. Some of them report observations of information from those experiences which they could not have had from the position of their physical body.

October 23, 2022: Surgeons Find Evidence of a Soul After Patient Describes Operating Room After Declared Dead for 20 Minutes

If there is a life after death, it is worthwhile to prepare for, even at the sacrifice of this life, if possible, based on its timeframe being infinitely longer than that of this life. It means that anyone who dies for the sake of eternal principles has made a wise trade to protect their Afterlife at the sacrifice of this life.
It makes sense to prepare for the Afterlife based on relationship with Someone powerful who rules it. If you believe in a supreme being, God, building a relationship with Him/Her makes sense to serve you well in the Afterlife.
Since you cannnot return to redo, it is worthwhile to take meticulous care about what you believe and pursue regarding the Afterlife. You need to be right the first time about this.
Death can happen at any time. It's wise to plan to live a long time, so long as you do it with both acknowledgement that you will die and that death can happen at any time. Preparatiosn for your passing, in this world and the next, should never wait.
You must completely leave your earthly Wealth and even body behind. Therefore your investment in these should never supercede your investment in the Afterlife. For example, although collecting money might serve you in this life, once you die, the only related wealth to your credit may be not what you kept, but what you gave away.
If you did good or evil you deserve a return in kind. If that return doesn't happen in this life, and there is any later life, you can expect a return on it then.
It's not clear, from this side, how far that accountability will go, or to what result. The safest appraoch is to prepare accountabiltiy for all of your actions, words, and even thoughts, and to not expect any automatic leniency (doing which is entitlement).
Regarding Post-Death Exerperiences, many of them report seeing celebrities in Hell. This suggests that it's not what the world thinks of you that's any safety in the Afterlife.

Theories about the Afterlife:

There are other beings in the Afterlife, since, at the very least, you are not the only one who dies. It is also reasonable that this entire system was set up by someone, or at least is run by some kind of governmence, since conscious beings in one place tend to organize into some kind of social order.
You may be judged in the Afterlife. It's not easy, from this side of life, to prove that you will be judged in the Afterlife, but at least you should acknowledge that if you were Created, and/or if there is a Supreme Being, that being may demand an accounting of you, even for your thougths, words, and actions. Humans do it to other humans in this life and they are neither all-powerful nor superior nor did they create you. Maybe God will be lenient, but to not recognize His right to judge is extremely dangerous tending to leave you unprepared in your accountability.
You will be judged primarily on the morality of your deeds, because God, truth, and morality are the only things fundamentally eternal (your eternity being based on God's), and the first two of those you don't control and thereforee cannot be judged on, but the last thing you can.
If you had a specific life purpose given to you by the Supreme Being, presumably you will be judged on how well you accomplished it.
How well you developed your consciousness in life seems reasonable to also be important in determining where you got next.

What the Threat is:

The threat is that unrepented guilt, whether you care about what you did wrong or not, must be repented or punished in this life, or else there is justice to be executed on you in the next life.

Although Hell is not a threat to life during physical life, it is a critical threat to life after death.

Evidence of Heaven: The Good Place. Really Good.

'Near-Death' (really Post-Death) Experiences of Heaven, God, or loving beings:

Hell: The Bad Place. Really Bad.

What the Issue of Hell is:

This is about the facts that:

We have an accountability for our thoughts, words, and actions, beyond to Earthly authorities, to our Creator. We can expect to be Judged there, for good deeds to be rewarded, and evil deeds to be punished.
The concept of Hell is that it is a place where these kinds of punishments are carried out, typically that the evil you did (and didn't repent of) is returned to you in similar fashion as you did to the innocent, only returned to you in tremendous repetition.
Hell is said to be eternal, although not every source agrees. Whether or not Hell is an eternal punishment, it is wise to everything to avoid it, beause the testimonies of visionaries and those of related near-death experiences are that the punishment of Hell is extreme beyond our imagination in both repetition, duration, and intensity. Part of the reason for the the high intensity of suffering is that, it is said and is reasonable, the pain felt by the soul-spirit hurts much more when injured directly than when the pain has to go through a body to be sensed by the soul-spirit. Appparently there are limits to bodily pain, but not to spiritual pain.
Punishments for sin can be avoided if the person sincerely repents, so long as they do so while they still live. After death, such repentance is not accepted.
Similarly, if a person is justly punished for what they did wrong in this life, as far as we know that is accepted to avoid punishment in the next life.
The standard for Afterlife judgment is morality, not legality: if something is legal in your society at the time you did it, but morally wrong, that's a guilt towards your Creator.
Afterlife Judgment is also based on intent behind your deeds rather than just your deeds, because the Creator knows your intent and keeps a spiritual record of it.
Due to the Afterlife Judgment being based on the morality of intent rather than outward appearances, some people who appear to do evil things with innocent intent, such as some prostitutes, will not be punished, while some people who appear to do good things with evil intent will be punished. For example, one visionary reported the the late Pope John Paul II is actually in Hell, because Jesus was angry with him because, during his life, besides some other sins, most importantly, the Pope taught, even in an official written document, that Hell was not a place, portraying it as simply a separation from God, even though he knew that it was a place. This worked against Jesus Christ's work to try to warn people about the reality of Hell, endangering many people, especially as the Pope was the religious leader of billions of people (there is a responibility to leadership): WARNING TO ALL CATHOLICS AND IDOL WORSHIPERS! Hell is Real, Pope John Paul II is BURNING in Hell.
It's when the morally guilty go unpunished, and they don't repent, that they face inescapable punishment in the Afterlife.
As doing evil things causes harm to victims in this world, and harm to purpetrators in the next, and since God is just but did not design us to suffer, He has been reaching out, through prophets, visions, and other means, to warn people to stop sinning (ie. stop doing evil).
The idea of Hell is easy to ignore in this life, because the gift of Life itself affords us comforts for now. Some might even laugh at those who try to describe, portray, or otherwise warn about Hell. Sadly, the horror of Hell isn't conveyed well through words or visual effects but it must usually be felt to appreciate its full gravity. Few have been allowed to witness it and come back to tell about it. Unlike stories of heaven, apparently due to shame, stories about going to Hell are less common.
Despite some interpretations, Hell is not about suffering for choosing the wrong religion somuch as justice for the moral evil you have done.
Few people give enough thought about where they will go after they die, even though it's inevitably coming, and even though it is eternal.

Evidence or Testimony

Here are sample testimonies of Hell:

Mirror: 23 Minutes in Hell (original) - Bill Wiese, The Man Who Went To Hell
10 Horrors of Hell - Warning To Those Who Reject Jesus
Hell is real-there is proof
A Vision-Dream of Hell 4/18/22@5:41AM
Many quick testimonies on TikTok:

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The Concept of Puragatory

Although not Biblical, there is a Christian concept, in some denominations, of a place you go to in the Afterlife if you have unrepented sin or shortcomings which are not serious enough to send you to Hell for (mortal sin) but which you need to atone for in terms of suffering.

The popular viewpoint on this in such believe systems is that the penalties for sin are severe, only a little less agony than Hell, and for timeframes which are often measured in tens, hundreds, or thousands of years. For example, one notion is that for a single sin the atonement is suffering for longer than your Earthly lifetime. It is also believed by some that time passes much faster in Purgatory than it does here, for example that a year there might be a day here, based on the Day-Year Principle.

Questions about the Afterlife

With our transition to the Afterlife even more certain than our life expectancy here, and our life expectancy here far less than the eternity of the Afterlife, it would be wise for humanity to make answering certain questions about the Afterlife a high priority, such as:

Is there a Judgment in the Afterlife?

It seems likely that whoever made us will want to evaluate our performance at some point, and based on that evaluation, decide what to do with us, because this is a sensible way to manage resources.

What are the consequences of that Judgment?

As conscious beings endowed with freedom of choice, it is likely that there will be some reward or punishment as a result of that Judgment.

At how high a standard are we Judged?

What is considered failure?

How much punishment are we talking about for a certain failure?

Such things are of vital importance for humanity to understand.

What can we do now to improve our Judgment?

What preparations are most important? Can transgressions be remedied? How much easier is it for us to remedy things now than atone for them at the Judgment?

Which religion has the most accurate concept of what happens in the Afterlife?

We really need to know this.

What We Can Do About Your Afterlife:

Pursue your own spiritual experience. Spiritual experiences are usually subjective and it's all too easy to scoff at someone else's experience to puff your own pride. If you want to find out the truth, however, it's your responisibility to pursue your own experience. For example, many people report success simply addressing God and asking Him to help them understand if He is real.
Stop doing evil. This is the single most important thing you can do to improve your Afterlife.
Get to know God. Seek Him out.
If you have sinned, don't put off a repentance. Repentance only counts before you die, and death can come at any time.
Do as much good as you can in the lifetime you have. This website is a good resource to alert you to activist issues which need attention.
Help others to save their life and/or Afterlife and you help save your own.

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The Afterlife: Prepare it While You Live