Afterlife Beliefs

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The afterlife is the concept of a realm, or the realm itself in which an essential part of an individual's identity or consciousness continues to exist after the death of the body. According to various ideas about the afterlife, the essential aspect of the individual that lives on after death may be some partial element, or the entire soul or spirit, of an individual, which carries with it and confers personal identity. Belief in an afterlife, which may be naturalistic or supernatural, is in contrast to the belief in oblivion after death. In some popular views, this continued existence often takes place in a spiritual realm, and in other popular views, the individual may be reborn into this world and begin the life cycle over again, likely with …show more content…
The Sadducees were an ancient Jewish sect that generally believed that there was a God but no afterlife. Many religions, whether they believe in the soul's existence in another world like Christianity, Islam and many pagan belief systems, or in reincarnation like many forms of Hinduism and Buddhism, believe that one's status in the afterlife is a reward or punishment for their conduct during life. Reincarnation refers to an afterlife concept found among Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, Sikhs, Rosicrucians, Theosophists, Spiritists, and Wiccans. Reincarnation is also a belief described in Kabbalistic Judaism as gilgul neshamot. In reincarnation, spiritual development continues after death as the deceased begins another earthly life in the physical world, acquiring a superior grade of consciousness and altruism by means of successive reincarnations. This succession leads toward an eventual liberation. One consequence of reincarnationist beliefs is that our current lives are both afterlife and a beforelife. According to those beliefs events in our current life are consequences of actions taken in previous lives, or