I believe a couple of different things about what happens when we die, simultaneously, cuz that's fun.
A) I've long known (and have re-realized many times) that I place my faith and my hope in the ecosystem, that the same hope and the same optimism others find in an omnipotent omnibenevolent God, I find in the base ecological reality that everything is useful and waste is just another word for "someone else's food". A complete immanence of divinity is part of that, and that means that what happens to the subtle body after "death" would naturally be in some way analogous, similar, or equivalent to what happens to the gross body. Hell, it might even be the same process ~ which has a certain aesthetic glamour to it*. What happens to the gross body when you die? It is eaten by other beings who take these little bits of your body and turn them into their own body (well, they turn most of it into keeping themselves alive, but that still follows the same ultimate lala, since energy is neither created nor destroyed). This process is repeated hundreds of times until ~ faster than we assume ~ molecules and atoms that were once part of your body are spread more or less evenly across the surface of the planet. We die so that others may live by eating us so that they in turn can die so that others may live so that they can die so that yet others may live . . . . It is why we are alive.
To put it in the vague terms of one of the divine beings I worship (work for, actually ~ she's my Boss Lady): We give the stores of motion in our heart to the universe, giving it a push and keeping it going, preventing it from winding down.
B) I define the ecosystem a bit broader than many, informed by Teilhard de Chardin and Velikovsky and others (Tolkien has certainly influenced me here, too, though I doubt he'd be discussing this as ecological). The seven parts of the ecosystem are atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere, lithosphere, pledosphere, magnetosphere and the noosphere. The noosphere is where memes live, the subset of the ecology that involves things like religions and languages and the gods and economic systems and advertising jingles and things. I assert that the noosphere is as vital to the functioning of the ecosphere as any of the others, and that means that it is so in addition to and separate from its effects on human behavior. One of the ways I describe death is as when one's memes overtake one's genes. While we live, our bodies and existence are defined by our genes (and molecules and atoms and things, but please allow me my poetical flourishes); after we die, our bodies and existence are defined by our memes, the stories told about us. Importantly, we have no actual control over the content, tone, longevity, or intent of those stories; we can just hope while we're alive that our actions inspire people to tell stories about us that we will be happy to become. Insofar as my ethics depend upon my view of the afterlife, that is how they do so.
C) I've visited a couple of different afterworlds ~ Hades, the Kur, etc. ~ and have friends in several of them. Specifically, I have ritually put my afterlife in the hands of Ol' Four-Letters (YHVH, that is) and Diuus Antinous (boyfriend of the Roman emperor Hadrianus Caesar ~ the one who built that wall in Britain) so far. Several of the other divinities that i work with are likely to get involved as well, though I need to do ritual to ensure such things. The same is true of the various beings I worship as ancestors of all four types (of blood, of love, of path, of land) and the non- and pre-human ancestors of extinction I worship, as well. I expect to end up in Diuus Antinous's realm and hopefully on the ancestor shrines of at least a few of my friends and relatives (my niblings, especially). It would be nice to have homes in various death-realms ~ I could travel!
I've helped birth two ritual songs that also sum up my thoughts:
#1
We are blood, and we are bone:
We're carrion, yes, we're carrion.
We are breath and we are soul:
We carry on, yes, we carry on.
We are here, and we are there,
Within spirit, we're everywhere.
Hey, Great Mystery, can you bum a prayer?
Just to carry on, just to carry on.
#2
As I eat, I know one day I'll be eaten.
As I treat, I know one day I'll be treated.
As I need, I know one day I'll be needed.
As I weave, I know one day I'll be woven.
As I break, I know one day I'll be broken.
As I hope, i know one day I'll be open.
* Aesthetics is the mother of all philosophy, as decisions are ultimately arbitrary, and aesthetics is the philosophy of how we make arbitrary decisions. In this way, aesthetics is the mother of everything, really.
