I'm going to try and cover all forms of how the world sees life after this one. Life after life. Life after death. Eternal life.
Let's start with Ancient Egypt.
Humans have "ka" (a lifeforce) that leaves the body at death. Like humans, it lives on food and drink. It must carry on eating and drinking. The way it gets this food is through the sacrifice of food that those lucky enough to be alive make. The food would then pass into the ghost realm for the ka to eat.
The "ka" then joins up with the "ba" - your personality. When the ka and ba join together they make an "akh." This is what the Egyptians would call a ghost or soul. The tombs of the deceased need constant upkeep to keep them in a good condition, as well as many rituals and sacrifices or else the akh will die. A second time. These ghosts would also require the power the "heka" (magic) that exists like The Star Wars' Force. All Gods had heka, and some priests of magicians did too. The priests would use the heka to perform The Opening of the Mouth Ceremonyso that the dead person could get some air into his mouth and nose, which'd warm up the senses and mean they'd enjoy their food and drink sacrifices all the more.
And move on to Ancient Rome
The classics believed that not doing the correct rites, sacrifices or religious observances would not only bring the wrath of the Gods aginst the wayward indivdual but also the whole state. Talk about guilt.
There were hundreds of cults in the Roman religion. Some were public cults and others private. They had so many feats and festivals that dies fasti (sacred days) outnumbered normal days.
and Ancient Greece
When you die you become a shade (a ghost). The body left behind is given sacrifices to nourish it and coins are placed in either the eyes or mouth for you to pay the boatman to take you across the river Styx (no relation to "living in the Sticks" by the way - which is a baseball term).
Then you go down the river of misery and past Cerberus - he's quite friendly despite popular belief. He only gets nasty, of course, when you try to get out.
You are then judged by the three Fates and given a chance to justify what you did in your life. Those three Fates are Minos - that's the guy who built the labrynth and installed the Minotaur in it. What happened was that Poseidon wanted a bull sacrificed to him, but at the last minute Minos switched his favourite bull for a less good one and Poseidon was practically apopleptic. He cursed Paciphae (Minos' wife) with bestiality (animal sex), and made it so that she could only be satisfied by a male bull (we'll leave the details to the reader's imagination). So Minos built a giant wooden bull for Paciphae to get inside and get freaky with whatever nearby bull was passing at the time. She got preggers and gave birth to a half-bull half-man creature (interestingly enough, this also happens in 120 Days of Sodom by the Marquis de Sade). To hide him away Minos got Daedalus - a local engineer and thinker dude to construct an amazing maze (or labrynth) so that he could banish this freak of nature from sight.
To keep the Minotaur (as it was called) alive, they fed him 14 people a year. Then in a move well before Dan Brown's time, thought to keep all this a secret by feeding Daedalus and his son, Icarus, to the Minotaur. Course Daedalus had built in an escape plan, and made some wings together, held with wax. Icarus flew too close to the sun, you know how that played out. Minos went to exact his revenge on Daedalus using a conch shell a piece of string and an ant (look it up) and was eventually tricked into taking a hot bath. A very hot bath. And died.
All this was enough to impress the Gods into giving him a encumbant position in the afterlife.
They also gave his brother (Rhidamanthus) a job as he was an excellent ruler that Minos had driven out. The third judge and Fate is Aeacus. He was a bloody good King too. Although he had the poor luck of ruling over the Myrmidons, a race of ant-people related to the original she-ant Myrmidon, daughter of Eurymedousa, who was seduced by Zeus in the form of an ant. (Again, we'll leave that image to you, the reader.)
These three fates then pick where you go to: purgatory? Yes, if you've been a bit naughty. The Elysian Fields? Only if you've been really good. Like a warrior or hero. Off you go to the Plain of Asphodel if you're just an average Joe. Been bad? Really bad. Off to Tartarus with you! There you'll be dipped in lava, have your liver eaten out a bit, push rocks up a hill, etc. But the ancient Greeks had quite a progressive view of eternal punishment though. You could work your way up the ladder into a better afterlife, if you worked hard or pulled a few strings.
Hesiod said that the Greek afterlife was "9 days fall" from Earth. But, if a human falls at 122/mph (terminal velocity), he'd end up 26,352 miles below the surface of the Earth. The Earth, though is only 7929 miles thick, and would only take you 40 minutes to get through. Meaning you'd be 18,423 miles above the Earth's surface (that's about 1/10th of the way to the Moon) on the other side of the globe, somewhere above New Zealand for Greeks. Not China, as originally thought. To end up in China, you'd have to dig a hole through the Earth in Argentina, Chile, Peru or Brazil.
Christianity
Christians believe a soul is the life breath. This comes from the term "nephesh" in the original version of Genesis. This is where God breathes the breath of life into Adam. This breath returns to God after the body dies as it is God's innermost aspect of humans, and the definition of being made in God's image.
But where does it go? To an intermediate state? In the Old Testament it's called sheol - a storage facility of souls - where the soul is kept until Judgement Day. At this point the good ones get immortal bodies to live in the Garden of Eden. The bad go to hell. In sheol, the souls are in a state called soul sleep. It means that souls aren't immortal, funnily enough, as they have to come back to life for Judgement Day. Some Christians believe that your soul goes straight to heaven or hell for a taster session, then back for Judgement Day before spending the rest of eternity in their designated roles.
Heaven is, of course, a dwelling place for God. It's like Eden apparently, and Hell is often seen as a lake of burning sulpher etc. But it's quite hard to tie down the Bible for an exact description of either afterlife. Even Pope John Paul II said that rather than a place it's a state of being for anyone who has accepted or rejected God. This caused a bit of an uproar at the time, but does highlight how most of our idea of Hell comes from Dante and not the Bible, which doesn't really describe anything.
Judaism
So in Judaism, if you're really good you go to the World To Come (Olam Haba), in which they will inhabit a Garden-of-Eden-like place, or be cast into the barren Gehenna (Hell). You might get a chance to atone in the after-life though and go through a re-schooling period.
Islam
In Islam the more good deeds you do, the higher your level of Imam and the more Gates of Jannah and Pillars of Islam you observe, the better place you get in heaven. There Gates of Jannah are thus:
- Baaab us-Salaah (prayer)
- Baab ul-Jihad (Jihad gets a bad press, but it's more to do with a struggle than a war. It can be a struggle for a noble cause or promoting peace)
- Baab us-Sadaqah (Charity)
- Baab us-Rayyan (Fasting)
- Baab ul-Hajj (Pilgrimage)
- Baab ul-Aiman (Resisting temptation)
- Baab udn-Dhikr (showing zeal in remembering God)
- Baab ul-Kaazimeenal Ghaiz wal Aafina Anim Naas - (Forgiveness)
If you're bad or don't do enough of these things you go to Jahannam where you will experience
- The burning of skin
- The burning off of all your skin
- Having your skin regrown and then burnt off again
- Garments of fire being put out with boiling water
- Face on fire
- Lips burnt off
- Backs on fire
- Brain boiling
- Being spitroasted (ahem)
- Faces dragged through fire
- Eating the Zaqqum
- Which is a fruit that is really spiky, and really hot and will pierce your tongue and your throat and burn you at the same time as you eat it. It also tastes really bitter, so there.
They believe in reincarnation whereby you go through the cycle plenty of times until you become one with God. Your body is a shell and you go up and down in the scale of things depending on your Karma. Inbetween each incarnation you get to experience some punishments or rewards (like a bonus round) depending on your behaviour.
Buddhism
Similar to Hinduism but instead of moving between shells and getting the perfect life right, your soul is on a journey like a cosmic game of snakes and ladders where you're being born into the new life in the same condition as you left the previous one. Eventually you leave the cycle and experience Enlightenment, but you don't become one with God like in Hinduism.
Sikhism
A more structured version of reincarnation: a good live moves you up one level, and a bad life down one. Plants are at the bottom, up through bugs, fish, animals and Humans and then Oneness with God at the top. You also get a choice whether to become One with God or return to serve the people of the planet Earth.
Zoroastrianism
The battle of Good vs Evil exists in everyone and after death the soul lingers on and all the spirits of the good deeds have a massive scrap with the spirits of the bad deeds and the winner drags the soul off to the respective afterlife.
Wiccan
They believe in reincarnation, but in some strains they believe that there are only a set number of Wiccan souls and only Wiccans are reincarnated as Wiccans.
Ancient Norse Religion
If you die in battle as a glorious warrior you go the Valhalla - the Hall of the Slain. If you're average you go to Hel (with one L) - aka the Covered Hall, to be with your loved ones. If you're a bad egg you go to Niflhel where you're punished in the usual ways.
