What happens when we die?

“If you ask religious people all over the world, they want ‘heaven’. Each scripture of that religion tries to give us a picture of heaven. By telling the people of heaven they put down norms of behaviour expected and rituals to be done. So what is Heaven? Have you seen it or have you met someone who has spent time there to come and tell you? So it’s a kind of visualisation. I have been trying to take a rational picture of heaven. The best way to visualise heaven is to put the best of things for a long long time….”
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“A friend who has worked in hospice care once told me that people either die saying, ‘Oh God’ or, ‘Oh shit.’ I had witnessed two deaths by the time she told me that, my step-mother’s and my grandmother’s. Both ‘Oh shit’s’. My grandmother’s final words from her deathbed were, ‘That’s all?’ I don’t know who she was talking to, whether it was us or her God. It might have been that she was responding to someone or something that had, in the final breath of her life, finally revealed to her the purpose of life. And she was like, ‘That’s it?! Just that?’ The way it felt, knowing her choices from a young age had been dictated by historical fate and circumstance, was that she was saying, ‘I’m out of time already? That’s it, game over?'”
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"Life is dream-like to say the least.  Most of us have no recollection of what happened before we were born.  Looking back at one’s past, even the present, seems as hazy and obscure as a dream does.  It is common knowledge that it is impossible to die in a dream - that doing so will jolt you awake.  Why would this dream-like experience of life be any different?  To die in this dream is to be born into another."

"Our mortality can best be symbolized by a cloud.  When water droplets condense in the sky, we do not say a cloud is born.  When they fall as rain, we do not say the cloud has died.  We see the nature of the cloud as ever changing.  To see the similarities between our own lives and those of clouds is to ask, “what dies?”  When we let go of our attachments to this fixed identity, we recognize death as mere transformation.  Our bodies return to the Earth, and our impact continues to make waves for others."

"I’m open to everything, closed to nothing. Maybe we create our own afterlife, and whatever you believe to be the destiny of your consciousness, you manifest yourself. Maybe it’s reincarnation. Either way I believe it’s ashes to ashes and dust to dust- mother earth will repurpose your physical body no matter what. But that was never the question. We know what happens to our bodies when we die. It’s the idea of a “soul” that’s troubling. Does our soul continue on? It feels right to me that we are all a part of one consciousness on the pursuit of experiencing ourselves and becoming “God” over years and years of reincarnation, and maybe not even in a linear way."

“The process of dying has been explained in detail by many indigenous tribes and ancient sciences. I have chosen to read and study Tibetan Buddhism, Vedic Teachings, and Tantric Practices. This is an attempt to present, in short, my understanding of the process of dying and rebirth according to the teachings I mentioned above. If you want to read more, I highly recommend the Tibetan book of living and dying by Sogyal Rinpoche. The human organism is sustained by 5 elements-earth, water, fire, air and space. Once we die, the elements dissolve into the macro universe. Together, with the elements, in specific order the ego, intellect, conceptual mind disintegrate as well-stripping everything away from us-senses, emotions, feelings, rational thinking until nothing else remains but our true nature/consciousness/soul/ higher-self/spirit-whatever you need to call it.
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"It depends how you define what death is. It also depends who you define as you. Death of body is recycled into the Earth to become new resources for new Life to emerge. Death of the mind is the death of one’s identity and ideas – this can happen before the death of the body or at the same time. Accumulation of mind will be passed on through one’s consciousness – just like saved data stored in an iCloud rather than a hard drive only to be transferred back to the hard drive during reincarnation."

“There is no heaven or hell, or spiritual plane, or even eternal void you go to when you die. Just an infinitude of an inevitable conscious experience of self-worlds. Eternal hell could never exist, nor eternal heaven. Nothing ever remains in the same place forever. The experiencing world NEEDS contrast. If the up line means you’re happy and the down line means you’re sad then If you were always going up you wouldn’t have anything to relate to happiness to give it its meaning of happiness. No down line to know what up is or what it means at all, it wouldn’t be happiness anymore. You only know you’re happy because you’ve been sad. Everything is bound to change and it would need to be naturally….”
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"ABSOLUTELY FUCK ALL! We die. End of story. Our bodies decompose (unless we put them into a treated box, smh), and our energy is restored into the biosphere to make room for new life. To make things a little more romantic, I like to think that we are all just a transfer of energy, stored in bodies that can do miraculous things for the duration of our lives, and when we die we return to source, that dying is just returning."

"When a star dies, it turns into a supernova, collapses in on itself, and becomes a black hole.  When a flower dies, it disintegrates, leaving the plant to continue on.  When a gazelle dies, it becomes food for many species.  When a human dies, a synthesis of the above happens;  Our bodies, like the gazelle, are recycled as nutrients.  Our wisdom, like the flower, is passed on through the stream of human intelligence.  Our souls, like the star, are transported into another dimension."