Our personality,thoughts, memories etc are all contained in the brain. When the brain dies and decays they are gone. The only way a person lives on is in their deeds, good or bad, and in the memories of friends and family.

If a second hand car dealership told you that they only sell cars to people who are moving abroad, and that they will only deliver to you after you have moved abroad, what would you think? And what would you think when they told you they had never had any complaints ?

That would be a good scam. But not as good as promising anything in the way of rewards and punishments, but only after you die. Now that's what you call a good trick.

At the heart of the problem lies the fact that time is nothing but a human mental construct, which renders meaningless any question about creation or immortality. Our very concept of existence is based on superficialities. When we think of something “existing” we think of it as enduring over time.

The sense of self as a separate person with a body is a very airy concept and IMO is just an illusion. Without your memories you would no longer be you. Many cases have been documented of different personalities occupying a single body.

The question is bound up somehow with the nature of conscious awareness, and that is currently a very deep mystery. What we desire is a continuation of consciousness, but I lean toward thinking that consciousness is primary and is all there is in an ultimate sense, immortal by default. That sense of being conscious doesn’t come from our bodies. Our bodies are mere robots that are led by consciousness IMO.

We are at the door of Ultimate Reality but we can not directly experience Ultimate Reality, mentally bound as we are to our illusions. What then? I have no idea.

We spend way too much time as a species preoccupied on what happens next. We know, we cease to be dynamic "individuals." Our atoms go on to do different shit. Maybe more, probably not.

Our entire society is constructed around it. What comes next?

Who cares?

It's a verifiable fucking miracle that you're here right now, being who you are, just reading this text. You won lottery after goddamn lottery in a succession that defies so many odds as to be almost impossible just to read this fat dude wearing a beanie in his profile pic tell you about it. That's what you won, that's your prize.

But these lotteries came with a cost. It was a steep one.

You can never, not in the whole of goddamn infinity, do this again. Not in this way, not in this order, not in the deepest recesses of improbability.

This life matters not one fucking iota except what each person makes of it, but that's still it.

So fuck wondering what happens next. No offense to OP, but we argue over this shit every day in here. It doesn't matter. It's fun to think about, but that's it.

Stereotypical motivation stuff here: do whatever makes you happy. That doesn't matter either, though.

On the plus side, this post doesn't matter. Do whatever you want. I'm the universe exploring itself just like you.

I do have a hypothesis n this subject, all based on what's known and logic. Conciousness is an energy flickering around the brain, thinking of itself as an invididual and whole self and it is this self we fear losing in death. But the question is flawed, there is no indivisible self as has been shown in experiments to find ways to control epileptic fits. They cut through the bridges between the to hemisperes of the temprol lobe, so to restrict the fit to one side leaving the other half of the brain still functioning enough to keep the patient concious and aware with some element of control. But what they discovered is the self had divided, there were now two individuals in the same head. Theycould keep secrets from each other, argue and even assult the self. Energy can not be created or destroyed only transformed, so add the energy from your dying body to the background energy, and like a drop of water in the ocean you become the ocean.

I know! We get eaten by worms…

I have always thought that my low priced chemical remains would would become a part of our sun when it becomes a red giant.

So, the light at the end of the tunnel is a train.