I’m generally with you on this perennial enigma among us. And I don’t believe in any narrative of the “Afterlife” because every culture on Earth has a different narrative. Whereas there is substantial consensus among the world’s religious traditions on basic ethics—i.e. the golden rule, which has analogues in every other religious tradition that I know. But no such analogues exist for what happens to our “souls” after we die. As a gardener, I take refuge in observing interbeing all around me. Cut a clipping and propagate it, and voila—a whole new plant, genetically identical to the first. It happens all the time; whole stands of forest or sea grass or fungal mycelia are actually only “one” organism. So our notion of a unique, autonomous self may also be an illusion. We are simply ripples on the ocean of life, moire patterns in the matrix of space-time. And our death is like a wave washing ashore, trying desperately to maintain its structural integrity until the water is too shallow and it collapses. But the water is still there, already getting drawn into the next wave…