I currently believe that the most logical conclusion is that absolutely nothing happens after you die. You just stop existing, just like before you were born. I find that sad but not too scary because I won’t be conscious of not existing.
So knowing there is an afterlife is somewhat comforting, but the afterlife could just as easily be something bad as something good. I might come back as a microbe living on the left nipple of Rosie O’Donnell. Then what?
Now if I knew the afterlife was wonderful I might not be as worried about dying, but if I knew the afterlife was terrible I would become a health nut and only be dragged into the afterlife kicking and screaming.
If all I know is that after I die, there’s more, but I don’t know what the “more” is, I don’t think I’d radically change my life. Probably be less skeptical of other woo claims, but not to a huge degree. Just because some spiritualists turned out right, doesn’t mean the ancient alien guys know what’s what. Without any reliable guidance as to what the after life is like, I have no basis to judge if what I’m doing now is the right thing or not, other than my own internal sense of morality - which is already telling me I’m doing pretty well, all things considered.
One of the issues I have with the idea of the spirit is I’m not sure how much that spirit would resemble my corporeal self. A lot of my personality can be traced to purely physical things. I’ve had a panic disorder most of my adult life. That’s something that absolutely shaped my personality, and is entirely due to a chemical imbalance. Presumably, that’s not going to be included as part of my spirit - but without that chemical imbalance, am I still “me?”
Same with a lot of regular brain functions. The athlete who’s life is shaped by being an adrenaline junky: what’s he like when he doesn’t have a body pumping him full of that adrenaline? Presumably, having no body means having no sex drive. To what extent our are personalities shaped by that? What would we be like if all those chemicals and evolved responses based around reproduction are completely stripped out? We know the chemical our brain produces when we feel happy. If we can’t produce that chemical, can we still know happiness?
It seems to me that the transition from corporeal entity to pure spirit would be so fundamentally transformative that the resulting entity would bear little-to-no resemblance to our earthly selves. Which makes it not really all that different from death with no afterlife. I already know that “I” am going to continue to exist in the form of bugs and worms that consume my body, and plants that draw my residual nutrients out of the soil. Continuing existence as a spirit seems largely like a metaphysical recycling similar to what happens to my corpse: there’s a part of me that’s going to continue on, but as some other sort of creature that bears very little resemblance to who I am right now.
As LSLGuy said, I wouldn’t view this as actionable information, and since I feel that I generally lead a pretty moral life any god that would condemn me for how I lived would probably not be worth my following anyway. So all in all I’d pretty much just keep going on the way I have been.
The only significant change might be near the end of my life I might get excited at the prospect getting the answer to what its going to be like when I die, but not so much that I would actively hurry to find out. The afterlife will be there when I get there, and so long as I’m enjoying the life I have I can be patient.
I suppose, with confirmation that there is an afterlife, I would perhaps try to devote the remainder of my life to discovering the nature of said afterlife. After all, the empirical tests were performed and shown to me, confirming the existence of an afterlife, must at least give me some clue as to where to begin looking for further information.
After all, if I know there’s an afterlife, I now need to know enough about it to turn that into actionable information. I would want to know if my behavior now has any effects on my existence after death. Perhaps it’s likely I’ll never discover such a thing myself, and people will study it for many decades or centuries to come, but I think I’d feel obliged to try.
Either that or curl up in horror and have my mind break completely at the knowledge that there may not be an end to my existence at all. Because right now, I can think of literally nothing more horrifying or terrible than there to be no way to cease existing.
The bad news: “We’re all coming back as the flies that *really *like dog crap. And who live about 2 weeks. *Then *starts the eternal oblivion you’ve always expected.”
The universe has always seemed to me to be neutral, neither benevolent nor malevolent. I wouldn’t expect that to change. I’d expect this “afterlife” to be merely a different place, as it were, not substantially different that what we already know . . . and devoid of anything resembling reward or punishment. So I’d consider it merely an extension of the life we already know. If any preparation were possible, I’d focus more on my health, physical and mental.
The downside would be that I’d be away from my partner for many years (I’m 20 years older). And following my death, rather than “moving on,” he’d be stuck here without me, awaiting his own demise. Possibly wonderful in the long run, but potentially painful in the short run.