Hmm... There's a lot of possibilities, and no evidence.
To all who say your consciousness ceases to exist, consider that we have no idea what consciousness is right now. (or even a consistent definition of it.) - So saying it's a physical thing is speculation based on nothing really.
That doesn't mean it isn't what happens.
As for evidence for other things, some research has been done, though few believe it, especially since it's by definition hard to trust.
Some young children 'remember' details of their last life. Often claiming to know people, and even knowing how they died.
In several cases, the stories these children came up with have been investigated, and seemed consistent with a real person...
All the known cases have something in common though, and that is that these children remember their death in their former lives, and it was always something traumatic. (A car crash... Being murdered... Etc.)
The memory of such 'past' lives these children seem to know also tends to dissapear as they get older. At the age of 7 they no longer remember any of it.
Consider a few other points too:
How do you know you were alive yesterday? Do you have any memories of being an infant? - You might have been shown pictures of when you were 6 months old, but do you actually remember that? How can you be sure it's you? How can you be sure you even existed at all, prior to this exact moment?
The only reason you can say who you were yesterday is you, is because you remember it... So, with no continuity of memory, your life doesn't actually seem to be anything.
So what happens when you die? Well, some people think that what happens is what you expect to happen. Thus, if you expect an afterlife, you'll get one. If you expect to cease existing, you will. If you're not sure, you'll be very confused...
But I want to say one final thing. All our current knowledge of physics starts to make two things look quite probable:
- Free Will is an illusion.
- And more importantly, time, or more accurately, the flow of time is also an illusion of perception...
That implies that since time, while reflecting something about the universe, is not in fact a real phenomenon (at least, not in the way we percieve it to be; In that it goes from the past to the future), the future and the past are not seperate from eachother.
Therefore, being alive or dead is also something that is related entirely to a peculiarity of our own perception.
And what is consiousness anyway? Do you realise how large a proportion of the cells in your body die every day?
The atoms in your body are exchanged with the environment so much, that 7 years later, there isn't anything left in your body that was in it originally.
The pattern that holds you together might not survive indefinitely, but it is not a static thing. Where is this pattern that keeps you you?
Anyway, I can be quite morbid too, after all that.
I mean, what happens when you're asleep? To my subjective experience, when I'm asleep, I cease to exist.
And yet, that clearly isn't the case...
Since consiousness is your subjective experience of reality, the fact that it can apparently dissapear for hours on end and then return with you being none the wiser is an interesting existential thought...
There is something else too. You may well ask, what is there after death, but have you ever wondered, what is there before birth? (Or before conception, if you prefer)
No-one in the history of humanity has ever had an answer for the riddle that is death. But birth is no less mysterious.
Whatever happens happens. You have no control over it whatsoever, and there's ultimately no meaning to life either, so while you can expend a lot of thought on all of it, in the end none of it matters.
