From the book "Gods About Us", Max Rempel
So, the first and most consoling piece of knowledge about the afterlife: we do not die forever. The soul usually parts with the material body easily and returns home with joy to the world of the departed. There it is met by friendly souls who celebrate its return.
I understand that you will not believe me right away; no one believes right away. I myself at first took the report of celebration as, to put it mildly, an exaggeration. But it surfaces again and again in different independent sources, namely: while Here we mourn the parting, There the reunion is joyfully celebrated.
The second piece of glad news: there is no Last Judgment.
No, there has never been and never will be any judgment, great or small. These are all distortions of the truth, introduced into our culture to stoke fear and, forgive the banality, to make it easier for those holding earthly power to rule over people.
In place of judgment there is something like a council of guides. The council of guides is peaceful and not at all frightening. Its task is to help the soul carry out, figuratively speaking, a debriefing. For after each incarnation the soul must spend some span of time in deep reflection upon the life it has lived. No punishment for any sins takes place. Both the trembling righteous and the most outright villains are met by an equally friendly council of guides.
I repeat, this is not my invention; it is a generalization of a great many independent testimonies. I am convinced that there is no manipulation here, and that this unexpected report of a council of guides was not introduced into the witnesses' accounts by culture. Because, as we know, culture instills the idea of the Last Judgment.
Here, of course, you will ask: is there really no difference, for the higher spheres, between good and bad deeds, between good and evil?
This is, of course, a most important question, and the answer to it is not simple, not obvious, and not unambiguous.
To understand why both good and evil are permissible from the soul's point of view, it is important to take into account that the soul is primary and the body secondary, that it is not the body that possesses a soul, but rather the soul that temporarily descends into the material world. Secondly, it is important to understand that the soul descends into the material world not for a single life, but for dozens of them. This settling of the soul into a body is called embodiment, or incarnation, and the repetition of embodiments (into other bodies, in other places and times) is called reincarnation.