Death is a phenomen every living being is subject to, no matter how highly placed or influencial that individual is. Both the rich and poor are subject to death. 'Rest in peace' is a popular statement used when an individual or entity ceases to be a living entity, in a simple man's words 'die'.
Everyone seems to wish a dead individual a peaceful rest. I'm not here to argue what criteria someone has to meet to either have a peaceful rest or a troubled rest, meanwhile it is no longer a rest when it is filled with troubles.
There are no arguments on what happens after animals and other living things except humans die. Everyone believes that they cease to exist after death. But there are arguments on the aftermath of individuals after death. So many schools of thought on the aftermath of dead individuals.
These schools of thought are these:
Buddhism
the Buddhist teachings believe that the Christian, Hindu, Jewish, and Muslim concept of an eternal soul is incorrect. To Buddhists, the human person is cannot be split intwo different persons. All of reality is in a constant state of change and decay. Because a human is composed of so many elements that are always dissolving and combining with one another in new ways, it is impossible to suggest that an individual could retain the same soul-self for eternity. Rather than atman, Buddhist doctrine teaches anatman/or, "no-self."
Although the Buddha does not believe the Hindu concept of an immortal self that passes through a series of incarnations, he did accept the doctrines of karma ("actions," the cause-and-effect laws of material existence) and samsara (rebirth). If the Buddha attested to rebirth into another lifetime but did not believe in self or soul, then what would be reborn? The Buddhist answer is difficult to understand, the various components in the continuous process of change that constitute human beings do not reassemble themselves by random chance. The karmic laws determine the nature of a person's rebirth. Various aspects which make up a living human during his or her lifetime enter the santana, the "chain of being," whose various links are related one to the other by the law of cause and effect. While there is no atman or individual self that can be reincarnated, the "human self" that exists from moment to moment is comprised of aggregates that are burdened with the consequences of previous actions and bear the potential to be reborn again and again. Because the aggregates of each living person bear within them the fruits of past actions and desires, the moment of death sets in motion an immediate retribution for the consequences of these deeds, forcing the individual to be reborn once again into the unceasing cycle of karma and samsara. However, dharma, the physical and moral laws that govern the universe, flow through everything and everyone, thereby continually changing and rear-ranging every aspect of the human. Although driven by karma, the dharma rearranges the process of rebirth to form a new individual.
If there is to be no rebirth for the soul, it appears before Yama, the god of the dead, to be judged. In Tibetan Buddhism, there is a direct link between one's earthly lifetimes and intermediate stages of existence in the various spheres of paradise, extending to the appearance of the soul remaining the same as the one it assumed when living as a human on Earth.
Both Buddhism and Hinduism believe Yama to be the god of the dead, in the position of judge in the afterlife, and passages depict the special reverence with which he was held
Christianity
The foundation of the Christian faith is the belief in the resurrection of Jesus after his death on the cross and the promise of life everlasting to all who accept him and believe in him. Because Christianity rose out of Judaism, the teachings of Jesus as recorded in the gospels reflect many of the Jewish beliefs of the soul and the afterlife, that a reunion of body and soul will be accomplished in the next world. The accounts of the appearance of Jesus to his apostles after his resurrection shows completely how they believed that they beheld him in the flesh, even to the extent of the doubtful Thomas placing his fingers into the open wounds of the nails of the crucifixion. "A spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have," Jesus told them. Then, to prove the tangibility of His physicality still further, he asked them if they had anything for him to eat which he did eat.
Paul the apostle and once fierce persecutor of Christians, received his revelation from the voice of Jesus within a blinding light while he was traveling on the road to Damascus. He discovered it to be a challenge to convince others in the belief in the physical resurrection of the dead when he preached in Athens. Although the gathered Athenians listened politely to his message of a new faith, they made jest of him and left when he began to speak of the dead rising up and being resurrected. To these cultured men and women who had been exposed to Plato's philosophy that the material body was but a fleshly prison from which the soul was freed by death, the very notion of resurrecting decaying bodies was strange. Paul refused to give up. Because he had been educated as a Greek, he set about achieving a compromise between the resurrection theology being taught by his fellow apostles and the Platonic view of the soul so widely accepted in Greek society.
Paul knew that Plato had viewed the soul as composed of three constituents: the nous, (the rational soul, is immortal and incarnated in a physical body); the thumos (passion, heart, spirit); and epithumetikos (desire). After many hardships, imprisonments, and public humiliation, Paul worked out a theology that envisioned human nature as composed of three essential elements—the physical body; the psyche, the life-principle, much like the Hebrew concept of the nephesh; and the pneuma, the spirit, the inner self. Developing his thought further, he made the distinction between the "natural body" of a living person that dies and is buried, and the "spiritual body," which is resurrected.
The right standing ones will be rewarded with eternal life, but those who have chosen greed and self-interest will be sent away into eternal punishment. In Acts 17:31, it is stated that God has appointed Jesus Christ to judge the world; Acts 10:42 again names Christ as the one "ordained by God to be judge of the living and the dead."
The Christian Church believes that the Second Coming of Jesus is imminent and that many who were alive in the time of the apostles would live to see his return in the clouds. When this remarkable event occurred, it would signal the end of time and Jesus Christ would raise the dead and judge those who would ascend to heaven and those who would suffer the everlasting torments of hell. Nevertheless, anyone who died will be judged after death.
For the Christian, heaven is the everlasting dwelling place of God and the angelic beings who have served him faithfully since the beginning. There, those Christians who have been redeemed through faith in Jesus as the Christ will be with him forever in glory. Christians accept that, as Jesus promised, there are many mansions in his father's kingdom where those of other faiths may also dwell. For Christians, the terrifying graphic images depicted over the centuries of the Last Judgment have been too powerful to be eliminated from doctrinal teachings, so they envision a beautiful place high above the Earth where only true believers in Jesus may reign with him.
Hell, in traditional Christian thought, is a place of eternal torment for those who have been damned after the Last Judgment. It is generally pictured as a pit filled with flames, the images developed out of the Hebrew Sheol and the Greek Hades as the final resting places for the dead. Roman Catholic Christianity continues to depict hell as a state of unending punishment for the unrepentant, but over five centuries ago, the councils of Florence (1439) and Trent (1545–63) defined the concept of purgatory, an intermediate state after death during which the souls have opportunities to expiate certain of their sins. Devoted members of their families can offer prayers and oblations which can assist those souls in purgatory to atone for their earthly transgressions and achieve a restoration of their union with God.
Protestant Christianity does not teach its followers the opportunities for afterlife redemption afforded by purgatory or any other intermediate spiritual state, but it has removed much of the fear of hell and replaced it with an emphasis upon grace and faith. While fundamentalist Protestants retain the views of heaven and hell. For liberal Christian theologians, the entire teaching of a place of everlasting damnation has been completely rejected in favor of the love of Jesus for all humanity.
Hinduism
In India's religious work, the Bhagavad Gita ("Song of the Lord"), the nature of the soul is defined: "It is born not, nor does it ever die, nor shall it, after having been brought into being, come not to be hereafter. The unborn, the permanent, the eternal, the ancient, it is slain not when the body is slain."
The early Vedic songs are primarily associated with funeral rituals and believe that the individual person is comprised of three separate entities: the body, the asu (life principle), and the manas (the seat of the mind, will, and emotions). Although the asu, and the manas were highly regarded, they cannot really be considered as comprising the essential self, the soul. The facet of the person that survives the physical is something else, a kind of the living man or woman that resides within the center of the body near the heart.
During the period from about 600 b.c.e. to 480 b.c.e., the series of writings known as Upanishads set forth the twin doctrines of samsara (rebirth) and karma (the cause and effect actions of an individual during his or her life). An individual has a direct influence on his or her karma process in the world and the manner in which the person deals with the difficulties inherent in an world bound by time and space; the individual determines the type of his or her next earthly incarnation. The focus of the two doctrines is the atman, or self, the essence of the person that contains the divine breath of life. The atman within the individual was "smaller than a grain of rice," but it was connected to the great cosmic soul, the Atman or Brahma, the divine principle. Unfortunately, while occupying a physical body, the atman was subject to avidya, an earthly veil of profound ignorance that blinded the atman to its true nature as Brahma and subjected it to the processes of karma and samsara. Avidya led to maya the illusion that deceives each individual atman into mistaking the material world as the real world. Living under this illusion, the individual accumulates karma and continues to enter the unceasing process of samsara, the wheel of return with its succession of new lifetimes and deaths.
The passage of the soul from this world to the next is described in the Brihadarankyaka Upanishad.
The Self, having in dreams enjoyed the pleasures of sense, gone hither and thither, experienced good and evil, hastens back to the state of waking from which he started. As a man passes from dream to wakefulness, so does he pass from this life to the next. Then the point of his heart, where the nerves join, is lighted by the light of the Self, and by that light he departs either through the eye, or through the gate of the skull, or through some other aperture of the body. The Self remains conscious, and, conscious, the dying man goes to his abode. The deeds of this life, and the impressions they leave behind, follow him. The Self, having left behind it a body unconscious, takes hold of another body and draws himself to it.
God.
In the preceding centuries before the common era, a form of Hinduism known as bhakti spread rapidly across India. Bhakti envisions a loving relationship between God and the devout believer that is based upon grace. Those devotees who have prepared themselves by a loving attitude, a study of the scriptures, and devotion to Lord Krishna may free themselves from an endless cycle of death and rebirth. Eternal life is granted to the devotees who, at the time of death, give up their physical body with only thoughts of Lord Krishna on their minds.
Islam
In regard to the concept of a soul, Islam envisions a human as a being of spirit and body. The creation of Adam as described in the Qur'an (or Koran) is similar to that of Genesis in the Christian Bible as the Lord says that he is going to create a human of clay and that he will breathe his spirit into him after he has given him form. "And He originated the creation of man out of clay, then He fashioned his progeny of an extraction of mean water, then He shaped him, and breathed His spirit in him." (Qur'an 32:8–9)
Muhammed appears to have regarded the soul as the essential self of a human being, but he, adhering to the ancient Christian tradition, also considered the physical body as a requirement for life after death. The word for the independent soul is nafs, similar in meaning to the Greek psyche, and the word for the aspect of the soul that gives humans their dignity and elevates them above the animals is ruh, equivalent to the Greek word nous. These two aspects of the soul combine the lower and the higher, the human and the divine.
As in the other major religions, how one lives his or her life on Earth will prepare the soul for the afterlife, and there are promises of a paradise or the warnings of a place of torment. The Qur'an 57:20 contains an admonition concerning the transient nature of life on Earth and a reminder of the two possible destinations that await the soul after death: "Know that the present life is but a sport and a diversion, an adornment and a cause of boasting among you, and a rivalry in wealth and children. It is as a rain whose vegetation pleases the unbelievers; then it withers, and you see it turning yellow, then it becomes straw. And in the Hereafter there is grievous punishment, and forgiveness from God and good pleasure; whereas the present life is but the joy of delusion."
Muhammed also speaks of the Last Judgment, after which there will be a resurrection of the dead which will bring everlasting bliss to the righteous and hellish torments to the wicked. The judgment will be individual. No soul will be able to help a friend or family member, no soul will be able to give satisfaction or to make prayers for another.
While the doctrine of the resurrection of the body has never been abandoned in Islam, later students of the Qur'an sought to define the soul in more metaphysical terms, and a belief in the preexistence of souls was generally established. In this view, Allah kept a treasure house of souls in paradise available for their respective incarnations on Earth.
The Islamic paradise is in many ways in resemblance with the Garden of Eden in the Bible. It is a beautiful place filled with trees, flowers, and fruits, but it really cannot be explained and described in human terms. It is far more wonderful than any person could ever imagine. "All who obey God and the prophet are in the company of those on whom is the grace of God, of the Prophets who teach, the sincere lovers of Truth, the witnesses and martyrs, who testify, and the righteous who do good: Ah! What a beautiful fellowship!" (Qur'an 4:69)
Hell is a place of torment, and, like the perspective held by many Christians, a place of fire and burning. In the Islamic teachings, neither heaven nor hell lasts throughout eternity. Infinity belongs to Allah alone, and there may exist various levels of paradise and hell for the souls who dwell there.
