I like to think of death as an innevitable event causing a major disruption or change in the "narrative of your ego".
We live our days tied to a narrative.. "the world is so and so, I am so and so, when I die so and so will happen, my relationship to other people is this and that, this is important, this is good, this is evil"... etc. The narrative is incredibly difficult to break. I find that even if I can rationalize that it must be wrong, I keep tied to it. Because it is so vast and because my ego is defined in relationship to it.
The materialism Darkmatters mentions is one of the basic, and commonly shared aspects of narrative among humans. A very fundamental, and difficult narrative to break free from. "the physical world". At some point in time, the physical world was an unprovable concept in the head of a philosopher. Now it is undoubtable truth.
Death disrupts or resets the narrative to a degree depending on the nature of your afterlife, and largely, as you were talking about, it's effect on your memory.
Maybe you wake up on a couch as an alien with a bong in your hand... or maybe you forget everything and float around without a body... or maybe, you return to a checkpoint and forget that you died... or a game over screen pops up and you log out and go eat breakfast in a "higher" reality... maybe you go to heaven... or hell, or maybe you are reborn as a chinese baby girl... or a ghost... Either way... the narrative takes a big turn.
BUT. It's a narrative, a framework and story to help you interpret your experience and make it engaging. The basic reality never changed... you are still in the same overarching dream, the same position of experiencing reality, the same here and now. You never went anywhere, nor did the universe. It just changed it's colors, it's dance, it's performance, it's music, it's story, through a mystical transition foretold by your narrative. The illusion of death.
I expect, and I don't really feel like going into why right now, that these things are personalized, that anything can happen.. that there is no single fate awaiting humans upon death, but rather infinite variation. I am under the impression that the universe enables and enjoys variation. That on a basic level, it's purpose is entertainment.
Keeping your memory through death would enable you to bear witness to the change in narrative. If I were to die today I would hope to experience that.
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