It's slightly reassuring as an idea to know that life might continue on after death.
But even then, it's sort of a crappy thing anyways.
If I had a countless amount of lives before this one, whether it be as another human or maybe an animal or fly (on the wall) or whatever, there's no transferal of any memories over from one life to the other, which makes sense from any sort of logic based point of view. But it's this that even makes an afterlife a bit unsettling. Even if you know you're going to live on as another thing, you're never going to remember your past life, pretty much cancelling it out, and rendering an afterlife useless as a form of comfort for the most part.
Maybe if there was some deal with deities or aliens that you could keep a certain amount of memories from the previous life, it would be okay, but as far as anyone knows, that doesn't really happen, as I don't remember stuff about being JFK.
It's a bit better to think than outright brain death however. It's a topic that your mind itself cannot really understand. If you've never really experienced the feeling before, block any sort of belief, religious or whatever, that you're going to ascend to a different place or being after your current life ends.
Try to think of absolutely nothing, your brain just stopping with its function. A world where even pure darkness does not exist. A world where you don't exist anymore.
It loving hurts, and the mind cannot comprehend it. It's almost scary, which is why I would like to believe in an afterlife of some sort after death, and why I understand why other people believe in such things. It's because it's something we can all understand.
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