Every culture has its own version of what happens after death. However, the first question a sceptic might ask is "how do you know there is something after death?" This is quite a hard question to answer, because there clearly can be no empirical proof. However, for thousands of years, people have dived deep within and embarked on the journey of self discovery, and realised that, indeed, there is something inside us that is eternal, that will persist long after the body drops off. In other words, the proof is lying deep within each person for them to discover for themselves.

What exactly is that something? Many of the worlds great spiritual traditions, such as Christianity, Islam and Hinduism speak of the soul. Buddhism prefers to refer to it in less concrete terms, emphasizing the impermanence of all things. All agree that it goes somewhere after death, but where? On the surface, accounts given by differing spiritual traditions might differ, but they all talk of worlds outside the physical, some of them abodes of peace, bliss and rest, others places of suffering.

Of course, there is a huge difference between Eastern and Western spirituality on one issue: the issue of reincarnation. In Western traditions, the world we go to after death is permanent, whereas in Eastern traditions we alternate between life and death; we take on a new body and having new experiences every time we come back down to earth. Each successive experience on earth contributes to our eventual perfection - hence we see that reincarnation naturally incorporates the concept of spiritual evolution. Which philosophy do we believe? Eastern meditation teacher Sri Chinmoy, whilst a firm advocate of reincarnation, holds that we can leave aside any ideas we might have and just focus on making spiritual progress. "Let us be wise.", he writes in his book, Yoga and the Spiritual Life. "Our business is to go to God; it is God's business if He wants to keep us in Heaven or send us back to earth. The best thing is to surrender to God and let Him fulfil us in His own way. Having thrown aside all our preconceived ideas regarding the existence or non-existence of rebirth, let us do the only thing of importance: be one with His Will and Consciousness."

One's view of whether reincarnation exists naturally influences one's view of the purpose of life and death. The Western view emphasized reward and punishment, whereas the Eastern view is that all these experiences the soul has to undergo is merely a result of ignorance of its true nature. Hinduism and Buddhism both speak of a succession of worlds we pass through, in some of them we purify ourselves from the wrong actions of our previous life, whereas in the souls world we prepare for our next incarnation and prepare to have a whole new set of experiences which will further our progress towards liberation.