Heaven can wait

I was reading some meditations from the Dalai Lama today and he stated that after death experiences(dissolution of the elements of the body) is accompanied by experiences of light. First there is white light(conforms to research on near death experiences) the red, black and finally clear light. He further states that all these lights can be experienced thru meditation and that thru this practice one can experience the dissolution process. Boy some people are going to be disappointed! Heaven or afterlife concepts exist in many religions. They tend to reflect cultural experiences of that society. Christianty has created a heaven of gold, Islam a heaven of paradise as viewed by a desert dweller, some Buddhist sects create a Pure Land for the soul to experience. Hindus go for reincarnation, a process that can be manipulated in this life by certain acts. It seems everyone wants to bring along the ego. And that, primarily is what dies when the body machine quits working. The soul( or rather that energy that sustains us) continues, but without the baggage of the illusion of ego. People believe strongly in their different heavens. The belief motivates suicide bombers with promise of paradise. Christian heaven seems a well ordered medieval state with god enthroned and various cherubim and seraphim singing his praises endlessly. Yet, if one reads the Tibetan Book of the Dead, death appears to be a journey taken by the soul as the body dies and ego begins to fade(like batteries running low on a flashlight) Tibetan Buddhists stress the need of this road map( the Book of the Dead) for a successful journey. But where do "we" go. "We" don't go anywhere, but energy cannot be destroyed, so some kind of transformation takes place, but it ceratinly ain't heaven.
Being 64, one begins to be concerned with these things. I watched a holy man die once,(long story)his final thoughts were on what he could do(with exceeding limited options, as he was almost comatose) for some one else. His death cleansed me of some guilt i carried and he dedicated part of his death to teach me this. He died well. I reckon thats pretty important.