Darren,
You asked,
"Nick a few questions how did you come to this? I mean come to this way of belief."
--> I encountered this pilosophy many years ago. I like it because it makes sense to me. I find it makes absolute, perfect, logical sense, unlike many parts of the Bible. I cannot find any flaws in this philosophy whatsoever.
"What do you believe the after life will consist of."
--> I will take a very complicated topic, and try to give a very simple answer. After death, everyone becomes conscious on the astral plane. There are different levels on the astral plane. People who did very bad things in life will become conscious on a low, terrible astral plane. (This is the Hell that all major relgions talk about.)
“Recall also the story of Tityus, the man who was tied to a rock, his liver being gnawed by vultures, and growing again as fast as it was eaten. There you have an illustration of the effect of yielding to desire: an image of the man who is always tortured by remorse for sins committed on earth.
“As perhaps a higher example of the same we can take the story of Sisyphus. You know how he was condemned always to roll a stone up a hill, and how, when he reached the top, the stone would always roll down again. That is the condition of an ambitious man after death, a man who has spent his life in making plans for selfish ends, for attaining glory or honor. In his case also death brings no change. He goes on making plans just as he did during life. He works out his plans, he executes them, as he thinks, till the point of culmination, and then he suddenly perceives that he has no longer a physical body, and that all was but a dream. Then be begins again and again, till he has learned at last that these desires are useless and that ambition must be killed. So Sisyphus goes on uselessly rolling the stone up the hill, till at last he learns not to roll it any more. To have learned that is to have conquered that desire, and he will come back in his next life without it; without the desire, but of course not without the weakness of character which made that desire possible.
“So you see that conditions that seem terrible are but the effects in the other world of a wrong life here on earth. That is nature's method of turning wrong into good. Man does suffer, but what he suffers is only the effect of his own action and nothing else; it is not punishment inflicted upon him from outside, but entirely of his own making. And that is not all. The suffering he has to bear is the only means by which his qualities can be directed in the right way for his evolution and progress in another life. This was a point much emphasized in the teaching of the mysteries.” (Charles Leadbeater, The Inner Life, pages 57-58)
Average people will become conscious on the middle levels of the astral plane, and very good people with become conscious on the highest astral plane "Seventh Heaven").
I agree with the idea that Hell is a place geographically below the surface of the Earth: “People find their own level on the astral plane, much in the same way as objects floating in the ocean do. This does not mean that they cannot rise and fall at will, but that if no special effort is made they come to their level and remain there. Astral matter gravitates towards the center of the earth just as physical matter does; both obey the same general laws.” (Charles Leadbeater, The Inner Life, page 156)
People of the lower astral sub-planes (Hell), then, generally reside below the surface of the Earth. This explains the orthodox religious teaching of Hell being below us (and Heaven being above). (As parts of the Earth are of great heat and pressure, this is also a connection to the idea of Hell as a hot place.)
The value of this belief is that people burn off bad 'vibrations' and then slowly move up to higher levels of the astral plane.
When they are ready, most people then return to Earth for more 'training' and reincarnate into a new human body. When they are ready to move up to the next level, they can enter Nirvana. (I believe in both Heaven and Nirvana, and I see no conflict between the two concepts.)
As I said, this is a very complicated topic. I hope this very short explanation helps.
"Will we be physical or spirit."
--> Spirit. There is nothing physical about the afterlife. Physical bodies cannot exist on the astral plane.
"...will we know our family member or not?"
--> Again, here is a simple answer to a complicated topic. Immediately after death, we are still here, we just do not have a physical body any more. As such, we can still 'see' people here on Earth, and we can talk to them every night when our still-alive relatives do astral traveling. (Everyone does astral traveling at night, while they are asleep.) The higher levels of Heaven are different, in that we create our own illusion of Heaven, and create our illusions of our loved-ones in that Heaven.
"I do however believe in the lake of fire where the non-elect will be purged of their carnality...."
--> You have described the non-physical astral plane perfectly. Imagine, if you will, people who die. They still have all of their desires, their addictions, their anger, etc. (People seem to think things like alcohol and tobacco addictions disappear as soon as they die -- they do not, why should they?) Also, it is said that these desires are much stronger on the astral plane than they were on the physical plane. Also, people who did bad things like murder and rape will feel the pain that they caused. It will be just as bad as the 'lake of fire' that you describe, although it will not be a punishment from any God, it will be a world that we ourselves have created, with nobody to blame but ourselves.
"...we will be fired just as clay is to remove the impurities."
--> ...and the place where this happens is Hell. You describe the very place you do not believe in.
This 'firing' is exactly what happens on the lower astral planes after death. Impurities are burned out, although they are emotions, not physical things. As lower forms of emotional impurities are burned off, we 'float' up to higher levels. This also explains the idea of Purgatory, which to me is a real place, and makes just as much sense as Heaven and Hell.
"I think it will be a terrifing experience."
--> I understand that, for most people, the time between reincarnations is a fairly nice experience. (Most people are not murderers, etc.)
"...in order for us to be in God's kingdom we must first be changed from flesh and blood to spirit."
--> We already ARE spirit. (Even the Bible says that.) We use physical bodies only because we are at too low a level of maturity. Once we rise to a high enough level of spirituality, we will discard physical bodies forever, because we will no longer need them. This is what the Bible teaches, although it does it in a convoluted way.
"Then and only then will [we] be in the image of God and be part of His family."
--> I disagree. I believe there are many, many levels between Earth and the Absolute. Moving up to Nirvana will be only moving up one level.
"...a god sending his creation to a hell to be torture and tormented for all enterity."
--> This, of course, does not make any sense at all.
