We are all familiar with the general assumed teaching from various sources where the general concept that is frankly the rot at the core of any spiritual/religious identity can be broken down to a very basic concept:
Believers go to the Good Place. Non-believers go to the Bad Place. Therefore, it is the duty of the believer to convert non-believers to save them from the Bad Place. That is truly one of the most common and dumbest ideas imposed on every belief everywhere and what rots everything from the inside out eventually. Some things faster than others.
Let me make one thing abundantly clear. If you ever see something claiming to know what "The Oldest Religion in the World" was or is, they are lying to you. We have evidence of some kind of beliefs before written records. However, those records only pertain to the cultures they come from and do not apply to ALL things called religious or spiritual. Such claims are complete nonsense. Even the field of so called Comparative Religious Study are heavily and culturally biased and specific.
Most such claims and concepts are based in shoddy scholarship done at a desk in an old library from old Universities and not actual firsthand examination and exploration and many authors are known to have written things in a way that would cater to the sensibilities of their "readers back home" than an unbiased and unfiltered account of observations. Even pre monotheistic Romans were notorious for that.
This is an old deception and old attitude that though pushed most heavily through various forms of Monotheism, it is also pushed through some forms of older polytheism. And its complete nonsense. The reality is, when one careful review such matters, what they actually find is most teachings of old circulate around:
The nature and intention of the laws of nature and a community or culture,
how to treat other people properly and appropriately,
how to see people for who they truly are and not what they claim or are claimed to be,
about being completely honest with yourself and others and expecting no less from others but do not demand it because it cannot be forced,
and about working hard for what you want while not gaining what you want at the expense of others,
yet also, be willing to work with others who are clearly seeking to achieve the same goal and help yourself and them who are being reciprocal to achieve the same.
We can break it down further about what it means to be a better person:
It does not matter if others are being fair. You need to be fair regardless.
It doesn't matter if others are being honest. You need to be honest.
It doesn't matter if others care about you. You need to care about yourself.
It doesn't matter if others care about anyone else. You need to care about others.
It doesn't matter if other agree with you. You don't have to agree with them.
We could go on about all this, though it simply means treat others as you want to be treated and not to treat others as you do not want to be treated. On the same hand it is fundamental that you do not impose yourself on others and do not let others impose themselves upon you. That's actual equality and has nothing to do with one's particular set of skills, strengths, weaknesses, gender or skin color. It also means that one should be willing to admit when they are wrong, accept correction but also be able to be allowed to also correct others when they are wrong and for them to accept correction.
All the teachings regardless of where you look when you set aside the centuries of deceit and political driven social engineering which is not a modern problem either, are about how people should act independently and think independently to be better people individually and collectively as living examples in their physical lives and not about how to get to the "good place" and avoid going to the "bad place."
Think of it this way:
If your only reason for doing good is to avoid being punished and going somewhere bad, then your motivation isn't truly authentic.
If it's based in fear of going to a bad place or a false sense of getting a reward as an obligation the motivation is also again not authentic.
In fact, an unhealthy obsession with the afterlife ribs you of enjoying and living here and now while you have a life to live and experience.
Also, if you do not consider and focus on the here and now and live life to the fullest while striving to be the best you can be for you and in a way that is not at the expense of others than any hereafter state is pointless anyways because you cheated yourself from living life with all its pros and cons and robbed yourself.
In addition, a true and closer evaluation of every ancient concept and teaching about an afterlife type state is intrinsically connected to the here and now, and not some separate hereafter in some mysterious separate dimension. In other words, the physical and the spiritual is interwoven as part of the whole, not two separate wholes unto themselves as one is converted from the nonphysical to the physical and the physical converts back to the nonphysical as its only endless cycle. That simple reality is a factor far too many have simply been systematically blinded to by more than just a handful of sources with very different and often insane agendas.
In a sense, by understanding the whole of Druwayu, one can say figuratively speaking, that over focus on the spiritual/non-physical over or in place of mundane/physical is a bit of a slap to the faces of the One and Three and the vast wonders to be explored and learned from the observable universe as far as we are able as a species. It's also such a disconnection from the focus and recognition of the physical that has led to all sorts of unnatural, insane and foolish beliefs resulting in everything from a lack of regard for the natural world we all depend on and its systematic destruction and even a disconnect with our own actual physical, emotional and mental health.
Holding a view that the One and Three made the physical from which this world came to be as a result and likes the physical as much as anything is not a contradiction or conflict with authentic spirituality. It's essential to it. That includes acts of celebrating nature and life which is not in opposition but a demonstration of true respect and appreciation contrary to what the paranoid and delusional profess.
On the same hand this is not "worshipping nature" either. In other words, praying to a rock accomplishes nothing. Using it as a tool or as a representation of something gives it a usage and what one can say, a purpose. However, it is still a rock. An unthinking, impersonal fragment of physical substance derived ultimately from a nonphysical source like everything, including us.
Our claimed beliefs about such things will not change those facts. If the physical world and all life within it is completely worthless, it wouldn't exist and none of us would exist to argue about it. It is as simple as that.
When we look at all the ancient texts, we can review direct from their cultures and not outside commentators "redefining" things in their own terms, we always find instructions about how to treat our bodies, how to eat, and how to treat one another in a physical sense. Sex, Marriage, Eating, Drinking, Pooping, Pissing, Sleeping, Working, Building, Destroying, Combat and so on are all physical things. Even our emotions and thoughts are based in and produce physical responses for better or worse.
Denying the physical is in essence denying "being" and indeed many seek to convince you to do just that; to deny your reality to invalidate your existence and that of others. If one then truly is made to believe their existence is an illusion, they are all the more easily manipulated, and when you are denied the right to object or fear objection and rejection, you are already being controlled. That is not helping you gain greater awareness. It is erasing it systematically, and one only needs to look around the world to see how that has worked out.
Gnosticism more or less creeps in and is regurgitated in diverse ways through all major religions, even when they don't realize it themselves. The basic premise is the word is bad, the hereafter is good, therefore reject and destroy the physical word as a holy act and prevent any more souls being created or trapped in the physical and destroy the physical to set the trapped souls free as ultimate redemption through oblivion by any means necessary. It amounts to as a cult of death, not life. That is the truth of it all when Gnostic sources state that “secret knowledge” of the spiritual world was the only way to avoid and escape the entrapment of the physical.
Does this mean there is no "hereafter?" It doesn't mean anything one way or the other. It means regardless of if there is or isn't we need to live our best life and self here and now and stop trying to treat some possible after life like a bank account where all the good you do is equal to money in the bank savings account collecting interest and all the bad you do is like a withdrawal leading to bankruptcy and unpaid loans. It doesn't work that way, and it makes no sense that so many ancient concepts would have innumerable volumes about things intrinsically tied to here and now and comparatively little in regard to the hereafter by comparison. You cannot truly strive for a better world if your whole goal is about abandoning physical existence, and it is also this kind of foolishness that keeps us equally self-suppressed from seeking to venture out of this planetary nest to explore this universe and be ready to become whatever we will become when we actually start appreciating and having real compassion for life here and anywhere else in this universe or any other than may or may not exist.