Question pertaining to the afterlife in FFXIV

[Lauront]

The Lifestream is basically the same concept of reincarnation you’d find in traditional Buddhism (such as Theravada Buddhism). In Japan, Mahayana Buddhism is more popular in Japan where the concept of the afterlife and soul are much more palatable but sometimes you’ll see more traditional concepts in Japanese media.

In the first place, the idea of a soul is considered an illusion (in these schools). Even in life, you are just an amalgamation of desires propagating itself and you get stuck in a karmic cycle. In traditional Buddhism, Nirvana is actually a true death to escape the cycle of suffering.

But these games aren’t as depressing as that. Japanese Shinto beliefs have taken Buddhist concepts in more naturalistic way. We are essentially reflections of an Omni-Soul which is life itself. So when you die, you return to it.

The one thing that remains in most of these Buddhist concepts is that the sense of Self and Soul are an illusion and we are all one. That’s not so depressing (to me anyway).

I do think ShB may change the cosmology a bit. This seems even more relevant with some of the info from the MSQ. FF7 was a straight rip of Buddhist cosmology, but FFXIV has a lot more to it than that. As we learn more, I think it gets more nuanced and becomes its own thing.

Yeah, I think XIV is drawing significantly more on the ancient Greek conception of the soul and Underworld (it literally refers to what appears to be the Aetherial Sea as this in Hades's short story.)

I think we do need to consider the difference between "soul" and "mind" (for lack of better words). It seems to me that while the soul may be able to survive and reincarnate, the mind is what gets dissolved in the Life Stream after they die.
So the Ascians we captured with auracite, their souls may have survived, but their minds - containing all their memories and knowledge - would have been destroyed.
Normally the soul and mind would be tightly attached to each other, so Sharlayan scholars and the like may not have noticed that there are two different parts.
The soul, I think, would contain the basic core of personality - so a reincarnated person would be similar but not identical in personality to the previous person having the soul.

I'm intrigued whether tempering survives this whole process. What Emet-Selch suggested in the Unsundered's preference for the souls of the original members of the Convocation, due to their faith in Zodiark, does seem to hint at it, but it's not strong enough confirmation. Still, given that the Overlords possess the Echo, which itself appears to hint at a soul that survived the whole dissolution process effected by the Lifestream, there may be some connection to this and tempering. Alternatively, the division may be along the lines LineageRazor mentioned, which also seems reasonable to me - or it may be a mixture of both.

Yoshida even warned us in one interview to not take what Emet says as the one and only truth since we are missing Hydealyns view on this.

Well it's more that we only have part of the story - he also did not allude to Hydaelyn, IIRC, but rather that we only had one side's account of it. If anything, we'd need testimony which is more direct than Hydaelyn's to get a more complete picture, and this is likely what Anamnesis Anyder will offer.