She seems very sincere," Asura told Pieter. "A word with oddly positive connotations," Peter said, nodding. "In my experience those who are most sinc… - Iain Banks

Is all she says true?" Asura whispered.
"Ah," Pieter said, smiling. "Now, that is a question. Let's say it is all based on truth, but the facts are open to different interpretations from the one she supplies.

I had nightmares I thought were really horrible until I woke up and remembered what reality was at the moment.

Ideas about what happened after you died varied even among the priestly cast. Primitives were able to have more straightforward religions because they didn’t know any better. Once you knew even a little of the reality of the situation in the outside universe, it all got a bit more complex: there were lots of aliens and they all had—or had once had—their own myths and religions. Some aliens were immortal; some had constructed their own fully functional afterlives, where the deceased—recorded, transcribed—ended up after death; some had made thinking machines that had their own sets of imponderable and semi-godlike powers; some just were gods, like the WorldGod, for example, and some had Sublimed, which itself was arguably a form of ascension to Godhead.