Realizations

For reasons that make sense at the time, David Falkayn pretends that he needs privacy for meditation. His acquaintance with Adzel enables him to waffle about Buddhism:

the purer Buddhist sects are agnostic;
they do not require belief in reincarnation in the usual sense;
nirvana can be attained before death and consists of -

Falkayn is interrupted. I would like to know what he had been going to say about nirvana. Instead, SM Stirling's Wiccan character, Orlaith, gives us some insight into spiritual realization:

a man whom she kills with her mystical Sword looks as if a veil has been lifted, revealing to him the absolute truth of his existence;

Wiccans expect such a realization after death;

the only post-death punishment is full knowledge of the cause and consequence of all your actions.

"Right now she was realizing that that might be just as serious as the Christians' hellfire."
-SM Stirling, The Desert And The Blade (New York, 2016), Chapter Twenty-Seven, p. 678.

Maybe it is the Christian's hellfire?

"Nothing burns in Hell but the self." (See here.)

I think that any such realizations precede death but religions give us stories about a hereafter.