in the afterword to “The farthest shore” comments on her view of the afterlife. She reckons that she “believes” in the various worlds as images and glimpses of reality. So far I agree with her.
However she goes on to describe a personal eternity (she has a nice term for this: ergo-immortality, or some such) as terrifying her. She has just described how evil is not out there, but close by. So her fear makes sense: eternity as we are now, with evil near to us, would indeed be awful. does well at describing this, showing how the inner evil progresses and matures into eternity.
Because of this fear Le Guin prefers “giving up oneself” into a great conciousness. Thus mortality becomes the price we pay for a greater immortality. Mortality, to her, is the currency with which we purchase something better. I think, as with many great writers and artists, she glimpses reality. Indeed immortality in the same state as we are in now would be awful. There must be some change which the path through death brings. There must be something more. But it is not mortality itself that brings the value.
The Star Trek series Piccard is a bit more bleak. It supposes that there is no afterlife. They deal with mortality by saying that an end is what gives the present value. Life is full because we die, so immortality is undesirable.
While these two views are opposite in their understanding of the present, they have the same understanding of the afterlife: a fear of immortality in our present state. This fear is insightful. It points to the understanding that the present is not as it aught to be, there must be something greater. Le Guin sees more clearly and proposes a beautiful future. Star Trek Piccard does not know how to deal with mortality so do their best to add some value to it.
Le Guin’s proposed future also reflects her understanding that much value comes from our relationships. We are more valuable and fulfilled as we than as a collection of mes. She falls short for she could not see how we could maintain our individuality while shedding evil and attaining the beauty of we. The Bible offers a solution here: one of the beautiful parts of being a me is that I get to love you, and serve you. Thus my individualism enhances our relationship rather than stifling it. Additionally the Bible tells us that we do carry evil near us, but that as we pass through death we either shed this evil or shed any good and humanity is divided. These teachings fit with the observation that the present is deficient and the afterlife must be more as well as the beauty of unity, without shedding ourselves.