Within Kejawen, reflections on reincarnation, karma, and the afterlife form a layered tapestry rather than a rigid system. Reincarnation is generally acknowledged in some form, influenced by Hindu–Buddhist currents and expressed in ideas of repeated birth and the soul’s ongoing journey toward refinement or spiritual perfection. This rebirth is often imagined not as an endless mechanical cycle, but as a process oriented toward completion, in which the soul may return to fulfill unfinished responsibilities or deepen its spiritual maturity. At the highest level of attainment, the goal is liberation from this cycle—described as moksa or as a return to the Origin—and a lasting union with the divine, often articulated as manunggaling kawula Gusti.

The notion of karma in Kejawen is similarly adapted to Javanese sensibilities. Rather than a strictly doctrinal system, it appears as a moral law of cause and effect that shapes both present experience and future conditions, including the circumstances of rebirth. Actions, rituals, and ethical conduct generate consequences that are felt in harmony or misfortune, health or illness, and social honor or disgrace. This moral causality is closely tied to ideals of balance and inner purification, encouraging a life of responsibility, restraint, and refinement. In this way, karma becomes less an abstract metaphysical ledger and more an ever-present reminder that every deed participates in a wider web of spiritual consequence.

Views of the afterlife in Kejawen are notably stratified, combining Islamic eschatology with older Javanese understandings of subtle realms and ancestral presence. There is recognition of judgment after death and of heaven and hell, yet these are interwoven with the idea that the soul passes through various spiritual realms, or alam, where it may linger, learn, or undergo further purification. Ancestors are not regarded as gone beyond recall; they remain active as leluhur, capable of blessing or disturbing the living, and are honored through rituals that support the soul’s transition and ongoing well-being. For those who have achieved a “good death,” often described as mati sampurna or a return to the Origin, the afterlife is understood as a state of profound harmony in which the individual soul’s separateness is overcome in closeness to the Divine.