This is along the lines of my last big post about Heaven. I still haven't come up with a good system to handle dead people with +MB. Where do they go? What do they do? Their relative detachment from the Illusion would make them unlikely candidates for instant reincarnation (as 0MB souls might do), but I don't think they should end up in the Inferno. I like the idea that the soul's guilt is what keeps it in Hell, and +MB implies freedom from such guilt. I kind of like the idea of an empty Heaven (the Demiurge's citadel) with rotten fruit and depressed angels, which bores the newcomers so much that they decide to have another crack at the Illusion. Still, it doesn't quite seem to work. I heard some mention of the Memory Banks a while back... what are they? Do they wipe the memories of the deceased, rendering them A-Okay for recycling the same way that the tortures of the Inferno induce a voluntary discard of painful memories? If so, (in the famous words of Eric Idle)...British accent what's it like British accent?

The Memory Banks are found in the Metropolis source book. This is where souls who are about to be reborn go. They pass into the Centrifuge halls where their bodies are pulverized, and their now memory-less souls pass into the primordial sea to enter one of the foetuses found there. Due to problems with the machinery due to lack of maintenance, some memories are escaping and become free floating "Memory ghosts" (sorry, my term). Anybody who makes contact with one experiences the memory as if it were their own.

My current take on it is this: guilty souls (-MB) have embraced their animal natures, and their light Shadows call out to them to repent. Driven by this guilty conscience (the little angel on their shoulder), the soul finds its way to the Inferno (or a Purgatory contained therein) to relive its sins over and over in a cycle of useless self-incrimination. This wears thin after a few (years, decades, or millennia, depending on the person), and the sinner finally loses all sense of self in an attempt to dissociate himself from his horrible crimes (which are often exaggerated in his own psyche). Poof, instant memory/identity wipe, brought about by the soul itself and therefore taking advantage of its own latent divinity to imprison it. That pesky Astaroth!

Sounds pretty accurate to me. I think the years, decades, centuries of torment from the razides and nepharites also plays a part in the loss of memory. After enough torture, the mind just shuts down and reboots (so to speak)

Now, how about the saints and philosophers among us? Where do they get to go? They have divorced themselves somewhat from their animal needs by the time they die, so they have the opposite problem of their dark shadow calling to them to come back down to earth. Of course, if they're dead, the dark shadow may just be telling them that they missed their chances for Earthly pleasure. I think there should be some kind of symmetry to the process, so maybe these souls get pulled in the opposite direction as the sinners: they are forced to dwell on their disconnection from humanity, to get lost in abstract thoughts and ideas, eventually forgetting the concept of "self" in their attempt to become one with the universe.

Again, this sounds good to me. Sort of a Nirvana type existence. This would again wipe memory and push MB down to zero.

Okay, so according to that system death seems to push people away from MB0 one way or the other, and they get reincarnated when their MB reaches Chaos or Nirvana. This seems kind of screwy, since it means that really enlightened people are the quickest to get reincarnated with clean minds. Of course, maybe this is how it works. But it also means that no dead souls can exist in Nirvana, which is how Leghba is described in the Conjurer's guide to Death. so maybe +MB works another way:

I think the point of after death experiences is that they cause the soul to forget who they were and all events of the former life. With no memory, MB is set back at zero.

The actual MB of the wraith (let's use that term for dead souls of all varieties) doesn't get pushed away from MB0 by his environment. Instead, that environment reminds him of the disadvantages of having MB<>0. In the Inferno, the wraith is reminded of the guilt of his sins, and he is punished for them with bodily torture. He begins to long for a less sensual existence (since his senses are overloaded with pain), and he just wants a "normal life" again. Poof, his MB shoots up to 0. In Heaven, the wraith is deprived of all sensation whatsoever and is instructed to sit around and praise God all day (or something similar). The wraith begins to crave stimulation of any kind to break the monotony (to quote the Talking Heads, "Heaven... Heaven is a place... a place where nothing... nothing ever happens..."), and he wants to return to a "normal life". Poof, MB drops to 0.

A wraith who has a really strong reason to return to the Illusion right now can resist being pulled to either of these locations by ignoring his Shadow and remaining for a while as a Spectre, Spirit or Walking Dead. The light shadow works against this by trying to overwhelm the wraith with images of guilt, while the dark shadow tempts the spirit with visions of Heaven, which the wraith will see as the peaceful domicile he's been searching for for so long.

I won't quote your entire explanation. I will just comment that the idea that the after death experience returns MB to 0 through excessive stimulation according to the MB level at death makes sense to me.

Err... Isn't there a description where all the souls go in the 2nd edition? According to the Swedish 2nd edition (which mostly sucks, in my humble opinion) there are Hell, Heaven(s) and Shadow Worlds (where souls just goes around being bored). A person with negative MB or zero MB goes to Hell or a Shadow World, a person with positive MB *can* go to a Heaven or to a Shadow World. The only clear mention as to "where" these places is is Hell, which is Inferno. However, some of those who die make contact with Nefarites/Razides and create a Purgatorium, which isn't positioned in Inferno (since it is mentioned that "Inferno is being emptied since more and more souls choose Purgatoriums instead"). This is just my opinion, based on what the 2nd Ed says.

As to how the "Memory Cleansing Process (tm)" works, your guesses is as likely to be "correct" as mine, however the main goal of Heaven/Hell/Whatever is to make