Oh my God guys, the reason we see John on his quest bed in the Flash isn’t because people leave ghosts of themselves when they revive. It’s because his dream self was the version that ascended. John’s regular self stayed dead.

We’ve seen something like this before with Jade and Jadesprite. Jadesprite had memories of the dream bubbles. One Jade survived while the other one was dead because they have different bodies.

When Rose and Dave blew up the Green Sun, they probably didn’t leave ghosts behind. Same with the alpha kids ascending to God Tier and Kanaya reviving as a rainbow drinker.

We actually KNOW this doesn’t happen because Aranea’s and Calliope’s ghosts left when she put on the ring of life, although they’re a little complicated because they didn’t have bodies to go back to.

But still, different bodies = different ghosts, which is why John’s regular self has a ghost while his dream self continued to live. His regular self was never revived.