Terry,
Great post! I agree with your blaming the religions for bringing in the concept of spirit with a view to exploitation of the illiterate.
However, truth could be discerned without the help of religion.
When one goes to the bed in the night, sleep settles on one’s body, the pulse falls, the blood flow is slackened and all the organic functions slacken. HOWEVER, you might have noticed the energies and movements of the waking state DO NOT come to a dead end. The heart beats, the lungs breathe and repair-work starts on the tissues. Ordinarily as the sensations which describe environment fade away, attention begins to wander and one begins to relax the control by will and critical intelligence which operates during FULLY conscious life. The number of thoughts grow less and less as sleep approaches. Finally the room (as though) melts away and vanishes into nothingness as one’s consciousness is mysteriously and entirely isolated from the physical world, it sees nothing, hears nothing, smells nothing, feels nothing and tastes nothing, and then DREAM ENTERS IT.
SIMILARLY, at the instant of death, consciousness loses touch with the same organs i.e., sight, sound, taste, smell and touch and one goes into deep slumber or a state of dream and sleep before one becomes conscious or enters the next world i.e., the world of desire or astral world.
That time, Terry, you will remember what you wrote here in this thread and laugh!