You know full well that you are dealing with ancient beliefs here.
I was watching a Youtube clip the other day about a Papuan tribal war, highly stylised war very similar to the chimp battles is Africa, lots of screaming, posturing, waxing and waning, anyway, they had to stop the war before it got dark so that they could all get home before ghosts caught them out after dark. That's kind of what you a dealing with with these ancient religions.
As for this life segueing into the next, the question is why even bother with a physical existence in the first place?
The only answer I can come up with is that by beginning as a physical entity we start at the very bottom of a process of progressing towards God and we do so via our own volition. Physical life offers a very brief moment of relative free will in which we establish the foundations of our life's journey.
Clearly there is no heaven or hell and Jesus is absolutely not the singular source, or path to enlightenment, for want of a better word. Every religion has its own Jesus figure.
So the fact that we exist at all is no less profound than imagining that this existence is the beginning of an eternal journey through many worlds towards an ultimate goal we will never reach.
