Very interesting and thoughtful article.
I am in a fairly similar "place" in the sense that I have no real fears surrounding death and dying. If I have fear, it's having to suffer and endure excruciating physical pain before death... not death itself.
I have no religion... but occasionally I "see" things in my mind's eye that I cannot explain, and that is far beyond anything even an "overactive imagination" could create.
Adding some of all that together, I keep coming back to the realization that we're all basically energy. When we are in this physical arrangement known as "human bodies" we're still fundamentally an arrangement of energy. Then I think about all the people out there who have "seen things." Some call it communicating with God, some call it hallucinations... or something else. For me, the question isn't so much of whether people are "nuts," but why are so many nuts in the same way? Is that arbitrary?
Or is it just possible that it's actually pretty organized... just a different form of energy? Is it possible... that all these "bits" of energy all have their own unique signature... and when we die, we just become energy that becomes part of a new and different pattern? And when people claim to have memories of past lives... maybe they have exactly that, except at a level we are yet to understand?