All fair points, however, attributing hellish NDE's to "some transient problem associated with passnig over" seems as troublesome as maintaining that a perfectly good higher power allows all this suffering before passing over in the first place - i.e. why would it: why wouldn't (doesn't) it have the power to change things for the better and avoid all of this negativity?
Well clearly there is earthly suffering, and I can easily imagine that this may taint the early phase of the death transition.
However, the way I look at all this, is that many people deliberately expose themselves to danger and extreme discomfort - climbing mountains, visiting war zones, running to exhaustion, riding scary roller coaster rides, bungee jumping, etc, and they do it because they feel this gives them something. Looked at from that perspective, it seems at least plausible that people get incarnated on the same basis.
Eternal punishment seems something else - how could anyone 'gain' from that - indeed if they could gain it wouldn't really be punishment - which reminds me about a joke about a masochist and a sadist, but I will refrain!
David