I do not know what happens after death.
But I have the idea that the problem is deeply related to why we perceive ourselves. What I mean is: Even if we could perfectly understand the (human) mind, explaining why a person says that he perceives himself, it does not explain/prove why/that the person actually perceives himself. Since I perceive myself, i believe the perception of myself exist.(that others do so seems a reasonable assumption, because of it) And since no understanding of the physical manifestation can explain that, the question remains what this thing is. Another question is what happens if the physical manifestation is destroyed. (people call this thing "soul" i believe.)
Assuming souls exist, i dislike the idea of them being seperate, because of the (assumed)uniform behavior of physics, which governs their manifestations. Then again, assigning spatial positions of souls seems silly too. It is all a mystery to me.
It could, of course turn out to be a part of physics somehow, and i have said things about trying to relate randomness and quantum mechanics. However, when i do that, i realise i am grasping for straws. (At least so far)

@handy: a computer is too simple to make a good analogy. but very complicated systems can look like they have animal-like (or in future maybe human-like) behaviors. In that sense it is a good analogy, i think. Brains are machines too.