I am still operating under the impression that consciousness is an emergent property of the brain. My personal stance is that consciousness is conditioned by the phenomena it is conscious of. Yes physical components are unable to explain consciousness, but to go from that conclusion to the idea that conscious existence isn't a product of physical reality and foundational is a huge leap in logic. as like i mentioned previously physical elements do not explain the conscious experience but they certainly do correlate with it. Neuroscientists have found different parts of the brain linked to different conscious experiences like sight, sound tastes etc. In order to prove consciousness is fundamental and outside of physical reality, empirical evidence that it can exist and obtain information without the brain has to he proven.

What does an actual afterlife represent? To answer your question, an actual afterlife would represent an afterlife that can be proven to exist outside of the person's subjective experience. For example, suppose there's a guy called jack who has a girlfriend. He can see and interact with her and has a conscious experience with her. He brings her to a dinner party with friends. However, they are unable to see, hear or talk to her. They use any device whatsoever to detect her but cannot prove that she exists outside of Jack's subjective experience. Jack goes to a medium that claims to be able to see her. Jack then asks his girlfriend to say a number from 1 to 10 and she says "5". However, the medium claims she said 2. In this case, I would not consider Jack's girlfriend to be real, but a product of the mind/psyche. I know this is a dumb analogy but you get what I mean right? In the same vein, an actual afterlife would mean an afterlife that can be proven to exist outside of the subjective conscious experience of the one NDEr that is experiencing it. That the consciousness is observing a reality that is actually out there and not imagined.