I'll skim through the Tibetan Book of the Dead to see if I can find the info, thanks. Perhaps the forty nine days refers to the period spent in the bardos.

Interestingly, other forms of Buddhism do not say the same thing. I think it is the Theravada that holds that there is nothing spiritual of the human to separate from the physical. It is our skandhas or mental-emotional energies which make us up and dissipate leaving nothing essentially human. When they run through their cycles and return to each other we are reborn. Perhaps a mix of the Tibetan and Theravada would yield a more complete yet still veiled view of what really happens.

Woodfords musings do indeed sound horrific, and yet on the flip side perhaps the disintegration of the body by cremation would aid the "body-soul separation".

Harry