I don't have much to say about the spirit world. I have no memories of a life before life, nor have I visited the afterlife, and for this I am rather thankful. So I don't know whether people can be conscious without a body, or in just an ethereal body. But the spirit world is certainly present even in this life. That's something I know, as it is plain to see. It is not like we exist in a purely material world now! Rather, we could think of the present world as "spirit world plus inertia". If we imagine being alive in the spirit world alone, then our mind would immediately manifest its contents. Kind of like a dream, really. What we believed would appear before us. But thanks to the dense, slow matter, in this world we move only slowly and with considerable use of energy toward what is in our heart. But move we do.
You could also say that our spirit part is destiny, and our material part is fate. Life in this world is fate and destiny. But if we were only in the spirit world, only our destiny would manifest, for better or for worse. Much better or much worse, depending on our choices. (It is believed that angels are in this situation: Either glory or utter desecration, depending on what they decided once and for all. But we, we are held back, moving only gradually. This viscous quality of earthly life is very handy when we are falling, as we kind of sink downward instead of plummeting to the bottom of Hell at the speed of light. Of course, we are equally held back if ascending.)
Absent spirit, fate would reign supreme, and we would be like animals, blown about by whatever came our way, with no aspiration. Or drifting with the current. Conversely, without fate we would just boundlessly create our own world. There are some "New Age" people who believe they live in such a world, where everyone can get the green light in every crossing at the same time. They believe they are God, creating their world. You should not hurry toward such a world, but rather prepare yourself, so that you don't accidentally create your own hell. That is sure to happen if you mistake desire for aspiration.
