The real issue is comparing THIS physical life to the possibility of an spiritual AFTERLIFE.
With this current life humans use "sensors" to interact with our physical surroundings.
Eyes, mouth, nose, ears, skin, etc.
For example, if you took away the eyes (sight), and the ears (hearing), and the nose (smell), and even the skin (sensors), you'd basically then be dead anyway as far as ones surroundings go.
SO obviously, we currently live in a life of the physical.
But possibly there may be another life of the non-physical. The spiritual. The afterlife.
Religion certainly talks of the spiritual.
And certainly Christianity refers to spiritual throughout scripture.
All I can address is the religion of Christianity.
And if Christians do die in the physical, and go to a place in the spiritual, then the "physical" would have nothing to do with an "afterlife" per se. It would be an entirely spiritual afterlife. That "could" explain why scripture tells us that people will live "for eternity", or with death and hell scripture no where tells us that hell too will not be eternal.
When speaking of the spiritual, the teachings of Christianity only refers to as an eternity.
Both the good place and the bad place will both be an eternity according to the scripture of Christianity.
I would suggest that when in the spiritual form and while we will no longer have a physical form, yet we will still recognize others that we knew in the physical form of life who are also now spiritual.
Parents, siblings, friends, relatives, and so on.
And if you scribe to Christianity, that might explain not only why life and death are both eternal, but why life in the eternal has no death, no sickness, so suffering, none of stuff we encountered within the physical.
However, Christianity does say that those cast into hell will suffer for eternity. They will be as dead, but their existence will not end. They too will be eternal.
So who knows what the hell THAT means....?
And I guess no one really knows. Or ever will know.
It is insane crazy that humanity has spent so much time and effort on trying to grasp the concept of life and death using religion.
We enslave people over religion, murder people over religion, torcher people over religion, but really.... who the hell knows if those efforts to understand are all but wasted? Humanity killing humanity over what? Religion? A concept? A belief with absolutely no hard proof? Some guys thoughts written down of paper and then elevated as religion?
Show me one individual in history that has died and lived to tell about it?
If talking about Christianity the answer would be Jesus.
But then again, Christianity as with all religions are only the writings from then living people eons ago.
Christians think they are right, Muslims believe the Quran is the only truth.
And then you also have the Buddhist, Islam, Judaism, and I don't even know what Mormons believe....?
Plus, add in there so so many other religions throughout the world with their devoted beliefs.
Well, they all can't be right.
SO getting back to this afterlife thing, I'd simply say we have the physical that we all live in now, and possibly the spiritual as an afterlife concept completely detached from that of the physical.
Or.... maybe nothing at all.
I find it disturbing and hard to grasp that so much of life has existed before our current existence.
Watch a movie from the 1920's. People too back then were all running around and living their life and that society was dealing with great tragedy as well as great accomplishment.
AND NONE OF US WERE THERE!
We were nothing.
We didn't exist.
We had no awareness, no life, we were nothing at all. Zilch. Nada. Lights-out.
Then, considering all that life going on back in the 1920's and we here now had not a clue.
Maybe that nothingness is where we go back to once we exit this life?
Lights-out. The end. Finito.
Because, who really knows?
All we can do with being human is to imagine, and to make things up to soften the fear of the unknown.
I.e. to create our religious beliefs.
But none of us really knows what the hell is going on with life and death and the afterlife.
And should our next phase end up as back to non-existence, back to pre-birth lights-out, well.... the outcome of THAT we will never know either.
PS. If you are currently smoking weed, none of the above applies.
When you die you will go to a weed-farm.
And yes, for an eternity...