Old thread is old, but I don't want to work right now so will give a couple thoughts.

I really think all your questions come down to putting human limits and frameworks around something that doesn't really fit with any of them. This is something that I think we get far too preoccupied by, and really amounts to arguing about the color of the inside of a Klein bottle.

For example, I don't believe that we vanish into nothingness when our physical bodies die, only because I don't believe those bodies to be us. But I also don't believe that our human neurological systems can comprehend what's next in any meaningful way. Some traditions refer to death as a "homecoming," which I kind of like, although I don't assume I use the word in the same sense (then again maybe I do).

But really we have to work with the extent to which the Divine impacts our current world. I think a lot of that takes the form of information (but not in the pseudo-scientific sense). I don't believe that God directly intervenes in a physical way into our universe. But I do think that we're shown what's right for us if we listen. This brings its own challenges, of course, but I don't think we ever run out of chances to come back to the right path. Of course, the right path doesn't need to be religious. But someone can act in a Godly way without believing in God (and of course we all know plenty of examples of the religious doing un-Godly things).

Related to this, I think we're too quick to draw distinctions between the physical and "not," whether you want to call that ethereal, divine, or whatever. I think seeing things as two different worlds with some kind of barrier is the wrong way to go. Just as there's no distinction between "religion time" and "the rest of the day," I don't think we're going around in one ring or another. As Khalil Gibran said:

Is not religion all deeds and all reflection,

And that which is neither deed nor reflection, but a wonder and a surprise ever springing in the soul, even while the hands hew the stone or tend the loom?

Who can separate his faith from his actions, or his belief from his occupations?

Who can spread his hours before him, saying, "This for God and this for myself; This for my soul, and this other for my body?"