The material world is shaped by the laws of physics. The spirit world is shaped by the laws which create spiritual beings.

There are things which minds do. They reason, perceive, forget, recall, and react to stimuli. There is no mind that does not do all of those things, because there are principles involved, just like the principles of physics.

Consider reaction to stimuli. There would be no recall without it. If a person looks at a blue car, he recalls several memories related to blue cars. Blue cars are a stimulus to the reaction of memories on blue cars. If it were not automatic, it could not occur.

However, there are vast differences in the way minds function. Some minds can chose to recall a subject; others cannot. This is because there are developed abilities in minds. Some have higher developed abilities; some are undeveloped; and some are corrupt.

Corruption is what sin does. It creates forces in minds, and they obstruct normal and constructive mental activity.

Overcoming sin is removal of forces from the mind. Constructive environments are required along with moral knowledge and the desire to do so.

Very little sin is being overcome in the human society at the present time, because environments are not constructive. At some time in the future, more constructive environments will exist for overcoming sin. This requires a social order which is not under satan's control, because satan reduces society to a level of decadence which prevents moral progress from occurring.

Some progress at overcoming sin can occur in the spirit world, as described by persons who go into the spirit world through so-called near death experiences (search the net for NDEs). But the progress is quite minimal without a material life to stabilize realities and create controlled environments.

After sin is overcome in material life, it will eventually redevelop. If not, it never would have occurred in the first place. Over time, the subconscious reactions of sin develop until the spirit world is overtaken by corruption. Then material life is needed again to overcome the sin.

Seers in the Hindu religion have described the cyclic nature of the spirit world. They could not create a clear theology, because the lack of ability to stabilize realities resulted in numerous contrivances overwhelming the truth. Christ had to use extraordinary measures to stabilize the most important truths to create a basis for moral philosophy to be built upon.