It is amazing this (perhaps pithy) comment is so down voted, yet you do make one very appropriate observation. Without a body a consciousness cannot do anything.

The obvious answer the so-called-science occult refuse to entertain is that consciousness is the universe inflecting itself and life is a subjective scope of potential capacitating this consciousness.

Life is the vessel and consciousness the universe peering back upon itself.

That is good philosophy.

Maybe not "science", yet neither is refusing to believe until someone else explains it to you.

Truth is not confined to the horizon of our ignorance, and science is merely our ignorance rigorously explained away.