When a man passes from the natural world into the spiritual, he takes
with him everything that belongs to him as a man except his earthly
body. (This he leaves when he dies, nor does he ever resume it.[A]) He
is in a body as he was in the natural world; and to all appearance
there is no difference. But his body is spiritual, and is therefore
separated or purified from things terrestrial. And when what is
spiritual touches and sees what is spiritual, it is just the same as
when what is natural touches and sees what is natural.... A human
spirit also enjoys every sense, external and internal, which he
enjoyed in the world. He sees as before, hears and speaks as before,
smells and tastes as before, and feels when he is touched. He also
longs, desires, craves, thinks, reflects, is stirred, loves, wills, as
he did previously.... In a word, when a man passes from the one life
into the other, or from the one world into the other, it is as though
he had passed from one place to another; and he carries with him all
that he possesses in himself as a man. It cannot, then, be said, that
after death a man has lost anything that really belonged to him. He
carries his natural memory with him, too; for he retains all things
whatsoever which he has heard, seen, read, learned and thought in the
world, from earliest infancy even to the last of life.
--_Heaven and Hell, n._ 461
[Footnote A: Heavenly Doctrine, n. 225.]