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.]


THE WORLD OF SPIRITS

Every man at death comes first into the world of spirits, which is
midway between heaven and hell; and there he passes through his own
states, and is prepared either for heaven or for hell according to his
life.... It is to be observed that the world of spirits is one thing,
and the spiritual world another. The spiritual world embraces the
world of spirits and heaven and hell.