329. We can tell what a useful function is from the goal of the creation of the universe. The goal of the creation of the universe is to bring about an angelic heaven; and since an angelic heaven is the goal, so is humanity or the human race, since that is where heaven comes from. It follows, then, that everything that has been created is an intermediate goal, and that the functions are useful in the sequence, on the level, and in the specific way that they relate to humanity, and through humanity to the Lord.

461. AFTER DEATH MAN IS POSSESSED OF EVERY SENSE, AND OF ALL THE MEMORY, THOUGHT, AND AFFECTION THAT HE HAD IN THE WORLD, LEAVING NOTHING BEHIND EXCEPT HIS EARTHLY BODY

It has been proved to me by manifold experience that when man passes from the natural world into the spiritual, as he does when he dies, he carries with him all his things, that is, those things that belong to him as a man, except his earthly body. For when man enters the spiritual world or the life after death, he is in a body as he was in the world, with no apparent difference, since he neither sees nor feels any difference. But his body is spiritual, and thus separated or purified from all that is earthly; 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. So when a man has become a spirit he does not know otherwise than that he is in his own body in which he had been in the world and thus does not know that he has died.

[2] Moreover, the spirit man rejoices in every sense, both external and internal, that he enjoyed in the world; he sees as before, he hears and speaks as before, smells and tastes, and when touched, he feels the touch as before; he also strives, desires, longs for, thinks, reflects, is affected, loves, wills, as before; and one who is delighted with studies, reads and writes as before. In a word, when a man passes from one life into the other, or from one world into the other, it is like passing from one place into another, carrying with him all things that he possesses in himself as a man; so that it cannot be said that after death, which is only the death of the earthly body, the man will have lost anything of his own.

[3] Furthermore, he carries with him his natural memory, retaining everything whatever that he has heard, seen, read, learned, or thought in the world from earliest infancy even to the end of life; although the natural objects that are in the memory, since they cannot be reproduced in the spiritual world, are at rest, just as they are with a man when he is not thinking from them. Nevertheless, they are reproduced when it pleases the Lord. But more will be said presently about this memory and its state after death. A sensual man finds it impossible to believe that such is the state of man after death, because he cannot comprehend it; for a sensual man must needs think naturally even about spiritual things; therefore, anything that does not appeal to his senses, that is, that he does not see with his bodily eyes and touch with his hands (as is said of Thomas, John 20:25, 27, 29) he denies that it is. (What the sensual man is may be seen above, 267 and notes.)