1343. CONCERNING SENSATION AND REPRESENTATIONS IN THE OTHER LIFE The habitations of the blessed are various. They are presented to themselves altogether as they are during life, so that there is no difference, yea, [they are perceived] with every sense. This may seem incredible but it can be sufficiently evident from all that has been said and is still to be said. For what is sensation, as sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell? And whence is it derived? Is it from the body or from the soul? Is it not from the soul? for when the soul is separated no organ or member has sensation. There are also many other examples. It is indeed said that it is not real because not such as in the world; it suffices that a soul, spirit or angel knows no otherwise than that it is so with every sense. Thus if a spirit should touch anything he would have the sensation of touch. This moreover can be evident to me more than to others, for although I was a spirit and separated from the body, I have had an altogether similar sense of touch as in wakefulness, yea, a more exquisite sense. (These things may be repeated with more proofs and demonstrations.) If this were not so, what would life after death be? Or what the life of the soul without an exquisite sense? It would not be life. Indeed, man's intellectual ought to be exquisitely sensual, for there is not the least part of an intellectual idea without an exquisite sensation of a like degree, for which reason the keenness of sensation ascends according to degrees. Nevertheless, those who are in the heavens care nothing at all for such things [of sense] and thus hold them in no esteem; they pay no attention to such things, but when they do attend, they at once have them.