From Arcana Coelestia ~ Emanuel Swedenborg
The dwellings of the blessed in the other life are of many kinds, and are constructed with such art as to be as it were embodiments of the very art of architecture, or to come straight from the art itself. These dwellings appear not only to the sight, but also to the touch, for all things there are adapted to the sensations of spirits and angels, and hence are such as do not come to bodily sense like that of man, but to that possessed by those who are there. I know that this is incredible to many, but this is because nothing is believed which cannot be seen by the bodily eyes and felt with the hands of flesh. For this reason the man of this day, whose interiors are closed, knows nothing of the things which exist in the spiritual world or in heaven. He does indeed say from the Word and from doctrine that there is a heaven, and that the angels who are there are in joy and in glory, but he knows no more about the matter. How the case is there he would indeed like to know, but when told he still believes nothing, because at heart he denies the existence of such things, and his desire to know about them is prompted solely by his curiosity from doctrine, and not by any delight grounded in faith. They who are not in faith also deny at heart; but they who believe get ideas from various sources about heaven and its joy and glory, each person from such things as are of his own knowledge and intelligence, and the simple from the things of bodily sensation.Nevertheless most people do not apprehend that spirits and angels enjoy sensations much more exquisite than those of men in this world, namely, sight, hearing, smell, something analogous to taste, and touch; and especially the delights of the affections. If men would only believe that their interior essence is the spirit, and that the body and its sensations and members are adapted to uses in this world merely, and that the spirit and its sensations and organs are adapted to uses in the other life, then from themselves and almost of their own accord they would come into ideas about the state of their spirit after death; for they would reflect that the spirit must be the man himself who thinks, and who desires, longs for things, and is affected with them; and further that all the power of sensation which appears in the body belongs properly to the spirit, and to the body merely by influx; and they would afterwards confirm themselves in this idea by many considerations, and in this way would at last take more delight in the things of their spirit than in those of their body.
It is also a real fact that it is not man's body which sees, hears, smells, and feels, but his spirit; and therefore when the spirit is divested of the body, it is in its own sensations, the same as when it was in the body, only now far more exquisite; for the things of the body, being comparatively gross, had rendered the sensations obtuse, and this the more because the man had immersed them in earthly and worldly things. This I can aver - that a spirit has much more exquisite sight than a man in the body, and also much more exquisite hearing, and, astonishing to say, the sense of smell, and especially the sense of touch; for spirits see one another, hear one another, and touch one another. Moreover, anyone who believes in the life after death might infer that this is the case from the fact that no life is possible without sensation, and that the quality of the life is according to the quality of the sensation, nay, that the intellectual faculty is nothing but an exquisite sense of interior things, and the higher intellectual of spiritual things; and it is from this that the things of the intellectual and its perceptions are called internal senses.
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But be it known that the life of sense with spirits is twofold, namely, real and not real. The one is distinguished from the other by the fact that everything is real which appears to those who are in heaven, whereas everything is unreal which appears to those who are in hell. For whatever comes from the Divine (that is, from the Lord) is real, because it comes from the very being of things, and from life in itself, but whatever comes from a spirit's own is not real, because it does not come from the being of things, nor from life in itself. They who are in the affection of good and truth are in the Lord's life, thus in real life, for the Lord is present in good and truth through the affection; but they who are in evil and falsity through the affection, are in the life of what is their own, thus in a life not real, for the Lord is not present in evil and falsity. The real is distinguished from the not real in this - that the real is actually such as it appears, and that the not real is actually not such as it appears.
They who are in hell have sensations equally with others, and are not aware but that everything is really or actually just as it appears to their senses; and yet when they are looked at by the angels, the same things appear as phantasms, and disappear, and they themselves do not appear as men, but as monsters. It has also been given me to speak with them on this subject, and some of them said that they believe things to be real because they see and touch them, adding that sense cannot deceive. But it was given me to reply that no matter how real these things may appear to them, they nevertheless are not real, and this because they themselves are in things contrary or opposite to the Divine, namely, in evils and falsities, and moreover are themselves nothing but phantasies insofar as their thoughts are concerned, to the extent that they are in cupidities of evil and persuasions of falsity; and to see anything from phantasies is to see things that are real as not real, and things that are not real as real; and that unless it were given them of the Lord's Divine mercy to have their senses affected in this manner, they would have no sensitive life, consequently no life at all, because that which is sensitive constitutes the whole of life. To adduce all my experience on these subjects would be to fill many pages.
Therefore when you enter the other life beware of being deceived, for evil spirits know how to conjure up illusions of many kinds before those who come fresh from the world, and if they cannot deceive them, they nevertheless thereby endeavor to persuade them that nothing is real, but that all things are ideal, even those which are in heaven.
(Arcana Coelestia 4622-4623)