459.  It should be known that everyone’s human form after death is the more beautiful in proportion as he has more interiorly loved Divine truths and lived according to them; for everyone’s interiors are opened and formed in accordance with his love and life; therefore the more interior the affection is the more like heaven it is, and in consequence the more beautiful the face is.  This is why the angels in the inmost heaven are the most beautiful, for they are forms of celestial love.  But those that have loved Divine truths more exteriorly, and thus have lived in accordance with them in a more external way, are less beautiful; for exterior affections only shine forth from their faces; and through these no interior heavenly love shines, consequently nothing of the form of heaven as it is in itself.  There is seen in the faces of such something comparatively obscure, not vivified by any thing of interior life shining through it.  In a word, all perfection increases toward interiors and decreases toward exteriors, and as perfection increases and decreases so does beauty.  I have seen angelic faces of the third heaven of such radiance that no painter with all his art could possibly give any such light to his colors as to equal a thousandth part of the brightness and life that shone forth from their countenances.  But the faces of the angels of the lowest heaven may in some measure be equalled.

460.  In conclusion I will mention a certain arcanum hitherto unknown to any one, namely, that every good and truth that goes forth from the Lord and makes heaven is in the human form; and this not only as a whole and in what is greatest, but also in every part and what is least; also that this form affects everyone who receives good and truth from the Lord, and causes everyone who is in heaven to be in the human form in accordance with his reception of good and truth.  It is in consequence of this that heaven is like itself in general and in particular, and that the human form is the form of the whole, of every society, and of every angel (as has been shown in the four chapters from n. 59 to 86); to which let it be added that it is the form of the least things of thought derived from heavenly love with the angels.  No man, however, can easily comprehend this arcanum; but it is clearly comprehended by the angels, because they are in the light of heaven.

461.  XLVIII.  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.