Death and Afterlife 14 - Do we retain our consciousness and identity?

When we die we retain our consciousness and our awareness of ourselves. 

Saint Irenaeus tells us that our soul will “retain memory of the things of this world’ after death.

At the time of death we see ourselves as a double but unable to touch anything.

Mr. K. Uekskuell, continues with his story reporting that he saw his double: "I only was perplexed: how can this be? I feel myself here, and at the same time I am there also. I wanted to touch myself. I extended my hand, desiring to touch the shoulder of the doctor; but I felt that I was walking strangely, not feeling contact with the floor; and my hand, no matter how I tried, could not reach the figure of the doctor. I understood myself to be in a state of utter dissociation from all that was about me. 

"In this ... deprivation of the capacity to associate with the surrounding world, as an unnatural experience for a human being, in it there was so much deathly fear, such a horrible acknowledgment of helplessness, how it was possible for them not to see me, when I was the same as I had always been."

Our souls continue to exist in fullness, says Saint Irenaeus. 

"The Lord has taught with very great fullness that souls continue to exist. They do not do this by passing from body to body. Rather, they preserve the same form as that of the body to which they were adapted.... "

We will recognize each other after death, according Jesus.

"The Lord states that the rich man recognized Lazarus after death, as well as Abraham. From these things, then, it is plainly declared that souls ... possess the form of a man (so that they may be recognized)."

We will see ourselves as ourselves, says Saint Augustine.

When the soul is separated from the body, “the man himself who is such a state, though it be in spirit only, not in the body, yet sees himself so like to his own body that he cannot discern any difference."

The main thing that changes is that we no longer have physical senses.

For Mr. K. Uekskuell, his external appearance remained the same, but his body became inaccessible to touch, and contact with objects was not possible. He reported that only in seeing his lifeless body was he able to comprehend what really had happened to him.

Death is not a destruction of life, so what is it?

"With our understanding of the word “death,” there is inextricably bound the idea of some kind of destruction—a cessation of life; how could I think that I died when I did not lose self-consciousness for one moment, when I felt myself just as alive, hearing all, seeing all, conscious of all, capable of movement, thought, [and] speech?" he wondered. 

We do not even lose our dispositions, says Saint John Cassian.

"The souls of the dead not only do not lose their consciousness, they do not even lose their dispositions—that is, hope and fear, joy and grief.... They become yet more alive...." [He goes on to say that it makes no sense that our spirits, which are created after the image and likeness of God, should be unconscious after death].

"Therefore it follows, and the nature of reason itself demands, that the spirit after casting off this fleshly coarseness by which now it is weakened, should bring its mental powers into a better condition, should restore them as purer and more refined, but should not be deprived of them."

After death we are unchanged still having the  same capacities, conceptions and knowledge except physical sensations.

Mr. K. Uekskuell, adds: 

"I arrived in this new world essentially the same as I had left it, that is to say, with practically the very same capacities, conceptions and knowledge which I had while living on earth."