Death may be thought of as the moment when the physical body no longer functions, or when the brain waves stop, or some sort of measurable event. Another way of looking at it is that death is when the soul leaves the body permanently. Using that definition, many people in comas are already dead despite the fact that their bodies are functioning in many ways.

I'm going with the soul leaving the body definition. That's the form of death I'm concerned with here. It's just semantics, and there may as well be a different word for that event, because sometimes the body continues to be alive after the soul has left, usually just moments (a car accident, etc.) or sometimes a lot longer (a prolonged coma during which the soul has already left).

Some of the changes immediately after death concern the senses. Here we have our sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. These senses are not the same when we pass.

The sense of sight is similar, but it is perfected, so people who are nearsighted (aren't we all) or are completely blind are all able to see accurately at once. We are also not limited to what the human eye can deal with. We can see spirits as easily as we can watch tv. We can stare at bright lights without them hurting our eyes. We have no eyes to hurt, at least not the exact same eye mechanics that operate here. We no longer have a nervous system. It is no longer possible to feel physical pain.

The sense of hearing is similar, per above.

Our sense of taste is connected to the physical body. It is possible to taste things in our spirit body but the experience is not the same. Not enough has been written about this.

The sense of smell has been neglected in writings about this subject also. It is the most neglected of the five senses, and I don't know what happens to it.

The sense of touch is completely changed. Since we don't have a nervous system anymore, we don't feel the way we used to. Energy bodies can and do make contact with each other, but they don't experience the contact the same way we do here. They have very intense feelings, but those feelings aren't the same as ours.

One huge change is that we normally feel very detached from our earthly problems once we've left the body. They are things of the past. Any pain we may have been suffering through - all gone! What a great relief. We feel a sense of detachment about all the things that troubled us. We're no longer walking a mile in those shoes.

Assuming we aren't detained in a situation we don't want to be in, we lose our sense of isolation. We feel once again part of it all. We feel once again the closeness to God. People say that they feel it while alive on this Earth, but it's nothing like really being home and really feeling it so strong, feeling God's love with us always. It is something we are cut off from on Earth.

Not that we are cut off from God's love. We are cut off from feeling it. All we can feel is a very pale remembrance or hint of it here. We feel it so little that many of us don't even believe that God exists, or think that God is mean and angry and critical of us. Untrue on all counts. God is love and understanding. God is not a critical nag anxious to blame you for everything and having a fit if you touch yourself or somebody else.

Many of the current beliefs about who God is and what God wants from us are nothing more than reflections of humanity's neuroses or the lasting influence of an imperfect man named Saint Augustine, a "reformed" libertine who went way overboard in the opposite direction, condemning everything that feels good, condemning music, condemning enjoyment of nature, basically to my mind someone who can't be trusted in anything he says.

Our mobility changes instantly. At death, we are no longer earthbound or subject to gravity. Gravity completely disappears for us and has no pull on us. We can travel much faster than the speed of light. In fact, that's one big difference between heaven and our universe. In our universe, speed happens to be limited to the speed of light. In heaven it is not.

One thing we have in common with heaven is mass transit. There is mass transit in heaven. It's not that you get on a train with other passengers. It's that you yourself are the train, a train of one, but there are ways to get from Spacetime Point A to Spacetime Point B. There are paths. And you don't need to know the way, because you are drawn along the way. You see others being drawn along also. There are those who know the way and administer the system. Heaven is a highly organized place and time, and we help each other there, and do a lot there.

There are those who say that there is no "time" in heaven, but there is time in heaven. There has to be. Time is connected to place. Time is one of the dimensions of place. You are located at a certain point, defined in various ways, and time is one of those ways to define where/when you are.

There is color in heaven. There is music in heaven. There is communication without speech in heaven. Telepathy.

In heaven you become Superman without the allergy to Kryptonite. You can fly much faster in heaven than Superman does in comic books. You are physically invulnerable to pain because you have no nerves.

There is sex in heaven but it is different. It's not as localized, and it involves more knowledge and communication, rather than physical friction. It's more powerful emotionally, and there's a lot more intimacy. I wish more was written about it. Sources of information: Journey of Souls and Destiny of Souls by Michael Newton. Thanks to the thousands of very very deeply hypnotized clients of his who contributed to the books and confirmed each other's reports.

Sources of information most definitely do not include the writings of that utter fraud and bestselling author Sylvia Browne.