http://bible.org/seriespage/consciousness-soul-after-death
Browsing this evening, I came across this discussion of what happens to the soul after death. The claim of the author is that the soul is immediately transported to Heaven to be in God’s presence, and that the body is that which sleeps. An interesting claim is made toward the end of the page, where Paul’s description of being caught up into the “Third Heaven” is traced back to his stoning outside of Lystra, 14 years prior. Paul apparently had a near-death experience where he encountered a vision of Heaven (or was actually transported to Heaven for a brief time).