Does the Aatma (soul) leave the body after death?

Following is an excerpt from a samvaad (dialogue) session with Acharya Prashant.

Acharya Prashant (AP): What is the Aatman?

Do you already know what I am going to tell you?

Listener (L): No

AP: Yet you will understand, right? Now, how do you understand, without knowledge? How do you understand, without having already known? How does something absolutely new come to it and yet you are enamored by its beauty?

That, which remains active, even in your absence, even in the mind’s absence, even in knowledge’s absence, is Aatma.

Hence, it is utterly reliable. Because it is not a product of circumstances, because it is not a product of time. So, it can never desert you. It never came to you. It is not a product of some happening. Did somebody teach you that these mountains are beautiful? Then why are you captivated by them. You have been looking at them, over and over, again and again, and your eye seems to have some strange fascination for these mountains. Every day or the other, I am seeing, somebody or the other, just standing, lost, absorbed. Who taught you exactly that these are beautiful?

That, which you know, without being taught, is the Aatma.