Selection from Conjugial Love ~ Emanuel Swedenborg
With every one his own love remains after death.
Man knows that there is love, but does not know what love is. He knows that there is love from common speech, in that it is said, this one loves me; the king loves his subjects and the subjects love their king; the husband loves his wife; the mother, her children, and vice versa; also that this or that man loves his country, his fellow-citizens, his neighbor. It is likewise said of things apart from person, that one loves this, or that. But although love is so universal in speech, yet scarcely any one knows what love is. Because he can form no idea of thought about it when he reflects upon it, and so cannot set it in the light of the understanding (for the reason that it is not a thing of light, but of heat), a man either says that it is nothing, or that it is merely a something flowing in from sight, hearing, and conversation, and thus affecting. It is entirely unknown to him that -it is his very life, not only the common life of his whole body, and the common life of all his thoughts, but even the life of all the single things of them.A wise man can perceive it from considerations like this: If you take away the affection of love can you think anything? Can you do anything? In the degree that affection, which is of love, grows cold, do not thought, speech, and action grow cold? And as that grows warm do not these grow warm?
Love then is the heat of man's life, or his vital heat.The heat of the blood, and its redness also is from no other source. The fire of the angelic sun, which is pure love, effects this.
That every one has his own love, or a love distinct from another's love, that is, that the love of one man is not the same as that of another, is evident from the infinite variety of faces. Faces are the types of loves. For it is known that countenances change and vary according to the affections of love. Desires also, which are of love, and its joys and sorrows, shine forth from the face. It is clear from this that a man is his own love, yea, is the form of his love. But it should be known that -
the form of his love is the interior man, which is the same as his spirit that lives after death; and not also his outward man in the world, because this has learned from infancy to conceal the desires of his love, yea, to pretend to and put forward other desires than his own.Because love is man's life, as has been stated just above, and thence is the man himself, therefore his own love remains with every man after death. A man is also his own thought, and so his own intelligence and wisdom; but these form one with his love. For a man thinks from his love and according to it, yea, if he is in freedom he speaks and acts from and according to it. Whence it may be seen that love is the esse or essence of a man's life, and that thought is the existere or existence of his life therefrom. Speech and action therefore, [which flow forth from thought], do not flow really from the thought, but from the love by the thought. It has been given me to know from much experience that man after death is not his own thought, but is his own affection and the thought therefrom, or that he is his own love and intelligence thence; and that after death man puts off everything that does not accord with his love; yea, that he successively puts on the face, tone of voice, speech, gesture, and manner of his life's love. Hence it is that the universal heaven is disposed in order according to all the varieties of the affections of the love of good; and the universal hell according to all the affections of the love of evil.
(Conjugial Love 34-36)