Conjugial Love (Rogers) n. 36

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36. Everyone's own love remains in him after death for the reason that love is a person's life (as just said above, no. 34), and consequently it is the real person. A person is also what he thinks, thus what his intelligence and wisdom are, but these are united with his love. For a person thinks because of his love and according to it; in fact, if he is free to do so, he speaks and acts from it. From this it can be seen that love is the being or essence of a person's life, and that thought is the resulting expression or manifestation of his life. Speech and action that spring from thought, therefore, do not spring from thought, but from love acting through thought. I have been granted to know from a good deal of experience that a person after death is not what he thinks but what his affection is and what he thinks from that, which is to say that he is what his love is and subsequently his intelligence. I have also been granted to know that after death a person puts away everything that is not in harmony with his love; indeed, that he progressively takes on the look, sound, speech, behavior and manners of his life's love. It is for this reason that the whole of heaven has been set in order according to all the varieties in the affections connected with the love of good, and that the whole of hell has been arranged according to all the affections connected with the love of evil.


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