46. (i) Everyone retains his sexual love after death, exactly as it was inwardly; that is, as it was inwardly in his thought and will while in the world.
Every love accompanies a person after death, because it is the essence of his life; and the dominant love, the chief of all, lasts for ever in a person, together with the subordinate loves. The reason is that love is properly a function of a person's spirit, reaching the body from the spirit. Since after death a person becomes a spirit, he brings his love with him. Since love is the essence of a person's life, it is obvious that a person's fate after death is determined by the kind of life he led in the world.
As regards sexual love, this is a universal feature shared by all. For it was implanted from creation in a person's soul, which is the source of the whole person's essence, as something necessary for the continuance of the human race. This love remains the chief one, because after death a man is a man and a woman is a woman; and there is nothing in the soul, mind or body which is not male in the man and female in the woman. These two have been so created as to strive to be joined, in fact to be joined into one. This striving is sexual love, which precedes conjugial love. Since then this tendency to union is stamped upon every detail of the male and the female, it follows that it cannot be wiped out and die together with the body.
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