The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love: To Which is Added The Pleasures of Insanity Pertaining To Scortatory LoveSwedenborg, Emanuel
Religion
The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love: To Which is Added The Pleasures of Insanity Pertaining To Scortatory Love
Swedenborg, Emanuel
Marriage -- Religious aspects -- New Jerusalem Church; New Jerusalem Church -- Doctrines; Sexual ethics
37. IV. THE LOVE OF THE SEX ESPECIALLY REMAINS; AND WITH THOSE WHO GO TO
HEAVEN, WHICH IS THE CASE WITH ALL WHO BECOME SPIRITUAL HERE ON EARTH,
CONJUGIAL LOVE REMAINS. The reason why the love of the sex remains with
man (_homo_) after death, is, because after death a male is a male and a
female a female; and the male principle in the male is male (or
masculine) in the whole and in every part thereof; and so is the female
principle in the female; and there is a tendency to conjunction in all
their parts, even the most singular; and as this conjunctive tendency
was implanted from creation, and thence perpetually influences, it
follows, that the one desires and seeks conjunction with the other.
Love, considered itself, is a desire and consequent tendency to
conjunction; and conjugial love to conjunction into a one; for the
male-man and the female-man were so created, that from two they may
become as it were one man, or one flesh; and when they become a one,
then, taken together they are a man (_homo_) in his fulness; but without
such conjunction, they are two, and each is a divided or half-man. Now
as the above conjunctive tendency lies concealed in the inmost of every
part of the male, and of every part of the female, and the same is true
of the faculty and desire to be conjoined together into a one, it
follows, that the mutual and reciprocal love of the sex remains with men
(_homines_) after death.
38. We speak distinctively of the love of the sex and of conjugial love,
because the one differs from the other. The love of the sex exists with
the natural man; conjugial love with the spiritual man. The natural man
loves and desires only external conjunctions, and the bodily pleasures
thence derived; whereas the spiritual man loves and desires internal
conjunctions and the spiritual satisfactions thence derived; and these
satisfactions he perceives are granted with one wife, with whom he can
perpetually be more and more joined together into a one: and the more he
enters into such conjunction the more he perceives his satisfactions
ascending in a similar degree, and enduring to eternity; but respecting
anything like this the natural man has no idea. This then is the reason
why it is said, that after death conjugial love remains with those who
go to heaven, which is the case with all those who become spiritual here
on earth.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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