Men are unwilling to give up the male prerogatives or perks that society bestows upon them as a right and privilege for being a male man. I received this idea from childhood culture. My parents said it was better to have boys than girls. Boys carry the name and the blood line. Boys grow up to be men with power, fame, and riches. Girls were nice, but they were weak and you had to spend more effort at keeping them unspoiled so a man would want them. They also cost you a lot of money when you give them in marriage. Boys can protect you and take care of you. Yes, boys are trouble sometimes, but you have to give them a lot of slack. Etc. As a result, I was instructed by my parents before marrying that I be sure to “train” my bride right from the start to be subservient to me. She has to follow your word. A man must wear the pants and make the decisions. She has to serve you, cook for you, wash your clothes, look after you properly, like you deserve. And you have to let her know you’re expecting her to look fresh and nice for your, when you come home, anytime. She shouldn’t let herself go. You have to demand respect from her. Then she’ll love you and she’ll be happy, and she’ll take care of your children too. How astonishing to me now, as I list these factual realities of cultural gender arrogance.
The truth in the Writings has now been revealed: It is the opposite! It is the feminine perception and the feminine intelligence and the feminine beauty that is superior relative to men (xx). And so it is the feminization of marriage that sanctifies it and makes it a spiritual and whole (see Chapter 9 Section 1 above). One might wonder: Does this mean that it is the man who has to surrender to the wife—THE SURRENDERED HUSBAND? This would not be far from the truth, as long as you make sure to include the idea that it is another way of saying Rule 1:
RULE 1:
The first and only rule is
that husbands are to learn to love acting from the wife, more than from self.
This is what makes the difference between subjugation, servitude, and dominion. Only love can fend away these inherited enemies. Rule 1 doesn’t say “Husbands must obey their wives.” Neither does it say “Husbands should listen to their wives.” It says: “Husbands are to love acting from the wife more than from self.”
If a husband behaves in a way that is pleasing to his wife, he is pleasing her, even if internally he feels emotional conflict and stress. This is the first step of learning to live by Rule 1. It is loving your wife more than loving yourself. This type of love is called celestial, and is the highest human love (xx). If this love is elevated by the husband to the highest position in his hierarchy of loves, he will behave to please her, and this always means firstly, to avoid displeasing her. Eventually he will no longer feel the inner conflict of rebellion when he is pleasing her. He will then act to please her, and love it. From then on he lives by Rule 1, the celestial life on earth. He is conjoined as one from within with his wife. Of the two, they make a one—the conjoint self (see Chapter 9 Section 4 below).
This is the “surrendered husband”—the elevated true man of creation, who loves the feminine sphere of his wife’s affections more than the masculine sphere of his own affections.
The “surrendered wife” is the man’s exploitation of the woman, as a result of which he fails to attain his true self, the self into whose perfection he was created. A man can reach his perfection in the state of being an elevated husband, which is defined as a husband who has learned to love acting from his wife’s affections more than from his own. The man is then a celestial mind, conjoint to the wife from within. Her life is his life because affections is nothing else than life itself in human beings. He then acts from his wife within him. Note how different this is from acting from the wife from without!
If a man acts from his wife from without, he is not a man but a zombie under the woman’s control. She thereby becomes infernal, and he as well, because only voluntary submission can create the zombie relationship with someone. The Divine-Human guarantees freedom of choice moment by moment for every individual in the universe. If a husband becomes a zombie, he maintains himself in that state voluntarily, by his own falsifications of truth or reality. This is acting from the wife from without—she is standing there, with her hands on the hips, staring him down, and giving him orders to prove to herself that she can dominate him. This is an infernal couple. But it’s altogether different when the husband acts from the wife from within.
The expression “to act from the wife from within” means that the husband loves her affections and appropriates them to himself. Now the wife’s affections are within him. Now he acts from the wife’s affections from within. This kind of action is possible only from love of her affections. And what is loved, one chooses freely and voluntarily, in freedom (xx).
I agree on this with Laura Doyle and the many enthusiasts she seems to have among married women: It’s far better to be treated in a civilized way by one’s husband than in an abusive way.
What a relief these women feel when their man suddenly stops the heavy handed punishing treatments and abuses, verbal and physical, social and psychological. But he still holds it on top of his wife’s head, like a sword of Damocles, ready to fall on her head if she should step over a line that he defines.
This is an external improvement, like what the citizens experience when a dictator of a country passes away and is replaced by a democracy. Yes, being treated with due human rights is a start. Look what it took for the man to stop making a hell for his wife: Her surrender! He is now back with his male privileges and prerogatives! She is now treated a little better, but at what ultimate cost?
The wife’s surrender in order to achieve peace, romance, and respect is similar to the psychology and politics of blackmail, family style. The man says to his wife: “I will stop abusing you and neglecting you if you turn yourself into a surrendered wife.” And she has no choice but to accept, or else see no end to the abuse. She has no recourse because the man she is tied to by external marriage bonds, has closed off the interior relationship between them. Yet the interior marriage relationship is the wife’s life roots, the wellspring of her happiness and fullness of being. This is why she is married: To unite herself from within—feelings, thoughts, futures. She is the genuine married partner while he is the bogus husband, one who does not treat her lovingly, but tortures her instead. She feels like a lamb chained to a wolf who at any moment he wishes, can pounce on her and annihilate her lifeline.
The husband sees himself adjoined to her in the exterior physical and social domains. She sees herself conjoined to his interior psychological and emotional self, his hopes and aspirations, his dreams and perfectionism, his intelligence and power of reasoning. She loves all of these because they are his, and unites herself to them, which means, she takes these things within herself as she takes his semen into her birth canal. But the husband in contrast spews out his wife’s affections and walls himself off to be sure they don’t get to him. He will not appropriate them. His wife’s affections are his pet peeves, the bane of his marriage. It is on account of her affections that he denigrates her, calling his wife a nag, the moment her affections touch him. He acts like he wants to shake them off, like so many worms clinging to his body. He hates conjugial love because he is born with hell within him.
And hell hates nothing more fiercely an insanely than the idea of conjugial love. When an infernal sees a an angel couple, and receive a whiff of their conjugial sphere, they fly into a maniacal frenzy in an attempt to tear apart and squash the couple. But as they approach nearer to the angel couple, the infernals are seized with such anxiety and terror, that they cast themselves back down into hell. This was witnessed by Swedenborg in the spiritual world where the angel couple had descended (xx).
Such is the husband’s inherited opposition to internal unity with his wife. Such an internal unity with the wife REQUIRES that he love her affections!
But he hates her affections and finds them obnoxious and unpleasant, grating and nagging on his nerves. This hatred of her affections is what his lower outward self expresses as abusive behavior, emotional coldness, uncaring, and independent. She desires to tie him to her, for this is the internal unity. He is revolted by the idea and makes him suffocate. He feels all the joy of his life squeezed out of him when her affections touch him. He then feels like he’s been burned and denigrated. He lashes out against this hated foe called his wife’s affections. And she wonders “Why? And how can he be such a beast, such a hypocrite, so self-destructive of his own elevated happiness, who he was created to be, whom I fell in love with? O, O Where is my true husband who has been hijacked by this rude and gross man pretending to be my husband. How long Divine-Human?”
So now that she is a surrendered wife she sees her inner striving for conjunction with him closed off. The door has shut!
How could it be otherwise? He still wants her to obey him! This is the death of the conjoint couple, the celestial ideal creation that makes up one celestial angel. As long as the husband wants his wife to obey him, the interior door is shut tight. She is excluded in an absolute way. It feels to her like death. Now it’s her husband and God, forming an alliance against her. She is the third person. First comes himself. Then comes his God. Then comes her. This is the hierarchy in his mind, the idol he worships, or claims to, for convenience and perks. By the wife “obeying him,” he means that he wants her to act against her own wishes, her own best sense of what their relationship needs! She is the expert who can see the relationship in a rational way since conjugial love imparts the perception to the wife (xx). Her inner desire for conjugial love is the source of her perception form the Divine-Human. The Divine-Human gives her conjugial love, and then he can have it to the extent that he loves her affections (xx). When he doesn’t love her affections, she is powerless like a fish before a steamboat, or like a tomato on the road before a truck.
She feels disjointed, rejected, abandoned for the sake of an external politically motivated physical and social intimacy, but not a spiritual intimacy. What she craves for is a spiritual unity, which means that he loves her affections, appropriates them as his own, then acts from her, now within him. It’s a process that continues and repeats itself endlessly so that she is in the fullness of perfection of her being as a woman. A woman and a man are created reciprocals, in general and in every particular so that they may be united into one conjoint self.
Consider the wife who got into an accident on her way over to visiting her husband in the hospital, where he was waiting for a suitable donor to replace his worn out heart. The take her to emergency and before she dies she wills her heart to her husband. They perform the heart transplant and now he sits at home thinking about her. He lives because her heart is in him.
This story is parallel to the conjugial union which is established when a man adopts the Doctrine of the Wife and Rule 1 as a regeneration discipline. The wife dying represents his hatred for her affections. The wife’s heart that is now transplanted in him, represents her affections within him, because he now loves them. That she is no longer around physically because she has died, represents that she has resurrected in his mind as the conjugial wife. Since this is a spiritual unity, it doesn’t appear in the outside natural appearances.
Perhaps it is necessary for a woman to become a “surrendered wife” for awhile, as a phase in the marriage relationship. This may be imposed on her by the husband’s relationship blackmail mentioned above. But if there is going to be a heavenly marriage with these two, the man must become a “surrendered husband” as discussed above, since this is the state of perfection into which a man is created. This is his “elevated state.” This is the second phase, when the marriage turns into an inner unity between the willing and thinking of the man and the willing and thinking of the woman.
It has been revealed that a woman’s intelligence, wisdom, compassion, and grace is more abundant and inspired than a man’s (xx). A woman’s intelligence is celestial or the highest and inmost of human possibility (xx). A man’s intelligence is spiritual, which is a discrete degree below that of the celestial. A woman’s intelligence can therefore be compared to the noonday sun in the summer, while a man’s intelligence is like the light of the moon on a bright night (xx).
Since this is the created reality, it is rational and spiritual for man to love to act from his wife more than he loves to act from himself.
This means that the highest wisdom and intelligence of a man is that which he acquires for himself from his wife’s affections which he has taken up within himself.
Affections always determine the quality of wisdom and intelligence:
Such as the love is, such is the wisdom, consequently such is the man. (DLW 362)
The affections in the will are called “love.” The unregenerate husband acquires all his wisdom and intelligence from his own affections. This intelligence opposes itself to the intelligence of his wife, which she acquired from her affections. In other words he loves himself and is sealed and isolated in himself. There is no entry point. His wife receives from the Divine-Human conjugial love in her affections (xx). Her affections regarding him and the marriage are therefore heavenly. She now has to wait. At some unpredictable point he will decide to stop opposing and hating her heavenly affections. He undergoes reformation by means of the Letter of the Writings which he applies to his mind, bringing order out of disorder. Now he officially acknowledges to her that he is struggling to learn to love her affections so that he could act from her, rather than from himself. His Doctrine now confirms this process and he is officially ready to participate, to submit, to die, for the sake of being reborn an angel man.
He begins regeneration. He fights against his nature. He has to simulate friendship and enthusiasm as he painfully makes himself swallow her affections, like bitter medicine. As he persists in this struggle, the Divine-Human enlightens him. He builds Spiritual Doctrine for himself whose power is so great that he sees himself a new creation. He loves to love his wife’s affections! He has been healed. He is now the elevated husband in training. He is happy. She is ecstatic. Soon they are both ecstatic. Ecstasy becomes the bliss of their life here on earth. They are forerunners of the new human race. The Alpha Couple. The angels are in bliss for they actively participate in this awesome makeover. Angels love nothing more than to assist in the birthing of conjugial love in a couple on earth (xx).
Now the new husband would not be able to support displeasing his wife, an idea that devastates him as if all his happiness were suddenly gone. He would always act from her affections, which means from her perceptions and perspectives, not his own. In this way he can be conjoined to her form within and be happy and wise to eternity.
But if the wife surrenders to him, he is once again entrapped in his own male intelligence and externality. It’s as if God had not created Eve as an help mate to Adam.
The husband cannot save himself and he cannot be saved by his wife, as intended by the Divine-Human.
The future of this man is sorry and miserable. This fate is not something she contributed to. He is the one who forced her into the subservient status of a “surrendered wife.” He forced her by systematically wearing her down over years of strenuous effort. He made her feel scared, made her doubt herself, threatened her, ignored her, did not value her judgment or opinion. So she had no choice but to give up her most central role and task in life: To unite herself to her husband and thus to make him happy and alive from herself, from what she has in herself from the Divine-Human. This is how the Divine-Human intended it from the beginning and this is what the Divine-Human once again will re-create, as conjugial love is to return to this earth through the Heavenly Doctrines (CL 130).
When the man acts from his wife’s affections which he has internalized (Rule 1), her life is in him like the organ transplant the husband received of his wife’s heart. Her life is within him because her life is nothing else than her affections (xx). His intelligence is now reformed by the new affections in his will. Her higher affections, which are from love and good, shape his new intelligence which are from truth and faith. He receives truth from the Divine-Human as before, but the truth he now receives is far more interior and higher than before because he now has his wife’s affections in the will, and these celestial affections conjoin themselves with a more interior truth form the Divine-Human.
The more the man loves his wife’s affections, the more he has got the celestial love within him, and the more interiorly he can receive Divine Truth from the Divine-Human. When he has only his own affections in his will, the man also receives Divine Truth, but in a more external way. The Divine-Human longs to be conjoined with the man more and more interiorly, as He is already conjoined to the woman through conjugial love.
Recall again that “surrendered husband” doesn’t mean that she must now do the finances, the military service, and the paycheck! Equity is not what it refers to (see Chapter 9 Section 5). Rather, to be a surrendered husband means that he prefers to act from her more than from himself. If she says, “Honey, would you explain to me our finances?” he then strives to satisfy her. He explains as much as she wants to know and tries to respond to her inner emotions and intentions so she can feel that he is with her and for her. That’s what she wants, that’s what the surrendered husband gives. Or, if she says, “Honey, I think we should do x, not y” he then strives to value this request, to honor it, so that she feels that he cares and he likes her. If she says to him,
Do this. Don’t do that.
Do it this way. Don’t do it that way.
Start now. Stop now.
Keep up with me.
Lower your voice. Stop frowning.
And other things like these,
and he doesn’t do any of these things, what will happen?
What will happen to her conjugial? She will be feeling a process of breaking off, a growing incapacity to feel conjoined to him from within. This is because he refuses to meet with her in the interior mind. That’s where they are united, each giving something and living by what the other has. He—the cognitive reception from heaven by means of her celestial affections which he has internalized as-if his own. These are the interior truths that her conjugial love craves from within to unite with. Her inmost being or consciousness wants to unite to this Divine truth he receives from the Divine-Human by means of her affections in him.
This is the achieving of the conjoint self. (See Chapter 9 Section 1 above.)
One expression of men’s distaste of the feminine sphere is the grouping of the people at family gatherings. The men group together and bask in the masculine sphere of each other. Their wives are forced therefore to group with each other. They rather be together with their husbands, but when they try, the husbands abuse them. So the only peace the women can find is in each other’s sphere. This changes completely when a husband is surrendered to his elevated creation, which is that he act from his wife’s affections within him. When he does this, his intelligence tells him that his wife wants to be together with him. He is entertained by her feminine sphere far more than he cares for the masculine sphere. The feminine sphere of his wife is now his life. This is because her life is in her affections, and when he appropriate her affections to himself, her life is now within him. Now he is a complete man, a true human, a celestial mind, a conjugial husband.
The reason husbands hate the affectional sphere of women is that it breathes out conjugial unity, spiritual conjoining in willing and thinking. The man feels this as a process of being shackled or restricted. He feels that the woman wants to encroach on his territory of independence and freedom. He experiences the mother, the sister, the girlfriend, or the wife as constant nagging to do this or to do that, to be this way or that way, never to be who you really feel like being. So men prefer the permissive company of other men who respect the brotherhood rule of not trying to pressure or coerce one another.
The woman’s sphere of affections is animated and domestic, because it is celestial. Domestic uses are celestial while forensic uses such as business, science, and politics, are spiritual and natural uses. The reason domestic uses are higher is because they have to do with the home, with conjugial love, and with raising children. These are celestial uses because the purpose of the earths in the universe is to be a seminary for a heaven out of the human race (xx). Domestic uses are therefore higher. Women are in charge of domestic uses because the affections of women is celestial by birth, while the affections of men is spiritual by birth. Celestial uses are far more elevated and human than spiritual uses.
A man can transcend his lower creation by conjoining with a wife who is created into a higher creation. This is the meaning of the surrendered husband. He is surrendering the masculine idea that his essence is masculine.
For in fact the Divine-Human has revealed the physiology of the masculine and feminine. The man as a whole, and in his every part and particle, is love in his inmost, and this love is covered over with truth, which forms his exterior. The reciprocal is the case for what women are made of. Woman as a whole, and in her every part and particle, is truth in her inmost, and this truth is covered over with love, which forms her exterior.
You can picture this to yourself as a diagram:
What an amazing scientific revelation! How beneficial it would be for society if this revelation were understood rationally. Since man and woman are reciprocals of each other in general they must also be in particular, which means not a single thing in a woman can be like a thing in a man, and vice versa. (xx)
This can be understood rationally if you think of marriage in a physiological sense, which it is. Marriage is something sanctified and Divine since it is the vehicle of the seminary for heaven, and this is the highest purpose or use for creation. Unity is the conjoint operation of two things together so that the result is a new conjoint object that is superior to the composing parts. Man as an individual and woman as an individual are not human units, but only potential human units. A human unit is the conjugial pair that from a distance is seen as one angel (xx). The closest maximum unity is achieved between two distinct individuals. Since not one thing in a man overlaps with one thing in a woman, they remain most distinct. Therefore, when they unite, their unity will be more perfect (xx).
Conjugial unity is so perfect that it demands that not a single thing in a man can be like a single thing in a woman. An exception would reduce the perfection.
This applies to the body and the mind. Not a single fiber in a man can be like a fiber in a woman. Not a single thought a man has can be like any thought a woman has. Not a single affection a man has can be like an affection a woman has.
You can see the perfection of conjugial love when you consider from the Writings, what happens when a man meets a woman and they fall in love and get married. The woman takes within herself the man’s thinking style and reasoning process. This is the same way as she takes his seed through her birth canal and gives it life in her womb. That child born of her represents the husband’s intelligence in the wife. She is now no longer an individual woman but a married woman, which means that she has within her, his seed, his intelligence, his ideas, his manner of thinking. She has a replica of her husband’s mind within herself so that she always know what he is thinking!
Now it’s the man’s turn. His job is to take his wife’s affections within himself just as she took his cognitions within herself. As a conjoint self, the couple has become just one. She acts from his thinking within her and he acts from her affections within him.
Thus they form a superior human being called the celestial mind or conjugial couple. This is the plan of creation, now revealed!
Consider the second diagram of the spiritual physiology of marriage:
The marriage on earth of a regenerating couple is called Phase 1, while their marriage once they get to heaven, is called Phase 2. Conjunction in Phase 1 is external, also called spiritual. Internal conjunction in Phase 2 is celestial. In the external conjunction while regenerating on earth, the husband’s intelligence (“truth, wisdom) is conjoined to the wife’s affections (“love, good”). The wife’s affections are within him as a result of loving them more than his own affections. This gives the surrendered husband a new will from the wife. And it gives the conjugial wife a new understanding from the husband. In this mode they grow more and more into a spiritual unity while on earth. After they are reunited in heaven, they begin the conjunction of Phase 2. Now they are both interior people having cast off whatever was not part of their love and affections. The external truth and wisdom of the husband, are gone. The external love and good of the wife, are gone. What remains in the spirit-body of the angel couple is the interior—his celestial love and her celestial truth. As these unite, they become one angel more and more to eternity (xx).
Unity is only possible between truth and good, which is the same thing as saying, between wisdom and love (xx). This unity is called “the marriage of good and truth” (xx). For the celestial couple, the husband is the good and the wife is the truth (xx). Their conjugial unity is the result of the universal unity between good and truth in the Divine-Human. Marriage is holy because it is an image of the marriage of good and truth in the Divine-Human (xx). Marriage on earth is holy only when the husband’s truth unites with the wife’s love, which is nothing else than her affections. In other words, when the husband loves to act from her affections more than from his own.
The surrendered husband loves to meet his wife’s requests because that’s how he reciprocates in conjoining himself with her, as she is conjoining herself with him. The man who rebels and hates the feminine sphere perceives her wishes and instructions as demands, as nagging, as taking away his freedom, as going too far, as power hungry, as misguided, etc. I have felt all these feelings and they are general to men, because biological and cultural.
A Christian, because he knows the Divine-Human, has the Word, and since the Divine-Human places the church in him through its means, it is obvious that he is more able than the non-Christian to be reborn, so becoming spiritual, and to achieve truly conjugial love, since these go together. (CL 339)
A husband is a form of truth, and his wife a form of good, and that good cannot love any other truth than its own truth, nor can truth love any other good in return than its own good. If it were to love another, the inner marriage that forms the church would die, and the marriage would become merely external - the kind of marriage that idolatry corresponds to, not the church. (CL 76)
Here it is revealed how the “inner marriage” or internal unity, can be achieved. The husband loves his wife as his own good attached to his truth. Not his own good attached to his own truth—for this is the life of an unregenerate single man, or an unregenerate married man who avoids internal unity with his wife. To take his wife’s good as his own means to love to act from what is in her will more than what is in his own will. This is Rule 1 as discussed throughout this chapter.
[3] Take as another example conjugial love. The good which comes first and is introductory is good looks, or good manners, or outward compatibility, or similarity of social class, or aspiration. These forms of good are the first intermediate ones of conjugial love.
After this comes the joining together of minds (animus) in which one wills as the other does and finds delight in doing that which is pleasing to the other. This is the second state, and although those initial forms of good are still present they are no longer kept in view.
Finally there follows a uniting involving celestial good and spiritual truth. That is to say, one believes as the other believes, and one is moved by an affection for good as the other is moved. When this state is reached both together experience the heavenly marriage, which is a marriage of good and truth, and so experience conjugial love since conjugial love is nothing else.
At the same time the Divine-Human is flowing into the affections of them both as into a single affection. This is a good which flows in down a direct line, whereas the previous kind of good which had flowed in down an indirect line had served as the means of introduction to this good. (AC 4145)
Note the statement: “At the same time the Divine-Human is flowing into the affections of them both as into a single affection.” The expression “into the affections of them both as into a single affection” refers to what might be called the conjoint self.
Why must the husband surrender to his wife before he can achieve the conjoint self? Because:
He hates giving up his prerogatives and superiority status
He loves to have dominion over her
He has justified his superiority by philosophy or religion
He doesn’t trust women’s abilities
He hates the sphere of conjugial love she has within her
He ridicules or gets enraged at the idea he should act from her will
He justifies the falsity in his mind that it should be a kind of equity arrangement—he has his roles and his places assigned by society and religion, and she has hers.
What about the idea that the wife often doesn’t know as much as he does about many things, and so it wouldn’t be prudent or rational to let her make the decisions instead of him.
You will see that this is not a real danger, only an imagined one. It’s a doubt about women being able to be reasonable and practical. It’s the generalized gender bias that men have about women from inheritance and from culture. This biased reasoning says, How can you trust women to make the right decisions about so many things where men are used to making the decisions—etc. These are the doubts that come from not valuing women. The external philosophy of equity that men try to impose on women is nothing but a ploy. And unless men awake from this subconscious acquiescence, they will be men no longer, for the unregenerate man turns into a sub-human worse than any beast (TCR 564). Man’s salvation is regeneration of character, for which the wife is a Divinely appointed and essential instrument. This has been justified by many quotations from the Writings in Section 1 above.
Many intelligent men will admit to this: that the wife is essential in their life. And yet they do not ordinarily mean essential for their inner life, but essential for their outer life. By their outer life they mean their intellectual and economic power and their achievements and awards, including successful children. Many men admit that without their woman they would not have achieved what they did. And also, that they could not be content in life without being in love with this woman. These are noble legends. He may have convinced himself easily enough that he believes them sincerely. If indeed it had been the truth, his woman would have been in the fullness of her being, conjoint to him from within. But instead, she has been offered a fake marriage life, one that has the trappings of external propriety, success, and happiness, but not the real life and animation that is supposed to be within these outward achievements and enactments.
The outward married life remains an enactment until it grows a spiritual reality within. This is the spiritual union held together by each being the other’s all in all in their willing and thinking. Can she achieve this without his reciprocation? No, not in the least, for spiritual love requires reciprocation to become alive and real.
He is satisfied with the outer success, but she languishes from within. He is content to wait and let time pass, endless years and decades to her, waiting for her real man to enter her.
And so what is to be done?
The surrendered husband is a practical proposal. It is just another way of saying the Doctrine of the Wife, which is discussed at length in the preceding section. Women are intelligent and wise from within from heaven from the Divine-Human. They will not do anything that is contrary to conjugial love. This is their highest love and all other loves are placed below and subdued under its command and absolute rule. This is woman’s wisdom: the certitude they feel from within as to whether something is this way or that way in relation to her husband. This is a Divine perception women receive from the Divine-Human regarding their husband (CL 166). It is a perception of seeing the husband’s spiritual mind and content, his inner affections, loves, and reasoning through them. She knows this thoroughly, fully. More than he ever will—until he knows it from her, when he is united to her.
The wife will know when to make a decision, and when to let him make it. She would never override him except for one reason: she can see the danger he cannot see. So it makes total sense that he should listen to her and really believe from within that she has this perception from the Divine-Human. This is the religion of the New Church mind for it is conjugial love, and this union between husband and wife is the purpose and basis of the universe and of heaven (HH 382).
But, but what if she makes mistakes? What if she is uneducated? What if she’s got weaknesses, blindnesses, even neuroses and addictions? The answer is: And what if he has these things? Husbands make many many mistakes, do they not? Is there somebody there to remove him from the office of decision maker and over rider of her opinions when events prove her to have been right and he to have been wrong? No of course not. He makes mistakes as he goes along and the family lives with it. The point is that if he’s willing to live with the consequences of her mistakes she will gradually improve and be at least as good as he used to be—with his help. This is the point. Perhaps he needs to educate her views when ignorant, just as she does that for him. After all, he is free to do as he wants at any time whatsoever. His acting from her will is purely voluntary. He has the exercise that power at any time. Again the point is this: is he after dominion over her or after internal union? This he must answer for himself moment by moment.
It makes sense to think that the Divine-Human is managing this process as closely as any other in the universe. The Divine-Human longs for the husband to want to be united to the wife. The Divine-Human calls the two together, “One flesh,” and “His Church.” (CL 178) The husband-wife conjoint self makes the one angel that is the Church to which the Divine-Human is married.(CL 62). Not the husband by himself, ever, even if he comes to the gates of heaven in Aaron’s robes. The only admittance to heaven for a male man is as a conjugial husband (CL 50). The only.
And so is this not the most important work a man has—to prepare his mind to be a conjugial husband? Which is why a religious discipline is needed, as discussed throughout this chapter.
11.4.6 Her Heaven, Not His
The natural world tends to be male dominated, but not because of men’s superior intelligence to women. It is a “man’s world” because the unregenerated natural mind operates by the corporeal principle of “might makes right.” The feeling from which this idea issues is at the level of animals and men’s affections are at the animal level of operation in the unregenerate state. But when they begin to be regenerated their internal mind is opened and receives feminine intelligence through his wife from the Divine-Human. This softening and humanizing of the man shows that man on his own is only a half-man:
And when they become one, then taken together they are man in his fullest sense. But without that conjunction they are two, and each is like a person divided or half a person. (CL 37)
(For more on the spiritual psychobiology of gender see Reading List Part 1
For years now I’ve made it a habit to keep notepads all around the house and write down many of my wife’s observations. I can accurately state that her perceptions and insights form the starting point of the many rational and spiritual ideas I elaborate in this and related articles. I’m especially stimulated by the way her observations contain nonobvious connections to other things, revealing to my sight relationships that raise the level of my understanding and explanations. This cross-gender intellectual borrowing and sharing process creates a more interior spiritual dimension in our relationship. The wife’s interior wisdom from the Divine-Human descends into the natural-rational intelligence of the husband where he builds it into an outward shape that has many new uses.
In this way it has become true that I think from my wife, which is Rule 1 in conjugial development (see Chapter 9, Sections 3 and 4 for more discussion on Rule 1). If you ask her she would tell you that this is the ideal to which I am officially committed, but that my actual adherence to it is variable. Therefore I continue to struggle, turning to the Divine-Human for strength to persist. And He always gives it, if only I would take it from Him.
The New Church mind today is only the sixth generation of the new civilization of the Second Coming (1771 onward). We are part of the early generations that are building the great transition of the human race from the temporary external bonds of marriages to eternal interior union. The future of this transition depends on how we today are dealing with the struggles in our mind against the opposing forces of the natural mind. The power of the entire hells is in this resistance and there is no way of winning except through the pathway the Divine-Human laid down in His Second Coming. This pathway is the rule of life for husbands that they must act from their wife and not from self. This is explained in Sections xx and xx). The retain full independence of thinking and willing. They must learn to compel themselves voluntarily in all freedom to love acting from the wife more than from self. In this way their independent understanding—how they think and reason—is gradually realigned into the rational alignment of conjugial love as defined in the Writings. They are unable to do anything without this grounding and intentionality in their daily study of the Writings.
Husbands would do well to explain this to their wife. They need to show them how their conjugial efforts are grounded in the Writings and that this is the cornerstone of their salvation. Only through religion can the New Church husband obtain sufficient power to overcome himself, that is, the forces of hell in him through his hereditary and acquired evil loves. He needs to have an ally in his wife who can remind him when he is down and rebellious:
Now my husband, remember what struggle you are in. This is your life, our eternity. Come now, gather your spiritual strength and your religious motives and go forth in victory over your ego and arrogance. Compel yourself to act from me, my standards, my guidance, my will. For only this is from the Divine-Human in our marriage and what is from you is hell itself. I will help you if only you will help yourself. Give up your rebellion and act like I say to you. Etc.
I’m sure you can understand the intended meaning in this representation and apply it to the particulars of your unique life situation. The wife is to fight for you with all that the Divine-Human gives her, and you are to fight yourself by compelling yourself voluntarily to act from her. This is the spiritual discipline for conjugial husbands.
For many years I’ve been keeping track of my interactions with my wife and my behavior as a husband. This has helped me greatly to become actually aware of attitudes, opinions, and behaviors that I have developed from socialization and culture that are opposed to the development of conjugial love (see Note 16 at end). I noted the many unexamined ways that I insisted on my male prerogatives which a “man’s world” bestows upon men. Husbands interrupt when wives talk and instead of listening they give premature advice. Husbands determine the majority of topics being transacted by refusing to address issues raised by the wives. Husbands raise their voices and make scary faces when they disagree or are angry about this or that. These are maladaptive methods men use to intimidate women whose sensitivities are threatened and injured by this manly harshness. A crucial mental discipline for New Church husbands is to systematically and regularly keep track of how we fail to honor our wife. It requires that we enlist our wife’s help in providing us with information about our behaviors, habits, and traits that are contrary to conjugial love. Wives receive from the Divine-Human special perception into the unconscious traits of their husbands (CL 156). Relying on our own perceptions is insufficient and misleading.
Making lists is very helpful. Keeping cumulative records is what makes into a discipline. What makes it into a spiritual discipline is being motivated to use the records for self-change efforts in conjugial cooperation. Whatever the husband does consciously for the sake of preparing himself for conjugial love is a spiritual discipline.
Those who enjoy truly conjugial love have eternity in view in their marriage; but the reverse is true of those who do not.
The reason why those who enjoy truly conjugial love have eternity in view is that eternity is contained within this love. This is because this love increases for ever in the case of the wife, and wisdom increases for ever in the case of the husband; and as these increase and develop, the couple plunges deeper and deeper into the blessings of heaven, which lie hidden in their wisdom and also the love for it. So if the notion of eternity were torn away, or by any accident slipped from their minds, it would be as if they were cast down from heaven. (…)
It is much the same with marriages on earth. When couples there love each other dearly, they think of their partnership as eternal, and pay no attention to its being ended by death. But if they do think of this, it upsets them; though they are revived by hope, when they think of it continuing after death. (CL 216)
Keeping self-witnessing records conscientiously is a discipline. Consulting the wife’s perceptions about the records for the sake of conjoining their perspective, makes it into a spiritual discipline. It is painful due to our inborn pride and runs against the grain of our culturally received male chauvinism and male prerogatives. Resistance to the process is strong and motivation falters. Overcoming these constantly opposing forces is the discipline. The results are very beneficial and promote conjugial friendship and unity. This makes it into a spiritual discipline.
Married and pre-married men can practice many conjugial disciplines that relate to their relationship to a wife. Pre-married men can practice by viewing every girl or woman as someone’s wife. In addition, Christian women have conjugial love implanted and imprinted by nativity (CL 216, 457). The reason only Christian women have this is that conjugial love is only from the Divine-Human and so He alone must be acknowledged in order to receive it (CL 71). Nevertheless the women who are not Christian can also be in conjugial love in the afterlife, when they are instructed regarding the Divine-Human and are willing to receive it (HH 512[3]). The New Church mind exists as a duality: male and female, as determined by birth. No part of the male New Church Mind can be similar or overlap with the female New Church Mind inasmuch as in marriage they are united into a perfect one, and this is only possible with absolute distinctiveness of each unique element.
The Divine-Human’s perfection lies in this: that in Him infinite things that are distinct make a one (DLW 223). The New Church couple is a celestial unit made of two elements that are distinctly different. If things are distinctly different in general they are also distinctly different in every particular (AC 1040[2]). Hence it is that nothing in a husband can be similar to anything in a wife.
This unity cannot be understood outside the intellectual sphere of the Writings. To understand it rationally one needs to apply several things to it: the law of discrete degrees (DLW 186), the Divine-Human’s Proprium that angels use for themselves (AC 8409), the organic composition of the will and understanding (DLW 373), the perfection of unity from discrete elements (DLW 201), the character of temptations (natural, spiritual, celestial) (NJHD 196), the gradual character of regeneration (CL 146), conjugial simulation (CL 282), what chastity is and is not (CL 138), the wife’s interior perception of their husbands which husbands do not have on themselves (CL 166), and other things besides. In the context of these ideas from the Writings physical and mental disciplines can serve to strengthen a man’s suitability for conjugial union.
The focus is on the husband because conjugial love is not inscribed on men from birth as it is on women. It is revealed that men are promiscuous from birth like animals (CL 48) and if they are going to enter heaven they must regenerate into a celestial human being. Only this interior human can unite in perfection with a wife who has conjugial love implanted in her soul.
Conjugial love is lodged with chaste wives, but their love still depends upon their husbands.
The reason is that wives are by birth forms of love, so that it is innate in them to wish to be one with their husbands, and by keeping this thought in their will they constantly nurture their love. So abandoning the effort to unite themselves with their husbands would be abandoning their own nature. But it is different with husbands; since they are not by birth forms of love, but designed to receive that love from their wives, the more readily they receive it, the more readily do their wives come in with their love. But if they fail to receive it, their wives equally stay outside with their love and wait.
This happens in the case of chaste wives, but it is different with the unchaste. These considerations will establish that conjugial love is lodged with wives, but their love depends upon their husbands. (216bis) (see also CL 457)
Physical and mental disciplines by men performed for the purpose of conjugial motives, as defined in the Writings, are spiritual disciplines. But not otherwise.
From what is implanted in them, wives wish to be wives and to be called wives. To them, this is a name of beauty and honor and for that reason they love the bonds of marriage. Moreover, chaste wives wish to be wives not in name only but actually, and because this is effected by an ever closer tie with their husbands, therefore they love the bonds of marriage by reason of the stability of its covenant; and this the more, as they in turn are loved by their husbands or, what is the same thing, as the men love those bonds. (CL 217.) (See also CL 457)
Self-witnessing is at the basis of these disciplines. (See Note 20 for more on self-witnessing techniques).
The New Church mind contains the idea that the evolution of the universe towards its perfection is gradual change back from exteriorization (=creation from Firsts to lasts) to interiorization (=return to the Creator from lasts to Firsts). Creation is a process of distancing from the spiritual Sun which is uncreate, infinite and closest to the Divine-Human. This is the inmost of existence and being. The substance from the spiritual Sun proceeds to a greater and greater “distance” from Itself, going through discrete degrees of transformation, each more externalized than the preceding, until at last it reaches the inert stage of the physical universe, starting with energy and space or ether, and more and more externalized until the various minerals and compounds of planets is reached.
The distance or externalization is a process of becoming more and more inert, that is, less and less life which is the inmost substance of every object. This inmost of every object and particle is the life of existence in a created reality. The word “distance” in this context must be taken as a correspondence for the exteriorization process of creation by substance and intermediaries (xx). The originating substance in sequential order becomes the inmost substance in simultaneous order (xx). The originating substance of created objects is the substance that emanates from the spiritual Sun. This substance is called “Divine Truth within which is Divine Love” (xx).Therefore the inmost of every object or particle in the universe is “Divine Truth within which is Divine Love.”
This inmost substance called “Divine Truth within which is Divine Love,” is living in itself, or life in itself. It is an uncreate substance that belongs to the Divine-Human, and is infinite, since infinite distinct things are contained in it as one. You can see that this substance is be source of infinite distinct or unique things in the created universe. This momentous scientific revelation gives the human race a far higher consciousness of reality than was possible before.
The level of thinking, reasoning, and understanding the workings of the universe is immeasurably increased by this revelation. One important implication is that the universe is rational. The universe is rational since it is created from truth, within which is good. Truth is the inmost substance out of which a thing exists! What an amazing revelation of reality! For instance, a rock, the brain, and a feeling are all created out of truth as a substance of love. Truth creates not from itself but from love or good. Still, it is not love that creates but truth from love. This is what makes the universe rational, and what is rational is both human and alive. Rational defines the human (xx) because the human mind is created an organ for the reception of rational truths from the Divine. When these rational truths are appropriated, loved, and lived, they become our heaven in eternity. But without rational truths appropriated to ourselves by loving them, there can be no heavenly life in us, but only infernal, for all life in human beings is either heavenly or infernal (xx). This is the result of the fact that all things of truth are heavenly, while all things of hell are falsifications or distortions of truth.
This is the same as saying that the living function or quality is hidden more and more within, and doesn’t show in its effects. Animals are less externalized and the life within is visible and obvious. Human minds are the least externalized of the created things, especially the consciousness or rationality of human beings. The minds of women are more interiorized than the minds of men. The male human is more externalized than the female human.
Every man is created that he may live for ever. In the treatise THE DIVINE LOVE AND WISDOM, Parts Third and Fifth, it is shown that in man there are three degrees of life, called the natural, the spiritual and the celestial, and that these degrees are actually in every man; while in beasts there is only one degree of life, which is similar to the lowest degree in man called the natural. From this it follows that man by the elevation of his life to the Divine-Human is in such a state above the beasts that he is able to understand what pertains to the Divine Wisdom and to will what pertains to the Divine Love, and in this way to receive the Divine; and he who can receive the Divine so as to see and perceive it in himself cannot be otherwise than conjoined to the Divine-Human, and through this conjunction cannot but live for ever. (…)
In order that every man may live for ever, what is mortal with him is taken away. His mortal part is the material body which is taken away by his death. His immortal part, which is his mind, is thus unveiled and he then becomes a spirit in human form, his mind being that spirit. (…)
As it has been granted me to speak with angels I will also say something from my own experience. I have talked with some who lived many ages ago, with some who lived before the Flood and with some who lived after it, with some who lived in the time of the Divine-Human, with one of His Apostles, and with many who lived in later times. They all appeared like men of middle age, and they said they did not know what death is, but only that there is condemnation. Moreover, all who have lived well, when they enter heaven, come into the state of early manhood they reached in the world and continue in it to eternity, even those who had been old and decrepit men in the world. Women, too, although they had been shrunken and aged, return to the flowering period of their age and beauty. (…)
Thus every man is created that he may enter heaven. This is the end of creation; but all do not enter heaven because they become imbued with the delights of hell which are opposite to the happiness of heaven; and those who are not in the happiness of heaven cannot enter heaven, for they cannot endure it. To no one who enters the spiritual world is it denied to ascend to heaven; but when one who is in the delight of hell enters heaven his heart palpitates, his breathing is labored, his life begins to fail, he is in anguish, distress and torment, and he writhes like a serpent placed close to a fire. This is so because opposites act against each other. (…)
Nevertheless, they cannot die, as they were born men and thereby with the faculty of thinking and willing, and consequently of speaking and acting. However, as they can live only with those who are in a similar delight of life they are sent to them; thus those who are in the delights of evil and those who are in the delights of good are sent to their own appropriate companions. It is indeed granted everyone to experience the delight of his own evil provided he does not molest any who are in the delight of good; but as evil cannot do otherwise than molest good, for there is inherent in evil hatred against good, therefore lest the wicked should inflict injury they are removed and cast down to their own place in hell, where their delight is turned to what is the reverse of delightful. (DP 324)
In earlier drafts and articles I used the term “feminization,” as in “the feminization of marriage” or “the feminization of the husband” and, “the feminization of the universe” and also, “the feminization of the Church.” I have a note to myself to go back to my earlier articles and edit out the word “feminization” from the sub-titles as this might be a kind of red flag to some people. While discussing the matter with my wife I suddenly got the sense that it might be an unnecessary stumbling block. Some men might not be able initially to shake the negative implications of this word when applied to a man.
Yet the underlying idea in the feminization of marriage, husband, universe, or Church, is that conjugial love is returning to earth (xx). Conjugial love is feminine. When the husband is feminized it means nothing else than that he has acquired conjugial love, which is now part of him. It cannot mean that his traits have become feminine since it is a Divine Law by creation that not a single thing in a man can be like a single think in a woman (xx). The man before being feminized by conjugial love is the same man as afterwards, except that he now has conjugial love as part of him whereas he did not before that.
The Divine-Human has now revealed the scientific fact that a man by himself is an incomplete creation and is still to develop to maturity. The mature man is created into perfection when he is no longer an individual man, but a structural or organic part of his wife, so that the two together are one angel (xx). Only as an angel-husband is a man in his created perfection. It is just like the surgical reintegration and attachment of a man and a woman in which her lungs are removed and her heart is attached to his lungs. And his heart is removed and his lungs are attached to her heart. This integrated new body corresponds to the conjoint mind of an angel-couple, which therefore has both masculine and feminine characteristics.
The Doctrine of the Wife, through Rule 1, creates the conjoint mind. Through Rule 1 the husband’s will, which corresponds to his heart, is removed, and it is replaced by the wife’s heart to which he keeps himself cleaving by conjugial love and the motive to acquire it. From the perspective of the husband, thinking and acting from his wife’s will, which corresponds to her heart, is to lay aside his individual independent will, which was entirely masculine. Henceforth his masculine understanding is to operate from a feminine will, just as his masculine lungs would be purified of impurities and poisons by the feminine heart to which he is now joined. To be a conjoint mind means that the husband thinks from his wife’s will or affections, and the wife thinks from her husband’s understanding or thoughts. He is feminized while she is masculinized, even though they each retain their full gender, gaining everything, losing nothing.
What does it mean specifically to say that the husband loves to think and act from the wife’s willing more than from his own willing?
Consider how you might describe your daily behavior. You act in accordance with your thinking, which is from your willing. In other words, the motives and affections in your will select and direct those thoughts that serve its affections and motives. The thinking is therefore from the willing, and the acting is from both of them together. This is the way we operate prior to being a conjugial husband.
As we are reformed by the Doctrine of the Wife, and struggle daily and hourly to follow Rule 1, we begin gradually to change from the operation just described. Now we inhibit and weaken and suppress our own affections and motives in interacting with our wife. Instead, we begin to compel our thinking to fit the wife’s requests and needs. This is gradual because we do not hear her requests except in a weak sense at first, gradually gaining strength until we can actually hear the request she had been making for years. Then we sometimes compel ourselves to think in accordance with the request, but sometimes we choose not to, and then we slide back, to the chagrin and suffering of the poor wife. But eventually we get better at it, more honest in our attempts, and at last our wife begins to say new things about us, things that a conjugial wife says to her conjugial husband who has become her bosom friend.
The more we think from the wife’s willing, the more our mind is conjoined to her mind. When our thinking is done from her willing, our doing will be called the works of conjugial love. This is what the Divine-Human has Commanded by saying that the man shall leave father and mother and cleave unto his wife (xx). “Father and mother” refers to the man’s own willing and thinking, since willing relates to good, and “father” represents good, while thinking relates to truth, and “mother” represents truth or the Church in us. We leave our own “father and mother” by laying aside our own willing, and the independent masculine thinking that goes with that willing. And in its stead, we hook ourselves into our wife’s willing by knowing her affections and hearing her requests. This is the meaning of the promise to “honor” her which we solemnly make at our sacred wedding. “To cleave to the wife” signifies to honor her by reforming our thinking to fit her willing, and then acting by the new thinking from her willing. In this way we act agreeably to her and she can conjoin herself to our new mind even more than before. this is a continuous process over the years. Happy is the couple on this earth that is immersed in this process.
Conjugial love is the highest of all loves and uses in the universe (xx), for which all other loves exist, for which all created objects exist. Conjugial love is called a celestial love (xx). This highest of all loves is received from the Divine-Human in the inmost of the wife, and conjugial love in the wife becomes the source of conjugial love for the husband (xx). It is in the husband only to the extent that her heart is in his, that is, to the extent that he has appropriated to himself her affections and now thinks and acts from them. Thus, he is in the state described by Rule 1 of the Doctrine of the Wife. This is meant by the elevated husband.
Conjugial love in the man is therefore the exchanging of his old masculine will and affections for her feminine affections, which are her will, her love. Her love is now in him and he thinks and acts from her love.
All thinking and acting is from love (xx), and he either acts from his own love or from her love in him.
To be able to act and think form her love requires that he appropriate her love, that is, make her affections to be in his will. This appropriation, or interiorization, is achieved solely by loving them, for only loving something can be appropriated to a human being. Once appropriated, it remains forever. Now he is a new man, for the man is his intelligence, and this is such as his love is (DLW xx). Now he acts from a higher love than before because woman’s love is higher than man’s, her love being celestial, while his love being spiritual, and the two are as far apart as the noonday sun light is from the midnight moon light (xx).
Man was created into a perfect order. He arrives in this perfect order when he becomes the elevated husband. He achieves this higher existence by exchanging the hereditary and acquired masculine affections in his will with the feminine affections of his conjugial life. Her affections are higher because she is the only one that receives conjugial love directly from the Divine-Human (xx). The Divine-Human provides that the husband also has conjugial love, but not directly from Him, but directly from his wife. This appropriation to himself of the Divine-Human’s conjugial love in her, effects his elevation. And this appropriation of her love as his own makes him hers, for he now is what his love is, purely hers. His new thoughts are now created by this new will, which is his wife’s in him. These new thoughts are higher than his thoughts before the makeover of his will. Now the wife takes these new thoughts into herself as she does his seed through the thighs (xx). This is her delight of unity that is indescribable according to the celestial wives who talked to Swedenborg about it in a rose garden (xx).
