The Unity Model of Marriage Lecture Notes Dr. Leon James, Instructor Fall 2006 G25, University of Hawaii

This seminar on the unity model in marriage will give you the opportunity to examine gender behavior in the context of marriage by identifying the sub-components of gender habits in men and women within the three domains of behavior: affective, cognitive, and sensorimotor. We will use the phrase "threefold self" to refer to these three levels of human activity. Our focus will be on identifying the differences in the mental structure of husbands and wives so that we may gain a rational understanding of how they manage to actually form a pair or a unit. In order to form a perfect functioning and fulfilling pair or unit, women and men must have reciprocal mental traits to allow them to conjoin mentally, and thus to reach mental intimacy or conjunction.

The happiness and fulfillment of both wife and husband depend on the attainment of physical and mental intimacy in which they are best friends to each other. This is also called being "soul mates." We will use the expression "conjoint self" to refer to the reciprocal union of the marriage relationship, when it is based on the unity model. We will use the concept of "model" to refer to the principles, beliefs, and attitudes that husbands and wives use to govern their behavior in the marriage relationship.

Part of the purpose of the course is to give you skills in recognizing what model partners are using in their relationship. This is not always clear to the participants themselves. A man may think and claim that he is following the equity model of equal sharing in all tasks in the marriage. But in actuality, observation would show that he is acting and thinking more according to the dominance model which gives a man privileges over women and considers women less capable or worthy than men. You will also learn of the unity model which prompts a man to elevate women to a higher status than men such as is done by men who are chivalrous and respectful of women.

The overall model we will focus on is the idea that a man and a woman can form a special and unique relationship in marriage in which they can become unified at all three levels of the threefold self--in sensory and motor behavior (sensorimotor self), in thinking operations (cognitive self), and in feeling states (affective self). When they are unified at all three levels, husband wife are best friends to each other and can be called soul mates functioning with a conjoint self (instead of each with his and her independent selves).

The unity model of marriage actually describes a progression of three phases in all marriages. The first phase is called the dominance model because society gives men privileges over women in many ways. Most men are raised to exercise these male prerogatives, and they do so during dating and afterward in marriage. For example, men interrupt women, and often feel it's all right to ignore what a woman wants or says. Men pressure women to do things they don't want to. Men expect women to serve them and take care of their personal things. Men go out with each other and do things and say things that are disrespectful to women. Men get mad and threaten women. Etc. These are all the ways in which husbands treat their wife during the first phase of marriage called the male dominance phase.

Following this phase, many men are forced to admit to themselves that their wife also has the right to expect him to share in the tasks of living and having a life together. Men get the idea that they can't just continue to dominate their wife and expect the two of them to be happy. Hence they enter more an more into the equity phase of marriage. This is the middle phase during which a man will spend more and more time in the equity phase, and less and less time in the male dominance phase.

Some men are spiritually enlightened and begin to see intuitively that equity is not bringing their wife real happiness. A woman deserves a higher place in a man's estimation because women are outwardly more delicate and heavenly beings than men, and it is this heavenly nature of women that allows a man to become heavenly by conjunction with her. Inwardly, both men and women are equally heavenly and celestial, but outwardly a man is less heavenly than a woman. Hence by making himself conjoin to his wife, a man becomes heavenly in his outward life as well. He can achieve this conjunction with his wife by following the unity model in his mind.

There are barriers or resistances to overcome with each level of the unification or conjoining process -- from male dominance to equity, and from equity to unity. We need to examine these barriers, and especially, the inherent and cultural resistance men have to the unification process. Men would outwardly prefer to remain in the male dominance model. This is what they find most comfortable. But women desire and long for the conjoint self of soul mates and best friends, as the ultimate happiness, the ultimate fulfillment, thus, heaven itself.

Men do not at first see the conjoint self as a heaven, but as a kind of hell in which the wife is always encroaching on their mental space of freedom and comfort. So husbands frequently oppose the unification process of proceeding to more intimate levels, while wives constantly fight for pulling the husband into such intimacy.

We will examine this classic and traditional relationship fight by observing and monitoring the behavior of boyfriends, husbands, TV characters, song lyrics, and books. You will read the reports of prior generation students in this course in which they present some of this evidence, Your reports will be similarly studied by future generations of students. You can access the reports from the links given in the Readings section at the end of these lecture notes.

The first level of unity may be referred to as sensorimotor consociation and involves what the couple do together externally or socially. The second level may be called cognitive affiliation, involving how they each think and to what extent they agree in definitions and beliefs. The third and deepest level may be called affective conjunction, and involves what they feel for each other and whether they are striving for the same goals. This includes what they are motivated to achieve, whether for instance, they are willing to make their unification as the most important element in their life, more important than anything else. For instance, it is common for husbands to devote more time, attention and importance to other activities like children, career, parents, old friends, activities, etc. This means that achieving affective conjunction or intimacy is judged less important to the husband than to the wife. This basic opposition forms the psychological dynamics of the marriage relationship -- its healthy progression or its gradual degradation into abuse and failure.

The hypothesis to be examined throughout the course is that the marriage relationship between husband and wife begins at a natural level and can add a spiritual level of relationship once the natural level is well established. We shall introduce the new concept of spiritual marriages which is based on what Swedenborg called conjugial love. He made a distinction between the two words -- conjugal and conjugial. Conjugal is the ordinary word that refers to natural marriages while conjugial is a new word he coined to refer to spiritual marriages. Natural marriages follow the model "Till Death Do Us Part" while spiritual marriages follow the model "Till Endless Eternity."

In other words, the word "spiritual" will be used in this course to refer to the afterlife. Couples who are soul mates to each other, and have achieved a relationship of mental intimacy at all three levels of the threefold self,

are able to sense by inner rational insight, that death cannot separate them. Hence they are united to endless eternity. Until the Swedenborg Reports, scientists were not able to introduce the concept of spiritual marriages and the concept of the afterlife. There was no scientific proof of the existence of the afterlife that takes place in a world of eternity, outside time and space, also called "the spiritual world" and "heaven and hell." These ideas were relegated to religion or folklore. But this changed with the Swedenborg Reports written and published in the 18th century, as will be explained and discussed below.

The Swedenborg Reports present empirical proof of the existence of the afterlife in the spiritual world of heaven and hell. The unity model of marriage is based on Swedenborg's detailed empirical data which he gathered in the spiritual world. These data include the many interviews he conducted with married couples in heaven and hell. It may at first surprise you that we are talking about heaven and hell in a psychology course! Nevertheless you will see that it is possible, due to the Swedenborg Reports. More will be said on this as we progress, including how you can examine these reports yourself. Nothing here is based on religion or belief. Everything is based only on the objective evidence to be found in the Swedenborg Reports.

You are not asked to believe anything. You are asked to evaluate rationally and scientifically the evidence presented. This means examining it, before you reject it. To reject it before you examine it, will be discussed below as the negative bias in science, while to examine it before you reject, in order to see if you should reject it or accept it, will be discussed as the positive bias in science.

That marriages continue in the afterlife is good news because true love strives to be eternal, and not to die at some point in the future. Swedenborg shows that the truly human must be immortal and that to think of ourselves as mortal, is to remain below our true potential.

Some marriages remain what they started out to be, namely an external bond that is legally and socially recognized. It is also a psychological bond because married partners rely on each other and support each other in joint pursuits like parenting, financial resources, lifestyle, retirement, and so on. But note also that this external bond -- legal, social, psychological -- is not sufficient to stabilize the marriage and insure unending growth. Instead, half of the marriages fail in divorce and separation, and much of the other half fails to supply the intimacy, friendship, and romance, that wives crave for from their husbands. After examining the evidence for this situation, our conclusion will be that external "natural" marriages are necessary but not sufficient for achieving true affective conjunction or intimacy, and hence not sufficient for fulfillment and endless growth together.

We will follow this up with the concept of "spiritual marriages" which is based on Emanuel Swedenborg's Writings (see Reading List). We will examine the hypothesis that the bond between the wife and the husband can become spiritual, in addition to natural. The difference is illustrated by the marriage vows. Our culture involves the idea that marriage is dissolved at the death of one of the spouses. This is correct of course -- from the legal point of view, and also from the religious point of view for most people. It is a common belief we acquire in our socialization that marriage ends at death, hence the familiar phrase in the vows: "Until death do us part." But according to the hypothesis we are examining, the marriage bond need not end at death, but can go on forever in "heaven." Some couples who know nothing about the "afterlife" nevertheless have the instinctive feeling that they are "soul-mates" and can never be separated, even by death. Some spouses are so "close" that when one of them dies, the one remaining insists that that their spouse is "with them" mentally, psychologically, spiritually.

So this is not a new notion. Though in a minority, some couples seem to have a bond of mental intimacy that seems to go beyond the physical body and the socio-legal-psychological bond of "natural" marriages. We will call this type of marriage bond "spiritual" in the specific sense that the bond survives the physical separation of the spouses by death. Marriages that are external and limited to the natural world and the physical body will be called "natural marriage" or "external marriage." A natural marriage becomes a "spiritual marriage" when the married couple's idea of their bond changes from "until death do us part" to "until endless eternity."

Of course to take this step the partners have to know or assume that there is an afterlife, that they are both immortal human beings, and that they will be fully equipped with an eternal or spiritual body through which they can once again be together, be intimate sexually, live in a house, have a social life, and continue an endless heavenly existence in their immortality.

This knowledge of the afterlife is not available to most people today. It is flatly denied by materialistic science, and many religious dogmas are taught that deny marriages in the afterlife. Yet our culture supports many widespread activities around the idea that there is a spiritual world (or "heaven"), though nothing substantial is known about it, only wildly differing speculations. No wonder therefore that science cannot rely on this folklore about the afterlife. As a result, psychology does not know about spiritual marriages that occur right here on earth. Some couples have entered the spiritual dimension of their mental intimacy, but when they are studied by scientists, the spiritual dimension is neutralized or eliminated from focus. Hence the research literature on marriage in psychology does not mention spiritual marriages and the afterlife. The negative bias in science acts as an intellectual barrier for researchers to investigate the mental intimacy that is real, but not detectable in interviews and videotapes of the couple's interactions.

This was the intellectual climate I was immersed in when I started studying the marriage relationship. But in 1981 my wife and I were browsing together the shelves in Hamilton Library, and we happened to come across a shelf containing a collection of around 30 volumes, all by the same author: Emanuel Swedenborg. This really intrigued us since we never saw so many volumes by one author. We each checked out one volume and started reading. We could not stop at one volume but went on to read the entire collection. What we found was amazingly stupendous!

You can read about Swedenborg's Writings in detail by consulting the Theistic Psychology textbook for Psych 459 at:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/theistic/

This is truly wonderful and amazing news! We live our immortality in eternity, which is our mental world, not as a dream specter or ghost, but as a full fledged bodily human being. Swedenborg lived in this world of spirits constantly for 27 years, from age 57 to 82 in the years 1745 to 1772, while at the same time he maintained his busy schedule as scientist, government engineer, legislator, traveler, international publisher, and frequent invited guest at the Swedish Royal table where his amazing stories were greatly appreciated and admired. This man of impeccable reputation all his life, a greatly admired genius in science and philosophy, wrote that he had been prepared by God from earliest childhood to be the vehicle for what God wanted the human race to know regarding marriage, and how women and men are to achieve their highest potential through an eternal marriage as soul mates.

At first this sounds to most of us as a kind of fantastic child-like story, introjected right in the middle of a research seminar in psychology by a professor who must be terribly naive, or worse. I am attributing these words to you so that you may gain some perspective on the content of this course. I am trying to show that I am aware of the fantastic quality of my proposal.

Nevertheless, please hear me out and continue your examination and study of the facts being presented. To think that this proposal is fantastic, is a common reaction for most people. To me, this common widespread negative reaction, shows that it is a group practice that we all learn, and that when we are exposed to this kind of a proposal, a trained reasoning process is set in motion in each of our individual minds, and we react as expected by thinking that this is fantastic science fiction, rather than science. And it is pretty easy to start listing all the reasons why we think that it is fantastic and not science. And if we compare all these reasons, we will find that almost everybody has given the same reasons. Again, this fits with what I am saying, namely that the resistance is a built in learned reaction against any proposal in science that makes mention of the afterlife, heaven and hell, or how God is managing events, and especially, that God appeared to Swedenborg at age 57 and prepared him to be conscious simultaneously in both worlds, and also that he talked to the people there, including Aristotle and Newton, and other historical figures we read about in the literature. All this kind of thinking strikes us at first as being fantastic due to our socialization and education in the negative bias mode of thinking.

But note this: although we are thinking that this Swedenborg's proposal is fantastic and impossible, we are not able to prove that it is false and fantastic, or even, that it is not science. This is why I call it the negative bias in science -- Swedenborg's dualist proposal is rejected automatically without a need to examine it. For further discussion along this line, please consult Volume 1 of Textbook of Theistic Psychology at www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/theistic/

Quoting from Swedenborg's book Conjugial Love (1768):

CL 27. II MARRIAGES IN HEAVEN

The existence of marriages in the heavens is incredible to those who believe that after death a person becomes a soul or spirit, if their concept of a soul or spirit is that of a tenuous ether or breath. So too it is to those who do not believe that a person can live as a person again until after the day of the Last Judgment, and generally speaking to those who know nothing about the spiritual world, where angels and spirits live, and where the heavens and hells are. Since this world has so far remained unknown, and there is utter ignorance of the fact that the angels of heaven are completely human in form, and likewise the spirits of hell, though less completely human, any revelation about marriages has been impossible. For people would say, 'How can a soul be united with a soul?, or a breath with a breath, as husband and wife are united on earth?' And many more things which, the moment they were uttered, would destroy and scatter belief in marriages there.

Now, however, that many revelations have been made about the spiritual world, and its nature has been described in my books HEAVEN AND HELL and THE APOCALYPSE REVEALED, it is possible to present also arguments in confirmation of the existence of marriage there, even for reason to grasp, as follows:

(i) A person lives on as a person after death.
(ii) A male is then male and a female is female.
(iii) Each person retains his own love after death.
(iv) The chief love is sexual love; and in the case of those who reach heaven, that is, those who become spiritual on earth, it is conjugial love.
(v) These facts have been fully confirmed by eye-witness.
(vi) Consequently there are marriages in the heavens.
(vii) God's statement that after the resurrection people are not given in marriage refers to spiritual weddings.

These arguments will now be developed in sequence. (CL 27)

CL 28. (i) A person lives on as a person after death.

It has not so far been known that a person lives on as a person after death for the reasons which have just been mentioned. It is surprising that this is even true in Christendom, where the Word is known to give enlightenment about everlasting life, and where God Himself teaches that all the dead rise again, and God is not the God of the dead, but of the living (Matt. 22:31, 32; Luke 20:37, 38). Moreover, as far as the affections and thoughts of a person's mind are concerned, he is in the company of angels and spirits, and so closely associated with them that he cannot be torn away from them except by dying. This ignorance is all the more surprising, when everyone who has died from the beginning of creation has come or is coming to his own people, or, as the Word has it, he has been or is being gathered to them.

In addition, people have a general impression, which is none other than the influence of heaven on the inner levels of the mind, which causes him to have an inward perception of truths, and so to speak to see them. This allows him to grasp this truth in particular, that a person continues to live as a person after death, happily if he has led a good life, unhappily if not. Surely everyone has this thought, if he lifts his mind a little above the body and thinks beyond the immediate level of the senses, as happens when he is deep in the worship of God, or when he lies on his death-bed awaiting his last breath, and similarly when he hears people speaking about the departed and their fate.

I have related thousands of facts about the departed, telling their brothers, wives and friends the fate of some of them. I have also written about the fate of the British, the Dutch, the Roman Catholics, the Jews, and the heathen, and about the fate of Luther, Calvin and Melanchthon. But up to the present I have never heard anyone remark, 'How can that be their fate, when they have not yet been resurrected from their graves, since the Last Judgment has not yet taken place? Surely they are in the meantime souls, mere puffs of wind, in some limbo called Pu*?' I have never heard anyone say such things, and this has allowed me to draw the conclusion that each person has a private perception that he lives on as such after death. Does not any husband who loves his wife, his young or older children, say to himself when they are dying or dead, that they are in God's hands, and he will see them again after his own death, and he will again share with them a life of love and joy? (CL 28)

CL 31. It needs to be known that after death a person ceases to be a natural man and becomes a spiritual man, but he looks to himself exactly the same, and is so much the same that he is unaware that he is no longer in the natural world. He has the same kind of body, face, speech and senses, because in affection and thought, or in will and intellect, he remains the same. He is in fact not really the same, because he is then spiritual, and so his inner man. But he cannot see the difference, because he is unable to compare his present state with his earlier, natural, one, since he has put that off and has put on his other state. I have therefore often heard people say that they are quite unaware of not being in their former world, but for the fact that they can no longer see those whom they left in that world, and they do see those who have departed from it, that is, who have died.

The reason, however, why they see the latter but not the former is that they are not natural, but spiritual or substantial* people. A spiritual or substantial person can see a spiritual or substantial person, just as a natural or material person can see another natural or material person. But they cannot see each other because of the difference between the substantial and the material, which is similar to the difference between what is prior and what is posterior. The prior being inherently more pure is invisible to the posterior, which is inherently more gross, nor can the posterior, being more gross, be seen by the prior, which is inherently more pure. It follows that an angel is invisible to a person in this world, and such a person is invisible to an angel.

The reason why a person after death is spiritual or substantial is because this lay hidden within the natural or material person. This served him as a covering, like an outer skin, which on being shed allows the spiritual or substantial person to emerge, so that he is more pure, more inward and more complete. A spiritual person is still a complete person, although invisible to a natural person, as was made plain by God's appearing to the Apostles after His resurrection. He was seen and then later was not seen, and yet He was a man like Himself, when He was seen and then disappeared. They said too that, when they saw Him, their eyes were opened. (CL 31)

CL 32. (ii) A male is then male and a female is female.

Since a person lives on after death, and a person may be male or female, and the male and the female are so different that one cannot change into the other, it follows that after death a male lives on as a male and a female as a female, each of them being spiritual. We say that the male cannot change into the female, nor the female into the male, so that in consequence after death a male is a male and a female is a female, but because it is not known in what masculinity and femininity essentially consist, I must state this briefly here.

The essential difference is that the inmost core of the male is love, and its envelope is wisdom, or what is the same thing, it is love enveloped in wisdom. The inmost core of the female is the wisdom of the male, and its envelope is the love from it. But this is a feminine love, which God gives a wife by means of her husband's wisdom. The other love is a masculine love, a love of being wise, given by God to the husband to the extent that he acquires wisdom. Thus it is that the male is the wisdom of love and the female the love of that wisdom. There is therefore implanted in each from creation a love of being joined into one. But I shall have more to say about these matters in what follows. The female comes from the male, that is, the woman was taken out of man, as is clear from the following passage of Genesis:

Jehovah God took one of the man's ribs and closed up the flesh in its place, and he built up the rib he had taken from the man to make a woman. And he brought her to the man, and the man said, She is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh, so it shall be called Ishshah,* because it was taken from man. Gen. 2:21-23.

The meaning of rib and flesh will be given elsewhere. (CL 32)

CL 33. The result of being so formed in the beginning is that the male is by birth a creature of the intellect, the female a creature of the will, or to put the same thing another way, the male acquires from birth an affection for knowing, understanding and being wise, and the female acquires from birth a love of joining herself with that affection in the male. Since what is within forms the outside so as to resemble itself, and the form of the male is that of the intellect, and the form of the female is that of love for it, this is why the male differs from the female in face, voice, and the rest of the body. He has a sterner face, a rougher voice and a stronger body, not to mention a bearded chin, so generally speaking a less beautiful form than the female. There are also differences in their gestures and behaviour. In short, they have no similarity, and yet every detail has the impulse towards union. In fact, there is masculinity in every part of the male, down to the smallest part of his body, and also in every idea he thinks of and every spark of affection he feels; and the same is true of the femininity of the female. Since therefore one cannot change into the other, it follows that after death the male is male and the female is female. (CL 33)

CL 34. (ii) Each person retains his own love after death.

People know about the existence of love, but not what it is. Our common forms of speech tell us that love exists, as when we say that he loves me, the king loves his subjects, the subjects love their king, the husband loves his wife, the mother her children, and they love her. We also talk of one or another as loving his country, his fellow citizens, his neighbour, and the same expression is used of non-personal objects, as in he loves this or that.

But in spite of the universal mention of love in speech, still hardly anyone knows what love is. Since meditation about it cannot form any concept of it in a person's thinking, or bring it into the light of the intellect, because it is not a matter of light, but of heat, he asserts that it is either non-existent, or some influence produced by seeing, hearing and being in a person's company, and so impelling him. He is quite unaware that it is his very life, not just the general vital principle of the whole of his body and of all his thoughts, but the life in every single detail of these. A wise person can grasp this in this way. Suppose we say, 'If you take away the affection of love, can you think of anything? Can you do anything?' Surely to the extent that affection, a part of love, grows cold, so do thought, speech and action, and to the extent that affection grows warm, so do they. Love then is the heat of a person's life, his vital heat, and this alone is the reason blood is hot and also that it is red. These effects arise from the fire of the sun of the heaven of angels, which is unadulterated love. (CL 34)

CL 35. The infinite variety of people's faces is an indication that everyone has his own love, to be distinguished from anyone else's, that is to say, no one has the same love as another. Faces are the expression of loves, for it is well known that faces change and look different, depending on the affections of a person's love. Desires too which are part of love, as well as its joys and sorrows, shine out from the face. This shows plainly that a person is his own love, or rather a form taken by his love. But it ought to be known that the inner man, which is one and the same as his spirit which lives on after death, is a form taken by his love. But the outer man in the world is not, because this has learned from childhood up to hide the desires of his love, or rather to pretend and make a show of something other than his true feelings. (CL 35)

CL 36. The reason why each person retains his love after death is that love is a person's life (as stated in 34 above), and in consequence is the person himself. A person is also his thought, and so his intelligence and wisdom; but these make one with his love. For it is love which is the origin and determinant of a person's thought; in fact, if he has freedom, of his speech and actions too. From this it may be seen that love is the being or essence of a person's life, and thought is the resultant coming-into-being or arising of his life. Speech therefore and actions, which derive from thought, are not so much from thought as from love by means of thought. Much experience has allowed me to know that after death a person is not his thought, but his affection and the thought which comes from it; or he is his love and the intelligence which comes from it. Also, a person after death puts off everything not in harmony with his love; in fact, he successively puts on the face, voice, speech, gestures and behaviour which fit the love of his life. Thus it is that the whole of heaven is arranged in accordance with all the different kinds of affection of the love for good, and the whole of hell in accordance with all the kinds of affection of the love for evil. (CL 36)

CL 37. (iv) The chief love is sexual love; and in the case of those who reach heaven, that is, those who become spiritual on earth, it is conjugial love.

The reason why a person's sexual love remains after death is that a male remains a male and a female remains a female, and the male's masculinity pervades the whole and every part of him, and likewise a female's femininity; and the impulse to be joined is present in every detail down to the smallest. Since that impulse to be joined was implanted from creation and is therefore continually present, it follows that the one desires the other and longs to be joined to the other. Love taken by itself is nothing but a desire and hence an impulse to be joined; conjugial love is an impulse to be joined into one. For the male and the female of the human species are so created as to be able to become like a single individual, that is, one flesh; and when united, then they are, taken together, the full expression of humanity. If not so joined, they are two, each being as it were a divided person or half a person. Since that impulse to be joined lies deeply hidden in every part of both male and female, and every part has the ability and desire to be joined into one, it follows that people retain mutual and reciprocal sexual love after death. (CL 37)

CL 38. Sexual and conjugial love are both mentioned, because sexual love is not the same as conjugial love. Sexual love belongs to the natural man, conjugial love to the spiritual man. The natural man loves and desires only outward union and the bodily pleasures it gives. But the spiritual man loves and desires inner union and the delights of the spirit it gives, and he perceives that these are only possible with one wife, with whom the degree of union can perpetually increase. The more the union increases, the more he feels delights rising in the same scale, and lasting for ever. But the natural man never thinks of this. This is how it is that we say that conjugial love remains after death with those who reach heaven, those, that is, who become spiritual on earth. (CL 38)

CL 39. (v) These facts have been fully confirmed by eye-witness.
I have so far considered it enough to confirm these propositions by intellectual, what are called rational, arguments: that a person lives on as a person after death, that a male is then a male and a female a female, that each person retains his own love after death, and his chief loves are sexual and conjugial. But people have from childhood been given by parents and teachers, and later by learned men and clergy, a firm belief that they will not live on as people after death, except on the day of the Last Judgment, and some have now spent six thousand years waiting for it. Moreover, many have placed this belief in the category of things which must be taken on trust and not understood. For these reasons it has been necessary to confirm the same propositions also by eye-witness accounts. If this is not done, the person who trusts only his senses will be led by the belief forced on him to say, 'If people lived on as people after death, I could see and hear them' and 'Who has come down from heaven, or up from hell, to tell us?'

But it has not been and still is not possible for an angel of heaven to come down, or for a spirit of hell to come up, and talk with a person, unless the inner levels of his mind, that is, of his spirit, have been opened by God. This can only happen fully with those whom God has prepared to receive the truths of spiritual wisdom. It has therefore pleased God to do this with me, in order to ensure that conditions in heaven and hell, and how people live after death, should not remain unknown, be sunk in ignorance and finally buried in denial. The eye-witness proofs of the propositions mentioned above are too numerous to relate here; but they can be seen in my book Heaven and Hell, also in the Continuation About the Spiritual World; and later in my Apocalypse Revealed. But in so far as particularly concerns marriage, they will be found in the account of experiences subjoined to sections or chapters of this book. (CL 39)

CL 40. (vi) Consequently there are marriages in heaven.
Since this has now been confirmed both by argument and by experience, it requires no further proof. (CL 40)

CL 41. (vii) God's statement that after the resurrection people are not given in marriage refers to spiritual weddings.

We read in the Gospels:

Some of the Sadducees, who deny that there is a resurrection, asked Jesus, saying, Master, Moses wrote, 'If a man's brother who has a wife dies, and he is childless, his brother is to marry his wife, and raise up seed to his brother.' There were seven brothers each of whom, one after the other married a wife, but they died childless. At length the woman too died. In the resurrection then, whose wife will she be? But Jesus in reply told them, The children of this world marry and are given in marriage. But those who will be judged worthy of reaching the other world and rising again from the dead will neither marry nor be given in marriage. For they can no longer die, for they are like angels and sons of God, being sons of the resurrection. But the resurrection of the dead was proved by Moses calling God the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. But God is not the God of the dead, but of the living; for him all are alive. Luke 20:27-38; Matt. 22:23-32; Mark 12:18-27.

God made two points in this teaching; first that people rise again after death, and secondly, that they are not given in marriage in heaven. Resurrection after death was proved by God being not the God of the dead, but of the living, and Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are alive; and further by the parable of the rich man in hell and Lazarus in heaven (Luke 16:22-31).

[2] The second point, that people are not given in marriage in heaven, was proved by the words 'those judged worthy of reaching the other world do not marry or are given in marriage.' It is plain this means spiritual weddings because of the immediately following words, 'they can no longer die, because they are like angels and sons of God, being sons of the resurrection.' A spiritual wedding means being linked with God, something that happens on earth, and if it has taken place on earth, it has also taken place in heaven. The wedding therefore cannot be repeated in heaven, nor can they be given in marriage again. This is the meaning of these words, 'The sons of this world marry and are given in marriage. But those judged worthy of reaching the other world neither marry nor are given in marriage.' These people are also called by God 'the sons of the wedding' (Matt. 9:15; Mark 2:19*); and in this passage 'angels,' 'sons of God' and 'sons of the resurrection.'

[3] Marrying is being linked with God, and going in to a wedding is being received into heaven by God. This is plain from these passages. The kingdom of the heavens is like a royal personage who made a wedding for his son, and sent out his servants with invitations to the wedding (Matt. 22:1-14). The kingdom of the heavens is like the ten maidens who went out to meet the bridegroom, five of whom were ready and went in to the wedding (Matt. 25:1ff). It is clear that God here meant Himself from verse 13 of this chapter, which says, 'Keep awake, because you do not know the day or the hour at which the Son of Man will come.' Also from the Book of Revelation:

The time of the wedding of the Lamb has come, and his wife has made herself ready. Blessed are they who are summoned to the wedding feast of the Lamb. Rev. 19:7, 9.

There is a spiritual meaning in everything God said, as was shown fully in THE TEACHING OF THE NEW JERUSALEM ABOUT THE HOLY SCRIPTURE, published at Amsterdam in 1763.
* The original Greek says 'sons of the bride-chamber.' (CL 41)

CL 42. I shall append here accounts of two experiences from the spiritual world, of which this is the first.
One morning I looked up into heaven and saw above me one broad level above another, and as I watched, the first level near to me was opened up, and then the second above, and finally the third, which was the highest. I was enlightened by this so as to grasp that the angels forming the first or lowest heaven were on the first level, those forming the second or middle heaven on the second level, and those forming the third or highest heaven on the third level.

At first I wondered what this meant and why it so appeared; and then I heard a voice like the sound of a trumpet coming out of heaven, which said, 'We have noticed and now see that you are meditating about conjugial love. We know that so far no one on earth knows what truly conjugial love is in its origin and essence, important though it is to know this. It has therefore pleased God to open up the heavens to you, so that the light which enlightens may flow into the inner levels of your mind and allow you to perceive it. Our celestial delights in the heavens, especially the third, are chiefly from conjugial love. We have therefore been given permission to send down a married couple for you to see.'

[2] Then suddenly there was to be seen a chariot coming down from the highest or third heaven, containing what seemed to be one angel. But as it approached, it seemed to have two angels in it. The chariot seen from afar sparkled like a diamond, and had harnessed to it foals as white as snow. The travellers riding in the chariot held in their hands two turtle-doves, and they called out to me, 'You would like us to come closer, but be careful then that the fiery radiance, which is from the heaven we come down from, does not strike too deep. It will certainly enlighten the higher concepts in your intellect, which are in themselves heavenly. But these are inexpressible in the world where you now are. So understand rationally what you are about to hear, and so explain this to your intellect.'

'I will be careful,' I replied, 'come closer.' They did so, and turned out to be a husband and wife. 'We are a married couple,' they said. 'We have led a blessed life in heaven from the earliest time, which you call the Golden Age. We have been perpetually in the bloom of youth, in which you see us today.'

[3] I gazed at them both, because I realised that in their life and their adornment they were a picture of conjugial love. Their lives were to be seen from their faces, their adornment from their dress. For all angels are affections of love in human form. Their ruling affection shines out from their faces, and it is their affection which provides and determines what they wear. So in heaven there is a saying, everyone is dressed by his affection. The husband looked to be of an age half way between an adolescent and a young adult. Sparkling light glittered from his eyes, an effect of the wisdom of love; this light made his face shine with a kind of internal radiance, and this radiation made his skin shine on the outside, so that his whole face was a single lovely splendour. He was dressed in an ankle-length robe, over a blue garment with a gold belt, decorated with three gems, a sapphire at either side and a carbuncle at the centre. He wore stockings of shining linen with silver threads in the weave, and pure silk shoes. This was the picture presented by conjugial love in the husband.

[4] In the wife it appeared like this. I saw her face and at the same time I did not see it. It looked like Beauty itself, but I could not see it because this is inexpressible. Her face shone with fiery light, the light the angels in the third heaven enjoy, and this dazzled my sight, so that I was simply amazed. When she noticed this, she spoke to me. 'What can you see?' she asked. 'I can see nothing but conjugial love and the form it takes,' I answered. 'But I both see and don't see.'

At this she turned sideways on to her husband, and then I could gaze at her more fixedly. Her eyes flashed with the light of her heaven, a fiery light, as I have said, which derives from the love of wisdom. For the love wives have for their husbands in that heaven comes from and is focussed on their wisdom, and the love husbands have for their wives comes from and is focussed on that love for themselves, so that it unites them. As a result her beauty was such that no painter could ever rival it or render it in its true appearance, for his colours lack radiance and his art has no means to express her loveliness. Her hair was beautifully dressed in an arrangement which had a meaning by correspondence, and it had flowers in it made of jewelled settings. Her necklace was of carbuncles, and from it hung a rosary of gold-coloured gems, and she had pearl bracelets. She was dressed in a red gown over a purple blouse, fastened at the front with rubies. But I was surprised to see that the colours changed as she turned towards or away from her husband, and this too made them sparkle more or less, more when they looked at each other, less when not directly facing.

[5] When I had seen this, they spoke with me again; and when the husband spoke, it was as if what he said came at the same time from the wife, and when the wife spoke, it was as if it came at the same time from her husband, so closely united were their minds, from which their utterances flowed. And I could also then hear the sound of conjugial love, which was in inward unison within their speech, and arose from the delights of a state of peace and innocence.

At length they said, 'We are being called back, we must go.' Then they were seen again riding in a chariot, as before. They drove along a paved road between flower-beds with olive-trees and trees laden with orange fruit springing from them. When they approached their own heaven, maidens came out to welcome them and escort them in. (CL 42)

CL 43. After this I saw an angel from that heaven. He held in his hand a parchment, which he unrolled with the words, 'I have seen that you are meditating about conjugial love. This parchment contains treasures of wisdom on that subject, which have not yet been revealed in the world. They must now be revealed, because this is important. We have in our heaven more of these treasures than elsewhere, because we enjoy the marriage of love and wisdom. But I prophesy that the only people who will make that love their own are those whom God receives into the new Church, which is the New Jerusalem.' With these words the angel let go of the unrolled parchment, which a certain angelic spirit took and placed on a table in a room; this he at once locked up and handed me the key, with the instruction, 'Write about it.' (CL 43)

CL 45. THE STATE OF MARRIED PARTNERS AFTER DEATH

That there are marriages in the heavens has been shown just above. It is now to be shown whether or not the conjugial covenant entered into in the world will continue after death and be enduring. This is not a matter of judgment but of experience, and since this experience has been granted me through consociation with angels and spirits, the question may be answered by me, but yet in such wise that reason also will assent. Moreover, it is among the wishes and desires of married partners to have this knowledge; for men who have loved their wives, and wives who have loved their husbands, desire to know whether it is well with them after their death, and whether they will meet again. Furthermore many married partners desire to know beforehand whether after death they will be separated or will live together - those who are of discordant dispositions, whether they will be separated, and those who are of concordant dispositions, whether they will live together. This information, being desired, shall be given, and this in the following order:

I. That after death, love of the sex remains with every man such as it had been interiorly, that is, in his interior will and thought, in the world.

II. That the same is true of conjugial love.

III. That after death, two married partners, for the most part, meet, recognize each other, again consociate, and for some time live together; which takes place in the first state, that is, while they are in externals as in the world.

IV. But that successively, as they put off their externals and come into their internals, they perceive the nature of the love and inclination which they had for each other, and hence whether they can live together or not.

V. That if they can live together, they remain married partners; but if they cannot, they separate, sometimes the man from the wife, sometimes the wife from the man, and sometimes each from the other.

VI. And that then a suitable wife is given to the man, and a suitable husband to the woman.

VII. That married partners enjoy similar intercourse with each other as in the world, but more delightful and blessed, yet without prolification; for which, or in place of it, they have spiritual prolification, which is that of love and wisdom.

VIII. That this is the case with those who go to heaven; but not so with those who go to hell.
The explanation now follows whereby these articles are illustrated and confirmed.

CL 42. To this I will append two narrative accounts from the spiritual world. Here is the first:

One morning I looked up into the sky, and I saw above me expanse upon expanse. And as I looked, the first or nearest expanse was opened, and shortly the second, which was above it, and finally the third, which was the highest of all. By the light coming from them I perceived that on the first expanse were angels of the first or lowest heaven, on the second expanse were angels of the second or middle heaven, and on the third expanse were angels of the third or highest heaven. I wondered at first what was happening and why. But shortly I heard a voice from heaven like the sound of a trumpet, saying, "We have perceived, and now see, that you are meditating on conjugial love. Moreover, we know that so far no one on earth knows what true conjugial love is in its origin or in its essence, and yet it is important for them to know. Therefore it has pleased God to open the heavens to you, that the inner faculties of your mind may receive an influx of illuminating light and thus perception. "Among us in heaven, especially in the third heaven, our heavenly delights come principally from conjugial love. Consequently, by permission granted us, we will send a married couple down to you, in order that you may see."

[2] And suddenly, then, a carriage appeared, coming down from the highest or third heaven, in which I saw a single angel. But as it drew near, I saw that it held two. The carriage shone before my eyes in the distance like a diamond, and harnessed to it were young horses as white as snow. And the couple sitting in the carriage held in their hands a pair of turtledoves. And the couple called out to me, "You want us to come closer. But beware, then, of the flashing light coming from our heaven, the heaven we descended from. It is a blazing light, and you must take care that it does not penetrate interiorly. By its influx, indeed, the higher ideas of your understanding are enlightened, ideas that, in themselves, are heavenly. But these same ideas are inexpressible in the world in which you live. Receive the things you are about to hear, therefore, in rational terms and so explain them to the understanding." I replied, "I will take care. Come closer." So they came, and behold, it was a husband and his wife. And they said, "We are married. We have lived a blessed life in heaven from the earliest time, which you call the golden age, remaining forever in the same flower of youth that you see us in today."

[3] I looked at the two of them closely, because I perceived that they represented conjugial love in their life and in their adornment - in their life as shown in their faces, and in their adornment as shown in the garments they wore. For all angels are affections of love in human form. The essential, dominant affection shines out from their faces, and they are given clothing on the basis of their affection and in accordance with it. Consequently, in heaven they say that everyone is clothed in his own affection. The husband appeared to be between adolescence and early manhood in age. From his eyes flashed a light sparkling with the wisdom of love. His face seemed to be inmostly radiant with this light, and because of the radiance from within, outwardly his skin virtually shone. As a result, his whole facial appearance was singularly one of dazzling good looks. He was dressed in a full-length robe, and under the robe he wore a blue-colored garment, which was tied about the waist with a golden girdle bearing three precious stones, two of them sapphires, one on each side, and a garnet in the middle. His stockings were of shining linen, into which had been woven threads of silver; and his shoes were made entirely of silk. This was the representational form that conjugial love took in the case of the husband.

[4] In the case of the wife, however, it took the following form. I saw her face, and did not see it. I saw it as the very essence of beauty, and did not see it because the beauty was beyond expression. For there was in her face the bright glow of a blazing light, like the light possessed by angels in the third heaven, and this light dimmed my vision, so that I was simply stupefied by it. Noticing this, the wife spoke to me, saying, "What do you see?" I answered, "I see only conjugial love and a picture of it. But I see and do not see." At this she turned at an angle away from her husband, and then I could look more intently. Her eyes flashed with the light of her heaven, which is blazing, as I said, and so takes its quality from the love of wisdom. For wives in the third heaven love their husbands on account of their husbands' wisdom and in response to it, and the husbands love their wives on account of and in response to that love directed towards them, and so they are united.

The wife had her beauty as a result of this, such beauty that no artist could reproduce it or portray it in its true form, for a flashing of light like that is not possible in the painter's colors, nor is such loveliness expressible in his art. Her hair was attractively arranged in a style to match her beauty, with jewels in the form of flowers inserted into it. She had a necklace of garnets, from which hung a rosette of peridots. And she had bracelets of pearls. She was dressed in a scarlet gown, and under it a purple bodice fastened in front with rubies. But what surprised me, the colors kept changing depending on which way she was facing in relation to her husband, and their sparkle also kept changing accordingly, being now more, now less - more when they faced each other, and less when she faced away at an angle.

[5] When I had seen these things, they spoke with me again. And when the husband spoke, he spoke as though he spoke at the same time on behalf of his wife, and when the wife spoke, she spoke as though she spoke at the same time on behalf of her husband. For such was the union of their minds, from which comes their speech. It was then that I heard as well the way conjugial love sounds, how it was inwardly together with, and also the result of, the delights of a state of peace and innocence. Finally they said, "They are calling us back. We have to go." They then appeared to be again riding in a carriage, as before, and they were borne off along a road stretching out between flower gardens, from whose beds rose olive trees and trees full of oranges. And as they drew near their heaven, young women came to meet them and welcome them and take them in. (CL 42)

CL 43. After this, an angel from that heaven appeared to me, holding in his hand a sheet of paper, which he unrolled, saying, "I saw that you were meditating on conjugial love. This sheet of paper contains secrets of wisdom hitherto undiscovered in the world. They are disclosed now, because it is important. In our heaven there are more of these secrets than in the rest of the heavens, because we live in a marriage of love and wisdom. But I predict that none will make that love their own except those who are received by God into the New Church, which is the New Jerusalem." Saying this, the angel sent the unrolled sheet of paper down, and one angelic spirit took it and placed it on a table in a particular room, which he immediately locked. And handing me the key he said, "Write." (CL 43)

(if you want to see the continuation, check the book here: www.swedenborgdigitallibrary.org/contets/cltc.html )

1. Part B

We cannot disprove the scientific validity of the Swedenborg reports. Nor can we prove them to be scientifically valid. And that is why I call this proposal "the positive bias in psychology." So, for the purpose of this course let us adopt the positive bias instead of the usual negative bias. This means that we grant the possibility that the Swedenborg reports are scientifically valid. This attitude allows us to examine the unity model of marriage which is based on the positive bias regarding the Swedenborg reports.

The unity model of marriage says that men and women are created reciprocals of each other so that they can conjoin into a unity. This means that the two become as-if one person with interdependent parts. What keeps them in this state of heavenly union is their mutual love and inmost friendship for each other. They are lovers and best friends at the same time. They are strongly motivated not to hurt each other out of neglect, impatience, anger, disagreement, or resentment. They try hard not to contradict each other. They remain loyal to each other before anybody else, including children, family, friends, career, hobby. They are happy, fulfilled, and constantly passionately in love with each other.

How did they get to that state of unity?

They first had to leave the male dominance model behind them, then they both had to realize that the equity model is inherently unfair to women. It appears that the equity model empowers women to leave behind the oppressiveness of the male dominance model, but it turns out that his is an illusion or legend. Yes, the wife can now negotiate with the husband: Honey, you take out the garbage and I'll take the kids to school. Later, she finds out he didn't do it. She reminds him a couple of times, which she finds denigrating because he puts her down for it, telling her to stop nagging him. So what has she gained?

He says: No, I don't think it's a good idea for you to work. She pleads with him: But you said before we got married that it was all right with you. He says: Well, I changed my mind. And that's the problem, isn't it? The woman has no guarantee about anything in the equity model. Men are given the advantage over women in many ways, both in free democracies like ours, and even more so in less free societies. The equity model does not come with a guarantee or a method for enforcing broken promises and contracts by the husband. A woman can make herself less sexually available in order to fight the man's injustice when he breaks his promises and does not follow the equity model fairly. This solution is often described in history and literature, and in the media today. Even if a man wants to be fair, his middle line is subconsciously biased in favor of himself because men's male dominance interferes with accurate perception of their interactions with women.

This is why men need a more powerful model by which to operate in the relationship. Both the traditional male dominance model and the popular equity model, are not sufficient to give men the motivational capacity to change. But there is one possibility for success: the man can switch over to the unity model.

In order for the husband to adopt the unity model he must first be spiritually enlightened. This means that he is willing to think of his relationship with his wife as eternal. Their love relationship will continue in the afterlife. They started their marriage with the vow "Until death do us part" and this led them into the male dominance model and the equity model. But now he is willing to go further and take the last and ultimate step, which is the vow "Until endless eternity." There is no parting, ever. If a man runs away from that thought with one woman, he will not adopt the unity model. But if he loves the idea of his wife as eternal soul mate, then he can find the motivational power to declare himself for the unity model, and to keep striving to achieve it in the ensuing years.

The adoption of the unity model is all at once, like an acknowledgement and commitment, but the attaining of it in daily practice is progressive and developmental. Nevertheless, the husband's declaration of his commitment to the unity model makes a huge difference to the wife even if it becomes actual only gradually. Why?

Because now the wife possesses moral leverage over him when he falls back on the equity model and the male dominance model. For example:

Wife: I want you stop sending birthday cards to your ex-girlfriends.

Husband: Why all of a sudden? It's just a nice habit to keep up with people you know.

Wife: You said you are committed to the unity model. Are you giving that up now?

Husband: OK, I see your point. I don't like it, but I see it.

Wife: Well are you going to stop?

Husband: Yes.

Wife: Thank you.

What do you think of this kind of exchange? You can see that the husband feels morally bound to his commitment. His wife has to be strongly motivated to keep bringing this point up to him, to keep facing him with his official commitment. She has to put pressure on him using the force that he provides her. This is how the unity model works. In the phase of the equity model the husband did not allow her to put this kind of pressure on him. He would oppose it, reject it, and blame her for it. All these separative strategies suddenly no longer work for him. He cannot both engage in separative behaviors and continue to hold the unity model. He has to choose because these are opposites.

The commitment he has to the unity model is grounded in his idea that his marriage is continuing in the afterlife as a conjugial heaven between lovers who are best friends to each other. Settling into this idea as a certainty acts as a receptor of spiritual power. This new ability flows into the conscious mind of the husband from his unconscious spiritual mind. This new ability involves enlightenment in the cognitive organ and empowerment in the affective organ. The husband can compel himself to think and act from the unity model even when he is tempted to act from the equity or dominance models. Without the idea that he and his wife will be together in heaven as lovers and best friends forever, a man does not have the affective power to prevent himself from sliding back into the equity or dominance way of interacting with his wife or girlfriend whenever he feels like it, or whenever he is being challenged. Hence he cannot stick it out with unity model long enough to discover that he actually much prefers it.

When a man discovers that the actually prefers the unity model to anything else, he has become an angel on earth, and he and his wife will be an angel in the heaven of their conjugial eternity. And yet, even such an angel on earth is not yet like an angel in heaven, such as a man becomes in his full human potential in eternity when he loves conjugial unity. The wife is then most fulfilled in a way she could not experience before. Later we will discuss what kind of behaviors express a man's commitment to the unity relationship.

So here we are. With respect to the reality of eternal or spiritual marriages observed by Swedenborg, we have a choice regarding to reject its possibility without proof, or accept the possibility without proof. Remember, the positive bias is to accept the possibility that the reports may be valid. You may decide they are not valid after you examine the evidence. Or, you may decide they are valid. The positive bias merely says that it's possible that they are valid.

Either way we go -- negative bias or positive bias in science -- we must adopt a bias.

In this proposal you are given the opportunity to adopt the positive bias in science, and to hold the negative bias tucked away in abeyance, so to speak, until the end of the course, at which time you can bring it back, should you still want to. By adopting the positive bias science now, you are giving yourself the opportunity to examine the evidence in seriousness rather than in mockery. In order to examine what I am presenting in seriousness, you need to act like in your mind, that you are adopting for the moment, the positive bias in science for the sake of the potential benefits being claimed for learning this new knowledge.

We also want to realize in clear awareness, that our initial preference for the negative bias position in science, is not due to our own thinking, but to the accepted thinking that we do by habit about science. We think about the "scientific method" with borrowed attitudes from our socialization, and especially definitions in our science education in high school and in college. We are told over and over again that ideas about the spiritual world of eternity and science don't mix because you can't investigate the world of the afterlife by observation and experiment. Hence these topics are outside the realms of science. We all received this notion from our education by teachers who themselves received this negative bias in science and are passing it on the next generation. But notice that teachers don't tell students that they are transmitting the tradition of the negative bias in science. Instead students are told that rejecting eternal marriages is "science" -- not "negative bias in science". Why, do you think this is?

My answer is that those who hold the negative bias in science cannot see that it is a bias, since a bias by definition, blinds you to reality and truth. They see the "positive bias science" as a bias, and not as science. So the negative bias in science creates a knowledge culture that is dead set against anything that is not definable by physical measurements and abstract derivations thereof. Anything having to do with eternity or the spiritual world is simply ruled out. Since eternity is ruled out, so are eternal marriages. So the unity model of marriage is not comprehensible or meaningful within the negative bias. The idea of marriage as a binding relationship "until death do us part" comes to you from the negative bias in science and as you are applying it to your marriage. While the positive bias in science leads you to the idea of marriage as a permanent or eternal relationship with your soul mate. The difference is whether you think of yourself as the temporary brain in the physical world, or as the immortal mind in the spiritual world.

In this proposal I am saying that it is possible to examine the Swedenborg reports rationally and impartially, in order to decide whether they are scientifically valid and rationally meaningful, or not. I have done so myself for the past thirty years and found these reports rational, empirical, valid, scientific, and highly useful to know about. As a result I set out to present to you the content of these reports regarding eternal marriages.

In this seminar on the unity model of marriage we will discuss Swedenborg's unique experience so that you may gain a rational and scientific idea of marriages in the afterlife. The religious view on the afterlife will not be examined in this course. Swedenborg was a respected and well known Swedish engineer, scientist, and legislator (1688-1772), known for his wide ranging set of discoveries in mining engineering, crystallography, chemistry, physics, anatomy. His science was unusual in that he always tried to include God as the creator and manager of all phenomena, while other well known scientists and mathematicians like Descartes, Leibniz, Newton, Darwin, only mentioned God in the Preface of their book, acknowledging Him as the Creator of Nature. But then they never mentioned God again in the rest of the book that contained their scientific theory. Swedenborg on the other hand kept bringing God into all of his scientific theories.

It is clear to me as I read all of Swedenborg's works and Writings that he succeeded in establishing God as a scientific concept. This is totally unique to Swedenborg's Writings. He established the reality of God in science (not religion). Hence Swedenborg's science can be called "theistic science" to indicate that God has a conceptual status in that approach to science. You may be interested in how I translate Swedenborg's Writings into theistic psychology -- see my online textbook here: www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/theistic/

At age 57, Swedenborg had a vision experience in which God as the Divine Human Man appeared to him and told him that Swedenborg had been unconsciously prepared since early childhood to become a theistic scientist and to build up the scientific knowledge and theory in which God could be incorporated as an objective concept and thus, at last, made part of the scientific explanation of events. Now that Swedenborg had formed the natural basis for a theistic science, he was ready for the spiritual laboratory he needed to provide the objective evidence for dualism in science. Swedenborg's "substantive dualism" refers to the philosophical and scientific theory that human beings are born into two worlds simultaneously -- with a temporary physical body in the natural world of time and space, and a permanent or eternal spiritual body in the spiritual world not in time and space (called "eternity").

The positive bias in science was not possible until Swedenborg published his reports about the spiritual world. He was the only modern scientist who had access to the observations he presents. This was made possible when he suddenly at age 57, became conscious simultaneously in both worlds, whereas every other scientist only becomes conscious of the spiritual world after resuscitation at death. Now that we have Swedenborg's reports we are able to adopt the positive bias in science -- long enough to be able to examine his reports. These findings about eternity cannot be examined in the negative bias mode, because it rejects them in advance without proof.

Swedenborg has proven by repeated daily observations over 27 years that human beings are born into eternity as immortal beings and are only temporarily connected to this world of time through the physical body. This proof forms the empirical basis of the unity model of marriage -- thus making marriage into an permanent relationship, not "until death do us part", but "until endless eternity".

The physical body with which we are born in the natural world and the mental-spiritual body we are born with in eternity outside time, are functionally inter-connected so that our sensations, thoughts, and feelings occur in our mental-spiritual organs, while the physical body exists and moves around in the natural world. For example, the facial expression on our physical body corresponds or is connected to, the mental emotions and mood in our affective organ which is located in the mental-spiritual body. As a result, the face can be used as an index to the emotions. The physical operations of the facial muscles and the sensorimotor brain correspond to the mental-spiritual operations in our affective organ. The facial muscles and their correlated brain operations exist in time and space called the physical world, but the emotions and feelings to which they correspond, exist outside time and space called eternity.

Our mental-spiritual body exists in eternity since birth and remains there after the death of the physical body. Death is therefore a continuation of life, as our conscious awareness shifts from the natural mind and its connection with the physical body, to the spiritual mind and its connection to the mental-spiritual body which exists in eternity. All this will appear more real to you if you remember that your thoughts and feelings are not the same as the electro-chemical operations of the neurons in your brain.

The thoughts and feelings of human beings are constructed out of spiritual substances not physical matter, like the physical brain. These spiritual substances are by definition immortal or eternal since death applies only to what is in time-space. Death does not apply to what is in eternity, and our thoughts and feelings are born in eternity and remain there forever. This means that the self, which is made up of our thoughts and feelings, is immortal. Remember this proof. Try it out on your friends.

At the death of the physical body, the mental body with its organs of sensing, thinking, and feeling, is freed from any connection with the world of time and space. We then continue our life of immortality in the mental world of eternity into which we were born to begin with. This mental world of eternity is also called the afterlife and the spiritual world. Swedenborg was able to confirm this by direct observation, when at age 57 his encounter with God left him conscious simultaneously in both worlds. We are all dual citizens, like Swedenborg, but we don't get to be conscious in our spiritual mind until the death of the physical body. Until then we are conscious only in our natural mind which is connected by correspondence to our physical body.

Swedenborg observed thousands of people being "resuscitated," which occurs about 36 hours after the death of the physical body. He talked to many people immediately after their resuscitation. Most of them were extremely surprised to find themselves alive in the spiritual world.

Swedenborg visited the people who had been in the world of spirits for untold ages. He described their cities and lifestyles. He talked to people whom he personally had known and then passed on. He talked to people he had read about in literature like Aristotle, Newton, King David, Mary, or Luther. He described the lifestyle in the "heavenly" and "hellish" cities and societies that he observed in the afterlife world of eternity. His dual citizenship lasted for 27 years until age 84 when he passed permanently into the afterlife. During those 27 years he published nearly 30 volumes of reports on the spiritual world. One of the most amazing is his discovery that people in the afterlife are in a spiritual body that is permanently youthful (around age 20) and that in the heavenly regions of the mental world of eternity, everyone lives as a married couple. His book Conjugial Love (1763) is a detailed description of the relationship he observed between husbands and wives in the eternity of their heaven. Each couple is called "an angel" because from a distance they appear as one angel, but close up they are seen as a husband and wife.

The unity model of marriage in this course is based on the empirical descriptions that Swedenborg gives of the "angel couple" which is what married partners are called in the afterlife of their heaven. But Swedenborg also described the "infernal marriages" of people who are in the hells of their mind -- and that is pretty ugly and awful! Swedenborg also describes and explains why people choose to be in the heavens or in the hells of their mind -- for he found that in the afterlife, everyone chooses their own preference of life.

What Swedenborg discovered empirically by direct observation, multiple times in the course of daily observations for 27 years, is that when people are resuscitated in the world of spirits a few hours after the death of the physical body, they appear not as filmy gaseous spirit ghosts, but exactly the same as in their physical body!

They have solid bodies that he could touch and shake hands with. He ate with them. He slept and had dreams. He talked to couples who had been husband and wife for untold ages, who told him that they were doing with their mental-spiritual body in their heaven everything they did on earth with their physical bodies, except that here, their sensations were much keener and stronger than what they had in their physical bodies. In other words what Swedenborg saw and confirmed many times in different ways, is that our afterlife of eternity is spent in a real substantial non-material body that is immortal and cannot die. This real body of immortality is what I call "the spiritual body" or "the mental body." We could also call it "the rational ether body" because it is a body constructed out of rational ether, which is the substance out of which all things are made of in the world of eternity, which is the mental world of the human race .

This makes sense since the world of eternity
= the mental world of the human race
= individual self and conscious life within that world.

All of this may sound like a naive fairy tale, not science! If you want to find our more how this is indeed science, and not a fairy tale or religion, I invite you to read a little further on "the negative and positive bias in science" available at:

www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/theistic/

2. Mental Anatomy and the Individual's Threefold Self

Section 2

2. Part A

The immortal spiritual body with which we are born, contains our mind, that is, our mental organs, which are called the affective organ, the cognitive organ, and the sensorimotor organ. These three mental organs are in the spiritual-mental body in the same way that the physical body contains the circulatory system, the respiratory system, and the nervous system. The circulatory system includes the heart and all its veins and capillaries reaching and permeating every organ and cell of the body.

The circulatory system in the physical body corresponds to the affective organ in the mental body, whose operations give us the subjective experience of feeling and willing. Feelings in the spiritual body, or the mind, correspond to the circulatory system in the physical body, because feelings nourish the life of experience. Feeling and willing give us

an affective consummatory life such as needs, wants, desires, satisfactions, pleasures, interests, attractions, etc. (as well as their opposites),
and
an affective conative life such as intentions, motives, purposes, endeavors, resolve, compassion, love, etc. (as well as their opposites)

The respiratory system corresponds to the cognitive organ whose operations give us the subjective life of thinking, reasoning, and intelligence. Thoughts in the spiritual body, that is, the operations of the cognitive organ, correspond to the respiratory system in the physical body, because thoughts guide our feelings and clarifies them, just as oxygen cleans and purifies the blood. Thoughts give us

a cognitive appraising life through memory, imagination, words, meaning, concepts, topics, knowledge, logic, common sense, conversation, etc.
and
a cognitive planning life through rational reasoning, inventiveness, predictions, hypotheses, fantasies, schedules, blueprints, management policies, etc.

The nervous system corresponds to the sensorimotor organ whose operations give us the subjective life of sensing the environment outside the body and of acting upon that environment through motor determinations. Sensations and motor determinations in the spiritual body, or the mind, are like the nervous system in the physical body, because sensations give us the life of experiencing the world outside of us and motor determinations give us the ability to make our bodies move and interact with the environment. Sensations and motor determinations give us

a sensory noticing life such as seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, pleasure, pain, heat, cold, etc.
and
a motor execution life such as moving, pushing, pulling, dancing, chewing, verbalizing, writing, drawing, etc.

Here is then a summary of the exact correspondence between mental anatomy and physical anatomy (try to memorize this after you studied the details given above):

an affective consummatory life in the spiritual body (= circulatory veins in the physical body)
an affective optimizing life in the spiritual body (= circulatory arteries in the physical body)
a cognitive appraising life in the spiritual body (= respiratory inhaling in the physical body)
a cognitive planning life in the spiritual body (= respiratory exhaling in the physical body)
a sensory noticing life in the spiritual body (= nervous afferent input in the physical body)
a motor execution life in the spiritual body (= nervous efferent output in the physical body)

The affective life of feelings cohere together as a cumulative whole called the affective self.

The cognitive life of thoughts cohere together as a cumulative whole called the cognitive self.

The sensorimotor life of sensations and motor determinations cohere together as a cumulative whole called the sensorimotor self.

Every person can therefore be studied, described, and understood as a threefold self.

2. Part B

Gender behavior in marriage is defined in this course along all three interacting domains of the individual's threefold self. The individual's affective self operates the feelings and motivations we maintain in dating or in marriage relationships. The individual's cognitive self operates the thinking and reasoning we do in these relationships. The individual's sensorimotor self operates the sensations, perceptions, and motor acts we perform in gender relationships. The category of "motor acts" includes overt verbal behavior (discourse, talk) and non-linguistic behaviors (expressions, appearance, style). Be aware however that motor acts and talking occur not from themselves but from cognitive acts (our thinking and lifestyle philosophy), and these in turn occur from our affective acts, which are motivations and needs that guide our thinking towards goals. Sensorimotor acts, cognitive acts, and affective acts form a perfect synergy between feelings, thoughts, and actions. This is called the threefold self or person.

In other words, each of us is involved in gender relationships in which we operate along three interconnected domains of behavior. The deepest and most influential is the affective operation in which we maintain selected motivations and desires in accordance with our primary needs and satisfactions. These affective operations in our mind are the most influential or determinative because they select and guide the other two domains. Affective operations guide and influence the direction of operations in the cognitive self, so that what we think or how we justify things cognitively, is selective and responsive to our affective motives. We entertain and prefer a way of thinking that will support and promote our motivations and feelings. In other words, our cognitive behavior adjusts itself to support our affective behavior. The affective and the cognitive domains together select and determine the sensorimotor behavior that eventuate in our overt actions, appearance, words, and styles. What we do and say amounts to our overt gender behavior, which is the result of what we think, and that is the result of how we feel and what motivates us.

Note that we are often more aware of what we think than of how we feel (or what motivates us). In relationships between a man and a woman, women get more practice in becoming aware of their own feelings and motivations than men, who in comparison, tend to be less aware of their own feelings and motivations. This is because women are more motivated to spend time and focus to figure out how they really feel or what they really want. Women tend also to be more aware of the man's feelings and motivations than the men are of their own feelings and motivations. This is because women are motivated to form a united couple, while men tend to be more motivated to maintain their independence and options. However, this does not mean that men have less feelings than women, as it is sometimes misrepresented in gender stereotyped thinking. It means that men are less motivated to discover their feelings and the feelings of women. However, as we shall see, men can learn to acquire this interest, habit and practice.

Note well this principle: Both men and women have the same amount of feelings and emotions. This fact can be observed when you analyze how men behave and react to things moment by moment--wi

Please note:

This is the Fall 2006 version. The corrected, updated, and expanded Spring 2007 version is here:

www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy26/409b-g26-lecture-notes.htm

This is the Fall 2006 version.
The corrected, updated, and expanded Spring 2007 version is here: