The Unity Model of Marriage Lecture Notes Dr. Leon James, Instructor Spring 2007 G26, 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 and exclusive romantic relationships. We will identify the sub-components of gender habits in men and women within the three domains of behavior: affective (A), cognitive (C), and sensorimotor (S). 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 men and women 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.

There are different types of intimacy, like the intimacy of family members, the intimacy of good friends, the intimacy of lovers who have just met, the intimacy we have with various others like doctors, lawyers, therapists. These types of intimacy are different from the intimacy between married partners or couples who intend to be together for life. People recognize that when they are in love they are in heaven. And sometimes in heaven and hell alternately if there are threats to that love. It is recognized that being in love with one's spouse or permanent partner provides a delightful, heavenly, and fulfilling life. But this is known from romantic songs and novels rather than from real life.

There are couples who are mentally tied to each other on a permanent basis, and yet don't feel fulfilled to the extent of calling their life delightful and heavenly. There are couples who are tied to each other by tradition and family in social circles where women don't have the same rights as men to decide on things. Inequality of status and of rights can lead to male dominance and suppression of women's inner traits. Without free expression and trust, women cannot feel that they are in heaven. And the freedom that men feel in male dominated relationships is not truly a freedom that can lead them to feel that they are in heaven.

The heavenly happiness and fulfillment of both wife and husband depend on the attainment between them of physical intimacy within the shared context of mental intimacy. To be mentally intimate means that they are best friends to each other. This relationship 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.

Definition:

We will use the concept of "model" to refer to the principles, beliefs, and attitudes that husbands and wives use or practice to govern their behavior in the marriage relationship. This covers both the principles and attitudes they are aware of, as well as those they acquired without awareness. Both types govern the values, emotions, thoughts, and actions during their interactions.

Note that this definition of model is a different use of the term than the one you ordinarily encounter through other courses. A "scientific model" usually refers to a theory constructed by a scientist to explain a complex set of phenomena or observations. In psychology we can contrast the "behavioral model" with the "psychodynamic model" or the "Gestalt model." In economics there are mathematical models to account for data trends such as the stock market. The Stanislavski method of teaching professional actors is also called a model. You can find two dozen definitions with this link: http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&rls=GGLJ,GGLJ:2006-24,GGLJ:en&defl=en&q=define:model&sa=X&oi=glossary_definition&ct=title

The way we use the word model in the "unity model of marriage" is to represent the mentality, or type of mental states, which men and women have when interacting with each other. For example, if a man has the "male dominance model" in his mind he will express attitudes that indicate the principle that women have a lower status than men and should be obedient to their husband or boyfriend. This attitude or "ruling motive" enters into every interaction with a woman that such a man has. It may only be visible in some interactions, but it is present in all interactions. In contrast a man who thinks and reasons from the "equity model" will be motivated to achieve parity, equity, or fairness between men and women.

Other terms that are related to model in this sense include script, schema, expectancy, philosophy, or principle.

Part of the purpose of the course is to give you skills in recognizing what relationship phase that two partners are in. This is not always clear to the participants themselves. A man may think and claim that he is in the equity phase 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 male 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 treat women in a special way such as is done by men who are chivalrous or gallant and respectful of women. In this mental phase husbands are capable of becoming best friends and soul mates with their wife.

The overall approach 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 of self, husband and 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). In the male dominance and equity models there is no motivation for achieving a conjoint self. In those mental states men would feel like they are abnormally losing their freedom and personality when they consider becoming a conjoint self with their woman. But in the unity phase of thinking men desire to achieve that state and are willing to give up their independent self for the sake of the conjoint self. In general you will find that women are more attracted to the unity model than men.

The unity model of marriage actually describes a progression of three phases. The first phase is called the male dominance phase 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 the women don't want to do. 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 or boyfriends treat their wife or girlfriend during the first phase of their intimate relationship 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 eventually get the idea that they can't just continue to dominate their wife and expect the two of them to be in heavenly happiness. 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 acting and thinking according to the equity model, and less and less time acting and thinking in the male dominance mode.

Some men are spiritually enlightened and begin to see intuitively that equity is not bringing their wife true heavenly 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 relationship 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 phase. 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, or portrayed on TV, song lyrics, and novels. 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, sports, 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 or 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 Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) 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 motto "Till Death Do Us Part" while spiritual marriages follow the motto "Till Endless Eternity."

Definition:
The expression "spiritual marriage" will be used in this course to refer to the marriage of partners who define their marriage as continuing in the afterlife. The unity model of marriage is possible only with spiritual marriages.

The expression "soul mates" also implies that the relationship continues forever. Partners who see themselves as "soul mates" united forever are willing to give up self for the conjoint self.

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 see themselves as together forever, united to endless eternity. Until the Writings of Swedenborg (1688-1772), scientists were not able to introduce the concept of spiritual marriages and the concept of the afterlife because there was no scientific proof of the existence of an afterlife that takes place in a world of eternity, outside time and space, also called "the spiritual world" and "heaven and hell." Scientists relegate these ideas to religion, belief, 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 (or the Writings of Swedenborg) 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 of eternity. 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 now possible to do so, 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 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 what is truly human with us must be immortal and that to think of ourselves as mortal, is to remain below our true potential. If you love someone as much as you love yourself, the thought of losing this person is like death, and actually losing the person is like dying. Love dies when it loses its object of love. This is why it's such good news that love never dies. This idea exists in romance and in first loves. People adopt a cynical view, thinking that these are just ideas, ideals, songs, fantasy. So now with the new evidence presented by Swedenborg, scientists like myself can examine the facts, the explanations, the consequences. As scientists in training you are going to do that in this Research Seminar on the unity model of marriage.

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 human 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 that 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 in the negative bias mode, 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 acknowledge or 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, reduced, or eliminated from focus. Hence the research literature on marriage in psychology does not mention spiritual marriages and the afterlife. Nevertheless as more people begin to accept the possibility of spiritual marriage there will be more data to study detailing the benefits of spiritual marriages to the happiness, productivity, and fulfillment of the partners.

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/

To me the most amazing aspect of Swedenborg's discovery is that the spiritual world of the afterlife in eternity is the same thing as our mental world.

In other words we are born into eternity with a spiritual body and into time-place with a physical body. The two are connected by the laws of correspondence. All our sensations, thoughts, and feelings are storied and felt in the spiritual body, not in the physical brain which is merely chemical and electrical activity. The activity in the spiritual body is a reaction by correspondence to the activity in the physical body. When the physical body dies or disintegrates, the spiritual body is free from the prior connection and continues life where it has been since birth, namely the mental world of eternity.

This may not be an easy concept to understand right away. The positive bias in science assumes that there are two worlds, one in time-space, and the other outside time-space called eternity. After some reflection you will come to realize that sensations, thoughts, and feelings are not material (electrical or chemical). They don't have mass and don't weigh anything in the material world. They cannot exist in the material world. In the negative bias mode it is concluded that thoughts and feelings are not real but subjective illusions that accompany the electro-chemical activity of the physical brain. This is called reductionism.

But in the positive bias mode it is concluded that thoughts and feelings are real objective phenomena. But they are not material but substantive. This is called substantive dualism in science. IN other words there are mental substances and our thoughts and feelings are constructed out of these mental substances. Swedenborg was able to confirm that the people he encountered in his spiritual travels were the same people he had known as friends and neighbors in Sweden. Swedenborg at age 57 suddenly found himself conscious in both worlds simultaneously. Until age 82 when he passed on, he took daily notes of his observations and experiments, amassing a collection of about 37 volumes called the Writings of Swedenborg. They have been studied by Swedenborgian scholars who translated his works into various languages. Consult Google to see what Swedenborg's stature is today.

So the spiritual world of the afterlife is nothing else than the mental world in which we are conscious right now.

The reason we are not aware of those who live in the afterlife is that we must be conscious in our spiritual mind in order to be aware of the spiritual world of eternity in which we are now. Instead our conscious awareness is restricted to the natural mind and this part of the mind gets all its input from the physical body. But once we are cut off from the physical body by the dying process, we are resuscitated a few hours later in our spiritual mind. At that instant we become aware of all those who are there and the cities and gardens they dwell in. Swedenborg observed thousands of people undergo this resuscitation process, talking to the people on earth before death, and then talking to them a few hours later in the mental world of the afterlife.

Once we are resuscitated in the spiritual body we appear exactly like before and we discover that our sensations, thoughts, and feelings are much more intense and pure when the physical body is no longer connected to our mind. Swedenborg interviewed many couples who live in their "heavens," even some who have been there together for thousands of years. They all looked like they were in the "flower of youth" or late adolescence. You can check out many more details if you consult the Lecture Notes for Theistic Psychology (Psychology 459, G27).

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 was conscious in this world of the afterlife 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. But this is only an appearance that you are experiencing because of your past training in the negative bias mode of thinking, and also because you've been taught that God and science don't mix. Also because there are lots of mentally questionable individuals who have claimed to talk to God or to see angels, etc. Given all this background with the negative bias mode of thinking, it's not a surprise that you might think that this is a fantasy subject, not science.

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):
[Note: in some places I add italicized explanations in square brackets ]

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. [ Note: angels = people who have passed into the afterlife and are living in their heavens; spirits = general word for people in the afterlife ]

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) The Lord'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 the Lord 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 [ man = generic male or female ], 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 the Lord'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 the Lord gives a wife by means of her husband's wisdom. The other love is a masculine love, a love of being wise, given by the Lord 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. [ this does not mean that men are more intelligent than women -- see our class discussions and later in these notes ]

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 behavior. 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 [ = Spiritual Sun in the mental world of eternity ] of angels [ = people after death who live in the heavens of their mind ], which is unadulterated love. (CL 34)

[ love = operations in our affective organ = life or heat of our affections, feelings, emotions, sensations, intentions, motivation ]

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 [ = operations in the affective organ ] 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 [ = exterior visible portion in body and speech ] taken by his love.

But it ought to be known that the inner man [ = our spiritual mind in the spiritual body which becomes conscious after death and resuscitation in eternity ], which is one and the same as his spirit which lives on after death, is a form taken by his love [ = our face in the spiritual body looks similar to our face in the physical body ]. But the outer man in the world [ = physical body ] 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 [ = operations in the cognitive organ that are directed by the operations in the affective organ ]; 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. [ = in the threefold self, the sensorimotor actions (S) are directed by the cognitive operations (C) that are directed by the affective operations (A): thus: A --> C --> S ]

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.
[ Note: this is really good news, don't you think?! How can we feel that we are in heaven if we can't have conjugial love with sexual love? The sensations we experience in our spiritual body after death are far more intense and pure than the sensations we experience in the physical body now. Swedenborg was able to confirm this many times during his 27 years of dual citizenship ]

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 [ = the conjoint self in the unity model of marriage ], that is, one flesh; and when united, then they are, taken together, the full expression of humanity. [ = the conjoint self is a higher form of human potential than the self ]

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 [ = our natural mind and physical body ], conjugial love to the spiritual man [ = our spiritual mind and spiritual body ]. The natural man loves and desires only outward union [ = social and legal ] and the bodily pleasures [ = of the physical body ] it gives [ = to our natural mind ].

But the spiritual man loves and desires inner union [ = mental intimacy at the affective level of the threefold self ] and the delights of the spirit it gives [ = the pleasures experienced with the spiritual body which are more intense and pure than is possible with the physical body ], and he perceives that these are only possible with one wife [ = exclusive sexual relationship ], with whom the degree of union can perpetually [ = after death ] increase. The more the union increases, the more he feels delights rising in the same scale, and lasting for ever. But the natural man [ = materialistic outlook or mentality ] 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 [ = undergo the process of character reformation and regeneration of our inherited selfish or evil traits ]. (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 the Lord. This can only happen fully with those whom the Lord has prepared to receive the truths of spiritual wisdom. It has therefore pleased the Lord 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)

[ You can read these books online at http://www.swedenborgdigitallibrary.org/index1a.html#can ]

CL 40. (vi) Consequently there are marriages in heaven.

Since this has now been confirmed both by argument and by experience [ = as reported in his books, see just above for links ], it requires no further proof. (CL 40)

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

We read in the Gospels: [ = New Testament Sacred Scripture ]

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 the Lord 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.

The Lord 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 [ = in quoted passages from the Old and New Testament Sacred Scriptures ] 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 [ = in the New Testament ] '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 the Lord [ = through reformation and regeneration of our inherited evil character traits ], something that happens on earth, and if it has taken place on earth, it has also taken place in heaven. The [ spiritual ] wedding [ = regeneration of character ] 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 the Lord '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 [ = spiritual wedding ] is being linked with the Lord, and going in to a wedding is being received into heaven by the Lord. This is plain from these passages. [ = New Testament Sacred Scripture ]

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 the Lord 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: [ = New Testament Sacred Scripture ]

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 the Lord said, as was shown fully in THE TEACHING OF THE NEW JERUSALEM ABOUT THE HOLY SCRIPTURE, published at Amsterdam in 1763.
(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 the Lord 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 travelers 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 realized 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. [ =the conjoint self ] 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 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 [ = this is determined by personal choice according to our ruling love after resuscitation from death ].
The explanation now follows whereby these articles are illustrated and confirmed. [ not reproduced here due to its length, but see the original book Conjugial Love ]

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 model "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 thoughts and feelings. What keeps them in this state of heavenly union or conjoint self, is their mutual love and inmost friendship for each other.

(1) They are lovers and best friends at the same time.

(2) They are strongly motivated not to hurt each other out of neglect, impatience, anger, disagreement, or resentment.

(3) They are committed to never contradict each other.

(4) They remain loyal to each other before anybody else, including children, family, friends, career, hobby.

(5) They are happy, fulfilled, and constantly passionately in love with each other.

How did they get to this state of unity?

Remember that the unity model consists of three phases of attainment in marriage and intimate exclusive romantic relationships:

Phase 1: male dominance model (natural marriage, traditional)
Phase 2: equity model (natural marriage, modern)
Phase 3: unity model (spiritual marriage)

These three phases of the marriage relationship will be further defined and discussed in detail as you progress through the course.

Every couple has to leave the male dominance phase behind them for the equity phase, but then some couples can come to realize that the equity phase is inherently unfair to women. It appears that the equity phase empowers women to leave behind the oppressiveness of the male dominance phase, but it turns out that this 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, tellin

Please note:

This is the Spring 2007 version. The corrected, updated, and expanded Spring 2008 version is here:

www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy27/409b-g27-lecture-notes.htm

This is the Spring 2007 version.
The corrected, updated, and expanded Spring 2008 version is here: