The Unity Model of Marriage

The materialistic view on marriage is the socio-legal definition by community and government, namely that marriage ends at the death of one of the partners. This type of outlook on marriage creates what may be called "natural marriages."

"Spiritual marriages" are those in which the partners see themselves as bound together after death. Hence, when one of the two partners dies, the other does not think that the marriage is over. Death is just a temporary separation until the other can catch up, whereupon they are reunited as husband and wife to continue forever.

The materialistic view on death is that it is the end. The spiritual view on death is that it is the end of life in the physical world of time, and the beginning of life in the spiritual world of eternity.

In the history of modern scientific psychology the adoption of materialism was a necessary step in separating psychology from philosophy and religion, with which it was tied before for centuries, since Aristotle. The new materialistic psychology views marriage in the socio-legal track so that marriage counseling does not involve discussion of the marriage continuing in the afterlife. It merely assumes the end of it at death.

In the past few years the American Psychological Association, which sets standards for science and practice, has encouraged licenses therapists to become knowledgeable in "theistic psychotherapy" which refers to the inclusion into the therapy of spiritual ideas that clients may have. In other words clinicians in the future will be expected to be able to deal with relevantly spiritual marriages as well as natural marriages.

Note well: This does not mean that the therapist is expected to believe that the marriage continues after death. In other words, the therapist's view on marriage can be called a "materialistic view of spiritual marriages." Of course this is different from a "spiritual view of spiritual marriages."

The difference between materialistic and spiritual is easy to remember:

Materialistic view on marriage = 'Till death do us part

Spiritual view on marriage = Forever in the afterlife

It's understandable that materialistic psychology takes the socio-legal view on marriage when we realize that psychologists do not have any details about the human body and mind after death. Until such knowledge is developed psychology must remain materialistic about marriage and the human mind.

Fortunately, in 1981 I discovered the Swedenborg Reports which were written in the 18th century by the Swedish scientist Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772). I will present his discoveries throughout the course, especially in relation to his observations about marriages in the afterlife of the spiritual world. At the age of 57 he suddenly became conscious in his spiritual mind. As a result of this he was in the unique historical position of recording his observations of what happens to people after death. The unity model of marriage in this course is based on his reports and observations.

The Swedenborg Reports at last gives psychology the knowledge of mental anatomy. It therefore gives psychology a basis for a new view on marriage which is spiritual rather than materialistic. In other words, the new view takes into account the dynamics of marriage as progressive from this life to the afterlife. The anatomy and physiology of a human being will now be dualist rather than monist. In other words every human being is born simultaneously into two worlds through a physical body in the physical world and a spiritual body through the spiritual world of the afterlife. At death we lose connection with the physical body and continue life in the spiritual body. When Swedenborg at age 57 became conscious in his spiritual body while still connected to his physical body, he was able to observe how the two worlds work together in one function.

This will help you with the new ideas introduced in this course: Remember that in this new view, our thoughts and feelings do not reside in the brain of the physical body, but in the brain of the spiritual body.

The reason is that sensations, thoughts, and feelings are psychological entities or substances, not physical or electro-chemical, like the neurons of the brain and their activity. Materialistic psychology is forced to put sensations and thoughts in the physical brain since it knows nothing about the spiritual body and its spiritual brain, spiritual heart, spiritual skin, spiritual liver, spiritual uterus, spiritual hands and legs, and so on. But in this course we are going to assume that we have valid knowledge from the Swedenborg Reports about the spiritual body and its organs.

This new approach will allow psychology to avoid the trap of "reductionism" which many critics of psychology have pointed out. Reductionism is to reduce the mind as the same as the body. Instead of talking about some hypothetical mind, psychology prefers reductionism, namely, our thoughts and feelings are "epiphenomena" of the physical brain of neuronal activity. When the neuronal activity in the physical brain dies, the thoughts and feelings disappear from existence. The self or person is no more.

Again this is a forced reductionist position for psychology since it knows nothing about the spiritual body. It is the activity of the spiritual body that constitutes what we call "the mind." This makes sense because the spiritual body is not born in physical time and matter, but in the spiritual world. Swedenborg gives many geographic details about the spiritual world of the afterlife. He observed the process of "resuscitation" with hundreds of people he knew in Sweden and elsewhere, and hundreds of strangers from all parts of the world. It happens as follows.

Our conscious life of self and personality is the collection of sensations, thoughts, and feelings we experience from birth onward. Our conscious life exists therefore because of the activity in the layers of our spiritual body which is houses the mind and its sensations, thoughts, and feelings. The mental layers or levels of conscious life in human beings falls into two major categories called the natural mind and the spiritual mind.

Swedenborg discovered that from birth to death we are conscious in our natural mind and unconscious in our spiritual mind. At resuscitation, which occurs a few hours after death, we become conscious in our spiritual mind and gradually lose consciousness in our natural mind.

In our daily life consciousness of the natural mind we are not aware that we are connected to our spiritual mind. And yet, Swedenborg shows that the two layers of the mind are interconnected and function together. Neither could function without the other. People are therefore unaware that their choices moment to moment all day long operate at two levels, one in the natural mind, connected to the physical body, and the other in the spiritual mind connected to the spiritual body.

In a natural marriage the husband and wife interact without realizing that each interaction has a determinative effect on their spiritual mind and body. But when they decide to have a spiritual marriage, they become aware of how their current interaction through the natural mind is going to affect their future together in eternity through their spiritual body and mind.

More on these anatomical details will be discussed as we progress through the course. For now you need to realize that you are not being asked to believe in the afterlife or in the scientific validity of the Swedenborg Reports, or in the unity model of marriage. You are only given these ideas as things to learn about and analyze from a rational, objective, and scientific perspective. You will learn various facts and interpretations in relation to the unity model of marriage. You don't have to believe these facts and interpretations, only to know what they are as presented in this research seminar.

The Unity Model of Marriage as I present it here has two components -- the theoretical context and the empirical confirmation. The theory is based on the mental anatomy discovered by Swedenborg through his life in a dual consciousness state for 27 years. This mental anatomy shows that we are born with a physical body in time and

a spiritual body in eternity. Marriage involves a conjunction between the partners' physical bodies (which is temporary) and their spiritual bodies (which is permanent in eternity).

If we assume the positive bias in science on the Swedenborg Reports then we can examine whether this theoretical context helps us in our modern context to understand the marriage relationship as it is today. This is the second component of the Unity Model of Marriage. Since 1981 I have made an intense study of my own marriage within this theoretical context. In 1985, I articulated my initial observations in the Doctrine of the Wife. Since then I continued my self-study on a daily basis and tried to express the theoretical context in modern scientific terms suitable for psychology as we know it today. I applied the theoretical principles to my observations of my thoughts and feelings throughout the day, especially in relation to my interactions with my wife. We discussed our insights together on a daily basis so that she is as much a co-creator of the model as I am. Her feminine intelligence is the centre of this model as expressed through my masculine intelligence.

This seminar on the Unity Model of Marriage will give you the opportunity to examine gender behavior in the context of marriage and of 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. This three-way subdivision of human behavior is traditional and very useful. However these three components have been studied separately, each in their own context. In this course we will make sure that we always keep track of interactions in terms of these three components together. In real life nothing happens unless all three operate in synergy.

For instance, as you read this you are thinking (cognitive, C). But you are also looking (sensorimotor, S). And you couldn't be looking and thinking unless you are motivated (affective, A) to do that by some goal you have (e.g., performing an assignment, interested in the subject, etc.). So the threefold self (A, C, S) must be involved in every interaction and behavior we do all day long. Start observing things around when you can take a moment, and think about which is the affective (A) -- or why they're doing it, and which is the cognitive (C) -- or what they're thinking while doing it, and which is the sensorimotor (S) -- or what they are doing that you observe. Often it is easier to start in reverse order with what they are doing that you can see (S), what they must be thinking (C), and why they are doing it (A).

This self-witnessing exercise is also very helpful to apply to yourself in various situations throughout the day:

What I am doing or saying or showing that someone can see (S)
What I am thinking, planning, interpreting, appraising, figuring (C)
What I am intending, striving for, hoping for, wanting, desiring (A)

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 they feel like they are in heaven and hell alternately, when there are threats they perceive to that love (e.g., when having a fight or disagreement). It is recognized that being in love with one's spouse or one's committed partner provides a delightful, heavenly, and fulfilling life. But this reality is known more from romantic songs and novels than from real life because of a lack of understanding of how unity is achieved.

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 (sometimes we observe this with our parents or uncles and aunts). 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. This applies as well to dating couples and couples who live together unmarried. Inequality of status and of rights can lead to male dominance and suppression of women's inner feminine 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 in the context of a romantic and sexual relationship. 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 and perform without awareness. Both types govern the values (A), emotions (A), thoughts (C), and actions (S) 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=titl

The way we use the word model in the "unity model of marriage" is to represent the mentality, or type of mental states, that men and women have when interacting with each other. For example, if a man has the "male dominance model" in his principles and motivations, 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 in all situations.

Other terms that are related to the term "model" in the sense we are using it, 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 at any particular time or in any specific situation or issue that confronts them.

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 unity 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, S), in thinking operations (cognitive self, C), and in feeling states (affective self, A).

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. Some men eventually get the idea that they can't just continue to dominate their wife or girlfriend 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 or parity model, and less and less time acting and thinking in the male dominance mode.

Some men are spiritually enlightened by accepting in their mind the reality of the afterlife and the ability of being together with this one woman for eternity. Once men accept this idea as real, they are called spiritually enlightened. The word "spiritual" as used in this course is defined as that which has to do with eternity. Once a man is spiritually enlightened he begins to see intuitively and rationally that equity is not bringing their wife true heavenly happiness.

Equity or parity between woman and man puts them theoretically at the same level. This relationship is better for the woman than the male dominance relationship phase -- far better. But it is not enough for a woman to feel completely free, totally her feminine, hence really happy and flourishing. A woman instinctively, or spiritually and rationally, feels and knows that she deserves a higher place in a man's estimation than just parity 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. This is not parity or equity, but unity.

Inwardly, both men and women are equally heavenly and celestial, but outwardly a man is less heavenly than a woman. This is because the male function on this planet is to face the harshness of the outside world while the female function is to provide man with the motivation for it. She provides a softer context for his harsher exterior so that he may be mollified and acquire the capacity of be more celestial, more peaceful, more altruistic, more human. Masculine intelligence alone is harsh, competitive, and task-focused; hence it neglects the higher aspects of life that he can enjoy, such as love, conjunction, unity, peacefulness, altruism, romance, children, self-sacrifice, community, communication, intimacy, compassion, receptiveness, cooperation. These are called "heavenly" or "celestial" traits and are supplied and sustained by feminine intelligence.

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, lovers 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 and boyfriends frequently oppose the unification process to more intimate levels, while wives and girlfriends constantly fight for pulling the man into such mental intimacy.

We will examine this classic and traditional relationship dynamic or fight by observing and monitoring the behavior of boyfriends and husbands, or those portrayed on TV, in song lyrics, and in 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 (S) and involves what the couple do together externally or socially.

The second level may be called cognitive affiliation (C), 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 (A), and involves what they feel for each other, whether they have compatible intentions, whether they enjoy compatible things, and whether they are striving for compatible and mutual 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 or boyfriend than to the wife or girlfriend. This basic opposition forms the psychological dynamics of the marriage relationship -- its healthy progression or its gradual degradation into abuse or failure.

Marriage? What's the secret? How not to get a divorce:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6yvoBgbQZ8&eurl

The hypothesis to be examined throughout the course is that the marriage relationship between husband and wife begins at a natural level ("natural marriages") and can add a spiritual level of relationship ("spiritual marriages"), 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. Hence "spiritual" = marriage in the afterlife of eternity. Swedenborg interviewed many couples who are living in the afterlife of eternity in what they call their "heaven."

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 their independent 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 of eternity 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, when it was discovered that we are born with a physical body in time and a spiritual body in eternity.

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 the mental zones of eternity called "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 and the methodological approach called the positive bias in science.

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.

In this psychology course 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. Often people adopt a cynical view, thinking that these are just ideas, ideals, songs, fantasy. But now with the new empirical and observational evidence presented by Swedenborg, scientists like myself can examine the facts, the explanations, the consequences.

As scientists in training in this Research Seminar on the unity model of marriage you are asked to examine this evidence and the rationality of its theory, and to see if you can usefully apply it to your current cultural and intellectual context relating to relationships and marriage.

Some marriages remain what they started out to be, namely an external socio-legal bond that is legally and socially recognized. It is also a psychological bond because married and live in 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 women crave for from their husbands or committed boyfriends.

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 (or eternal), in addition to natural (or temporary).

The difference is illustrated by the marriage vows. Our socio-legal-psychological context 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 which 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 with our spiritual bodies in the mental regions of the mind called "heaven."

Some couples who know nothing about the "afterlife of mental eternity" 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.

Although they may be in a cultural minority right now, some couples seem to have an inner 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 inner 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 of eternity, 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 detailed 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 operating from the negative bias, 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 here on earth.

This was the negative bias intellectual climate in which I was immersed when I started studying the marriage relationship in 1962 when I received my Ph.D. in psychology. But in 1981 my wife and I were browsing together the shelves in Hamilton Library here on the University of Hawaii campus, 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 Lecture Notes for Psych 459, G27, along with the student reports at:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/theistic/mental-anatomy.htm

A thorough compilation of articles and links about Swedenborg is available from Answers.com at:

www.answers.com/topic/emanuel-swedenborg

As you explore what people say about Swedenborg you will note that almost all of it has to do with interpreting his Writings as theological and religious, rather than scientific. I am among a few current scientists who see Swedenborg's Writings as science rather than religion.

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 stored and felt in the spiritual body, not in the physical body whose brain activity consists of merely chemical and electrical activity. In contrast, the activity in the spiritual body is mental and 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. The details of how this phenomenon occurs are totally unknown in psychology so it's understandable that it is not considered scientific.

This may not be an easy concept to understand right away. The positive bias in science assumes that there are two worlds of reality, one world in time-space-matter, and the other world outside time-space-matter called the mental world of 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. Thoughts and feelings cannot exist in the material world since they are not electrical or chemical. In the negative bias mode it is concluded that thoughts and feelings are not real but subjective illusions that "emerge from" the electro-chemical activity of the physical brain. This type of materialistic interpretation or bias is called reductionism.

But in the positive bias mode of scientific thinking it is concluded that thoughts and feelings are real objective phenomena. They are not material (physical anatomy), but substantive (mental anatomy). This is called "substantive dualism" in science. In other words, there exist mental substances and organs of the threefold self in our spiritual body, and our thoughts and feelings are constructed out of these mental substances in our spiritual body.

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 30 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 of mental eternity is that we must be conscious in our spiritual mind in order to be aware of the mental 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 hundreds of people undergo this resuscitation process, talking to them 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 spiritual body. 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 and early adulthood. 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 disembodied soul, dream specter, or ghost, but as a full fledged bodily human being.

Swedenborg was conscious in the world of the afterlife continuously without interruption 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 of the afterlife 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 the afterlife, 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 until the end and continue your examination and study of the facts and theory being presented in this course. Even if, in the end, you will reject the eternity feature of the unity model, there will remain several very useful concepts that you can use in your life and philosophy, such as the threefold self, the three models of marriage, and the use of these models in measuring and analyzing elements of popular culture and couples' relationships.

To think that some aspects of this proposal are 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 later 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 we all feel is a built in learned reaction against any proposal in science that makes mention of the afterlife, of heaven and hell, or of 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 supposed to think from science education that this proposal is fantastic and impossible, we are not able to prove that it is false and fantastic, or even, that it is not science. I have examined the explanations and arguments of various scientists writing from the negative bias mode. It is clear that they too are unable to prove that there is no God, unable to prove that this world is self-born or produced, unable to prove that our spiritual body does not exist, unable to prove that thoughts and feelings are electrical activity rather than eternal mental substances, unable to prove that marriage ends at death and does not continue. Etc. Etc. You can see from these considerations why I call the materialistic view as the negative bias in science.

A bias means that they assume something as valid which they cannot prove scientifically to be true or accurate.

For further discussion along this line, please consult Volume 1 of Textbook of Theistic Psychology at www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/theistic/ch1.htm

Let's examine Swedenborg's language and style, as translated from Latin into English. Quoting from Swedenborg's book Conjugial Love (1768):

Note:

In some places I insert italicized explanations in square brackets in order to fill in some of the context that is not presented here.

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 ]

EXERCISE

First read all the sub-parts of this exercise, then explore the following site:

http://healthymarriages.blogspot.com/2007/04/key-to-happiness-is-healthy-marriages.html

(a) Explore this site. Read a sample of the articles.
(b) Summarize the perspective outlined by Solomon and Tirah Keal in their marriage support blog.
(c) Compare their view to the unity model of marriage. What are the similarities and the differences.
(d) Discuss it with your friends. What are your conclusions?

Here is a selection from the site:

The Key to Happiness is Healthy Marriages

The doctrine (and practice) of true marriage love is one of the most wonderful things we can offer this world, as Christian people.

"The marriage of one husband with one wife is the precious jewel of human life." - Emanuel Swedenborg (Conjugial Love 457)

In what ways is the doctrine and practice of true marriage love different from the ways the rest of the world looks at marriage?

- Marriage is Eternal: If we think of marriage as temporary, then we won't treat it with the care it deserves. But if we recognize that marriage is eternal, we will treasure it, and nurture it, with the knowledge that it will keep getting better to eternity in Heaven.

- Marriage is about Daily Choice, or Daily Consent: In rough times in our marriage, we might be tempted to think, "Did I make the wrong choice? Did I pick the wrong person? Should I have chosen somebody else?" These thoughts will break down a marriage. Finding our "true love" is not about destiny, it's about the work of choosing to love someone every minute of every day. We have the power to make our spouse our "true love," simply by choosing them.

- Marriage is about the Complementary Union of two individuals into one "angel": Men and Women each represent half of humanity. As an individual we are really only half human, and half the image of God. But in marriage we can come together in a complementary union that allows for true human happiness.

- Marriage (like Spiritual Re-Birth) takes regular Maintenance: We might be tempted to think that once we've gotten married, the work is over. Actually the work is just beginning, and if a marriage doesn't have daily maintenance, it will fall apart much faster than any machine. If we make it a spiritual discipline to love God, and love our neighbor (the nearest one being our spouse) then we will find true happiness.

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, telling her to stop nagging him. So what has she gained in the equity model? Or take this example:

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 phase. 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 phase 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 phase fairly. This solution is often described in history and literature, and in the media today. Even if a man wants to be fair at a certain level of consciousness, he 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 phase and the popular equity phase, are not sufficient to give many men the motivational capacity to change. But there is one guarantee for success: the man can switch over to the unity model.

In order for the husband or boyfriend 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 being eternal, not ending at death.

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 phase and the equity phase. 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, and not full and complete for years and even decades. Why?

Because now the wife or girlfriend possesses spiritual leverage over him when he falls back on the equity phase and the male dominance phase.

For example:

Wife: Honey, 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: It doesn't matter if you like it or not. But you should learn to like it because it is
our conjugial heaven.

Husband: You are right.

Wife: Well, are you going to stop?

Husband: Yes. Thanks for reminding me, sweetheart.

What do you think of this kind of exchange?

You can see that the husband feels spiritually 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 spiritual commitment. She has to put motivational pressure on him by using the force that he provides her, since she herself has almost no power over the man in a man's world. In the male dominance phase the husband did not allow her to put this kind of psychological pressure on him. He would oppose it, reject it, and blame her for it. But now that he has declared himself for the unity model, these separative strategies suddenly no longer work for him. He cannot both engage in separative behaviors and continue to hold on to 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 spiritual power transfers by correspondence into psychological ability to remain motivated to continue the gradual changeover process from the earlier dominant-equity relationship to the eternal conjugial unity model.

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 or boyfriend can now compel himself to think and act from the unity model even when he is tempted to act from the equity or dominance phases of the past.

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 the unity model long enough to discover that he actually much prefers it.

When a man discovers that he 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 from within 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 of rejecting its possibility, without actual proof (negative bias in science), or accepting the possibility, without proof (positive bias in science).

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. The negative bias says that it's useless or ridiculous to examine it because it can't possibly be valid. Either way you choose, you are accepting something that has no proof.

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 approach now, you are giving yourself the opportunity to examine the evidence in seriousness (positive bias) rather than in mockery (negative bias).

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 approach 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 or approved way of thinking that we do by habit regarding scientific subjects. 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 to the next generation.

But notice this significant fact: teachers don't tell students that they are transmitting the tradition of the negative bias in science. Instead students are told that to reject the idea of eternal marriages is "science." Students are not told that to reject the afterlife is the "negative bias in science". Why, do you think this is? Why don't teachers tell students that to reject eternity is the negative bias in science, instead of saying that it is science? Why do they do that? Think about it for awhile.

When I think about it, 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. Instead, they see the "positive bias in 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 as applied to marriage. In contrast, 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 in this research seminar, 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. However 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), admired for his wide ranging set of discoveries in mining engineering, crystallography, chemistry, physics, brain anatomy, physiology. 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.

This is because Swedenborg had a passion for the full rational account in which he tried to take into account the idea that if God is omnipotent He cannot give away His power to nature or to natural laws. It is God who must be activating all the forces of nature. And further, since God had a definite purpose and goal to bring about, it was obvious to him that God had to manage all the details of nature that added up to the whole. Hence it made sense to him to bring God into science, trying to see how every phenomenon contributed to God's overall goal. He was especially aversive to the idea of keeping explanations restricted to a small area without worrying about how they fit in with the whole.

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 (prior to age 57), 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" and "afterlife").

The positive bias in science was not possible until Swedenborg published his reports about the spiritual world of eternity. 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 evidence. 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 a permanent immortal relationship, not "until death do us part", but "until endless eternity".

The physical body with which we are born in the physical world of time-space 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 body and 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 sometimes 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 located in the spiritual body.

Note well: The facial muscles and their correlated brain operations exist in time and space in the physical world, but the emotions and feelings to which they correspond, exist outside time and space in the mental world of 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. If you would like more information on this, you can check out the lectures notes for G27, Psych 459, Theistic Psychology, Part 1: Mental Anatomy.

Proof:
The thoughts and feelings of human beings are constructed out of spiritual substances not physical matter, like that of 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 in our spiritual body, which remains there forever. This means that the self, which is made up of our thoughts and feelings, is immortal. The spiritual substances originate from the Spiritual Sun just like natural matter for our physical body originates from the physical sun and stars. Remember this proof. Try it out on your friends.

At the death of the physical body, the spiritual body with its organs of sensing (S), thinking (C), and feeling (A), 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 30 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 of eternity.

Swedenborg visited the people who had been in the world of eternity 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 observational and theoretical 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 spiritual substance of rational ether emanates from the Spiritual Sun in the midst of which God can be seen visibly by those who live in the highest heavens of their mind.

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/
where you can also read the generational reports of the students who have studied theistic psychology.

From: http://www.nationalpost.com/loveandsex/story.html?id=306567

For marriage proposals ring, bended knee still de rigueur

Anne Marie Owens, National Post

Published: Wednesday, February 13, 2008

The first date and the marriage proposal, two of the seminal moments in courting behaviour, still stick very closely to a traditional script, despite dramatic societal changes in relationship-making.

For all the hype about hooking up, the increasingly casual view of relationships and the move away from conventional marital patterns, new research suggests that the majority of young people have expectations of these pivotal relationship moments that are rooted in convention and traditions established long ago.

In two separate studies in the latest issue of the journal Sex Roles, researchers examine the accepted scripts for the first date and for the engagement proposal, and in both cases, the so-called scripts could as easily fit 1968 as they do 2008.

The engagement proposal considered to be the strongest, for example, was more likely to feature the traditional elements of the man asking the woman, a diamond ring being presented, and even the extremely traditional move of a bended-knee proposal.

First-date scripts cling quite clearly to traditional gender roles -- with the majority of the hypothetical scenarios assigning the "pick up date," "pay," "walk/drive home," and "more than kissing" roles to the man.

The findings were culled from research involving large-scale surveys of university students at different Midwestern U.S. colleges. Together, they show that "the commonly accepted, traditional elements" -- as one researcher describes it -- still shape the perception of the good date or the good engagement more than the lived reality of most students.

Neither of the studies surveyed students about their experiences, but rather focused on their perceptions of hypothetical situations -- an important distinction.

"College students are especially prone to ideas about romance," said Sine Anahita, a sociology professor at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, and one of the researchers of the engagement study. "College students have been fed a steady diet of media images of love and romance ... If an event like an engagement proposal is supposed to be the most romantic highlight of a woman's life, she would want it to follow a script that she is going to understand."

The engagement study was drawn from the responses of more than 2,000 students who were asked to evaluate relationship strength based on how a hypothetical couple adhered to "culturally accepted" scripts about a proposal.

"Both men and women, and both older and younger individuals were likely to evaluate relationships based on their conformity to traditional proposal scripts," said the study, called, A Story and a Ring: Audience Judgments about Engagement Proposals. "There was a great deal of agreement among our participants as to the message that a traditional or non-traditional proposal sends to others as to the strength of a relationship."

Quite simply, the most traditional elements of a proposal (bended knee, parental permission) led to a rating that the relationship was strong; while non-traditional elements (no ring accompanying the proposal or the couple decided to get married without either one asking the other) were rated as a relationship that was not very strong or impossible to classify.

The first-date study, which was drawn from a survey of more than 200 college students, revolved around lists that included an average of 21 actions they expected to occur on the date.

Although traditional gender roles were common in the hypothetical assignment of roles in the date, there were interesting gender variations related to sexual behaviour and whoever initiated the date.

Women surveyed believed that "a kiss" was more likely on a male-initiated date than a female-initiated date; men believed that "more than kissing" was more likely on a female-initiated date than a male-initiated date. What that means, the researchers suggest, is that person asked out on the date "is likely to be more confident that their date partner has a romantic or sexual interest in him or her" than the person who initiated the date will be.

As to why so many elements of the first-date script stayed so closely to the traditional, the lead researcher suggests it is because that is where the cultural knowledge resides. "Even a person who has never been on a first date can describe one because they have heard stories from others about their first dates, they have seen first dates depicted in movies, and so on," said Mary Claire Morr Serewicz, a professor at the University of Denver and lead researcher. "The first date script seems to be something we all know on a cultural level ... Because that knowledge exists on a cultural level, it is very slow to change."

From: http://www.nationalpost.com/loveandsex/story.html?id=306567

EXERCISE 1.0

(a) Read the above Introductory Section once through, then again while taking notes. (b) Note some of your reactions to this unusual treatment of a subject normally associated with religion or spirituality, rather than psychology. (c) Note your reactions to the positive bias proposal, namely that it's possible that the Swedenborg reports are scientifically valid. Note your reactions to the content of the Swedenborg reports, such as our immortality and the state of being married to one's soul mate forever in the mental world of eternity of the afterlife.

Now discuss your notes and observations with friends and class teams.

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 (A), the cognitive organ (C), and the sensorimotor organ (S). 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-skeletal system.

The circulatory system in the physical body corresponds to the affective organ in the spiritual body, whose operations give us the subjective experience of feeling and willing. Feelings in the spiritual body 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-skeletal 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 correspond to 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. Affective acts (A), cognitive acts (C), and Sensorimotor acts (S) form a perfect synergy between feelings (A), thoughts (C), and actions with their sensations (S). 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 intimate and influential is the affective operation (A) in which we maintain selected motivations and desires in accordance with our primary needs and satisfactions (A). These affective operations in our mind are the most influential or determinative because they select and direct 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 are of theirs, 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 what are 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, showing their feelings and emotions --

being surprised,
reacting with anger,
being pleased or displeased,
feeling like talking or feeling like keeping quiet,
being in a good mood or bad,
getting excited when telling a story,
picking a fight,
feeling resentful,
liking something,
appreciating something,
feeling happy about something,
walking out on an exchange,
being terrified to commit,
being worried about their success,
lacking confidence or feeling very confident,
getting excited in games,
etc.

These observations prove that men equally with women have feelings and react with emotions all the time.

Living means having emotions and feelings. Hence it is invalid to say that men have less feelings than women, or that men are less emotional then women. Instead, we need to think that men express their feelings and emotions differently than women, and we shall study these differences.

Emotional reactions and feeling motivations are a necessary part of all thinking and acting. It is not possible to act and react in a conversation or interaction without feelings and motivations being present all the time, at every instant.

Nevertheless there are differences between men and women as to how aware or conscious they are of their own feelings and emotions from moment to moment, or of the emotions of their partner. Women tend to specialize in becoming aware of feelings and emotions of their partner. They are motivated to practice more than men in focusing consciously on feelings in gender relationships. This is because women are motivated to conjoin to the man of their choice as intimately as possible, while men are motivated to keep their independence emotionally and in their feeling life.

This difference in the skill of gender perceptiveness between a man and a woman creates an active gender dynamic in which the woman is motivated to prod her man to become more aware of his and her feelings and motivations.

The man tends to resist this affective prodding and finds it unpleasant and objectionable. This creates a constant strain on the developing relationship. The woman feels that the man doesn't want to "commit" and is resisting the process of conjunction by wanting to maintain affective independence and some mental distance, thereby keeping the couple in a state of division and conflict which is not totally satisfying to the woman. Nevertheless, all men can learn to be motivated to understand and recognize their feelings and those of their partners. We will examine the methods men can use to be successful in this fundamental change in their gender character.

Both men and women can gain understanding of the initial oppositeness between the sexes--women striving to conjoin, men resisting the process. The analysis of how men and women talk to each other reveals this dynamic opposition between men and women, as exemplified in the studies reported in our text by Deborah Tannen--Gender and Discourse. Analyzing verbal interactions between men and women is a powerful method for bringing out the differences between how they use talk to either oppose each other or to gain deeper intimacy and mutual support. Some of your activities in this course will include observing the talk and interaction of men and women in real life and on television (see Instructions for Report 1).

The views of "Dr. Laura" in her book The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands presents the point of view that men are in general "simpler creatures" than women, and that a wife needs to treat her husband in a certain way in order to keep him happy and well functioning. This is a different model of marriage than the unity model because it establishes an unequal status between men and women. This point of view puts less of responsibility on the men to change and more responsibility on the women to learn to live with it. The wife is told to adjust to this unequal status rather than to seek equality or unity.

The individual's threefold self in gender relationships is a joint product of biology, socialization, culture, and spiritual make up. As children we acquire the relationship style of our parents, other adults, and the media (TV, movies, songs, magazines, cartoons, commercials, online gathering places, social networking). By the time we begin adolescent or adult relationships, men have been exposed to years of stereotyped gender behaviors in all three domains of the threefold self:

(a) exploitative feelings and intentions (affective self) towards girls and women, whom they view as the "opposite" sex

(b) sexist thoughts (cognitive self) that stereotype women in a negative content

(c) injurious or hostile actions and words (sensorimotor self) against women

These affective, cognitive, and sensorimotor patterns of negative gender behavior by men create an atmosphere of discord and conflict in dating and marriage, even as the partners strive to love each other and become a functioning and satisfying unit.

2.1 Mental Anatomy of Women and Men

Section 2.1

2.1 Part A

The expression "mental anatomy" at first sounds like a metaphor about the mind. We are used to hearing about the anatomy of the physical body. But regarding the mind, it is common for us to imagine that it either doesn't exist, or if it does exist, it is something gaseous or transparent, not solid, just as "a spirit" or "departed person," is often portrayed in literature or television. But we are also familiar with the portrayal of angels who appear on earth and have visible bodies. But we imagine that after they return to "heaven," they no longer have a real body for being married. We all have been exposed to the various fantasies or imaginings that people have about the afterlife, including our own. This is why it is essential that we stick with the facts and the actual observations.

Swedenborg was the only scientist in history who was allowed by God to be conscious in his spiritual mind before resuscitation, and therefore he is the only scientist in the history of the world who can give us factual information about the spiritual world of the afterlife in eternity. This is looking at the Swedenborg Reports with the positive bias in science perspective.

It is fascinating to discover what married couples are like when they reach the heavens in the mental eternity of their afterlife. Swedenborg's observations of the relationship between husbands and wives in heaven and hell give us factual information about the future we can have in our immortality after we are no longer connected to the physical world. People who find their way into the heavens of their mind, are married, which symbolizes and reflects their mental unity. Amazingly, when Swedenborg saw a conjugial couple from a distance, he saw but one person walking or sitting. But when he came nearer to the couple, they were a husband and wife. The fact that they appear as one person is an outward representation of their inward mental unity.

From Swedenborg's description of the difference between men and women, I constructed various visual charts to picture their mental anatomy. By studying the details pictured in somewhat different way, it might be easier for you to gain a clearer knowledge and understanding of how men and women differ in their spiritual or mental anatomy.

Remember:
spiritual = afterlife of eternity.

So the anatomical difference between the threefold mind of men and women remains forever to distinguish them from birth to eternity.

This diagram is from an article I wrote on "spiritual genes in marriage" and is available here: www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss/dow2.html

Spiritual Gender Genes

dowfig1.gif (5308 bytes)

Quoting from the Writings of Swedenborg:

CL 195. X. THAT THIS FORMATION BY THE WIFE IS EFFECTED BY THE CONJUNCTION OF HER WILL WITH THE INTERNAL WILL OF THE MAN.

That with the man are rational wisdom and moral wisdom, and that the wife conjoins herself with those things with the man which pertain to his moral wisdom, has been shown above (nos. 163-65). All things pertaining to rational wisdom make his understanding, and all things pertaining to moral wisdom make his will. It is with these latter, being those which form the man's will, that the wife conjoins herself.

It is the same whether it be said that the wife conjoins herself or that she conjoins her will to the man's will; for a wife is born voluntary and hence does what she does from the will. It is said with the man's internal will because man's will has its seat in his intellect, and the intellectual of man is the inmost of woman, according to what was said above (no. 32) and frequently thereafter respecting the formation of woman from man. Men have also an external will, but this often partakes of simulation and dissimulation. A wife sees this will clearly but does not conjoin herself with it except in pretence or playfully. (CL 195)

CL 222. (13) There is a conjugial atmosphere which flows in from the Lord through heaven into each and every thing of the universe, extending even to its lowest forms. We showed above in its own chapter* that love and wisdom, or to say the same thing, good and truth, emanate from the Lord. A marriage of these two elements continually emanates from the Lord, because they are Him, and from Him come all things. Moreover, whatever emanates from Him fills the universe; for without this, nothing that came into existence would continue to exist.

[2] There are several atmospheres which emanate from the Lord. For example, an atmosphere of conservation for conserving the created universe; an atmosphere of protection for protecting good and truth against evil and falsity; an atmosphere of reformation and regeneration; an atmosphere of innocence and peace; an atmosphere of mercy and grace; besides others. But the universal one of all is a conjugial atmosphere, because it is at the same time an atmosphere of propagation and is thus the supreme atmosphere in conserving the created universe by successive generations.

[3] This conjugial atmosphere fills the universe and pervades it from the firsts to the lasts of it. That this is so is apparent from observations made above,** where we showed that there are marriages in heaven, and most perfect marriages in the third or highest heaven; also, that besides being in human beings, this atmosphere exists in all members of the animal kingdom on earth, extending even to worms, and furthermore in all members of the vegetable kingdom, from olive trees and palms to the smallest grasses.

[4] This atmosphere is more universal than that of the heat and light which emanate from the sun of our world; and reason can be convinced of this from the fact that the conjugial atmosphere operates even when the sun's warmth is absent, such as in winter, and when the sun's light is absent, such as at night. Especially is this so in the case of human beings. It continues to operate because it originates from the sun of the angelic heaven, and that sun produces a constant balance of heat and light, that is, a constant union of good and truth. For heaven is in a state of perpetual spring. Variations in goodness and truth in heaven or in its warmth and light do not result from changes of the sun, as changes on earth do from variations in the heat and light coming from the sun there; but they occur as a result of the way recipient vessels receive them. (CL 222)

To summarize the mental anatomy of a man and woman:

A woman does things from wisdom by means of love. A man does things from love by means of wisdom. In other words, a woman does things from her cognitive organ by means of her affective organ. A man does things from his affective organ by means of his cognitive organ.

2.1 Part B

The following diagram is from an article on "The Spiritual Psychobiology of Marriage" and is available here:

www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss/dow1.html#biology

The diagram immediately above shows the two phases or stages of marriage. Initially (phase 1), the man's consciousness of externalizing truth, which is what he thinks about and knows (cognitive, C), conjoins itself with the wife's externalizing good, which is the complex of the loves she has (A). And reciprocally, the wife's externalizing loves and affections (A) conjoin with the husband's externalizing cognitions (C). Thus they form an externalizing marriage or social and moral bond (natural marriage). In phase 1 of marriage and close relationships the man presents the external front and leadership and is on the outside facing the world, while the woman is on the inside creating a permanent relationship and bond between them, thus a "home" as it were.

In traditional marriages following the male dominance model, this relative position of man and woman is enacted literally, so that the woman stays home and is the "homemaker," while the man leaves the home to earn a living for the family. In modern marriages following the equity model, wives and mothers may also have work or career outside the home. But psychologically, biologically, and spiritually the woman in a couple partnership occupies an inner position relative to the man, who is on the outside. A man's consciousness faces outward to the world while a woman's consciousness faces inward toward the bonding of the relationship and the achievement of mental intimacy or unity.

The woman works towards unity from her "external good" which is "within" or "above" the man's "external truth." What is within or above in terms of spiritual positioning is also higher, more refined, more concerned with celestial things like love, harmony, unity, growth, peace, beauty, sensuality, warmth.

The man's outward or external spiritual positioning is lower, rougher, grosser, more concerned with spiritual things like truth, knowledge, rationality, doctrine, precepts, principles, applications.

Phase 1 in marriage and relationships is called externalizing because the man's cognitive focus (C, achieving) and the wife's affective focus (A, bonding) are both in the externalizing or lower degrees of their consciousness (natural marriage). However, if the two partners continue to grow together and conjoin more deeply within, then they enter phase 2 which is an internalizing union or conjunction (spiritual marriage). Now their internalizing parts are conjoined or united--the man's internalizing good and the woman's internalizing truth. Now for the first time the man becomes fully a husband and the woman fully a wife.

The unity model specifies the mental anatomy of marriage. In the negative bias approach to the psychology of marriage only phase 1 is recognized. Couples are expected to grow more interdependent and close as the decades of marriage proceed. This is certainly valid. Phase 1 undergoes growth and development so that the partners feel closer and closer, when the marriage is a success and lasts. But the unity model introduces a new dimension to the relationship based on mental anatomy not physical anatomy or psychological definitions of closeness. In other words every man and woman is born with a temporary physical body on earth, and a permanent spiritual body in the mental world of eternity, as discussed above. The process of bonding and becoming interdependent does not occur in the physical body or with the physical body.

The process of becoming a couple is a mental event, and must have an organic basis in the spiritual body where are located our mental organs: affective (feelings), cognitive (thinking) and sensorimotor (sensations and movements).

Bonding is an activity of our feelings, loves, intentions, desires, fears, anxieties, enjoyments -- these are all mental experiences we have as a result of the operations going on in our affective organ in the spiritual body in the mental world of eternity. We are conscious of these experiences because they are going on in the portion of the spiritual body called the natural mind. So the diagrams in this section attempt to portray the organic relationship between man and woman in the process of bonding, both in phase 1 (natural marriage), and in phase 2 (spiritual marriage).

You can see that the anatomical nature of bonding is totally different in the natural marriage phase (1) and in the spiritual marriage phase (2). Couples cannot attain to the beginning of phase 2 by going further and further with phase 1. The two phases are discontinuous and one cannot go from one to the other. They are in "discrete degrees" and relate to each other by correspondence (not by continuity). Phase 1 bonding activity in the mind of the partners is an operation going on in the external region of the spiritual body. For instance if you have a pimple on the face it is an external activity (skin) of the physical body. But if you have a cold sore on the lip it is an internal activity (virus) of the physical body. Phase 1 bonding is external, phase 2 bonding is internal.

Phase 1 bonding in external marriages and relationships conjoins the man's external mental focus (cognitive, C) the woman's external mental focus (affective, A). A man's consciousness focus as he grows up and becomes an adult is centered in his cognitive organ (C), while a woman's consciousness as she grows up and becomes and adult is centered in her affective organ (A). When man and woman get together to form a couple or romantic partnership they are each focused on reciprocal zones of their cumulative interactions. The man is focused on this thoughts about himself with her, while the woman is focused on her feelings and intentions about him. Phase 1 bonding takes place when her feelings are conjoined to his thoughts.

If she does not like his thoughts she cannot bond to him. A woman bonds to a man romantically when she likes his thoughts and his way of reasoning and presenting himself and things. If she does not approve of his thoughts, or feels repelled by his attitudes, she cannot bond with him romantically.

A man will allow the woman to bond to him when he recognizes that she likes his thoughts.

Note that in phase 1 bonding the woman takes the lead. The man does not bond because bonding is an affective focus on the relationship and men have a cognitive focus on the relationship. So when the woman takes the lead in phase 1 bonding (external) by loving the man's thoughts, he can respond and react by allowing it in his mind or rejecting it in his mind. In general, if he sees that she likes his thoughts, he will feel attracted to her, and this is the acceptance of her bonding to him. In this way they achieve mutual bonding when the man man responds positively to the woman. Anatomically this is all happening in the external portion of their spiritual body.

After phase 1 bonding is achieved and is working for both partners, there is the opportunity of starting phase 2 bonding, which is an inward anatomical conjunction or interdependence of their spiritual bodies. Here everything is reversed. The woman cannot take the lead. She eventually comes to realize this after trying desperately to achieve affective intimacy which the man continuously and successfully resists. She then understands that this deeper intimacy she craves for has to come from him. The man has to take the lead in phase 2.

Note the anatomical details of this spiritual bonding process (phase 2, diagram above). The wife is shown outside and the man inside -- the opposite of phase 1. In phase 2 bonding the spiritual bodies are facing the mental world of eternity, not the physical world of time and space. In the mental world of eternity what is within determines what is on the outside. In phase 1 the wife is inside and the husband outside, hence the wife takes the lead. In phase 2, the husband is within and the wife is outside, hence the husband takes the lead. If the woman fails to take the lead in phase 1, there will be no external bonding -- they are a couple only in name. Similarly, If the man fails to take the lead in phase 2, there will be no internal bonding -- they are a couple only in the natural marriage sense, that is, without affective intimacy (spiritual marriage).

The woman takes the lead for external bonding (natural marriage), while the man takes the lead for internal bonding (spiritual marriage). External bonding involves external cognitive operations (man) conjoined to external affective operations (woman). Internal bonding involves internal cognitive operations (woman) conjoined to internal affective operations (man). To understand this you need to know the difference between external mental operations (A and C) and internal mental operations (A and C).

External affective operations (A) is feminine and contrast with internal affective operations (A) which is masculine. External cognitive operations (C) is masculine and contrasts with internal cognitive operations (C) which is feminine. In other words, the mental organs of women in the spiritual body is arranged with the cognitive organ inside the affective organ, while for men, the cognitive organ is outside the affective organ, which is within. In still other words, women act from inner truth through outer love, while men act from inner love through outer truth. Masculine truth is outward, feminine truth is inward. Masculine love is inward, feminine love is outward. What is inward commands what is outward, hence men's way of thinking is adapted for the external life, while women's way of thinking is adapted for the internal life.

In the afterlife of eternity where the couple will be rejoined, the woman's thoughts and wisdom (C) define the couple's external life (S), while the man's loves and virtues (A) define the couple's internal life. In this life, the man's thoughts and intelligence (C) define the couple's external life, while the woman's loves and virtues (A) define the couple's internal life.

Our external life refers to our focus on the daily issues and activities a couple is immersed in -- living together, adapting to each other's social and physical habits and styles, coping with social and financial demands, caring for children, relationship to parents, community service, entertainment, sports, eating together, sexual activity. Our internal life refers to our focus on mental intimacy and affective support and bonding -- being best friends and soul mates, looking out for what is best for the other, full confidence and trust, reliance and acceptance, being together forever.

To be fulfilled and to have access to the full benefit of marriage bonding, it is necessary that the partners conjoin both their external (phase 1) and their internal life (phase 2).

In the diagram below, the same process is portrayed.

The externalizing union in stage 1 is shown to bond the man's externalizing truth (C) to the wife's externalizing good (A). This is not so much a true union as a partnership since it resides in externalizing (or lower) parts of the consciousness. Husband and wife as partners are adjoined to each other by externalizing natural life and family, but they are not yet conjoined from within by inner or spiritual life, which refers to inmost intimacy and eternal friendship. But in stage 2, the husband's internalizing good (A) is conjoined to the wife's internalizing truth (C). Now the marriage bond consists of his affections (A) covered over with her truths (C). This is a true conjunction or union because it resides in the higher or internalizing regions of their consciousness and life. Only when this stage of internal conjunction is achieved can they be prepared into a heavenly marriage and live together in eternity.

Couples who do not progress to an internal union of minds or spirits (stage 2, spiritual marriage), remain separated in their internals, and when they meet again in the other life, they live with one another again for a brief period. They then can become aware of each other's internal character and disposition, and these separate them. Each then looks for another partner with whom they can enter into an internal marriage in heaven. But this happens only when both have been regenerated while still in the physical body.

To be regenerated means to learn to give up inherited hellish traits and to acquire heavenly traits in one's threefold self.

When they meet in the other life and live together again briefly, they may decide that they are unsuitable for each other by internal disposition, in which case they separate. The one who is regenerate in character goes to heaven with the newly found conjugial partner or soul mate, while the other who is not regenerated goes to hell where they enter into a series of relationships, which are called infernal concubinage. These infernal marriages are purely externalizing and both partners are "devils" who hate each other's guts yet are forced to endure each other in a marriage made in hell.

Quoting from Swedenborg's Conjugial Love:

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. (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 88. (iii) There is the truth of good, and from this the good of truth, that is to say, truth coming from good and good from that truth; both of them have a tendency implanted from creation to join themselves into one.

Some idea of the distinction between these two must be gained, because knowledge of the essential source of conjugial love depends upon it. For the truth of good, that is, truth from good, is, as will be shown in what follows [90, 91], male; and the good of truth, that is, the good from that truth, is female. But the distinction can be better grasped, if love is substituted for good and wisdom for truth. These are one and the same (see 84 above). The only way wisdom can come into existence for a person is by means of the love of being wise. If this love is taken away, there is no way the person can be wise. It is wisdom arising from this love which is meant by the truth of good, or truth coming from good. But when a person has as a result of that love acquired wisdom, and loves wisdom in himself, that is, loves himself for his wisdom, then he forms a love, which is the love of wisdom and is meant by the good of truth, or good coming from that truth.

[2] A man therefore possesses two loves. One, which comes first, is the love of being wise, and the other, which comes later, is the love of wisdom. But if this second love remains with a man, it is a wicked love, called pride in or love of one's own intelligence. It will be proved in the following pages that it has been provided from creation that, to prevent this love being his ruin, it was taken from the man and copied into the woman, so becoming conjugial love which makes him whole again. Some remarks about these two loves and the copying of the latter one into the woman may be seen in 32, 33 above, and in the Preliminaries, 20. If therefore we understand for love "good" and for wisdom "truth," then it is proved by what has been said that there is truth of good, that is, truth coming from good, and from this the good of truth, that is, good coming from that truth. (CL 88)

Note this sentence in the quote above from CL 88: "the truth of good, that is, truth from good, is male; and the good of truth, that is, the good from that truth, is female." Here is a diagram that attempts to portray what the passages above describe:

Starting at the bottom you can see that literature written by women is different from that of men, or that women managers do things in a feminine way, which is different from the masculine way. The question of "Which is better or more effective" needs to be answered by presenting evidence showing that women who have been traditionally excluded from certain activities or jobs, have been working at these now for several workforce generations, and some women outscore men, while the overall average and range are also very similar.

This proves that men and women can perform equally effectively in any job setting or team work.

But it leaves open the question of how these jobs or activities are performed by men and by women. The diagram above indicates what the differences are in the way women and men perform the same activities. This difference is not due to their intelligence, but to their mental anatomy. For instance, men and women eat the same foods, but their bodies assimilate the nutrients from them differently due to hormonal and biochemical differences relating to physical anatomy or physiology.

Now you need to practice applying the diagram to the differences you can observe between men and women. Women are most comfortable being themselves according to their mental anatomy. This is how they define intimacy with a man in marriage or in an exclusive relationship. When the woman feels that she can be her feminine self in the relationship she feels maximum freedom, and thence total intimacy with the man.

She feels happy and alive when this happens. Everything she then does is from her feminine self. This is portrayed in the diagram above. If a woman competes with another woman or a man, she does it from her wisdom by means of her love. Her wisdom is inmost, while her love is outmost. What is inmost is less clearly in awareness compared to what is outmost. So when a woman acts she is less aware of her wisdom in the act, and more aware of her love in the act. A man is the reciprocal of this. When a man acts he is less aware of of his love in the act, and more aware of his wisdom in the act. In order to understand this you need to call upon what you already know about men and women -- which is considerable.

EXERCISE 2.1.1:

Read this Section once over then again as you think about your parents. Jot down or type out thoughts that come to you as you consider these questions.

(a) Your father as a representative of man, and your mother as a representative of woman. How were they different as you grew up? How did you experience them distinctly? What was a normal or regular mood or emotional quality that you experienced when being with one of them, or the other, or with both together? What similar or different thoughts or emotions did you have when something happened and you had to deal in turn with your father and your mother?

(b) Now look at your notes. You might want to expand on some issues. Summarize what you discovered in relation to how a man thinks and feels and how a woman thinks and feels. Relate this to the mental anatomy of a man and a woman.

(c) Now apply this approach to other men and women you know -- siblings, friends, neighbors, teachers, motorists, co-workers, supervisors. Does this approach help you to understand better what people do?

(d) Now discuss your findings and new perspective with friends, parents, or class teams. Come to class prepared to discuss some of these issues.

2.2. Masculine Intelligence and Feminine Intelligence

The anatomy of the human mind contains a higher spiritual mind that we use in our afterlife of eternity and a lower natural mind that we use in this life. The conjugial heavens in eternity are the thoughts and feelings we have in the spiritual mind. The conscious life we have in this life is through the thoughts and feelings in our natural mind. At death the natural mind becomes unconscious while we awaken fully conscious in the spiritual mind. This anatomy has been described by Swedenborg through his observations of the afterlife in his spiritual mind. At age 57 he suddenly developed the capacity to be conscious in his spiritual mind as well as in his natural mind. He was thus able to describe in his reports the empirical details of resuscitation and conjugial love. We are taking on the positive bias in science so that we can examine and assess what he has presented. If we remain in the usual negative bias in science we would be unable to examine and assess his reports without rejecting them right from the start as being impossible. The positive bias allows us to examine the reports objectively and to do so at their face value. Swedenborg was a well known scientist and public figure in Sweden and he had the respect of everyone as a genius and honest impeccable scientist.

The mental anatomy that we are considering in the previous diagrams clearly indicate that the intelligence of men cannot be the same as the intelligence of women inasmuch as they are anatomically reciprocals of each other. In the male dominance mentality men are more intelligent than women. In the equity mentality men and women are equally intelligent. In the unity model men and women have different intelligences that must fit together. By fitting together as reciprocals they are able to greatly enhance each other's thinking and understanding.

In other words the world is greatly enriched in intelligence because there are men and women in the equation. Each gender contributes a unique type of thinking and understanding. According to the mental anatomy diagrams above, men act (S) from love (A) by means of intelligence (C), while women act (S) from intelligence (C) by means of love.

Another way of saying it is this:
Men act (S) from love (A) by through intelligence (C).
Women act (S) from intelligence through love (A).

Still another way of saying the same anatomical fact:
Men act (S) from feelings (A) through thoughts (C).
Women act (S) from thoughts (C) through feelings (A).

Diagrammatically:

Men: A_m -----> C_m -----> S_m
Women: C_w -----> A_w -----> S_w

As is plainly visible, the threefold self of men and women is created by anatomical differences in the way their mental organs function in action (S), thought (C), and feeling (A). Remember that what is first in the sequence is also higher and more interior. So a man's highest and inmost organ is the affective (A) while a woman's inmost organ is the cognitive (C). Note that for men intelligence (C) is in the intermediate position while women's intelligence (C) is in the first position. Since first is always higher it follows that women's intelligence (C_w) is higher than man's intelligence (C_m). This is the basis for the unity model of marriage.

Higher or interior intelligence is more spiritual, while lower or external intelligence is natural. Hence women's intelligence is more suited and adapted for spiritual or interior things, while man's intelligence is more suited and adapted for natural or external things.

Experience in this world demonstrated that a woman's intelligence gives her the capacity to function and achieve as much as a man through his male intelligence. Women can do the same jobs as men and perform within similar ranges. But because women can do this with their feminine intelligence does not mean that the female intelligence is the same as the male intelligence.

When it comes to achieving a spiritual marriage woman's intelligence provides a big advantage over masculine intelligence. Spiritual marriages are based on the unity model. This phase becomes actual when man's intelligence conjoins with woman's intelligence.

Note again:

Men:                  A_IM -----> C_EM -----> S_M
Women:            C_IF -----> A_EF -----> S_F
Conjoint self:     A_IMC_IF -----> C_EMA_EF -----> S_MS_F

IM = internal male
IF = internal female
EM = external male
EF= external female

Note that the unity couple's conjoint self is constructed anatomically by joining together man's interior or higher feelings (A_IM) with woman's interior or higher thoughts (C_IF) yielding this: (A_IMC_IF), and man's lower or external thoughts (C_EM) with woman's lower or external feelings (A_EF) yielding this: (C_EMA_EF).

As you can see from the anatomical diagram natural marriage (phase 1) consists of conjoining woman's lower or external good (A) with man's lower or external truth (C_EMA_EF). Phase 2 (spiritual marriage) consists of conjoining man's inmost or higher good (A) to woman's interior or higher thoughts (A_IMC_IF).

Note from the diagram that in natural marriages (phase 1) the woman is within (A) while the man is outside (C) relative to each other. Anatomically, the natural marriage is the conjunction between the woman's affective organ (A) in the external mind and the man's cognitive organ (C) in the external mind. The affective organ supplies the operations of the will, of intentions, of motives, of goal achievement. The cognitive organ supplies the operations of the understanding, of planning, interpreting.

So in this external conjunction of the partners (phase 1, natural marriages), the woman is the source of the couple's intentions and motives (A) towards the world, while the man is the source of the couple's interpretations of the world and their planning strategies (C).

Note that external or natural female affections (A) are used for the couple's intentions, motives, values, feelings (A) while external or natural male intelligence (C) is used for the couple's dealings with the world -- interpreting what is going on on the outside and planning strategies to deal with it (C). Hence it is that the man takes the lead in dealing with the outside world where the couple must survive and adapt, while the woman takes the lead in dealing with the inside world of the marriage and the family. This has applied to all couple relationships in the past, which is why men run things in the world while women run things in the home. This is still true today with modern couples (equity model) that have working wives and mothers. The men are supposed to help out with domestic chores to ease the load on the working wives and moms. But society still attributes to the woman the central responsibility for running the home (cooking. laundry, toddlers) and making sure everything is being taken care of.

In natural marriages the external or materialistic thoughts (C_EM) of the man are conjoined to the external materialistic feelings (A_EF) of the woman. In spiritual marriages (unity model) the interior or spiritual feelings of the man (A_IM) are conjoined to the interior or spiritual thoughts of the woman (C_IM).

Natural marriages are involved in the male dominance model and in the equity model. Spiritual marriages are involved in the unity model. Natural marriage (phase 1, dominance and equity models) is called an external conjunction of man and woman because it involves the conjunction of the two people's external minds. Spiritual marriage (phase 2, unity model) is called an internal conjunction of man and woman because it involves the conjunction of the two people's external minds.

Every person is born with a natural mind and a spiritual mind. Both are housed in the spiritual body which is born in eternity and connected by correspondence with the physical body which is born in the natural world of matter, time and place. This is why we are called dual citizens. We are citizens of the physical world of time through our temporary physical body, which functions in correspondence with our natural mind. And through our immortal spiritual body, we are also citizens of the spiritual world of the afterlife, also called the mental world of eternity.

Until death of the physical body we are conscious in our natural mind and unconscious in our spiritual mind. After resuscitation from death (a few hours later), we are conscious in our spiritual mind and unconscious in our natural mind. We continue our life of immortality in eternity through our spiritual mind which is housed in our spiritual body.

Spiritual marriage (phase 2) involves the conjunction of the man's interior or spiritual mind with the interior or spiritual mind of the woman. This is why spiritual marriages are permanent and eternal.

Note carefully:
Since spiritual marriage is an internal conjunction of the their spiritual body and spiritual mind it cannot be seen in the physical world. Natural marriage is an external conjunction of their physical body and interactions, it can be seen, measured, and recorded. Natural marriage has a worldly and legal basis in the physical world, while spiritual marriage becomes visible and recordable in the world of eternity.

Nevertheless, when the couple is involved in a spiritual marriage, as in the unity model, their natural marriage reflects this. For instance, in a spiritual marriage the couple's natural marriage is in correspondence with it so that it may be called a heavenly marriage or a 'match made in heaven' between soul mates. The unity model leads to such a spiritual marriage.

The husband who wants to be a unity husband has to learn to accept and love the following principles of good behavior towards his wife:

1. Not to express disagreement through the sensorimotor self (head , face, hands, stance, voice, touch, speech acts). Wanting to learn from the wife what she sees and experiences about his sensorimotor expressions when he interacts with her under various situations or issues.

2. Not to express disagreement in verbal exchanges that are experienced by the wife as disjunctive. Wanting to learn from the wife what she experiences as disjunctive and unsexy conversational style.

3. Not to perform acts of disloyalty to her. Not to betray her to others by revealing things she does not want them to know. Not to discuss her with anyone in a way she would object if she heard a recording of the conversation. Not to lie to her in order to protect himself from her disapproval. Not to ignore what she says, but to think about it and remember it, and make it important to him.

4. To be supportive of her by encouraging her in what she wants to do or accomplish. To want to strengthen her self-confidence and thus, not to do or say anything that would weaken it or hurt it. To listen to her, to understand her, to learn from her, to admire her thinking, to appreciate her humor, to love her observations and perspective on various things.

5. To be protective of her sense of security and her vulnerabilities. To love her femininity. To be soft and sweet with her, always. To avoid giving her worries. To relieve her stress and anxieties.

6. To be useful to her in various ways that make her life more comfortable. To learn to offer to do things for her, then to learn to do them in a way she approves and likes.

7. To touch her every time he sees her. To keep himself clean, shaven, and attired in clean, attractive clothes. To learn how she likes to be touched and aroused. To pay attention to details. To learn how to make her laugh, and what puts her in a good mood. To be be dedicated to her happiness.

8. To learn how she wants him to make up when he precipitated a state of disjunction between them, by violating good principles of action. To learn how to perform procedures of (a) sufficient apology, (b) felt remorse, and (c) fun ideas about restitution or compensation (e.g., surprises that delight her).

These same principles of good behavior apply to all couples, married or not, who are in a romantic and exclusive long term relationship that they think of as forever or eternal.

Husbands can be committed to these 'good behavior' principles only when they experience an attraction to the unity model of marriage. To feel this attraction they must have a liking for the spiritual ideas of eternity and femininity. Love attracts. The husband has to love the idea in his mind that he is going to be attached to this woman more and more to endless eternity. He has to find this idea attractive in his mind. To be attached to this one woman forever. He has to love that idea more than any other idea he can think of. When a man brings himself into this mental state, he can learn to love these 'good behavior' principles, and begins to practice them in his daily interactions.

Once a man is committed to this daily practice of being a unity marriage husband, his mental state changes day by day, progressively into the "heavenly order." This is an expression used in the Swedenborg Reports where it is described according to what Swedenborg observed during his interviews and visits with couples after resuscitation who inhabited their heavenly layers in the mental world of eternity. The heavenly order of the mind is arranged in a top-down hierarchy of loves or feelings of a certain kind or quality. At the very top of the hierarchy of loves is what the Swedenborg Reports call "conjugial love." The word's usual spelling "conjugal" refers to natural marriage in the socio-legal sense, but when spelled "conjugial" it refers to spiritual marriage.

Spiritual marriage begins when both partners understand and realize that their union is permanent to eternity. Spiritual marriage evolves from that beginning and progresses closer and closer to the heavenly order. This means that the husband has endorsed and committed himself to the principles of good behavior needed to build the unity model marriage. In a "conjugial marriage" the affective hierarchy of both husband and wife are arranged so that the highest love each one has is the love for each other. He is her heart and circulatory system, while she is her lungs or respiratory system. He supplies their conjoint blood -- that is, their loves and affections, and she supplies their conjoint breath -- that is, their thoughts and wisdom. Conjugial husband and wife function as one unit -- the conjoint self.

Husbands who are practicing the unity model of marriage can experience the conjoint self more and more distinctly as they progress more deeply into the conjugial relationship. The conjoint self is the heavenly order in marriage. We work towards that state by aligning our affections and loves so that they represent the heavenly order. In the husband's mind the wife has to occupy top position or first place. This is conjugial love. All things must be subordinated to the one ruling love, which is the love they each have for the other. By committing himself the the good behavior principles, the husband taps into the source of inner mental power capable of overcoming his natural and intense personal and masculine feelings and needs to be woman dominant. This higher inner mental power is available to any husband or boyfriend, merely by committing himself to practicing the good behavior principles because he wants to achieve the heavenly order of conjugial love through the conjoint self.

This higher or inner mental power is able to overcome the natural hereditary biological masculine resistance for affective intimacy with a woman. Man wants to retain his affective independence. He wants to love what he likes, he wants to think what he likes, he wants to act the way he likes. This is what he now has to give up so that he will want to love what she likes, he will want to think what is agreeable to her, he will want to act the way she likes. To make this switch in mental state the man must have the inner power to accomplish it, through overcoming his own powerful resistance towards giving up affective independence. He now has to like what she likes more than he likes what he likes. Being committed to practicing the good behavior principles gives him access to this inner power, which is the heavenly power.

Everything gets better and better in the heavenly order of marriage.

It is well known that natural marriage tends to wane and diminish in romance and passion, though commitment to making the marriage last may increase. Often couples who have been married for decades have never become best friends to each other. They share loyalties and habits, but not feelings of peace and unity that come from not tolerating disagreements with each other. When the heavenly order of marriage is entered, its progression is experienced by both partners every day more and more as they live their life together. There is no waning of love, romance, and passion, but a progressive increase of it, and a deepening of it, so that the entire mental state is affected in many layers, all arranged in the heavenly order, which is infinite in variety, quality, beauty, and wisdom. The Swedenborg Reports describe many aspects of this heavenly order which is called "the marriage of good and truth." This eternal and Divine marriage in God is the source of conjugial love between husband and wife in a spiritual marriage.

We will now study various details about the three models -- male dominance model, equity model, and unity model.

3. Three Levels of Unity in the Marriage Relationship

Section 3

3. Part A

Research and personal observation confirm that most couples report experiencing oppositional or negative feelings, and at times acting upon them by retaliating, exploiting, abusing, or injuring their partner. When couples have a disagreement or fight, physical and mental abuse is practiced by men more than by women in the majority of societies and cultures. When men reason under the influence of exploitative motivations, they tend to misinterpret the intentions of their wife or girlfriend and tend to use stereotyped, inaccurate, and prejudiced thinking about them. Their unflattering and insulting verbal behavior will reflect this style of biased thinking against women. So will their abusive actions. Boys are immersed in this practice of talking against girls and putting them down among each other.

Adult dating men and husbands retain the capacity and internal desire to put women down in their mind and among each other with other men. It is part of man's thinking about women -- until the man becomes spiritually enlightened and realizes with shame and guilt that engaging in this denigrating behavior against women is contrary to heaven, and that without being united to a woman, the man cannot be his best, his greatest potential, his true self, his ultimate happiness. By thinking badly of women in his mind the man weakens himself from within and robs him of reaching his ultimate potential and true self.

This conclusion follows from the mental anatomy of heaven in eternity. It makes sense rationally from the perspective of the positive bias in science. God reveals in Sacred Scripture that His purpose for creating individual human beings is so that He can bring two of them together, made for each other, built mentally to fit and to attain the true higher experience of life in heaven in eternity. The unity of a man and a woman into a conjugial couple in heaven -- this is the purpose of the universe, according to God's own revelation to humankind. The man who realizes this idea is no longer capable of thinking badly about the woman he loves, and for her sake, he can no longer think badly of any woman.

Because of the intensity with which the negative bias is instilled in the thinking of educated people, few educated people know today that an individual is not a full human being, but only has the capacity to become one. A man is created to achieve unity with a woman, and a woman is created to achieve unity with a man. Women are more aware of this regardless of their education, which they put around themselves like a cape but do not let enter into their spiritual self. Men are more vulnerable to education, shaping their inner thinking according to its dictates and doctrines. They ingest the negative bias in science more deeply into their reasoning process.

Women retain a distinct rational perception of conjunction, external and internal. They sense strongly that the external conjunction ("I love you." ... "I love you too.") is not the final type of conjunction they crave for to become truly free, truly themselves as they were created feminine by God. Men do not sense this -- until they become spiritually enlightened and are able to examine the positive bias perspective regarding eternal spiritual marriages. Once a man is enlightened he can begin the long journey backwards in his mind, a journey in which he left around all sorts of gross thoughts and inclinations towards a woman, and women in general. This is a long and arduous task for most men, but many are able to stick to it and acquire a new chivalrous or gallant character that respects women as their highest principle in life and the universe. In this way they become real men, real to their creation, which is, that they unite themselves with a woman and live in conjugial happiness to eternity. This is why God created them.

The key to this amazing victory and achievement is to start practicing the self-witnessing life. This means monitoring what your mental organs are doing: your feelings (A), thoughts (C), and sensations and actions (S).

With this objective data on what you actually are all day every day, you have what you need to change yourself. I have done this for many years and it has allowed me to reform my socialization habits of thinking negative thoughts about others all the time. I no longer do this. It is the same with my private thoughts about women, about their motives, about their intelligence, about their capacities, about swearing using women's body parts, or about telling or laughing at jokes against women. I no longer do (S) any of these and have an aversion (A) for the idea (C) doing it again (S).

There is an advantage in gaining control over our gender behavior in the three domains of the threefold self -- affective (A), cognitive (C), and sensorimotor (S). We can avoid those cultural and psychological traits and habits that interfere with adaptive, successful long term marriage relationships. The benefits of a stable successful long term partnership are extremely attractive.

We will explore a particular principle in the unity model of marriage called the conjoint self.

According to the "unity" model of marriage, the perfection of unity in a marriage increases through differentiation (the two are mentally different), and reciprocity (all their differences fit together).

Mental interdependence between husband and wife becomes total in the spiritual body. Swedenborg was amazed when he saw couples in the third heaven of eternity, which is the most perfect expression of conjugial love. From a distance he saw only one "angel" but when they drew near to him he saw a husband and his wife each attired in beautiful clothes and light and beauty shining from their youthful faces. This is the expression of the unity of married couples in the mental world of eternity. When he saw their two faces close up he saw that they were one and the same, one masculine and the other feminine. When one spoke it was like it came from the other. When one removed himself or herself, the other lost all composure and happiness, even intelligence. They were united, two individual human beings forming one complete one. He spoke to many such couples in the course of his dual consciousness over 27 years.

This then shows us the potential we can achieve -- if we are willing to make it more important than all other things we consider important. In other words, conjugial love has to become the ruling love of a man, as it already is for woman from birth to eternity.

In the spiritual body of the unity couple here on earth, the woman's external affective organ (A) is conjoined to the man's external cognitive organ (C) (phase 1, natural marriage), and his internal cognitive organ (C) is conjoined to her internal affective organ (A) (phase 2, spiritual marriage).

This conjoint self therefore proceeds,

(Step 1) with her external will (A) joined to his external understanding (C) (natural environment); and

(Step 2) with her internal will (A) joined to his internal understanding (C) (spiritual environment)

Before the conjoint self is born, his understanding is joined to his own will, but after the conjoint self is born (Step 1), his understanding is joined to her will (no longer to his own will).

This means that in Step 1 or the natural daily environment of the couple, the husband practices learning to love to act from his wife's will (A) more than he loves (A) to act (S) from himself.

This means that he won't allow himself to disagree with her on anything whatsoever.

Since a man cannot just stop disagreeing with a woman on some occasions, it is necessary for him to practice conjugial simulation. This means that he acts outwardly like he agrees with her even if inwardly he disagrees.

The woman will accept this as a temporary solution. Out of her inner wisdom she perceives that he needs time to change himself inwardly, and she will go along with his simulation as-if she accepts it. In other words, she will not feel agitated and upset like she does when he overtly expresses his disagreement. This is a win-win situation, so I recommend it, having practiced it myself for years.

If you think this is hypocritical, think about some more. When people are being hypocritical they have some bad purpose in mind that can injure innocent people who fall for the act and believe they are being sincere. But if you withhold expressing your disagreement or disapproval to protect the person's feelings, this person being your girlfriend or wife, then you are not being hypocritical at all. You are being conjugial and chivalrous or gallant, thus trying to be good and heavenly. Later you will experience the slow disappearance of your disagreements and disapprovals in connection with your wife or girlfriend.

A husband or boyfriend practices the unity model by remaining committed to

listening to his wife or girlfriend,

trying to agree with her with everything she explains to him,

hiding his disagreement or disapproval whenever he feels or thinks it,

valuing what she says as important and worthy of his attention, and

honoring what she wants, whether she asks for it or not.

This is the husband's side of the conjoint self.

On the wife's side of the conjoint self, she is committed to lead her husband by means of her feelings, intentions, and perceptions for the purpose of making him part of herself, and thereby making him happy from herself and all that she can give him. The more he listens to her and agrees with her on all that she wants, the more he can receive from her the happiness and peace he craves for.

The conjoint self is the result of a spiritual (mental) union that lasts to eternity. In a unity marriage, the husband and wife develop a conjoint self, while their former individual self recedes into the background and no longer operates.

The unity marriage is not achieved by promise, love, or declaration, but by making developmental steps of internalizing and unifying which married partners must go through with each other, like a joint growth process that takes many years of dedicated effort.

The "conjoint self" refers to a husband and wife who have achieved unity at all levels of the threefold self -- affective (feelings, intentions), cognitive (thoughts and reasoning), and sensorimotor (sensations and responses).

Each individual has been changed, dropping off some traits and acquiring new ones that can fit together. This is called growing together through differentiation in reciprocity. The husband has to abandon some traits he cherished since childhood because these habits cause opposition and disunity with the wife. The wife has to abandon some of her traits, those that she perceives do not fit with her husband's personality. Both have to acquire new traits which create a new character and personality that can fit together as a differentiated reciprocal unit.

The old traits that are abandoned and the new traits that are acquired consist of sensorimotor (S), cognitive (C), and affective (A) traits in the threefold self. These are made of:

habits of external activities (S),
habits of thinking (C), and
habits of internal feeling and intending (A).

The conjoint self operates as a synergistic unit. The husband guides his thinking and reasoning into directions that he knows his wife would approve. If he thinks something that he he knows his wife would not like or approve, he tries to reject that idea or way of thinking about something.

The wife learns the style of her husband's thinking in order to better guide him in his attempts to avoid thinking what she disapproves of. The wife's continuous and unfailing motive and intention is to find ways of conjoining her husband to herself. The more he lets her guide his thinking, the more she is able to be successful. She is totally dependent on her husband to cooperate. She does not have the power to coerce him or even to convince him of anything he doesn't want to accept. Hence her success is entirely dependent on the husband's response to her attempts -- whether he responds through the unity phase, or through the equity and dominance phases.

Levels of conjunction in marriage are ordered from relatively less to more and more interior conjunction, as will be explained below. For instance, the initial or first level of conjunction between married partners involves the sensorimotor portion of their threefold self. They like and enjoy to do things together like dancing, touching each other, partying, camping, watching movies, eating, driving, talking about their favorite topics, and so on. These overt "external" activities involve sensory and motor interactions, including verbal, which is an overt motor activity.

Of course every sensorimotor activity (S) involves thinking and feeling, but these cognitive (C) and affective (A) operations are not yet known or visible to each other at this early stage. Their focus at this stage is on the external activity of the other and self. There is less focus or concern at this stage on the particulars of what the other is thinking or feeling, as long it is favorable.

Note that these joint external activities do not necessarily mean that the two partners are in agreement with each other's way of thinking, each other's attitudes, or feelings and motivations. The cognitive and affective self of each partner may not be in agreement with the other, and they may even be competitive or hostile to the other. What is on the inside that is not visible (affective and cognitive self) may be in opposition and even hatred against the partner, while what shows on the outside--the sensory-motor activity, may appear cooperative and compatible.

This underlying non-visible disagreement or dislike they have for each other becomes suddenly visible when there is an overt fight during which the two partners show their anger, resentment, and disrespect for one other. Afterwards they make up, and the cognitive disrespect and affective dislike recede again into the underlying invisible state, lurking there, until the next fight at which time the abuse and disrespect come out again.

Women, more than men, tend to experience this external phase of the relationship as unsatisfactory, painful, and injurious. Women often have to bond with other women to support and reassure each other during this phase of disharmony with their husband or partner. During this initial phase of external sensorimotor conjunction (S), men refuse to accept the idea that they would be happier and freer if they got rid of the traits that their wife or girlfriend wants banished or extinguished from their personality and character.

During this initial phase of conjunction, the men and the women each bond with same-sex friends outside the marriage. Women use each other as a source of support for the painful labor involved in getting a man to listen to a woman. On the other hand men tend to bond with other men by complaining about women and speaking about them with disrespect. Men also keep secrets from their women and do things they want to hide from their wife or girlfriend. So while the men are willing to pursue sensorimotor conjunction (S), they are not willing to cooperate in cognitive and affective intimacy. They want to retain their cognitive and affective independence.

At this external level of conjunction, men feel more comfortable than women because they exercise more control in the relationship. Men tend to resist closer, more intimate relationship phases, in order to maintain their cognitive and affective independence. A man ordinarily dislikes giving up independence in his private thinking, feeling, and intending (plans), while a woman is generally motivated to conjoin her thinking and feeling with her man--if only he cooperates with her. A woman strives to achieve mutual and reciprocal interdependence, while a man strives to retain independence. This creates a conflict dynamic between them, especially in the first level of conjunction which is external, involving mainly the sensorimotor self.

This intrinsic difference between women and men occurs at all levels of their humanity: biological, social, psychological, and spiritual. Biologically and socially, women make themselves dependent on men for reproduction, parenting, and lifestyle habits. Psychologically, women love and enjoy the man's intelligence and inventiveness, and they adopt the husband's ideas and philosophies as their own, as long as they are morally valid.

Spiritually (in mental anatomy), women are made of feminine intelligence on the inside (cognitive organ) and feminine conjunctive love on the outside (affective organ). Men are made of masculine intelligence on the outside (cognitive organ) and male conjunctive love on the inside (affective organ). So a man is spiritual love covered over with spiritual intelligence while a woman is spiritual intelligence covered over with spiritual love.

What is on the inside is superior or more advanced in spiritual human potential than what is on the outside. So a woman's spiritual intelligence is superior to a man's, while a man's spiritual love is superior to a woman's. This difference is due to their spiritual anatomy (see Section xx). In this way they fit together to achieve total spiritual unity in eternity. The woman's superior spiritual intelligence conjoins with the man's superior spiritual love. According to Swedenborg, conjugial conjunction in the unity model is possible only between intelligence (cognitive organ) and love (affective organ). It is not possible between intelligence and intelligence (cognitive organ with cognitive organ) or between love and love (affective organ and affective organ).

If women and men were similar in these fundamental anatomical traits, they could only form temporary external relationships in the physical world, and could never achieve eternal conjunction as the conjoint self. Their selves would remain separate because like cannot conjoin with like but only associate with it. Like can be adjoined to like, but only reciprocals can conjoin.

For example, think of the shape of reciprocals and how they would not be able to fit together if they were similar instead of reciprocal: pot and handle; key and key hole; shoe and lace; button and button hole, window and window sill, picture and frame, hand and glove, etc.

Sensorimotor disjunction refers to overt interactions whose motive is the opposite of intimacy and conjunction.

For instance, when a woman asks questions about what the man did, or why he did not do something, he typically uses this occasion to attack her or to act in an unfriendly and unsexy way towards her. For example, he might raise his voice threateningly and say, "There is nothing wrong with the way I did it, OK?" Or things like that which he says in a rough voice intended to intimidate or scare her away from asking any more questions.

Speaking in a rough voice to your sweetheart, or a loud voice, or an unpleasant voice is a sensorimotor disjunctive act. The message she is getting from this performance is that he does not want to progress to true intimacy with her. To be willing to be mentally intimate with her would mean that he retains her in his focus when he talks to her, and she is the center of the purpose of his talking. He wants to show her his desire for intimacy by softening his voice, by inhibiting any gesture or expression that she finds intimidating or threatening.

If a woman has sex with her husband or boyfriend even though she is still remembering and feeling her intimidation of his threatening behavior, then she injures her conjugial, that is, her motivation for unity with that man.

She feels forced to have sex by thinking that if she refuses she would be accused of not being a good wife or appealing girlfriend. She may also have doubts as to what's the best thing to do. She may be afraid he will get worse or end the relationship. Other women may counsel her to have sex anyway. What she actually wants is to have sex with him but not before he made up for his disjunctive and rude behavior. If she compels herself to have sex with him before he is willing to make her feel better about what happened, then she is giving in to sexual blackmail. And the more a woman does this, the less she has the motivational power, resolve, or interest to conjoin with that man on the internal or spiritual plane.

When a man swears at a woman or calls her by insulting names or words, he is performing sensorimotor disjunctive behavior. Also, when the man refuses to answer when she talks to him.

When a man lets a woman carry the load (packages, child) when they walk together, he is performing sensorimotor disjunctive behavior. Similarly, when a man does not call her on the phone when she wants him to, as for instance when she is wondering where he is, he is performing sensorimotor disjunctive behavior. When a man forgets to mention things she wants him to remember, like anniversaries or details about her life, he is performing sensorimotor disjunctive behavior.

As discussed above, couples begin their relationship together by external sensorimotor conjunction and disjunction -- talking to each other, eating, dancing, driving, doing fun things, etc., and also, arguing, fighting, yelling, walking away. This is the sensorimotor level of their road to conjunction.

The sensorimotor level continues and deepens while things are beginning to happen with the other two selves.

3. Part B

The second level of conjunction is deeper or more intimate in that it involves the cognitive self of the two partners.

This includes how they think, how they reason, how they justify things, what they consider acceptable or unacceptable, what information or knowledge they have, what philosophy of life and religious beliefs they officially sustain. These cognitive behaviors and habits tend to be more resistant to mutual adaptation for achieving reciprocity in the relationship. For instance, a man and a woman can be married for years and yet maintain contradictory attitudes, beliefs, and judgments. They have many areas in which they "have agreed to disagree."

To disagree is to maintain distance, which is the opposite of intimacy for conjunction. To "agree to disagree about x" makes the distance official, makes the lack of intimacy an official thing between them. This may be necessary for social or political reasons to keep peace in the marriage and family. So in that case their agreement not to talk about certain subjects is useful and serves a good purpose. Nevertheless, when they are both spiritually committed to the unity model, they will find ways of agreeing with each other on al things that are important or prominent, and thus eliminate those gaps that are a barrier to complete cognitive intimacy.

Remember this: for the unity couple

Mental intimacy = agreement

Disagreement = lack of mental intimacy

The external sensorimotor level of conjunction does not necessarily lead to a more interior conjunction of thinking and reasoning (cognitive habits). Yet many couples achieve a certain externalizing cognitive unity by joint involvement in having a social life together, running a home, or raising children. They see 'eye to eye' on many things and enrich each other's thinking process by mutual stimulation and interest. When a man and a woman achieve this second level conjunction (cognitive), they can love each other more deeply and the relationship continues to grow and become more satisfying and enriching. The sensorimotor interactions also improve as the cognitive intimacy grows because now they are more actual or real. Sexual activity (S) is more fulfilling (A) because it now has an inner cognitive (C) intimacy to rest on.

Achieving cognitive conjunction is often easier for women because they are spiritually (or by mental anatomy) oriented towards conjunction as a felt inner compulsion.

Women desire to become a conjoint self more than they desire to retain their own ideas and philosophy, which they obtained from some other man or men. On the other hand men spiritually (by mental anatomy) are infatuated with their own ideas, and resist change for the sake of the conjoint self. Men see the conjoint self as giving up selfhood, while women see it as gaining togetherness.

However, when a wife perceives that her husband's thinking is disjunctive with her thinking, she tries to change the man's thinking rather than adopting it for herself. A wife or girlfriend has an inner spiritual perception of her man's disjunctive or separatist thinking, even while he himself is blind to it.

She can sense and perceive the man's areas of resistance to their conjunction while the man cannot. He is not as aware of his own feelings and principles as she is of his.

This is because by mental anatomy, a woman spiritual or inner mind is spiritual intelligence covered over with spiritual love, while a man is spiritual love covered over with spiritual intelligence. So a woman perceives more with her feminine spiritual intelligence than a man can perceive with his masculine spiritual intelligence. On the other hand, a man's masculine spiritual intelligence is more focused than a woman is on cognitive issues of rationality, spiritual doctrine, or theoretical explanations and debates. A woman can also match these understandings but she does not have the interest in it and love for it, that he does.

The reason for this difference is that they have a contrastive cognitive focus -- the woman's feminine intelligence focuses on the interactional methods of conjunction with her man, while the man's masculine intelligence focuses on the methods of achieving control over the environment, which includes his woman. As a result of this difference in focus, the process of conjunction in love relationships is slow and tortuous, especially for the woman.

Cognitive intimacy is what builds cognitive conjunction. As a method of resistance to cogntive conjunction men exercise a technique we can call information flow control in their own favor. In other words, they keep secrets so they won't have to face their woman's interference or "meddling" as they think of it. This is a disjunctive behavior that prevents the build up of cognitive intimacy.

For a woman to have cognitive intimacy with her man (friend and lover), she needs to know what her man is actually thinking.

A man who is not telling his woman what he is thinking, when she wants to know that, or when she is asking him about it, is showing her that he does not want to work for cognitive intimacy with her.

He has to face it and make up his mind. Does he want mental intimacy with her? If yes, this means cognitive intimacy, which means he has to tell her what he is thinking when she wants to know that. The normal way for a man is to hide from her what he is thinking. This is the way their relationship starts -- they each have their own cognitive life, unknown to one another. But then they become lovers and fall in love and are also best friends. Now they want to progress in their relationship experience, they long for fulfilling their relationship potential. This is especially true of women because their focus is on conjunction while the men can be distracted for years with outside tasks and efforts. Meanwhile the woman has to wait and keep her love going for him.

Understanding and supporting the unity model in their mind gives men motivational power to stop the distractions and perform a turnabout in life -- to focus on his wife as his eternal partner. Now he can start building his eternal heaven with her. The tool for building this new conjoint self is cognitive intimacy.

This means that he begins to share with her a greater and greater proportion of his thinking. His goal is to have her know everything, or everything she wants to know. When a woman asks a man a series of questions about what he did or why he thinks in a certain way, the man starts accusing the woman that she is prodding, or not trusting him, or being pushy, and tells her to back off. This is extremely unfriendly and unsexy, thus contrary to his role with her, which is to be a friend and a lover. That means he has to love her as a friend by being decent and encouraging.

Why does the man want to hide his thoughts from her?

Because he wants to retain independence in his thinking and in his planning. He is not ready to be mentally intimate with her.

From her perspective, if he loves her, he wants to be mentally intimate with her, which means allowing her to react to his thinking after he tells her what it is.

That's why the men resist mental intimacy with their woman -- because they don't want the woman to react to what they are thinking.

Sometimes men will "share" their feelings, as they call it, or even "bare their soul" as they call it, but they don't want the woman to react, other than approval and acceptance. They don't want the woman's feminine intelligence to illuminate his perspective. This is a disjunctive attitude that prevents progress in unity and friendship between them. Men can discover that if they allow the woman's feminine reaction to his thinking and intentions, they are enhanced, enriched, and empowered by it. They really love it, if only they are willing to do it, to allow their woman to react freely to what the men are thinking.

There are various reasons and situations why a husband or boyfriend doesn't want his woman to know what he is thinking. He may think that she disapproves of what he is thinking, and then he would have to face the consequences of her disapproval. He takes the disjunctive solution to the problem -- he just doesn't tell her, so she doesn't know. He cares less about the fact that this prevents cognitive intimacy and conjunction. Perhaps he irrationally thinks that he can achieve a different kind of intimacy where he doesn't have to be honest in his conversations with her. This is like chasing the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

The unity model helps him to see that even though achieving cognitive intimacy is a very painful process, he can get through it, and then he will be a true man, happy and in an elevated mode of thinking and feeling as a human being. Then his woman will be truly happy because she is fully conjoined with him, since her life and passion exist in this conjunction. Take away this conjunction and her life dies because her love is unattainable.

A man can practice being more and more informative to his woman about what he is thinking and why. This means that he must allow her freely to have her reaction to this information. This is her basic human right that he must honor. So if she gets emotional and passionate about it, he must not injure her. He must allow her to say what she wants, how she thinks and feels about it. And he must take that into account. He cannot dismiss it by saying, Thank you for your thoughts. This would be an insult. He must do something about it.

He must change the way he is thinking about whatever it is they are talking about. Or he must keep talking to her until they reach full satisfaction of each other. Then they are getting cognitively intimate. Their future for heavenly happiness with each other is full of promise.

One of the most difficult aspects to accept and understand about the unity model is its apparent lopsidedness in favor of women. A man in the equity phase of thinking will think that it's unnatural or unfair or unwise to follow a principle that makes the woman always right and the man always wrong. Even women might think this because they have been raised to think in the masculine intelligence and perspective, which sees only the external aspects of the relationship. Women might think: But what if I'm wrong? I need the man's input and perspective where his knowledge and experience is greater than mine." Or they might think: "I've been wrong plenty of times before, so it wouldn't be right or prudent to always go after what I think about something."

These concerns are well taken, and they are valid. However you need to consider where this unity rule applies in which the husband always has to listen to the woman and agree with her.

The wife expects her husband to tell her what he thinks, how he thinks about something, and even what he thinks is wrong with her plan or conclusion about something. She wants to hear what he has to say and what he thinks. If she is wrong she will see it from his explanations. But if she is not convinced by all his explanations there remain only two possibilities: He goes along with her or she goes along with him. Here the unity rule applies: He should compel himself to go along with her. This will work almost always in normal situations.

There may be exceptions. Suppose the woman is ill, mentally deranged, not in command of her faculties due to various reasons, perverted from prior experiences, unable to think normally, in danger she does not recognize, manipulated or blackmailed by sinister others, etc., then obviously the man is to do what he decides is best for her. But this would occur in abnormal situations, not their normal routine everyday relationship.

The third level of conjunction involves the partners' affective self -- their feelings, motivations, and goals of happiness and togetherness.

Affective conjunction is the basis of the inmost level of intimacy between husband and wife, or of boyfriend and girlfriend, when they are thinking of themselves as a permanent couple.

Only conjoint feelings, loves, desires, or goals remain operationally legitimate in their mind. This is achieved by a systematic and long term effort in reciprocal growth. The partners give up former feelings, loyalties, goals, or involvements that are not conjoint and tend to exclude the other partner in some way. Affective conjunction is weakened if one partner reserves an area of their mind or involvement that excludes the other partner.

For example, some husbands spend socializing time with male friends. The activity is such that they don't want wives or girl friends around, even if they are not cheating on them or "doing something bad." But the fact that a husband's wife is excluded, not wanted there, means that the man intends to retain independent involvements and loves that exclude his wife. These affective habits and enjoyments are not reciprocal. They do not contribute to conjunction in marriage, but slow the process down or act against it.

Still, this does not apply the same way to every man or group of friends. It's possible for there to be healthy "guy friend" relationships that do not exclude the other partner in principle, just in interest or involvement. Hence men friends can be a positive asset as well. It depends. A man should seek his wife's perspective on the people he hangs around with. This applies equally to unmarried couples who are in love. The boyfriend should seek to have the girlfriend's perspective on the friends he hangs around with and the activities going on. If he does not allow her to do this he is unwilling to be mentally intimate with her.

Women have loyalties and friendships with each other for different goals and feelings than men have friendships with each other. The involvements that married women have with other women is for supporting the marriage, not resisting it. Men have an inborn resistance to marital conjunction, a negative feeling which they have to fight against most of their life. Their male friendships, when they exclude the wife, serves their desire to escape total conjunction with their wife, at least in mutual fantasy with the other "guys." This is not so with married women and serious girlfriends since they have an inborn desire and need to strive for as much unity with their man as is possible.

Women who are neglected, treated badly, abused, or not loved by their husbands or boyfirends, gradually lose the desire and motivation for conjunction with that man.

The following diagram summarizes the three levels or phases of marriage:

Study the diagram. Imagine you're explaining it to your friend. Memorize the diagram. Notice its various elements and how they fit together. It's a diagram about the three phases of marriage that most, if not all, married couples go through, or live through, but each couple in a unique way. Knowing the general principle of the three phases can help you understand and manage your own relationships, or to understand the relationship of others like friends and parents.

It's important to understand that all three phases may occur simultaneously, but in different degrees of overlap as the couple progresses to unity more and more, which is a gradual process that takes years.

The diagram pictures the threefold self of the two partners and whether or not they are conjoined or united in each domain of the threefold self. Conjunction requires intimacy and harmony or agreement. When a husband models his behavior according to the traditional male dominance principle, the marriage is in phase 1 of development. As the diagram portrays, this phase conjoins the couple at the sensorimotor level, but not at the cognitive and affective levels. The husband's thinking and way of reasoning towards his wife is governed by tradition and social norms.

The wife is required and expected to submit her thinking to this traditional mode so that she thinks of herself as lower in status, authority, and freedom than men (husband, brother, uncle, stranger). Later we will study how men act when they behave from the traditional male dominance phase. So even if the wife in such a relationship accepts the man's thinking as traditional and even appropriate, she still can't conjoin herself to such male dominant views of women because they are contrary to unity, something all wives crave for.

Young or "modern" couples tend to spend time in both phases 1 and 2. The more they see themselves in modernistic terms, the more situations in marriage that they will handle according to the equity phase. This means that they do not follow the traditional norms in many areas of interaction but negotiate with each other on who does what when. This is when husbands share the domestic work load and parenting, and consult their wife regarding financial and career decisions. Most couples will alternate between equity and dominance phases depending on the situation.

The diagram shows that sensorimotor intimacy is present in both the dominance and equity phases of marriage. But cognitive intimacy or conjunction only begins with the equity phase. This is because the husband's thinking in many areas of their interaction is now influenced by his wife's thinking more than by tradition.

What is the difference between sensorimotor conjunction without cognitive conjunction (phase 1) and sensorimotor conjunction with cognitive conjunction (phase 2)? This will be studied in detail later on.

If the husband is spiritually enlightened and looks upon his marriage as eternal, then the couple can start performing more and more of their interactions through the unity model. This means that he allows affective interdependence and gives up the idea of his own emotional independence as a person. He begins to see marriage as a physiological process of growing together to achieve a conjoint self -- no longer a single whole individual, but part of a unit.

This is a long process of maturation while the couple is growing in mental intimacy at all levels of the threefold self. During this time the husband will regress towards the dominance phase many many times, which will make his wife suffer mental agony. But at the same time she now knows with certainty that they are going to stay an eternal couple in eternity, and this gives her strength to endure the husband's faltering episodes, hoping and knowing that he will eventually get rid of them.

4. Unity Through Reciprocity and Differentiation

Section 4

There are three principles in the unity model of "conjugial love" described by Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772).

First Principle--Differentiation: No spiritual or mental part of a woman is like any part of a man and vice versa.

Second Principle--Reciprocity: The perfection of unity in marriage increases with the diversity of its composing elements when integrated into a conjoint self.

Third Principle--Eternity: The unity marriage relationship is eternal, continuing in the afterlife of heaven.

According to the first principle of marital unification the threefold self of men and women are biologically and spiritually different. This amounts to maximum differentiation or diversity in every part of the uniting components.

According to the second principle, the diversity becomes unified through reciprocity by which the traits of a woman can harmonize or fit together with the traits of a man, and vice versa.

According to the third principle, marriage is a spiritual union of mind and spirit that is not just for this world -- "till death do us part," but is eternal, since the spirit or mental self of a person is immortal (for more on this topic see the Psych 459 Lecture Notes on Theistic Psychology: www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/theistic/mental-anatomy.htm ).

Here are some illustrations of these three principles acting together. Consider where you are already familiar with the unity of two different components through differentiation and reciprocity (though not with eternity). At the physical level we can see how a bolt, nut, and washer work together structurally to achieve a tight grip on some object. The form of the nut must fit exactly the form of the bolt. The bolt is different in form from the nut, and it is the particular way they are different that makes them work together, reciprocally. They would not work together as a unit if there was no differentiation and reciprocity between them. Consider the same principle operating in other functionally related objects like a hammer and nail, or like a purse and its strap, or a fork and knife, or glove and hand, shoe and foot, etc.

The same principle of reciprocity with differentiation applies to interactions between partners. When you dance, your partner must make the reciprocal steps (mirror image) -- not the same steps, as you are making, or else you step on each other. In a four-part harmony with men and women, in a quartet or other choir, the singers are differentiated into soprano, alto, tenor, and base. This differentiation is combined into a unity when they sing reciprocally according to the arrangement prescribed for each part. The result is a harmony that is rich and attractive but which cannot be achieved by any of the voices individually.

When you are talking with someone you mostly alternate between speaker and listener. These two roles are reciprocal and differentiated. When you are in the role of speaker, the other person takes on the reciprocal role of listener. And so on. All interactions therefore follow the law of reciprocity with differentiation.

Note the result of the reciprocity with differentiation process: There is a synergy or separate parts conjoined or acting together into a unity. The dancing couple is a unit made of two differentiated components (two dancers) acting in reciprocity to each other. The talking couple is a unit, with each alternating role-taking interaction. When you kiss someone on the cheek, your lips and the person's cheek are differentiated components in reciprocal relation or action. When a wife holds a husband's hand the reciprocity can generate healing power (see story below).

When a functioning unit is formed, the components together can accomplish much more than when they do not form a reciprocal unit.

For example, if you are working on some project you will find it helpful to talk about it to others or to consult other people for information and advice. Why is it helpful to talk to others? When you talk, you form a reciprocal unit with that person. It is known as creating "intersubjectivity." The two minds together are capable of much more than one mind on its own. In general being with others, forming a reciprocal unit of some sort, promotes teamwork, community life, and society.

The marriage unit is of course different from other units one can form. It is more basic, more intimate, more complicated, and more enriching than any other unit people can form. This is because of creation: Individuals are created for each other, not for themselves. As you proceed with the unity model of marriage you will begin to see why marriage is deeper than any other relationship human beings can have, having critical significance for you to eternity.

Recently in the news:

Stressed Out?
Grab Hubby's Hand

FRIDAY, Dec. 22, 2006 (HealthDay News) -- If you're a woman stressed out from work, holiday shopping, the kids or even too much traffic, grab your husband's hand for instant relief. And if you're spouse-less? Holding any male's hand is better than none.

That's the conclusion of a study published in the December issue of the journal Psychological Science.

"Hand-holding is second nature for kids" when they're under stress, said James A. Coan, assistant professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of Virginia, who led the study. "This can also work for adults."

The happier the marriage, the greater the stress-reducing benefit, Coan found. But even a stranger's hand can help reduce stress, he said.

For the study, Coan recruited 16 married women who scored high on his marriage satisfaction quiz and gave them magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans of their brain when confronted with stress. He subjected them to a very mild electric shock in three situations: by themselves not holding anyone's hand; holding their husband's hand; and holding the hand of a male stranger.

"First, we wanted to know what the brain is doing when the women were completely alone," he said. "We got a baseline of how the brain responds to stress."

Then, the researchers looked at the MRI images of the brain when the women held their husband's hand or the stranger's hand. "When your brain is under stress, it has to work hard, it has all these different problems to solve," Coan said.

"We found when you are holding a hand, any hand, the parts of your brain responsible for mobilizing your body into action calm down," Coan said. "It doesn't matter whose hand it is. "

But a husband's hand provided the greatest benefits. "Both hands calmed the bodily reaction to stress," Coan said, "but only the spousal hand can calm the mind, only a husband's hand calmed down the region of the brain that keeps your emotions in check."

And the happier the marriage, the greater the benefits. Among couples in the study who scored the highest on marital satisfaction -- pairs that Coan termed "super couples" -- the women got even more benefit from spousal hand-holding than did the other women.

Coan found that the region of the brain thought to be associated with experience of pain quieted down even more in those women. "If you are in a 'super couple,' hand-holding serves as a kind of analgesic," he said.

Whatever the amount of benefit, Coan said he believes "the brain works a lot less hard when there is someone else helping us cope. One of my students said, 'It's like the brain is contracting out some of the work,' keeping our brain less stressed."

Dr. Charles Goodstein, a psychoanalyst at New York University Medical Center and a clinical professor of psychiatry at New York University School of Medicine, said the study gives scientific credence to long-time observations. "Interaction between members of a species can have a momentous impact on emotion, and emotion can have a profound impact on bodily functioning," he said.

Often, Goodstein noted, medications are used to provide relief from anxiety and anticipated anxiety. "This study shows that there is a better way."
From: www.forbes.com/forbeslife/health/feeds/hscout/2006/12/22/hscout600407.html

This is a cute story. I'm glad scientists may be beginning to realize how special is the relationship of husband and wife. Note that "super-couples" benefit even more from hand holding. I hold my wife's hand when we are together --watching TV, driving, walking. She says it calms her down. She misses it when I forget to do it. When I was panicked about a surgical procedure on my face the doctor let me hold her hand and it was very calming. When my wife had laser eye correction surgery her regular eye doctor made it a point to be present and held her hand. My wife found it very calming during the few minutes of stress.

In the sensorimotor domain of gender interactions we can see how a woman's body is differentiated from a man's body, and how the parts of the man are shaped to fit the parts of the woman. No doubt this is the analogy upon which electrical objects are designated, as for instance the wall receptacle is called the female and the plug is called the male. They act together to form a unit through differentiation and reciprocity of physical form or shape. When you consider sports teams, government departments, or armies, you notice a similar reciprocity of different role behaviors, so that they can achieve joint action, unity, or several acting as one. In fact throughout nature, and even the universe, you will find a unified whole made of differentiated parts acting in synergy. It makes sense therefore to have a model of gender unity that is based on the two acting as one through differentiation and reciprocity.

A well known symbolic representation of sensorimotor unity is the familiar Ying/Yang emblem. According to ancient tradition, it "demonstrates the perfectly balanced interchange of the two dynamically opposed forces of the Universe, the dot represents integration." In Tai Chi and I Ching traditions, the white area of the emblem represents heaven, the dark area earth and the curvy line between them represents the Law or reality. In Feng Shui the Yin/Yang represents the integration of Female/Male duality: "Yin and Yang are dependent opposites that must always be in balance." And: "It is a duality that cannot exist without both parts." (See for example this Web site: www.168fengshui.com/Articles/Article_yinyang.htm

In other words, it is the differentiation that makes the perfection of unity out of reciprocity.

The man and the woman as a couple can be totally integrated, or form a unity, because they are completely different but in a way that is reciprocal. Nothing of the male mind can be like anything of the female mind or else they could not conjoin into a perfect unity (Yin/Yang diagram shows all white vs. all black for the two). But they curve around into each other, in a perfect fit of reciprocal union, the perfect circle. This is the principle of "synergy" which is defined as "combined action or operation." It comes from the Greek "synergos" or working together. In business "synergism" refers to "a mutually advantageous conjunction or compatibility of distinct business participants or elements (as resources or efforts)" (Merriam-Webster Online).

The principle of synergy operates universally where separate elements interact to produce a joint goal.

Synergy is obvious in the physical body where thousands of separate and differentiated parts work together to produce the functions of a normal human body. How many parts does a computer need to be able to function -- one million? To function means to operate as a synergistic unit.

The more there are parts that make a unit, the more perfect the unit is.

The human brain contains billions of cells, and Swedenborg says that each cell is like a little brain that is made of billions of other things that exist in a cell. To make up the unit of a human being many billions and trillions of components had to be created by God so it may operate in a synergistic unit. The physical world of endless space and expanding galaxies of stars and planets, is the most perfect natural thing created. Think of the numberless elements the physical world must contain if just one cell of one plant contains billions of parts acting as one cell. Through the positive bias in science it is known that to God infinite things make a unit and function as one.

You can comprehend a little better now the rational principle that the perfection of a unit increases with the number of parts that operate in unison.

Our mental organs are made of substantive elements from the Spiritual Sun in the mental world of eternity. This Spiritual Sun is the source of infinite substantial elements that continuously enter and enrich the mental world of humanity.

What is difficult to comprehend with natural ideas of time and place is the difference between the Spiritual Sun which is substantial in mental ether, and the physical sun which is material in time-space. How would you describe the difference to your friends if you wanted them to consider the issue from a scientific perspective -- remember: not negative bias scientific, but positive bias scientific (and this you will have to keep remembering yourself, and to keep reminding your friends. Then both of you may have the opportunity to examine this ideas rationally and with coherent explanations.

Think of your dreams and day dreams. You are creating scenes with things and people in them. You are recreating elements not only in your memory -- which is in the cognitive organ, but in your affective organ of emotions and motives. Your hopes, fears, and enjoyments are powerful operations in your affective organ. They possess the power to influence, even control, the operations in your cognitive organ -- hence what should be the content of your thoughts and dreams. So the source of dreams or imagined things (C) is our love and its affections (A), which operate in the affective organ (A).

Every thought or daydream you ever had, every sensation you ever had, moment by moment all your life, and every emotion or feeling or desire you ever experienced, are all permanently recorded in your mental organs -- affective, cognitive, and sensorimotor. The record is permanent because the components are immortal and eternal -- sensations, thoughts, feelings in the spiritual body.

Swedenborg confirmed by observation and experiment that this is true. He had the opportunity to interview and experiment with thousands of people in their afterlife of eternity. No operation in our mental organs, once it occurs, can be erased or changed. People who had already been settled in eternity for untold ages were easily able to recall any detail of their life on earth, which was thousands of years since they had lived on earth. In order to have access to earth memories they had to exit from their celestial consciousness in which they were, and lower it all the way to the external level called the natural mind. This is the mind that you are conscious in now, as you read this and do your daily activities.

After we are resuscitated, we are given the opportunity, actually the necessity, to make a critical life changing choice. Is there any hellish trait we are unwilling to part with?

If there is just one trait you don't want to give up no matter what, your powerful affective organ will activate this one trait to greater and greater intensity, until it reaches paroxysms of excess, and the individual enters a mental state called eternal spiritual insanity. This means that they prefer to suffer the mental torments and inconveniences of a hellish mental life to a heavenly mental life. Every person makes their own choice, in fact, every person feels compelled to make the choice they love the most.

This is because in the mental world of the afterlife there is no external limit or restraint to hold someone in check, as there is here on earth. All actions here on earth have their consequences -- physical, social, and legal. But all this disappears from our focus after resuscitation, since we no longer have a connection to the physical body and the world it is in. So once you are resuscitated nothing can stop you from what you want to do. Except of course -- other people. Whatever hellish trait you desire to hold on to, you will live with it forever in eternity. Also, the hellish traits, whatever they are, tend to get worse and worse as they devolve forever.

Heavenly traits you love and want to hold on to in eternity create a beautiful world of appearances in your consciousness. To you and to your partner, your life in the heaven of your eternity is populated with others who desire and enjoy what you do, but they also have a way of enriching your experience endlessly, every day of eternity. This is the conjugial heaven that every individual has in the upper layers of their mental organs. All we need to do is to acquire the love for this heaven more intensely than any other love that we can have.

The unity model of marriage is a method that helps us build such a heavenly marriage in the course of our lifetime here, and then continue it in eternity.

Society is viewed as made up of separate and unique family units forming themselves into a community and abiding by mutual norms, laws, and expectations. The same reasoning applies to the marriage relationship which society officially sanctions and licenses. Society recognizes that a married couple forms a new unit that acts together for common goals and that the partners are united by positive feelings and loyalties. Married couples who live according to the unity model represent the most perfect unit or a "one" that a man and a woman can form together. Affective unity is the most essential, and it influences the cognitive and sensorimotor unity that is possible for that couple.

Unity is achieved through the synergy of the threefold self of each partner acting together. There is no independence in any area or under any circumstance. All points of independence have been transformed into points of interdependence. Even when the two are in physically in different locations (e.g., at home vs. at work), they remain united because each partner acts and thinks when alone as if the other were present.

In order for this to be a reality, the husband has to learn his wife's preferences in all things, just as his wife does that for him. He has to internalize his wife's thinking and reasoning, just as she has done that about the husband in her mind. When she realized that she was in love with the man, she felt compelled by her love for him, to conjoin his attitude, humor, and style of thinking to her own thinking. It's as if she has a little version or model of her husband in her mind, and she is therefore able to interpret things according to his interpretation. Sometimes women are so attached and so influenced in this process of cognitive conjunction with their man, that they seem to their girl friends to have changed personality after meeting the man she is in love with.

But the man lags behind this active process of unifying his mind to the woman's mind.

It's natural for a boyfriend or a husband to express resistance to doing the same thing in his mind about her, as she has done about him in her mind. Men spontaneously resist the process of unification. They experience it as a threat to their comforts and status of independence and superiority or dominance. However if a man becomes spiritually enlightened, knowing the permanence of the relationship to eternity, then he is powerfully motivated to unifying his mind to hers. He will then inhibit the instinctive resistance he feels for giving up his cognitive and affective independence.

Under this powerful motivation he can compel himself to learn his wife's way of thinking and reasoning. He can compel himself to listen to her, to actually listen, not just pretend. Men by instinct and socialization, normally dismiss what a woman says or thinks. He will deny this and he will pretend otherwise, but careful observation by the girlfriend or wife will reveal whether he is willing to internalize her way of thinking and reasoning, or whether he will continue to fight it and dismiss it.

A woman in the effort of conjunction, wants the man to think like her and to understand how she thinks, first of all, and second, she wants him to like it, to love it.

She knows whether he loves her way of thinking by the way he acts and talks. Every statement, gesture, or facial expression of the man is an index the woman can read. Her motivation to conjoin gives her perception of the man's inner resistance to her and her effort to conjoin him to herself, to her bosom, so that she may be his love as he has become her love. Through this mutual romantic love between best friends and lovers, they can be a unity in eternity. In this state of conjugial unity both he and she are magnified to their highest human potential for which they were created to achieve in eternity.

Our culture gives us the expectation that spiritual and sexual are opposed to each other. This false legend is most harmful to people who adopt it as a justification for their life philosophy and base their character and life on this opposition. The positive bias regarding the Swedenborg reports clearly demonstrates to us that our life in eternity is founded upon conjugial love. Swedenborg was told by both husbands and wives that sexual pleasures among heavenly partners is experienced in their spiritual body, and that this sensation is far superior to sexual sensations experienced in the natural mind through the physical body.

This is because the physical body actually acts as gross material filter that far diminishes the mental sensation in our natural mind. After the loss of the physical body and consequent resuscitation of the immortal spiritual body in eternity, the natural mind becomes so weak and unimportant that it loses all functionality and goes into a state of shut down or hibernation. We then have our conscious awareness in the spiritual mind and the celestial mind, which are suited for life in eternity.

The unity model as a method of practice for married partners, helps them to achieve spiritual unity in eternity. The experience of married partners still here on earth, who are working within the unity model, is a foretaste of the spiritual and celestial life they are going to have in eternity. This heavenly life in eternity is possible for any married couple. The couple reaches this virtual marriage heaven on earth when the husband is fully committed in philosophy and attitude to act from the image of his wife within himself.

Before this landmark, he acts from himself whenever he wants to, but he also can act according to his wife's preferences, whenever he wants to. He remains independent. He decides when he listens to his wife, and when he listens to himself. This attitude, and the philosophy behind it, is anti-unity rather than unity.

See what this news article says regarding current thinking about marriage:

Love doesn't necessarily mean marriage: survey

Fri Jan 4, 2008 12:04am IST

NEW YORK (Reuters Life!) - Four out of 10 Americans say they don't need a marriage certificate to prove love or commitment, according to a new online survey.

Overall, 44 percent of the 7,113 Americans aged 20 to 69 who took part in the poll by Zogby International and AOL Personals said they didn't need marriage to validate their relationships.

"Across all age groups, you just don't need a marriage certificate to mean love," AOL Personals Director Keith Brengle told Reuters.

"People are coming online to find that special someone but that special someone doesn't necessarily translate into a marriage, and more so with the folks in their 60s."

Half the respondents between the ages 20 and 29 said marriage wasn't necessary.

A majority of respondents also said they would prefer to live together first before marriage and most said marriage should truly be until "death do us part," especially those in their 30s (73 percent).

Trust was ranked highly important to most singles polled, especially for those in their 20s.

Although 20-somethings said they were more open to experimenting with sexual relationships, they were also more willing to end a partnership over infidelity when compared to respondents in their 50s and 60s.

"Trust is still extremely important for the 20-somethings -- they wouldn't work through any infidelities, they'd walk away," Brengle said.

However, older respondents were more interested in companionship, didn't feel the need to be married and were more comfortable accepting infidelity "as a part of life."

"They've probably been tested so they're much more accepting of things that traditionally you would think they wouldn't be," Brengle said.

"As such they're going to be less likely to have to snoop through a partner's things to try to find indiscretions."

The survey also found that as people age they are more likely to believe that more than one soulmate exists.

A majority of those polled said they would date someone their friends found unattractive, were willing to date someone with different political or religious beliefs, a different race or a person with a physical disability.

However, the poll showed people were less willing to date someone with a life-long sexually transmitted disease or someone with poor hygiene.

The poll was conducted between Nov 9 and 12, 2007, and has a margin of error of +/- 1.2 percentage points.

(Reporting by Natalie Armstrong; Editing by Paul Casciato)

The above is from: http://in.reuters.com/article/lifestyleMolt/idINL0312488620080103?sp=true

Once the husband switches commitment to the unity model of eternal union, his main problem becomes how not to lapse into his anti-unity mode of interacting called disjunctive. He throws a temper tantrum and stamps his foot and refuses to budge. His strategy is to keep arguing with her until she is exhausted and emotionally drained. Then she has to quit, and he wins the argument. Or, else, he walks out and deprives her of any further access and input to his mind. Hence nothing gets resolved in her mind, and she suffers abandon by her so-called friend-lover. Seduced and abandoned. When he returns, he does not want to spend the effort of making things right again between them. Instead he wants to express his emotions by having sex with her. This puts her in a bind called sexual blackmail. If she says, "NO, you must make up for what you did", he acts like he lapses back into the hostile mode. If she gives in, she feels manipulated and furious at him, and at herself.

This and many other things like this, have to be overcome by the husband or boyfriend, using the strength and clarity provided by the wife or girlfriend.

This is how unification is possible and in no other way, given the spiritual anatomy of men and women, and the developmental psychobiology of the conjugial conjunction process.

Unification is a process of anatomical symbiosis and physiological cooperation through interdependent cognitive and affective operations. Now the man is unwilling to think or act from himself, as he so often did before, and feels guilt and intense anxiety when he acts against his wife's way of thinking. But he feels peace, security, and empowerment when he acts and thinks from the image of his wife that he has incorporated within himself.

The husband's approach is different when he acts from the "dominance phase" in his mind. This idea of sharing the burden and the benefits, is also transmitted in our socialization process and is part of our modern culture so that everyone follows some norms of equity in various areas of living. This is a good thing in public life because it acts to reduce discrimination against women, which has been the traditional practice and still is for the most part. Gender relationships in dating or marriage may start with men assuming traditional dominant roles and women being submissive. But the relationship can then move on to the equity phase which helps the two partners by reducing the traditional heavy load of expected work on women, and can make their relationship more intimate at the cognitive level. But the equity phase need not be the last phase. The couple can then move into the unity phase which affords still more intimacy at the affective level (see diagrams above).

Ask yourself this question: If equity is given up for unity, which of the two partners should be giving up their equal power which they had under equity?

If it is the woman who gives up equal power or equity, then the couple falls back into the traditional male dominance phase that they started with, in which the man dominates the woman in socially prescribed ways. On the other hand if it is the man who gives up equity power in decision making, then they move forward into the unity model, which leads to still greater intimacy, growth, and mutual love as best friends and lovers to eternity. This conclusion will be reviewed in detail in our class discussions throughout the semester. Be sure you understand it as it is the key principle in achieving unity in marriage.

Why should the man be the one to give up power sharing? Why should the woman end up with all the power in the relationship?

The answer is that it's not about giving up power but about cooperating.

The husband intrinsically has all the power (physically, socially, financially, culturally) and retains all the power, even under the unity model.

This is a fact of life and society. The husband must compel himself not to use the power that he has over his wife.

The wife never acquires power over the husband, but the husband cooperates by not using the power he could use.

So to observers, it may look like the wife is dominant and powerful in the relationship because the husband is always doing things the way she wants it done. The wife instinctively takes charge of him in all the details of life, and manages them. She tells him do this, don't do that, and, do it this way not that way. And he says, "Yes, Sweetheart." and does what she wants. So to his unenlightened friends it may appear that he is being dominated by his wife. But to himself he appears enlightened, and he feels the happiness and peace of conjunction.

And he also sees that his wife is effective and intelligent in the things she takes charge of and manages. But this is a process of gradual maturation and the husband will regress back many times into the dominance mode of interacting. Nevertheless, each time he is able to recover, and to continue with the maturation process.

EXERCISE 3.1

Read the above Sections 3 and 4 through first. Then read it again with the following questions in mind (it's good to type out notes for yourself as the ideas come to you).

1) To what extent do your current views on relationships reflect your socialization experiences, including school, peer group, and the media?

2) How much thinking and figuring out have you done to see if some of these received views on couples and marriage are possibly invalid perhaps injurious to the achievement of affective mental intimacy between a man and a woman? (e.g. : soul mates, true love forever, best friends and lovers, lasting romance, never ending passion and enthusiasm)

3) Examine and pinpoint some of your beliefs and attitudes on man-woman relationships. Examine the lyrics of songs you listen to -- how do they portray relationships, men, women, marriage?

4) What is your reaction to learning about the conjoint self in the unity model? Describe to your partner or friend what this idea involves, namely, unity, eternity, reciprocity, differentiation, mental intimacy, interdependence, external and internal conjunction.

5) What is your reaction to reading that in order to achieve unity and mental intimacy, the man has to compel himself to agree with the woman whenever they don't agree?
By doing this the man becomes affectively interdependent with the woman, and thus united. But when the man retains his disagreement he also retains his affective independence, and this makes affective intimacy impossible since she cannot trust that he will always protect her feelings. Affective intimacy for a woman means that she trusts the man to protect her feelings no matter what the situation or issue is (e.g., when a man gets angry or resentful or critical or deceptive, he is hurting her feelings)

6) Discuss with your partner or friends the diagram that summarizes the three levels or phases of marriage: male dominance, equity, unity.

5, Sensorimotor, Cognitive, and Affective Conjunction

Section 5

5. Part A

Consider the cognitive (C) and affective (A) domains of gender interaction in marriage. For instance, a wife's depth of perception of a situation (her affective self) contrasts with that of a man's, but the difference is such as to be reciprocal with it. But if the man feels competitive with her, as in the male dominance and equity phases, their difference in perception is then nonreciprocal, incompatible, or opposite. Similarly, a woman's cognitive self complements that of a man, which is why they find each other's ideas interesting and stimulating.

A man ordinarily resists the idea that the woman who loves him has a deeper perception of his own feelings and motivations than he has himself. Women in relationship have this greater awareness of feelings than men due to the confluence of biology, gender socialization, personal experience, and spiritual anatomy. Hence the unity model helps the man give up dominance and equity power that he already has in the relationship due to external factors of society and culture. To give up power and advantage in the relationship means that the man voluntarily agrees to let the woman play the lead role in decision making when it comes to their relationship areas. He always retains the power to disagree and to do what he wants anyway, but he refrains from using this power because he is now enlightened and can see that unity in eternity is possible.

He thereby gains new power over himself that he did not have before. Now he is more of a man than before, and she can love him for that even deeper than before.

For example, a wife might request that her husband no longer talk to an old girl friend of his. She feels very strongly about it. She perceives it from within, as if it was instinct. In other words, she may not be able to give a rational explanation of where it comes from or why she feels so strongly about it. She tells her husband all this, yet he rejects it because he thinks differently about it. He feels a certain loyalty to many of his old friends and doesn't want to give that up, especially since the wife (or current girlfriend) can't explain her demand in a way that makes sense to him. He and his old girl friend do not have any romantic feelings for each other, so his wife (or current girl friend) should not be jealous. That's how he thinks. So he argues about it with his wife or girlfriend, instead of trusting her judgment about such relationship issues.

Arguing and refusing is part of the dominance phase. It is a power play by the man, to make sure he can do what he wants, despite what the wife or girlfriend wants. The message she is getting through this is that he is refusing to work for affective intimacy between them. This can be hard and stressful on the woman as it puts her in a double bind -- the man whom she loves, the man who says he loves her, flatly refuses to share affective intimacy with her. His goal in the relationship is to remain affectively independent, his own man, doing what he thinks is right or wrong, regardless of what she thinks.

The same applies to his men friends. If the girlfriend or wife wants him to quit doing certain activities, and he keeps insisting that she doesn't make sense or that she is not being reasonable, then he is refusing to become affectively intimate with her. No matter what she says, how she argues and pleads, he defeats her and refuses. He can get away with this affective disjunction because he has all the power in the relationship, given to him by society and its norms.

This disjunctive stand adopted by the man puts a hold on the inward (affective) growth of the relationship.

She may not say this to him, and sometimes she may not be clearly aware of it, but within herself she knows that the relationship is not growing deeper. She hopes that it can be amended but for now it's like a broken leg you can't use for walking. She feels neutralized by his stance of affective independence. He has excluded her and taken away her right or opportunity to make him change his stand, from equity-dominance to reciprocity, conjunction, unity, oneness in mind to eternity. He is keeping an area of his love sealed off to her. He reserves his affectional territory for something for which she has no direct input. She feels herself kept on the outside of his true love.

This brings her emotional stress, lack of mental peace, hesitation in the relationship, and confusion as to what is truly going on between them.

How do you know if you and your partner have affective intimacy? In the unity model, the wife perceives it and tells the husband, who accepts her perception. A woman feels affective intimacy with a man when he makes her feel that he is motivated to protect her feelings without exception.

This is not the same as what is called "unconditional love" in the equity model. In that mentality there is pressure on the woman to tone down the importance she attaches to affective intimacy. This lets the man off the hook and not progressing towards what she feels and considers is affective intimacy, namely, feeling completely free to present to him her true feelings about him, his behaviors, his traits, his attitudes -- which are things to which he exposes her and requires her to deal with it herself. In the equity phase the man feels that she is too demanding to require him to be what she wants him to be. And so he will engage in fights and resistance to her attempts at a deeper affective intimacy between them.

If she keeps her insistence and continues the struggle with his resistance (instead of giving in to him), then she is providing him with an opportunity to start agreeing with her on some things, then enlarging the circle to all things. They will then progress to the unity mentality of affective intimacy. She will then feel like she, or her feelings (A), are safe with the man. She can then be content at last, and growing in beauty, strength, and love. And he will at last experience the woman's sweetness, which is heaven to him. Any man who has experienced the sweetness of the love of the woman he loves in return, will know experientially what is what is heaven on earth, and consequently what is heaven in eternity. From that moment on he is spiritually enlightened -- which means being involved in preparing his character and behavior to be conjugial in heavenly eternity.

Consider some other common examples where the girlfriend or wife is anxious for the man to change his manners and talking style for the sake of their greater affective intimacy. He knows she wants him to stop using crude language. He knows she wants him to get rid of some of his manners and habits that she finds objectionable and beneath the style of life she wants for them. Her motivation is that they be able to reach a deeper and higher human level of living together. Her goal is eternal conjunction -- as long as the man wants to be her best friend as well as romantic lover forever.

So she does everything rational that a manager can do to facilitate the process and to reach success with him, which is unity in eternity. She knows from her insights in spiritual biology that in the state of unity with her, he is elevated to his happiness, bliss, and full potential. She loves him, so she wants him to reach this highest level of himself with her.

But the normal response for the man to her attempts at unity in eternity is to resist and to retaliate against her for even trying. He is 'dead set' or 'hell bent' to fight to retain his affective independence as an independent person. He does not yet see what she sees, so the fight between conjunction and disjunction goes on, and on. This makes both men and women unhappy and unable to reach their potential.

The battle does not stop until either she gives up on him or on heaven with him, or, he gives up on his independent personality and self.

He has to give up his habit of rejecting her interdependent desires for the two of them and maintaining his independent desires for himself. In other words, what is it that prevents their affective conjunction and intimacy? Why can't they be best friends as well as soul mate lovers? Best friends don't treat each other the way he treats her when he decides it's all right to step on her feelings, to disregard her opinion, to refuse to do something she asks him to do. As long as the man insists on acting this disjunctive way with her, he is refusing greater affective intimacy. The path to their unity must therefore be postponed as long as he refuses her.

Now if we read the above paragraphs from the equity or dominance phase in our mind, the first thing we think of is "What about the woman? Does she has the right to refuse what he wants?"

This question is motivated by the desire to reject the unity model. Some men want to reject it because it depends on the existence of eternal marriage in the afterlife. Some women want to reject the unity model because it seems too idealistic, or perhaps, unrealistic in real life with real people. Some men want to reject the unity model because they are attached to the idea of retaining affective independence, even if they love a girlfriend or wife. So one way of rejecting the unity model is to think that it is not balanced, that it doesn't give equal responsibility and effort to both sides, laying most of the responsibility on the men.

But once these objections in one's mind are put aside through the positive bias, one can examine the unity model in its own perspective, as presented in these lecture notes. As you go along you will be able to judge whether your understanding of it is growing and whether it is rational in your own thinking. Finally, you will be able to test out the model through empirical observations of the threefold self of couples. At that point you will have developed an educated perspective on the unity model. You can then take it with you, or leave it behind.

This situation can be better understood if we look at it in more detail as to what's going on. In their relationship the man and the woman are interacting at the three levels of the self: sensorimotor (S), cognitive (C), and affective (A). The process of forming a marital unity involves the successive conjunction of the threefold self of each partner to that of the other. The sensorimotor self of the man and the woman are conjoined first as shown by the activities they enjoy doing together--eating, playing, embracing, talking. These activities involve mostly the "external" physical and external mental self of the partners. It is called external because it is easily visible to them and to others like their friends, parents, and neighbors. We can call this phase sensorimotor conjunction.

In this phase the man often takes the lead and exerts a dominant role. The woman follows along with his dominance in order to keep the relationship going. Her motive is higher than the man's. His motive is to please himself; her motive is to help the relationship to go to a deeper level (cognitive and affective intimacy -- see diagrams above).

At the same time that they are being intimate at the sensorimotor level, the two partners are also interacting at the cognitive level, though this level of intimacy may be only slight. At this cognitive level of the interaction, the woman takes the lead. She strives to take the man's perspective, to learn his sense of humor, to memorize the details of his life that he reveals, to acquire the reasoning style he uses. Her motive in all this effort at cognitive intimacy is to harmonize with the man and to please him. She understands intuitively, and sometimes explicitly or consciously, that by making him laugh and pleasing him by how she thinks, she will better succeed in conjoining the man to herself. This will also help him feel that this is "his woman", or at least, "his kind of a woman."

The man is normally focused on himself, on his ideas, his plans, his goals, and he is pleased when she shows interest in him and demonstrates that she remembers and knows his ideas and his past. He is not thinking of her perspective, while she is constantly trying to analyze his perspective. Obviously, this differential effort and focus gives the woman a superior perception and understanding of the relationship, that is, of the process of conjoining. This cognitive communication of ideas between them can be described as reaching for cognitive conjunction or cognitive intimacy.

Cognitive conjunction is more visible than affective conjunction because it comes out in their overt verbal discussions, their stated agreements or disagreements on this or that subject. Long after sensorimotor conjunction has been established, and after cognitive conjunction has been operating for awhile in the relationship, the woman strives even more intensely to conjoin the man to herself at the affective level.

She senses from her unconscious spiritual self, and sometimes realizes it explicitly or consciously, that the relationship won't be perfect or fully satisfying and fulfilling, until they achieve affective conjunction.

This doesn't just mean saying "I love you" even if this is said sincerely. Affective conjunction means that the man has aligned his feelings with his woman.

In other words, until he has given up his male prerogatives that are left to him by society and tradition.

Society allows a man to retain affective independence from the woman he is married to. This is a male prerogative or inherent right given to him by society. There are other male prerogatives like the "double standard" regarding pre-marital sex, and even, extra-marital sex. Another male prerogative is to pay less attention to what a woman says than what a man says. Expecting the woman in a room to make coffee, take notes, clean up, etc. is another area of male prerogatives in our society, and in most societies. To the extent that a man exercises or practices the male prerogatives given to him by society, to that extent he is opposing affective intimacy as a couple.

The "good" husband is expected to provide for the wife's needs, to support her in her side endeavors or activities, and to be decent to her. But he is not expected to become dependent on her for his feelings about himself, for his motives and goals in life, or for his ambitions and endeavors as a man. He is expected to love her and be loyal to her, but not to give up his own independent feelings and strivings. Affective independence is the practiced norm for a man in most societies.

In contrast, social and cultural norms require a woman not only to love her mate but to be dependent on him for her feelings and emotions.

For example, in most couples if she loves Italian food and he hates it, she is expected to give up her old loves and adopt his loves (male prerogative to expect this). He expects it and sees it as a sign of loyalty to him male prerogative to think this way). If she complies with this (male prerogative) expectation, he feels bonding with her.

Note that a man feels bonding or conjunction when the woman becomes dependent on him in her threefold self. But this kind of bonding is not true conjunction and cannot lead to unity. That's because it's not what she ultimately and truly wants, and needs, to be fulfilled. She needs for him to be the center of his affective life. This means that whatever he is planning or doing should relate to her in some way -- e.g., How will this affect her? Is this something she would want me to tell her about? Would she go along with this? etc. These are affective conjunctive thoughts that the man has when she is not physically present.

Nothing he ever does should be independent of her and her feelings, her opinions, her principles, her preferences. This is affective intimacy and conjunction. This is what the woman wants and craves for from her spiritual mind which is in eternity. This is what truly and finally fulfills her as a woman, her feminine task, what she was created for by God, and this is what allows her to reach her innate potential. This is how she wants their love to become -- immersed in affective intimacy, the two as-if one. He loves her feelings and ideas more than his own. He is motivated to fulfill her wants more than his own.

All this he wants to do because he has come to realize and understand that this is what he was created for by God and this is what will make him maximally happy and intelligent. This is affective conjunction or unity. This is not an ideal, or an idea, or a principle, or a fantasy. It is a felt reality, the actual experiencing of it. That's why this mental state is called "heaven on earth" and after death "heaven in eternity."

5. Part B

In the region of "the heart", or spiritual love, which has to do with eternity, woman rises far above the man in perception, rationality, understanding, and consciousness. This is the result of her biological, psychological, and spiritual anatomy. Therefore the gender syntax that produces unity involves the husband becoming affectively dependent on the wife (vs. affectively independent). This runs contrary to his past socialization and to his current life philosophy, so he puts up enormous resistance--that the woman has to overcome if they are going to achieve unity.

Both men and women have three natures or levels of operation of life:

a biological nature or sensorimotor self (sensations, movements)
a thinking nature or cognitive self (thoughts, intelligence)
a feeling nature or affective self (feelings, loves, motives)

By the principle of differentiation and reciprocity (as discussed above) it is clear that men and women differ in their biological nature, they differ in their thinking nature, and they differ in their affective nature. As stated before, there is nothing in a man that can be like what is in a woman, and vice versa. This is because sensations, thoughts, and feelings are mental operations that take place in the spiritual body, which is born either male or female. Since this spiritual body is immortal in the mental world of eternity, a male man remains a male forever, and a female man remains a female forever.

Further, the spiritual body is created by each unique soul that carries the immortal spiritual DNA of every unique individual. A female soul creates female mental organs: cognitive organ within, affective organ on the outside of it. A male soul creates male mental organs: affective organ within, cognitive organ on the outside of it. Every sensation, thought, and feeling in a male anatomy must be different than any sensation, thought, or feeling in a female anatomy. All human sensations (S), thoughts (C), and feelings (A) are either female in origin or male.

This difference in mental operations of the spiritual body corresponds to the difference in physical operations in the physical body. Medical theory and practice is far enough advanced today to recognize that the research done on men is not indicative of how the drug will affect women. It is known that the blood of women contains hormones that men ordinarily do not carry. Certain diseases affect mostly men, others mostly women. All this suggests that the physical body of women is not like the physical body of men. This is even more true of the spiritual body and the sensations, thoughts, and feelings that occur there (they do not occur in the physical body or brain -- remember that).

The threefold self of a woman is unlike anything about the threefold self of a man, and vice versa. This makes unity between them possible (see the principles of reciprocity and differentiation discussed above).

Biological differences between them are obvious in the anatomy and appearance of their physical body and in how they enjoy things (S). Rational differences (C) between men and women result in the reciprocal orientation and focus they each have. When a man's cognitive (C) focus is reciprocal to the woman's cognitive focus, they can conjoin and reach cognitive intimacy. To conjoin means to allow mutual influence on each other. To resist influence on each other is called disjunctive behavior.

When a man retains affective independence he is performing disjunctive behavior because he is resisting influence from his wife or girlfriend. To accept influence is conjunctive behavior. For example, if she wants him to do X when he wants to do Y, then if he does X he is accepting her influence on his affective operations. This is practicing affective conjunction and intimacy.

In the equity way of thinking, the man expects an exchange: If he does what she wants on this occasion, then she should do what he wants on some other occasion, and in this way they can get along well. This is how a man thinks in the equity phase. But this kind of equity arrangement cannot lead to unity because it interferes with affective intimacy. A man who bargains with his wife or girlfriend is showing her that he wants to retain affective independence.

Note this well:

When a man is ready to give up affective independence he does not ask the woman to do what he wants, when she wants something else than what he is offering. But when a woman asks the man to do what she wants rather than what he wants, she is practicing affective interdependence, mental intimacy, spiritual conjunction, and eternal unity. This may sound invalid or unfair -- when viewed from the dominance and equity mentality. But when viewed from the anatomical and biological perspective in the unity model, it is valid.

You need to review the argument as we got here, if you are not completely clear on why the above is rationally and anatomically valid. Write down your questions, bring them for class discussions.

A man and a woman have different functions for their thinking, that is, they think differently using different cognitive procedures. A woman might say or think X and a man might say or think X yet they are not thinking the same thing. A woman uses thinking in the relationship for the purpose of achieving intimacy because that's the way she defines herself, while a man uses his thinking for the purpose of retaining independence because that's the way he defines himself. This is one reason they are called "opposite" sex to each other.

A man prior to practicing the unity model wants the woman to give up her feminine thinking and think like him instead. This is impossible for nothing in a man can be like anything in a woman, and vice versa. On the other hand, he can give up his affective independence so that his thinking (C) now responds not just to his own preferences and purposes (A), but to her preferences and purposes as well (A). The affective organ always directs the cognitive organ, that is, the will (A) always directs the understanding (C). Prior to practicing the unity model the man's thinking (C) is directed by his own will (A), but once he starts practicing the unity model, his thinking is directed by her will (A) as well as his own will (A). Thus he is no longer mentally independent, as if he were still alone.

In this way the man's thinking is elevated to a new level of consciousness, intelligence, and wisdom known as the conjoint self (versus his prior independent self).

But when he refuses to give up his affective independence, his thinking remains where it has always been, unable to achieve the higher levels of his own masculine humanity. It's obvious therefore that "giving up" affective independence is not losing something but gaining a whole new level of life for a man.

When a husband is committed to giving up affective independence, he is conjoined to his wife at the inmost or affective level of intimacy. This is a spiritual conjunction that lasts forever. It has a built in dynamic for dissolving disagreements. Not a single disagreement can arise between them no matter what -- and if it does arise, as soon as it has arisen, and he notices it, he puts his disagreement away. This is because they have learned a reciprocal unity style of interacting at all three levels of the self.

In the early stages of this practice the man may experience lapses during which he finds it difficult or impossible to lay aside his disagreement and follow the woman's desire or request. When he does have a lapse or a relapse, it will not last. Sooner or later, either minutes, hours, or days, he will come to realize that he he cannot achieve unity if he insists on maintaining a disagreement whenever he feels like he wants to or must. He will then give in and lay aside the disagreement, once more rejoining her in affective intimacy.

Sensorimotor conjunction or intimacy is the mental state of husband and wife in which their sensations and physical actions are mutually and reciprocally interdependent. The pleasures they enjoy are centered around making each other happy. For instance, what the unity husband enjoys most is to keep his wife feeling comfortable, and her desires or preferences satisfied. He talks to her softly in a pleasant voice with a smile or happy appearance. He keeps himself clean and groomed, wearing the kind of apparel that she approves of.

Sensorimotor disjunction or independence exists when the husband insists on his own comforts and pleasures. His focus is then on himself, not his wife, then himself. If he is in a bad mood, he scowls and makes gruff sounds and noises. He neglects his appearance in front of her. He acts like he acts when he is alone. This is sensorimotor disjunctive behavior. It is negative intimacy -- unfriendly and unsexy. The wife feels frustrated, disturbed, defeated. Unloved. No longer special in his eyes.

It's common to observe in public couples walking together and carrying things -- at airports, on the streets, in stores and restaurants, etc.. More often than not you will see the woman carrying a greater load than the man. Maybe a child and a big bag, while the man has his hands free. Or at airports you see the woman carry two big bags and the man she is with is carrying one bag. These interactions result from the man's sensorimotor independence or disjunction. He is not focused on his woman or their relationship. He relegates her to second class citizenship doing the menial jobs. He takes her for granted. He considers her an object of possession. He practices his male prerogatives in all three domains of the threefold self -- what he does with her or how he treats her, what he thinks of her, and how he feels towards her femininity (chivalrous or anti-chivalrous).

Another area of sensorimotor disjunction is the fact that often husbands in the male dominance phase will satisfy their sexual appetites for years and make hardly any effort to discover anything about their wife's appetites or satisfactions. This is because the man's focus is mostly on himself, even during "love making". This is different when the man operates from the equity phase, in which case he is motivated to alternate between focusing on himself and focusing on his woman. This again changes when the man commits himself to the unity model, in which case he is strongly motivated not to alternate, but to keep his focus always on the wife.

It helps to contrast clearly the differences between the affective (A) and sensorimotor (S) parts of the threefold self.

Often people use the word "feeling" when they mean thinking (C), and vice versa. For example, people say, "I feel that we should wait longer" when they are discussing what they think (C). Sometimes feelings (A) are confused with sensations (S). For example, "I feel hot flashes coming on" or "I feel so tired." In both cases it is not the feelings (A) that are discussed but the sensations (S). When we say "It feels so good" we are talking about a sensation (S). When we say "I feel good today" we are talking about an affective experience (A). The expression "I can't stand it" refers either to a sensation (e.g., being tickled) (S), or to a feeling (A) (e.g., feeling bad about the situation).

The sensorimotor area of the threefold self includes these primary features of our everyday life:

sensing physical pleasures, or pain
sensing excitement in the stomach or other parts
sensing being scared, or calm and relaxed
experiencing a healthy well being, or being sick
sensing physical attraction for someone ("vibes", "chemistry"), or the opposite
coordinating one's movements with partner, or acting independently
expressing positive or negative emotions through the tone of the voice, gesture, and face
performing any activity with the body
the appearance we have (expression, clothes, activity)
all our possessions are extensions of our physical body and its sensorimotor sphere
etc.

The affective area of the threefold self includes these primary features of our everyday life:

feeling good and hopeful, or bad, depressed
feeling hesitant, unsure, or confident, eager
feeling apprehensive, anxious, or calm, reassured
feeling resistant, rejecting, or cooperative, accepting
feeling connected, or alienated
striving to reach a goal, or having no motivation
perceiving from within that something is right and good, or not (conscience, insight)
feeling guilty, embarrassed, ashamed, regretful, or not
feeling calm, cool, and collected, or the opposite
etc.

Do you get the difference? Note that the affective always comes first in the sequence of our behavior. We do something because we are motivated to do it or we have a desire to do it (affective). We are motivated to do something to achieve a particular goal (affective). Every goal is defined by what we want or desire or prefer to happen (affective). Therefore all human action starts from a feeling -- what we want or intend to happen, together with a goal that satisfies what we want.

The sequence of execution in behavior is always ACS: A ---> C ---> S

(A) affective (wanting to do something) ----> (C) cognitive (planning) ----> (S) sensorimotor (executing or performing)

Once we have a feeling, motive, or particular goal that we desire to happen (affective), the next behavior in sequence is the cognitive self. Our thinking operations (C) suddenly begin to figure out a plan or method of proceeding that will bring about the desired goal (A), and thereby satisfy the feeling (A). It is the feeling (A) that motivates, guides, and directs (A) the thinking and planning (C). It is the feeling-intention or striving for the goal (A) that keeps the sequence of mental operations (C) focused in a coherent way so it may lead to the desired goal (A).

For example, you become aware that you are thinking (C) about the candy bar in your pocket or purse. What made your thoughts go in that direction? It had to be some kind of feeling (A). When we sense hunger in the stomach (S), the sensation becomes the occasion for a new motive (A), namely, the desire to satisfy the hunger (A). This desire or feeling (A) then awakens our thoughts and memories (C) to think about the candy bar (C). Another feeling or motive (A) can take over, namely, the desire (A) to control one's weight. This new feeling (A) now directs the cognitive to plan (C) a substitute for eating, or a way not to ingest certain foods (S), and the sensorimotor then carries out (S) the motivated (A) plan (C) (e.g., inhibits the hands from reaching for the candy bar). Either way, the sequence of execution is always the same (ACS): affective, cognitive, sensorimotor.

It is the reverse with the sequence of reception which is always SCA:

A <--- C <--- S <---- environment

noticing or sensing something in the environment (sensorimotor) ----> appraising it (cognitive) ----> evaluating it (affective)

Once the feeling or desire (A) and the thinking about the candy bar in pocket or purse (C), are placed together or conjoined, the hand starts reaching (S) for the candy bar or the legs start waking (S) to the kitchen.

But then you stop the hand or the legs from going further (ACS). "Wait. I'm on a diet and I want to lose weight. Remember?" What's happening here? It's another feeling (desire, motive) (A) that takes over and this new feeling (A) now directs the thinking (C) and the moving in another direction (S).

So whatever we do all day long minute by minute, has to do with sequences and loops of feelings, thoughts, and sensorimotor executions of them (ACS). Note that the SCA sequence happens along with the ACS sequence in alternating cycles. We notice something (S), we think about it (C), and we react to it (A) (happy or sad, attractive or repelling, etc.). This is the SCA cycle. Then we form the intention (A) of holding it, so we see a way of grabbing it (C), and we reach for it (S) or inhibit reaching (S). This is the ACS cycle. Note that the SCA cycle is called "reception" while the ACS cycle is called "optimizing." Reception (SCA) is passive (feminine, left hand and side), while optimizing (ACS) is active (masculine, right hand and side). Thus both men and women have a feminine side (receiving, satisficing, valuing) and a masculine side (optimizing, giving, engaging).

All affective operations (motives, feelings, intentions, valuations) (A) are dynamically ordered in a top down hierarchy or networked nodes. For instance:

A1 striving to keep alive, safe, out of trouble

A2 wanting to avoid hurting certain people

A3 keeping track of our belongings, money

A4 striving to maintain a healthy diet

A5 having a good time, fun, pleasure

A6 enjoying eating chocolate and candy several times a day

A7 intention to get the candy and eating it

This example shows that the desire to get the candy (A7) is the lowest in the hierarchy of motives for this individual. Six higher motives exist that relate to it. Since affective operations are in a control hierarchy relative to each other, a higher motive "trumps" a lower motive if it interferes or becomes engaged in the operation. The motive to maintain a healthy diet (A5) trumps the motive of enjoying eating chocolate (A6) which then inhibits the intention to get the candy (A7) so that no candy will be eaten. But this happens only when the higher motive (A4) is engaged in the situation. If it is "asleep" or "looking the other way" or disengaged from the situation as not relevant, then the lower motive (A7) will direct and execute, and candy will be eaten.

By self-witnessing or self-monitoring ourselves in a systematic and persistent way in the course of our daily activities, we gradually learn to distinguish between the actions of the threefold self (ACS) and how the affective hierarchy of our feelings (A) dominates and rules our thinking (C) and doing (S).

Most people prior to self-witnessing are not fully aware of the feelings they have and their relative hierarchy of power over the threefold self. What we don't know about ourselves, we cannot control or modify even if they are maladaptive and are the source of negative consequences. It is to everyone's advantage to get to know the hierarchy of feelings they have in the course of their day.

Here is a summary table to memorize: (read Table from bottom up)

Table 5B.1

PRINCIPLES BY WHICH HUSBAND GOVERNS HIS BEHAVIOR TOWARDS HIS WIFE		HOW THEY BEHAVE TOWARDS ONE ANOTHER AND CONSEQUENCES ON WIFE
Phase 3 UNITY MODEL	spiritual marriages ("Till endless eternity in afterlife")	husband chooses to act from his wife’s preference (or "will"), rather than from his own will, thereby unifying the two into one conjoint self in eternity
Phase 2 EQUITY MODEL	modern natural marriages (“Till death do us part”)	the two negotiate consensual arrangements, based on equal rights principles, so husband agrees to help in domestic activities. However, he reverts to dominance when he chooses
Phase 1 DOMINANCE MODEL	traditional natural marriages (“Till the husband decides to divorce his wife”)	wife is submissive and obedient to husband and his family, and must endure societal sanctioned abuse of women by men

See if you can follow the themes in each cell in the above Table. Try to see how these names and descriptions apply to your experience with couples, partnerships, and marriages:

yourself
parents
friends
movies
song lyrics
jokes
group practices, norms, and expectations.

Review what you know about each of these items in the list above. Are the Table cells helpful in organizing and characterizing what you are observing when you examine these areas of daily life? For example, think about the meaning of lyrics to songs you enjoy listening to and singing along. Do they portray the male dominance pattern of relationship between men and women? (e.g., abusing women or using them as sex objects, etc.). Or what about your favorite sit come or movie: Which model of interaction do they portray between women and men? Do your parents fit one model more than another? Have you ever seen the unity model portrayed? What about old fashioned romantic songs and movies that talk about love being forever?

Spiritual marriages enhance natural marriages through the new creation of the conjoint self. Masculine and feminine intelligence (C) act in differentiated synergy to enrich their rationality and wisdom in daily choices and decisions. Feminine and masculine love (A) act in reciprocal synergy for empowering husband and wife in all aspects of the personality and self. Feminine and masculine bodies and sensorimotor organs (S) act in familiar synergy that delights, intensifies, and fulfills their affections and desires (A).

Spiritual marriages are based on the unity model which requires two conditions:

(I) that they both think of their marriage as eternal, unique, special, never ending, eternally improving; and
(II) that the husband chooses to act from his wife’s preference (or "will"), rather than from his own will.

The first condition requires that they have a rational idea of God and of life after death in a spiritual body.

The second condition requires that the husband loves his wife and is willing to treat her with chivalry and respect for her femininity or "womanness." This is the recognition that all women deserve chivalrous respect from every man. In the eyes of the unity husband, the wife in her feminine character is the representative of all women. Chivalry for a husband is to act according to his wife's will or preference in all things of their interaction. When this is adopted by the husband as a daily spiritual discipline, it is called the Doctrine of the Wife (available at: http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/theistic/ch11.htm )

From Swedenborg's direct observation of couples in their heavenly layers of their mind:

CL 213. III. THAT WITH THOSE WHO ARE IN LOVE TRULY CONJUGIAL THE HAPPINESS OF COHABITATION INCREASES BUT WITH THOSE WHO ARE NOT IN CONJUGIAL LOVE IT DECREASES. That the happiness of cohabitation increases with those who are in love truly conjugial is because they love each other mutually with every sense. The wife sees nothing more lovable than the man, and the man nothing more lovable than the wife; yea, neither do they hear, smell, or touch anything more lovable. Hence the happiness of cohabitation that is theirs in house, chamber, and bed. You who are husbands can confirm this from the first delights of marriage, these being in their fullness because then, of all the sex, it is the wife alone who is loved. That the opposite is the case with those who are not in any conjugial love is well known. (CL 213)

As you continue studying the following Sections, be sure to integrate them in your mind with the above Summary Table.

You actually need to integrate all the Tables in these Lecture Notes, and then you will see clearly how this unity perspective can give you a rational understanding of marriage.

You might want to print out just the Tables, and study them together, trying to integrate them into your understanding. A good method is to try to explain the Table to someone.

Here is a recent newspaper article that discusses recent findings on marriage:

The key to wedded bliss

by Graham Payne and Dan Ballard

February 11, 2008

A FEW simple questions could hold the key to whether a marriage will last or end in divorce, according to a study.

John Gottman, an emeritus professor of psychology at the University of Washington and founder of what the media termed "The Love Lab", where much of his research on couples' interactions was conducted, headed the experiment.

He says he found the answers given by a sample selection of married couples helped his researchers come up with an amazingly accurate prediction as to those who would stay together or split.

"After computer analysis, we predicted which of the marriages would end in divorce.

"We never told the couples, of course, but four years later, our predictions were 94 per cent accurate."

That prediction was based solely on the couples' answers and how they interacted during a 15-minute discussion of the two problem areas in their marriage.

The 12 questions that couples were asked were carefully compiled after months of research.

"They're clever because couples don't know what answers are expected of them, and so they're not constantly trying to show themselves up in the best light," says Prof Gottman.

The questions – which focus on nine areas of a marriage, including how husband and wife deal with marital disappointments, negative feelings and affection – are now to be specially constructed to apply to engaged couples and might even be available for personal computer testing.

In evaluating the replies in the study, Prof Gottman's researchers measured:

• Affection towards the spouse.
• Negative feelings towards the spouse.
• Expressiveness about the relationship versus withdrawal.
• "We-ness" versus separateness – how connected and intimate the couple felt.
• Feelings of chaos or control over events in the couple's life.
• Glorifying the struggle – pride in getting through hard times.
• Disappointment and disillusionment with the marriage, difficulty in expressing what makes a marriage work.

The single, most potent predictor of divorce was found to be the husband's disappointment with the marriage. Among couples who divorced, the husbands were found to be "low in fondness, low in 'we-ness', low in expressiveness, while high in negativity and marital disappointment".

For the wife, the most important predictors of divorce included being low in "we-ness" and high in marital disappointment.

The researchers did find that some disagreement – and well-vented anger – could be good for a marriage.

But other negative behaviours, including defensiveness, stubbornness or withdrawal, were likely to lead to divorce.

Do you dare try them?

1. Tell how the two of you met for the first time. Was there anything about him/her that made him/her stand out? What were your first impressions of each other?

2. How long did you know each other before you got married? What do you remember of this period? What were some of the highlights? Some of the tensions? What types of things did you do together?

3. Tell about how you decided to get married. What led you to decide that this was the person you wanted to marry? Was it an easy decision? Was it a difficult decision?

4. Tell what you remember about your wedding. Did you have a honeymoon? What do you remember about it?

5. What do you remember about the first year you were married? Were there any adjustments to being married?

6. If you are parents, tell what the transition to this period of your marriage has been like.

7. Looking back, what moments stand out as the really good times of your marriage?

8. Many couples say their relationships go through periods of ups and downs. Would you say this is true of your marriage?

9. Looking back, what moments stand out as the really hard times in your marriage? How did you get through them? Why do you think you stayed together?

10. How would you say your marriage is different from when you first got married?

11. Why do you think some marriages work while others don't? Think of a couple you know who have a particularly good marriage and one couple who have a particularly bad marriage. What is different about these two marriages? How would you compare your own marriage with each of these?

12. What about your parents' marriage. What was/is their marriage like? Would you say it was/is very similar or very different from your own marriage?

From: http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23192307-5015723,00.html

EXERCISE 5.0.1

Read the above Section (5A and 5B) through first. Then reread it while typing notes about the following issues. Then discuss them with your partner, friends, or class teams.

1) Explain what are the three types of conjunction possible within a couple. How are they different. Give various examples for each type of conjunction in the threefold self of partners. Examine each type of conjunction in your experience as a couple, or a couple that you know well (parents, friends, TV).

2) The Section also discusses the threefold self of women as different from the threefold self of men. Hence the man and the woman are not pulled in the same way when they work for greater mental intimacy between them. Describe this differential dynamic based on how woman is and how a man is, or, what a woman wants and what a man wants. Also this: what a woman is willing to settle for if she has to, but not if she can get what she prefers in the relationship.

3) Explain why it is that in order to achieve mental intimacy the man has to compel himself to do what the woman wants, but not vice versa, unless she wants that. How do you account for the apparent lopsidedness of the unity model? If you think this is not valid or unfair, examine whether you are thinking about this with the equity or dominance perspective or assumptions.

4) What are the reactions of people you are talking to about these issues? What conclusions do you draw from their statements and beliefs?

5.1 Sexuality: Non-exclusive Love of the Sex vs. Exclusive Love of One of the Sex

Section 5.1 Selections from : www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/theistic/ch6.htm#sex

5.1 Part A

Sexuality is a key issue in most people's lives and is an important topic in any society. For example, the word "sex" is the most frequently looked up word in Web search engines. If you look up the word sex in the top ranked Web search engine, www.google.com (November 2007), you get an astonishing 520 million registered Web pages that use this word. The word "God" receives 450 million hits, which is pretty impressive to me, compared to "food" which receives 570 million hits. Just to get a real contrast the word "psychology" receives 100 million hits, the word "mother" receives 260 million, and "money" is listed on 675 million Web sites. "Patriotism" has 12 million, and "morality" has over 21 million. "Rationality" has 9 million, "Swedenborg" receives 800,000 hits, Leon James gets 58,000 (not just me), and theistic psychology gets just 36 (most by me and the generational reports).

Why do the topic of money and sex come out on top? The topical frequency of occurrence on the Web is a measure that reflects the mental frequency of occurrence of this topic.

A popular or "hot" issue in society is a hot issue in the minds of the majority of people in a community or nation. The hot issue in our mind about sex is caused by the non-exclusive love of the sex that is built into the affective organ of every mind, but in a different way for men than for women.

The unity model distinguishes two forms of sexual love or activity, one that belongs to our spiritual mind in eternity (our higher nature), the other to our natural mind or lower nature. People grow up with the indiscriminate enjoyment of sex, that is, the capacity to enjoy sex with many people. When people dance at a party with multiple partners they are capable of being sexually aroused by many individuals. They are able to enjoy pleasure by being touched by various people, not just one person. Humans have this "corporeal" pleasure like animals do, who can enjoy being petted by many people. At the sensorimotor level, humans have the capacity to enjoy physical pleasure from multiple sex partners. But this is more difficult to do at the cognitive level, and almost impossible to do at the affective level.

Human sexual activity always involves the threefold self -- sensorimotor (S), cognitive (C), and affective (A).

Look again at the diagram that was discussed above:

Let us summarize the four situations in which human beings engage in sexual activity:

Phase 0 Sexual Activity: Sex Without Mental Intimacy (not on the diagram above)
Non-exclusive sexual activity with a succession of partners at different times.

Phase 1 Sexual Activity: Sex With Sensorimotor Intimacy Only (male dominance phase)
Exclusive sexual activity in the male dominance phase of marriage or dating.

Phase 2 Sexual Activity: Sex With Sensorimotor and Cognitive Intimacy (equity phase)
Exclusive sexual activity in the equity phase of marriage or dating.

Phase 3 Sexual Activity: Sex With Sensorimotor, Cognitive, and Affective Intimacy (unity phase)
Exclusive sexual activity in the unity phase of marriage or dating.

Most people start sexual life at Level 0 and move on, though some stay at this level forever. This means that they are not working to achieve marital unity. Many people come to realize that non-exclusive love of the sex, which is lacking in mental intimacy, is a trait that human beings share with most other animal species, and that in order to raise ourselves above the level of animals, we need to cultivate a love for an exclusive and intimate sexual relationship with one person. This is the meaning of "spiritual marriage" (unity phase)

Psychologists who reject life after death cannot see the difference between natural marriage ("till death do is part") and spiritual marriage ("till eternity"). They do not see spiritual marriage as real so they cannot study it or advise people about it. It is not possible to do research on something that they define as non-existent.

Exclusive sexual activity occurs at progressively higher levels of mental intimacy.

Phase1 sexuality involves the sensorimotor system of the two partners as the central feature, with less importance attached to cognitive and affective intimacy. In other words, when a couple's dating becomes exclusive they enter a phase of sensorimotor intimacy in which they are physically intimate with each other to various degrees, depending on the couple and the situation. During this phase they are not yet cognitively intimate, and not yet affectively intimate. They each think their own thoughts (C), have their own emotions and feelings (A). They are not cognitively intimate since they do not share their thoughts and plans (C). They are not affectively intimate since they each feel responsible for their own emotions and feelings (A).

But if they continue dating as an exclusive couple, or if they get married, their sexual activity is going to change to Phase 2, which involves both the cognitive as well as the sensorimotor phases of conjunction. Now their sensorimotor sexual activity (S) is different from their previous sensorimotor activity in Phase 1 sexuality. The sensorimotor sexual activity is more intimate than before because it is intertwined with the cognitive intimacy of knowing each other's attitudes and values, being familiar with each other's sense of humor, being able to talk about various things and understand each other, etc.

Finally, Phase 3 sexuality involves the affective phase of intimacy along with the cognitive and sensorimotor intimacies. Sexual pleasure (S) is more personal, satisfying, and meaningful when it is in the context of cognitive and affective intimacy. The partners feel for each other and their sexual emotions are magnified due to this mutual feeling of sympathy and friendship. More details will be discussed below.

Notice that the non-exclusive love of the sex with many is natural, like that of some animals, and it is not intimate, while the exclusive love of the sex with just one is intimate and spiritual, thus specially human. It is known that some animal species also show the characteristic of exclusive mating relationship maintained for life. This corresponds to the unity model, but of course this is biologically based rather than spiritually or rationally as it is with humans.

People differentiate between "having sex" and "making love." Only the latter is considered mentally intimate. Sexual activity (S) without mental intimacy (C, A) is a lower form of human pleasure and satisfaction than intimate sexual activity (S). The highest and most satisfying human form of sexual activity is achieved in the unity phase of the relationship (Phase 3 sexuality). This is because the sensorimotor activity of sex (S) is then the result of cognitive (C) and affective (A) intimacy.

To understand the precise difference we need to focus on the difference between "non-exclusive" sex vs."exclusive" sex.

Definition:
To love non-exclusive sex is to love one's own pleasure in the activity with whomever is available or suitable. The identity of the partner is of little importance in relation to one's own pleasure.
But to love exclusive sex is to love a particular person sexually. The identity of the partner is of central importance in relation to one's own pleasure. "Identity" does not mean merely knowing the person's name but the person's thinking (C) and feelings and values (A), and this requires mental intimacy.

Quite a difference between the love of non-exclusive sex and the love of the exclusive sex.

Everyone retains the physiological ability to enjoy non-exclusive sex, but those who develop the love of exclusive sex inhibit and lay aside their former capacity for non-exclusive sex. Women can do this immediately but men lag behind so that even though they feel the love of exclusive sex men are unwilling to give up certain forms of non-exclusive sex like pornography, voyeurism, exhibitionism, sexual fantasies. Marriage counselors who do not recognize spiritual marriages sometimes counsel couples to watch sexually arousing videos together or to imagine themselves having sex with someone else. But you can see from the positive bias perspective that mental infidelity is even more real than physical infidelity because what is mental is spiritual and eternal.

Watch this video and contrast the views of the husband and wife:
http://video.ivillage.com/player/?id=0#videoid=155984

The non-exclusive love of the sex apart from the person, is a mental operation in the affective organ of the corporeal mind, which is the lowest part of the natural mind, a part that we share with animals. The non-exclusive love of the sex by humans is very similar to the love of copulation and mating by animals. Non-theistic biology and medicine in the negative bias perspective, view all human sexual response in these animal or physiological terms. But theistic psychology in the positive bias perspective, cannot view all of sexuality as limited to the lowest levels of the mind, since the operations of the affective organ are ranked in a hierarchy of distinct degrees--lowest natural, middle natural, highest natural or rational, lower spiritual, and highest spiritual or celestial. You may want to check out the chart of layers in the Psych 459 G27 lecture notes at: http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/theistic/mental-anatomy.htm#chart-layers

In the lowest portion of the natural mind, sexuality (Phase 0) is not intimate, it is indiscriminate, non-exclusive, and temporary because it is determined by the love of one's own pleasure in sex, which is the love of indiscriminate sex without intimacy and regardless of person, situation, or condition.

The interpersonal attitude behind the non-exclusive love of the sex without intimacy is exploitative, selfish, or abusive because it is tied to the love of self for the sake of self, or selfish sex. There is no love of the sexual partner for the sake of the partner--which may be called altruistic sex (mutual, exclusive, and mentally intimate).

We have an innate natural capacity to enjoy non-exclusive sex with many others and without mental intimacy or mutual caring. We also have a higher spiritual capacity to enjoy exclusive sex with one person with whom we are mentally intimate. As we progress with our character development in life, we become more and more attracted to the mental intimacy that is the result of mutual exclusive sexual love between best friends. When this phase progresses further through the unity model, the couple attains the state called conjoint self .

This is the deepest and highest form of sexual mental intimacy (C, A) between partners and therefore it is accompanied by the most satisfying sensual experiences (S). Swedenborg interviewed couples in heaven and they testified that they are in this kind of conjugial love, and further, that their romantic passion for each other grows daily more intense to endless eternity. (See details and discussion above.)

The biological capacity for physical pleasure though sex has two modalities for human beings -- either with or without mental intimacy. Sex without mental intimacy can be enjoyed by both men and women of all ages and races. But this animal or physiological pleasure is greatly enhanced in satisfaction and meaning when it is produced from mental intimacy. If there is mental intimacy, and this produces sexual activity among friends who love each other, the human sexual experience reaches its full potential. This full potential is given up when we attempt to enjoy sex without intimacy and friendship between the partners.

When a wife or girlfriend engages in sexual activity due to physical, social, or psychological pressure by the husband or boyfriend, the sexual activity will be without mental intimacy. It is called sexual blackmail (as discussed above). Even though the woman is familiar with the identity and values of the man, the sexual activity itself will not be intimate because she is not allowed to be honest with him (what she really thinks and feels), and gives in to his pressure rather to his charm or attractiveness. Thus her sexual participation is not free and voluntary, thus not from her love for it.

When a husband has a mental attitude that encourages fantasizing about non-exclusive sex with other women, he performs biological coupling with his wife, but this is not conjunctive or mentally intimate. It is a depersonalized experience that does not go deeper than his physical pleasure isolated from friendship or caring. This kind of sexual attitude by a husband or boyfriend is not personal, not intimate, it is indiscriminate, mentally promiscuous, pornographic, and unchaste to the marriage vow of exclusivity with one woman for life.

His sexuality is not personal or intimate with his wife. Sex therapists in non-theistic psychology prescribe or approve of fantasizing that you are with someone else while making love to your spouse. Some even recommend that the couple watch pornographic videos to stimulate and "revitalize" their passion for each other. This kind of therapy or advice ignores the spiritual consequences when a partner encourages the habit of having non-exclusive sex thoughts. Check out what advice is being given on the Web regarding sex in marriage.

Sex that has no spiritual context within it is not personal, not intimate, not lasting in interest or passion. When sex is practiced in a context of friendship and intimacy, the relationship becomes intimate, personal and lasting. That relationship enters the spiritual phase of conjunction, which is eternal and unbreakable by death. In the afterlife of heaven, the two soul mates live in conjugial unity forever .

Non-theistic sex therapy does not recognize that allowing mental non-exclusivity hurts affective closeness and intimacy, thus hurts conjunction between husband and wife at the inner level of their relationship, that level that is spiritual or eternal in significance for their marriage. The spiritual level of marriage is that part that continues in the afterlife . It strongly influences the degree of mental intimacy and affinity the couple can have for each other. This is why a husband's encouragement of the habit of using pornography or mental non-exclusivity in marriage, hurts the mental intimacy that he and his wife can achieve together.

Swedenborg has confirmed by repeated observation that after resuscitation in the other life people shed off all their external inhibitions and external loyalties. Here if a husband only fantasizes sex with another woman, or has an email woman correspondent with whom he discusses intimate things, it is considered not so hurtful to his marriage as long as he doesn't meet these women or go off to a bar where there are women willing to act slutty to make a profit on men. Such a man may not act out his fantasy or attraction because he is concerned that it might destroy his marriage and hurt his career. But in the other life these inhibitions and considerations do not apply. Men do what they feel like doing and nothing can stop them from acting out their fantasies. This is why mental infidelity is as real, or more real, than physical infidelity.

The media often depict men wanting the woman to act like a slut towards them. They call that "being sexy." But they don't mean sexy; they really mean slutty. This adjective refers to a woman who acts like she approves of or encourages non-exclusive sex. Men go to bars or look at "adult" movies and begin to confuse or associate non-exclusive sexual exploitation with sexual pleasure. Men act like they want their girl friend or wife to act that way for them. This leads to the loss of their ability to feel sexually aroused in the context of personal friendship and intimacy with one woman. When they are in a situation of sexual exclusivity with one woman, they begin to lose sexual interest in her. This is destructive and wasteful of human potential.

On the other hand, sexual activity within the context of mental intimacy and friendship leads the partners into a spiritual-sensual sexuality which corresponds to the celestial marriage they are going to enjoy together as soul mates in heaven in eternity. The delights and pleasures of exclusive and chaste conjugial love, here and in heaven, are immeasurably greater and more passionate than the pleasures of natural-sensuous non-intimate sexuality. Swedenborg conversed about this with both husbands and wives in the heavens of eternity and it is they themselves who reported this wonderful intensity of their sexuality. This is not something Swedenborg invented or theorized about.

In the spiritual-sensuous portion of our mind, sexuality is entirely different from that in our natural-sensuous mind..

At the spiritual level of rational consciousness, sexuality consists of the exclusive love of one of the sex and is closely tied to the love of others for the sake of others (altruistic sex). The exclusive love of one of the sex in the affective organs of the spiritual and celestial mind is exclusive with just one person, is monogamous in marriage, and is eternal. It builds and solidifies unity between husband and wife so that mentally they are conjoined into a conjoint self, thereby reaching their full human potential.

In movies and novels this theme is often reflected contrastively with men and women, men being shown as promiscuous and unchaste, while their girlfriends or wives are chaste and exclusive. The word "chaste" in the Writings of Swedenborg means exclusive sex with one's spouse. A "chaste" husband abhors thoughts of being with other women. A "chaste" wife allows herself to be sexually aroused only by her husband. The opposite of chaste, or "unchaste," is non-exclusive sexual interest.

Often the women are portrayed as feeling jealous and threatened when the man shows a sexual interest in other women. It is known therefore that women love monogamy and exclusivity in sex while men do not love that, and have to force themselves to be faithful in act or thought. Eventually the men also love exclusivity and mental intimacy in sex when they begin to bond internally with their wife. Even then the husbands may feel attraction and excitement of the non-exclusive type of the love of the sex with many. But this attraction gradually dies out if the man does not approve of it because it is contrary to the conjoint self with his wife -- and that is his true love.

It makes rational sense for husbands to be very careful by rejecting these natural-sensuous thoughts and desires when they occur spontaneously. It's not their occurrence that should be addressed (over which a person may have no control), but the rejection of them when they occur in the mind. If we do not actively and explicitly reject them in our mind, we are allowing them in, and since they are pleasurable and delightful, we love them, and the loves (A) we accept fully with cognitive justifications (C), those we can never give up.

Quoting from the Writings of Swedenborg:

CL 48. Love of the sex is love towards many of the sex and with many; but conjugial love is love towards one of the sex and with one.

Love towards many and with many is a natural love, for man has it in common with beasts and birds, and these are natural; but conjugial love is a spiritual love and peculiar and proper to humans, because humans were created and are therefore born to become spiritual.

Therefore, so far as we become spiritual, we put off love of the sex and put on conjugial love.

In the beginning of marriage, love of the sex appears as if conjoined with conjugial love; but in the progress of marriage, they are separated, and then, with those who are spiritual, love of the sex is expelled and conjugial love insinuated, while with those who are natural, the opposite is the case.

From what has now been said, it is evident that love of the sex, being a love shared with many and in itself natural, yea, animal, is impure and unchaste; and being a roving and unlimited love, is scortatory; but it is wholly otherwise with conjugial love. (CL 48).

Note that the exclusive love of one of the sex with married partners is called "conjugial love." Note the word "conjugial" which means spiritual marriage together with natural marriage vs. the word "conjugal" which means natural marriage without spiritual marriage.

Most husband and wife couples begin their life together in a natural or external marriage without a spiritual dimension. Some marriages stay that way until the end, but others go on to the next phase which is the conjugial phase or spiritual dimension of marriage. The unity model refers to this spiritual phase that is tied to the natural phase.

Everything spiritual is based on rational consciousness which animals cannot possess, not having the mental anatomy for it. We become spiritual to the extent that we think rationally about unity in eternity, and abandon non-intimate sexual activity in favor of conjugial love. This makes sense since non-exclusive love of the sex with many keeps our consciousness in the natural-animal mind where natural loves operate. To raise our consciousness to the spiritual level we must commit ourselves to conjugial love which is a love operating in our spiritual mind, the organ that we possess as our conscious mind after resuscitation in eternity. This organ is in our immortal spiritual body which we have since birth. This spiritual body is anatomically equipped with everything that the physical body is equipped with. Thus we can enjoy in eternity the things we enjoyed here but with greater purity, intensity, and satisfaction.

5.1 Part B

Quoting from the Writings of Swedenborg:

CL 46. (i) Everyone retains his sexual love after death, exactly as it was inwardly; that is, as it was inwardly in his thought and will while in the world.

Every love accompanies a person after death, because it is the essence of his life; and the dominant love, the chief of all, lasts for ever in a person, together with the subordinate loves. The reason is that love is properly a function of a person's spirit, reaching the body from the spirit. Since after death a person becomes a spirit, he brings his love with him. Since love is the essence of a person's life, it is obvious that a person's fate after death is determined by the kind of life he led in the world.

As regards sexual love, this is a universal feature shared by all. For it was implanted from creation in a person's soul, which is the source of the whole person's essence, as something necessary for the continuance of the human race. This love remains the chief one, because after death a man is a man and a woman is a woman; and there is nothing in the soul, mind or body which is not male in the man and female in the woman.

These two have been so created as to strive to be joined, in fact to be joined into one. This striving is sexual love, which precedes conjugial love. Since then this tendency to union is stamped upon every detail of the male and the female, it follows that it cannot be wiped out and die together with the body. (CL 46)

CL 47. The reason why sexual love remains as it was inwardly in the world is that everyone has an interior and exterior; this pair is called the inner and the outer man. He has as a result inner and outer will and inner and outer thought. When a person dies, he leaves behind his exterior and keeps his interior, for outward things belong properly to his body, inward things to his spirit. Since a person is his love, and love resides in the spirit, it follows that his sexual love remains with him after death as it was inwardly before.

For example, if his love was inwardly conjugial or chaste, it remains conjugial or chaste after death, but if it was inwardly scortatory (unchaste, non-exclusive) it remains the same after death. It should, however, be noted that sexual love is not the same in one person as in another, for there are countless differences. But it still remains in each case as it was in each person's spirit. (CL 47)

CL 44. The second experience.
I once saw three spirits newly arrived from the world [ = after resuscitation we are called spirits ], who were wandering about, gazing around and asking questions. They were surprised to find that they were still living as human beings, and seeing familiar sights [ = in the mental world of eternity ]. For they knew that they had departed from the previous, natural, world, and that there they had not believed that they would live as human beings until after the day of the Last Judgment, when they would again be clothed in the [physical] flesh and bones they had left in their graves.

So to free them of all doubt that they were really human beings, they took turns to examine and touch themselves and others, handling objects and finding a thousand proofs that they were just as much human beings as in their previous world, with the one difference that they could see one another in brighter light, and objects in greater splendour, that is to say, more perfectly.

[2] Then it happened that two angelic spirits [ = people who live in their second or middle heaven ] came across them. They stopped them to ask, 'Where do you come from?' 'We have departed from the world,' they replied, 'and are living again in a world, so we have moved from one world to another; that is what is making us wonder.' The three newcomers then questioned the two angelic spirits about heaven; and since two of the newcomers were young men, and their eyes glittered with the spark of sexual lust, the angelic spirits said, 'Have you perhaps seen any women?' 'Yes, we have,' they answered.

In reply to their questions about heaven the angelic spirits said, 'In heaven everything is magnificent and splendid, things of a sort you have never set eyes on. There are girls and youths there, the girls so beautiful they could be called models of beauty, and the youths of such good character they could be called models of good character. The beauty of the girls and the good character of the youths match so well that they resemble shapes that fit snugly together [ = reciprocity ].

The two newcomers enquired whether human form in heaven is exactly like that in the natural world. The reply was that they are exactly alike, with nothing taken away from the man or from the woman. In short, a man is a man, and a woman is a woman, with all the perfection of shape with which they were endowed by creation. Please go aside and check yourselves over, to make sure you are just as much a man as before.'

[3] The newcomers asked another question: 'We were told in the world we have left [the natural world] that in heaven there is no giving in marriage, because people are then angels. So is sexual love possible?' The angelic spirits replied, 'Your sort of sexual love is impossible, but there is angelic sexual love, which is chaste and free from all the allures of lust.' 'If sexual love,' said the newcomers, 'is devoid of allures, what is it then?' Thinking about that kind of love made them groan and say, 'How boring heavenly joy must be! How could any young man long to go to heaven? Is not such love barren and lifeless?'

The angelic spirits replied with a smile, 'Sexual love among the angels, the kind of love there is in heaven, is still full of the most intimate delights. It is an extremely pleasant feeling, as if every part of the mind were expanded. This affects all parts of the chest, and inside it is as if the heart were playing games with the lungs; and this play gives rise to breathing, sound and speech. These make contact between the sexes, that is, between young men and girls, the very model of heavenly sweetness, because it is pure.

[4] All newcomers who come up to heaven are tested to see how chaste they are. They are introduced into the company of girls of heavenly beauty, and these can detect from their sound, speech, face, eyes, gestures and the sphere they emit, what their sexual love is like. If it is unchaste, they run away and tell their friends they have seen satyrs and priapi. The newcomers too undergo a change and appear hairy to the eyes of angels, with feet like calves or leopards. They are quickly sent back down, so as not to pollute with their lust the atmosphere there.'

On hearing this the two newcomers said again, 'So there is no sexual love in heaven! What can chaste sexual love be but love stripped of its living essence? Surely the contacts between young men and women there are boring pleasures. We are not made of stone or wood, but sensations and the wish to live.'

[5] On hearing this the two angelic spirits indignantly replied, 'You are quite ignorant of what chaste sexual love is, because you are not yet chaste yourselves. That love is the supreme delight of the mind and so of the heart, but not of the flesh too below the heart. Angelic chastity, which is shared by either sex, prevents that love from passing beyond the barrier of the heart, but within and above it the young man's good character enjoys the delights of chaste sexual love with the beauty of the young woman.

These are too inward and too rich in charm to be described in words. This sexual love is the prerogative of angels, because they have only conjugial love; and this cannot be combined with unchaste sexual love. Truly conjugial love [exclusive sexual love between married partners] is a chaste love, and has nothing in common with unchaste [non-exclusive] love [of many]. It is confined to one person of the opposite sex to the exclusion of all others, for it is a love of the spirit leading to love of the body, not a love of the body leading to love of the spirit, that is to say, not a love which attacks the spirit.'

[6] The two newcomers were pleased to hear this and said, 'So there is sexual love in heaven. What else is conjugial love?' But the angelic spirits replied, 'Think more deeply and check your thoughts; you will find that your sexual love is love outside marriage, quite different from conjugial love, which is as different from it as wheat from chaff, or rather what is human from what is bestial. If you ask women in heaven what is love outside marriage, I assure you they will reply, "What do you mean? What are you saying? How can you utter a question that hurts our ears like this? How can a love which was not created be generated in a person?"

'If you then ask them what truly conjugial love is, I know they will answer that it is not sexual love, but the love of one of the opposite sex, something that happens only when a young man sees the young woman the Lord has provided for him, and the young woman sees the young man. Then they both feel the fire of marriage catch alight in their heart, and he sees that she is his and she sees that he is hers.

One love meets the other, makes itself known and instantly joins their souls, and thus their minds. From there it enters their chests, and after they are married spreads further, so becoming love in all its fullness, growing together day by day, until they are no longer two, but as if one person.

[7] 'I know too that these women in heaven will swear that they know no other kind of sexual love. For they say, "How can sexual love exist, if it does not go out to meet the other and receive it in return, so as to long for everlasting union, the two becoming one flesh?"' To this the angelic spirits added, 'In heaven no one knows what promiscuity means or even the possibility of its existence. Angels feel cold all over at the idea of unchaste love or love outside marriage; on the other hand chaste or conjugial love makes them feel warm all over. In the case of men, all their sinews go slack at the sight of a whore, and become tense on seeing their wives.'

[8] On hearing this the three newcomers asked whether married couples in the heavens have the same kind of love as they do on earth. The two angelic spirits replied that it is exactly the same. Then seeing they wanted to know whether the ultimate delights were the same there, they said they were exactly the same, but far more blessed, 'because,' they said, 'angels' perception and feeling is much more exquisite that those of human beings; and what brings love alive but the current of potency?

Surely its failure leads to a cessation and cooling of that love? Is not that power the very measure, degree and basis for that love? Is it not its beginning, its strengthening and its completion? It is a universal law that first things are brought into being by ultimates, are kept in being by them and endure by their means. So it is with this love; so if the ultimate delights were absent, there would be no delights in conjugial love.'

[9] Then the newcomers asked whether the ultimate delights of that love led to the birth of children there, saying that, if not, what use were they? The angelic spirit replied that there are no natural, only spiritual children. 'What,' they asked, 'are spiritual children?' 'A married couple,' they answered, 'are more and more united by the ultimate delights in the marriage of good and truth. The marriage of good and truth is that of love and wisdom, and love and wisdom are the children born of that marriage. Since in heaven the husband is wisdom and the wife is the love of wisdom, both being spiritual, they cannot have any but spiritual children conceived and born there. This is why these delights do not leave angels depressed, as some on earth are, but cheerful; this is due to the constant inflow of fresh strength to replace the former, at once renewing and enlightening it.

For all who reach heaven return to the springtime of their youth, recovering the strength of that age, and keeping this for ever.'

[10] On hearing this the newcomers said, 'Do we not read in the Word [ = New Testament Sacred Scripture ] that in heaven people are not given in marriage, since they are angels?' 'Look up to heaven,' was the angelic spirits' answer to this, 'and you will receive your answer.' They asked why they should look up to heaven. 'Because,' they were told, 'it is from there we get our interpretation of the Word. The Word is deeply spiritual, and angels, being spiritual, will teach us its spiritual meaning.'

After a short while heaven was thrown open overhead, and two angels came into view, who said, 'There are weddings in the heavens as there are on earth, but only for those for whom good and truth are married [those who have undergone regeneration], for no others are angels [after the second death]. So it is spiritual weddings, the marriage of good and truth, [ = rebirth of the individual, or regeneration of the inherited character ] which are meant by this passage. These are possible on earth, but not after death, and so not in the heavens.

So it is said [ = in the New Testament Sacred Scripture ] of the five foolish maidens, who were also invited to the wedding, that they could not go in, because they lacked the marriage of good and truth [ = all people who have not changed their inherited character ]; for they had no oil, but only lamps [ = people who knew what is true but did not live accordingly ]. Oil means good and lamps truth; and being given in marriage is entering heaven, where that marriage is.'

The three newcomers were very happy to hear this, being full of the longing for heaven and hoping to get married there. So they said, 'We shall devote ourselves to good behaviour and a decorous life, so that we cachieve our aims.' (CL 44)

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 46. 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. Every love follows man after death, love being the esse of his life; and the ruling love, which is the head of all the rest, continues with man to eternity, and with it the subordinate loves. The reason why they continue, is because love pertains properly to man's spirit, and to his body from the spirit; and after death man becomes a spirit and so carries his love with him. And because love is the esse of man's life, it is evident that as the man's life was in the world, such will be his lot after death.

As to love of the sex, this is the universal of all loves, for it is implanted by creation in man's very soul, from which is the essence of the whole man, and this for the sake of the propagation of the human race. This love especially remains because, after death, man is a man and woman a woman, and there is nothing in their soul, mind, or body which is not masculine in the male and feminine in the female. Moreover, the two have been so created that they strive for conjunction, yea, for such conjunction that they may become one. This striving is the love of the sex which precedes conjugial love. Now, because the conjunctive inclination is inscribed upon each and all things of the male and of the female, it follows that this inclination cannot be obliterated and pass away with the body.

CL 47. The reason why love of the sex remains after death such as it had been interiorly in the world is this: With every man there is an internal and an external, these two being also called the internal and external man. Hence there is an internal and external will and thought. When a man dies, he leaves his external and retains his internal; for externals pertain properly to his body, and internals properly to his spirit. Now because a man is his own love, and his love resides in his spirit, it follows that his love of the sex remains after death such as it had been within him interiorly. For example, if interiorly that love had been conjugial or chaste, it remains conjugial and chaste after death; and if interiorly it had been scortatory, it also remains such after death. But it must be known that love of the sex is not the same with one man as with another. Its differences are infinite in number; yet, such as it is in the spirit of each man, such also it remains.

CL 48.. II. THAT CONJUGIAL LOVE LIKEWISE REMAINS SUCH AS IT HAD BEEN WITH THE MAN INTERIORLY, THAT IS, IN HIS INTERIOR WILL AND THOUGHT, IN THE WORLD. Since love of the sex is one thing, and conjugial love another, therefore both are named, and it is said that the latter also remains with man after death such as it had been in his internal man while he lived in the world. But because few know the difference between love of the sex and conjugial love, therefore, at the threshold of this treatise, I will premise something respecting it.

Love of the sex is love towards many of the sex and with many; but conjugial love is love towards one of the sex and with one. Love towards many and with many is a natural love, for man has it in common with beasts and birds, and these are natural; but conjugial love is a spiritual love and peculiar and proper to men, because men were created and are therefore born to become spiritual. Therefore, so far as a man becomes spiritual, he puts off love of the sex and puts on conjugial love. In the beginning of marriage, love of the sex appears as if conjoined with conjugial love; but in the progress of marriage, they are separated, and then, with those who are spiritual, love of the sex is expelled and conjugial love insinuated, while with those who are natural, the opposite is the case. From what has now been said, it is evident that love of the sex, being a love shared with many and in itself natural, yea, animal, is impure and unchaste; and being a roving and unlimited love, is scortatory; but it is wholly otherwise with conjugial love. That conjugial love is spiritual and properly human, will be clearly evident from what follows.

48a. 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. There are two states through which man passes after death, an external and an internal. He comes first into his external state and afterwards into his internal. If both married partners have died, then, while in the external state, the one meets and recognizes the other, and if they have lived together in the world, they again consociate and for some time live together. When in this state, neither of them knows the inclination of the one to the other, this being concealed in their internals; but afterwards, when they come into their internal state, the inclination manifests itself, and if this is concordant and sympathetic, they continue their conjugial life, but if discordant and antipathetic, they dissolve it. If a man has had several wives, he conjoins himself with them in turn while in the external state; but when he enters the internal state, in which he perceives the nature of the inclinations of his love, he either takes one or leaves them all; for in the spiritual world as in the natural, no Christian is allowed to take more than one wife because this infests and profanes religion. The like happens with a woman who has had several husbands; women, however, do not adjoin themselves to their husbands but only present themselves, and their husbands adjoin them to themselves. It must be known that husbands rarely know their wives, but wives readily know their husbands. The reason is because women have an interior perception of love, and men only an exterior perception.

48b. 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. This need not be further explained since it follows from what has been set forth in the preceding article. Here it shall only be shown how, after death, a man puts off his externals and puts on his internals.

After death, every one is first introduced into the world which is called the world of spirits--which is in the middle between heaven and hell--and is there prepared, the good for heaven and the evil for hell. This preparation has for its end, that the internal and external may be concordant and make a one, and not be discordant and make two. [2] In the natural world they make two, and only with the sincere in heart do they make a one. That they are two is evident from crafty and cunning men, especially from hypocrites, flatterers, dissemblers, and liars. In the spiritual world, a man is not permitted thus to have a divided mind, but he who had been evil in internals must be evil also in externals; so likewise the good must be good in both; for after death every man becomes what he had been internally, and not what he had been externally. [3] To this end, he is then let into his external and his internal alternately. While in his external, every man, even the evil, is wise, that is, wishes to appear wise, but in his internal, an evil man is insane. By these alternations, the man is able to see his insanities and repent of them; but if he had not repented in the world, he cannot do so afterwards, for he loves his insanities and wishes to remain in them, and therefore brings his external to be likewise insane. Thus his internal and his external become one, and when this is the case, he is prepared for hell. [4] With a good man, it is the reverse. Because in the world he had looked to God and had repented, he is wiser in his internal than in his external. Moreover, in his external, by reason of the allurements and vanities of the world, he sometimes became insane. Therefore, his external must be brought into concordance with his internal, which latter, as was said, is wise. When this is done, he is prepared for heaven. This illustrates how the putting off of the external and the putting on of the internal is effected after death.

CL 49. 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. That separations take place after death is because conjunctions made on earth are seldom made from any internal perception of love, being for the most part from an external perception, which holds the internal in hiding. External perception of love derives its cause and origin from such things as pertain to love of the world and the body. To love of the world pertain especially wealth and possessions, and to love of the body, dignities and honors. Besides these, there are also various allurements which entice, such as beauty and a simulated propriety of behavior; sometimes even unchastity. Moreover, marriages are contracted within the district, city or village of one's birth or abode, where there is no choice save one that is restricted and limited to the families of one's acquaintances, and among these to those in the same station of life as oneself. Hence it is that, for the most part, marriages entered into in the world are external and not at the same time internal, when yet it is internal conjunction, or conjunction of souls, which makes marriage. This conjunction, however, is not perceptible until man puts off his external and puts on his internal, which takes place after death. Hence it is that there is then separation and afterwards new conjunctions with those who are similar and homogeneous--unless these had been provided on earth, as is the case with those who from youth have loved, chosen, and asked of the Lord a legitimate and lovely partnership with one, and who spurn and reject wandering