CENTER FOR ROMANTIC COMEDY STUDIES |
| DIRECTOR Lugus Pasternak |
ABOUT
That Those, Who Are In Love Truly Conjugial,
FEEL THEMSELVES A UNITED MAN, AND AS ONE FLESH. That it
is so, is to be confirmed not from the mouth of any inhabitant of earth, but from the mouths of the inhabitants of heaven, since love truly conjugial is not given at this day with men on earth; and, moreover, men on earth are circumvested with a gross body, which deadens and absorbs the sensation that two consorts are a united man, and as one flesh; and besides, they in the world, who love their consorts only exteriorily, and not interiorly, are not willing to hear this; they think also concerning this from the flesh lasciviously. It is otherwise with the angels of heaven, because these are in spiritual and heavenly conjugial love, and not circumvested with so gross a body as men of the earth are. From those who have lived for ages with their consorts in heaven I have heard it testified, that they feel themselves thus united, the husband himself with the wife, and the wife herself with the husband, and each feels himself or herself in the other mutually and interchangeably, as also in the flesh, although they are separate. The cause of this phenomenon, rare upon earth, that the unition of their souls and minds is felt in their flesh, they said was this, because the soul not only makes the inmosts of the head, but also the inmosts of the body; in like manner the mind, which is mediate between the soul and the body ; which, although it appears to be in the head, is yet also actually in the whole body; and they said, that thence it is, that the acts, which the soul and mind intend, flow in an instant from the body; also that it is thence, that themselves, after the rejection of the body in the former world, are perfect men. Now, because the soul and the mind adjoin themselves closely to the flesh of the body, in order that they may operate and produce their effects, it follows, that the unition of the soul and mind with a consort is felt also in the body as one flesh. When these things were said by the angels, I heard from the spirits who stood by, that they were things of angelic wisdom, which are transcendent; but those spirits were natural rational, and not spiritual rational.