Conjugial Love #71

71. No others can be in a state of truly conjugial love but those who receive it from the Lord - namely, those who go to Him directly and live the life of the church from Him - for the reason that this love, viewed in terms of its origin and correspondence, is celestial, spiritual, holy, pure and clean, more than any other love that is found in angels of heaven or people of the church (as said above, no. 64). And these attributes of it cannot exist except in people who are joined to the Lord and brought by Him into association with angels of heaven.

That is because people like this abstain from love affairs outside of marriage, which are liaisons with others than their rightful wife or husband, and they abstain from them as injuries to the soul and as cesspools of hell. And in the degree that a married person abstains from such liaisons, even as regards the lusts of his will and his consequent intentions, in the same degree conjugial love is purified in him and becomes progressively spiritual, first during his life on earth, and afterwards in heaven.

[2] No love can ever become pure in human beings, nor in angels. So neither can this love. But because the Lord primarily regards the intention that is in the will, therefore to the extent that a person has the intention and perseveres in it, to that extent he is introduced into the purity and holiness of this love, and gradually makes progress in it.

No others can be in a state of spiritual conjugial love but those who are in it from the Lord, because heaven is in that love. And the natural man - for whom conjugial love takes its pleasure solely from the flesh - cannot draw near to heaven, nor to any angel. Indeed, neither can he draw near to any person who possesses that love, for that love is the fundamental love of all celestial and spiritual loves (see above, nos. 65-67).

[3] The fact of this was attested for me by an experience I had. I saw some evil spirits in the spiritual world who were being prepared for hell, going towards an angel who was enjoying the company of his wife. As they were approaching, while still at a distance, they began to act like frenzied madmen, and they sought caverns and pits as places of refuge and threw themselves into them.

(One may conclude from the incidents related in the Introduction, no. 10, that evil spirits like whatever is of the same character as their affection, however unclean it is, and that they dislike spirits of heaven, because heaven is pure, which they avoid as something alien to them.)