Conjugial Love (Rogers) n. 192

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192. (7) Marriage even induces different forms on their souls and minds. In the natural world one cannot observe that marriage induces different forms on their souls and minds, because souls and minds are there enveloped in a material body, and the mind is rarely visible through this. In today's world, moreover, more than in ancient times, people also learn from early childhood to assume expressions on their faces which completely conceal the affections of their minds. For this reason, one cannot see the difference between what the forms of their minds are like before marriage and what they are like afterwards. Nevertheless, it is clearly apparent from souls and minds in the spiritual world that the forms of these after marriage are different from what they had been before; for people are then spirits and angels, who are nothing else than minds and souls in human form, divested of the integuments they had had, which were composed of elements found in waters and earths and of exhalations from these diffused in the air. When these coverings have been cast off, the forms of their minds, and what these forms had been like within their bodies, become visible; and it is clearly seen then that the forms in people who are married are different from the forms in people who are not. In general, the faces of married partners possess an inner beauty, the husband receiving from his wife the lovely blush of her love, and the wife receiving from her husband the shining splendor of his wisdom. For a married couple there is united in respect to their souls; and one also sees in the two a full expression of what it is to be human. This is the case in heaven, because marriages do not exist elsewhere. Beneath heaven one finds instead only temporary alliances which are formed and broken.


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