Page:Emanuel Swedenborg, Scientist and Mystic.djvu/332

316 "I once saw three spirits recently deceased," he told in this book, "who were wandering about in the world of spirits, examining whatever came their way and inquiring concerning it. They were all amazement to find that men lived altogether as before. . . they by turns viewed and touched themselves and others, and felt the surrounding objects, and by a thousand proofs convinced themselves that they were now men as in the former world; besides which they saw each other in a brighter light . . ."

Two angelic spirits talked with them and the newcomers were curious to hear about heaven. "As two of the three newcomers were youths there darted from their eyes a sparkling fire of lust for the sex," and the angelic spirit said, "Possibly you have seen some women?" They admitted it, and asked if there were any in heaven. The angelic spirits said there were youths and maidens in heaven. Was the human form, the newcomers inquired, altogether similar to that in the natural world? Nothing was wanting, they were told, either in the man or the woman. "Retire, if you please," they said to the youths, "and examine whether you are not a complete man as before."

"Is there then the love of the sex there?"

"Not your love of the sex," they were told, "in heaven we have the angelic love of the sex, which is chaste and devoid of libidinous allurement."

"If there be a love of the sex devoid of all allurement," the youths observed, "what in such case is the love of the sex?" And they sighed, and said, "Oh how dry and insipid is the joy of heaven! What young man if this be the case can possibly wish for heaven?"

The angelic spirits smiled and explained that it was a kind of exchange of pure celestial sweets, tone of voice, eyes, gestures, speech, but the newcomers declared, "What is a chaste love of the sex but a love deprived of the essence of its life . . . we are not stocks and stones . . ."

They were told by the angelic spirits that angelic chastity common to each sex prevented their chaste love from descending below the heart. Yet it was an indescribably joyous and abundant delight, and they possessed it because they had conjugial love only, which was a love of the spirit and thence of the body, not a love infesting the spirit.