Reading excerpts from Emanuel Swedenborg’s Conjugial Love evokes a compassionate smile. It is evident that he was in touch with awakened beings (perfected humans, or angels). They shared with him beautiful, inspiring insights into human love. And yet, being the good mammal that he was, did he perhaps fail to comprehend their key teaching about sexual continence (lovemaking Synergy style, i.e., without climax)?
Swedenborg (b. 1688) was a Swedish scientist who began writing spiritual treatises in 1749, after a profound spiritual awakening. Without intending to, he founded a spiritual movement denominations of which exist to this day.
He taught that the highest form of connection between a man and a woman was monogamous union, which ideally mirrors the androgynous pairs (joined together as one) that are human beings’ true nature beyond the material plane. Swedenborg viewed the masculine and feminine aspects of humans as complementary. He taught that whether or not spouses are ideally mated, chaste monogamous union advances their spiritual understanding because it brings the partners closer to their spiritual reality.
More on angels
Swedenborg’s “angels” were not his spiritual guides in the conventional sense. According to his writings, angels were once humans who had lived on Earth and transitioned to heaven after death. One of their roles was to assist humans in overcoming “evil affections” in order to lead them toward “heaven.”
However, Swedenborg emphasized that angels respect human free will and do not directly control or intervene in human affairs. All they can do is influence human behaviour in subtle and indirect ways, respecting human free will while guiding individuals towards good. It’s up to the humans whether they follow the advice, or even interpret it correctly.
According to Swedenborg, angels inspire us towards truth and goodness but always without coercion. They support us in dealing with lower cravings and selfish instincts. But only when we are willing to turn away from those instincts.
To an extent, they can act as guardians, attempting to protect us from evil influences by urging us to “moderate our affections” (modify our lovemaking?). In this way, they push back against negative forces that try to harm us spiritually.
This suggestion that “moderated affections” protect us from evil influences is an interesting concept deserving of more attention than it will be given here. Do misused “affections” open us to harm from evil influences? In contrast, is chaste lovemaking protective?
In any event, the key point is that angels are obliged to back off and leave us to our own poor decisions, rather than engender fear. This is because they respect our free will. Thus, they can go only so far, even with an advanced soul like Swedenborg.
What did Swedenborg’s angels teach about chaste lovemaking?
According to Swedenborg’s writings, angels taught that chaste lovemaking in heaven is a profound and joyous experience:
- Spiritual union: Angelic lovemaking is primarily a union of minds and spirits, not just bodies. It originates from the soul and flows through the mind to the body, becoming “love in its fullness”.
- Elevated experience: Chaste love is elevated to a superior spiritual region, purified of base desires, and then descends to the body, making the physical act itself pure.
- Intense pleasure: Angels experience “ultimate delights” that are more exquisite and sensitive than human sensations, resulting in a “cheerful constant flow of new vitality”.
- Spiritual offspring: Instead of producing physical children, heavenly unions result in an increase of love and wisdom for both partners.
- Perpetual rejuvenation: After such delights, angels do not experience sadness or fatigue but instead feel refreshed and return to a state of “vernal youth”.
- Exclusive devotion: Chaste love is defined by the exclusive and faithful love between one man and one woman, not abstinence from sexual intercourse.
- Divine origin: This love is considered chaste, pure, and holy because it originates from the Creator and symbolizes the union of divine love and wisdom.
Swedenborg emphasized that this celestial form of lovemaking is free from lust or selfish desires, focusing instead on the spiritual connection and mutual growth of the partners involved. Yet who has ever climaxed without some lustful feelings?
Ultimate delights?
The angels clearly succeeded in raising doubts in Swedenborg’s mind about earthly climax. As can be seen in these excerpts, Swedenborg was determined to know if this heavenly love included “ultimate delights,” and the question came up repeatedly.
Here is where I think a very understandable, all too human, communication breakdown occurred. The angels, apparently knowing he would be too fearful if they laid out a no-orgasm approach to sex, just assured him that the “ultimate delights” were certainly part of the package of celestial lovemaking. They said,
[The delights] are altogether similar, but far more blessed, because the perception and sensation of the angels is far more exquisite than human perception and sensation.
They did their best to point him in the Synergy direction, however:
You do not know at all what the chaste love of the sex is, because you are not yet chaste. That love is the very delight of the mind, and thence of the heart, but not at the same time of the flesh below the heart. Angelic chastity, which is common to both sexes, prevents the passing of that love beyond the enclosure of the heart; but within that and above that, the morality of the youth is delighted with the beauty of the maiden, with the delights of the chaste love of the sex that are too interior and too rich in pleasantness to be described by words. (Emphasis supplied)
In short, they tried to tell him that an ecstasy is possible that he cannot comprehend while he is not yet chaste. But that this ecstasy doesn’t rely on the flesh below the heart. Nor does it lead to procreation. “There are no natural offspring, but spiritual offspring”, defined as “love and wisdom.”
Said the angels,
Think more deeply, reflect, and you will perceive that your love of the sex is outside of conjugial love and that conjugial love is altogether different; that it is as different from the former as wheat from chaff, or rather as the human from the bestial. (Emphasis supplied)
It is not the love of the sex, but the love of one of the sex. [That is love of the person not the act.]
Conjugial love perfects an angel, for it unites him with his consort…. For…two married partners in heaven are not two but one angel.
All the delights of love truly conjugial, even the ultimate, are chaste. (Emphasis supplied)
However, Swedenborg apparently never made the leap to experimenting with sex without ejaculation, i.e., “chaste sex”. In his day offspring were considered an economic necessity by most of humanity. How was a couple to produce children without ejaculating?
Never mind that even in his day, couples often had sex when they weren’t trying for children. Swedenborg, however, appears to have clung to his understanding of “ultimate delights” and taught others to do so too, rather than mastering chaste lovemaking when not seeking to procreate.
Retaining potency. And spiritual “deafness”
The angels gave him another clue as well. They hinted at the benefits of undiminished potency (sexual self-control). They ask whether it isn’t so that love has no life
unless from a vein of potency? If this [potency] fails [in the post-orgasm neurochemical dip, for example] does not that love diminish and grow cold? And is not that vigour the very measure, the very degree, and the very basis of that love?
This sounds like a loud hint that orgasm is best avoided, because as potency fades after climax so do loving feelings.
Swedenborg notes that when we humans get our chaste love right, it exalts the angels:
Moreover, I have heard from the angels that they perceive those delights within themselves to be exalted and filled when they ascend from chaste married partners on earth.
In Swedenborg’s recounted dialogue, someone once again enquires whether his revered “ultimate delights” fit into the picture. The angels say, “Why not?” knowing that their questioner is too frightened to consider the possibility that earthly orgasms don’t ideally fit into the picture of chaste lovemaking.
Swedenborg (understandably) failed to integrate the key insights about retaining potency and the lack of a need for semen in chaste lovemaking. Instead, he reached the tortured conclusion that earthly orgasm somehow ascends to heaven and mysteriously becomes chaste when a couple is monogamous.
He observed, however, that over time “conjugial love is purified more and more and becomes chaste.” In short, (predictably) habituation sets in and a couple’s ardour declines. So do the lovers’ potency and potential for using sex to enhance their vigour and protect their love for each other. Gee thanks biology!
Swedenborg is not the only influential spiritual channel who was unable to “hear” rather blatant clues about Synergy-style sex. In future blog posts, we’ll look at some others.
