158. 2. Conjugial love joins two souls and thus two minds into one. Every human being is made up of soul, mind and body. The soul is his inmost constituent; the mind is his intermediate one; and the body is the outmost part. Because the soul is a person's inmost constituent, it is, from its origin, celestial. Because the mind is his intermediate constituent, it is, from its origin, spiritual. And because the body is the outmost part, it is, from its origin, natural.
Things which are, from their origin, celestial, and things which are, from their origin, spiritual, do not exist in space, but are in appearances of space. This is also known in the world. That is why it is said that spiritual things cannot have dimension or location ascribed to them. Consequently, since the spaces are appearances, distances and nearnesses are appearances as well. Appearances of distance and nearness in the spiritual world depend on congruences, similarities, and affinities of love, as I have quite often pointed out and established in works I have written about that world. 1
[2] We say this here in order to have it known that people's souls and minds are not in space, as their bodies are, because, as we said above, their souls and minds are from their origin celestial and spiritual. And because they are not in space, they can be joined together as though into one, even though their bodies cannot be so joined at the same time.
This conjunction takes place especially between married partners who love each other deeply. But because woman comes from man, and this conjunction is a kind of reunion, reason can see that it is not an amalgamation into one but an adjunction, nearer and closer according to the love, and to the point of contact in those who are in a state of truly conjugial love. This adjunction may be called a spiritual dwelling together, which occurs in the case of married partners who love each other tenderly, however separated they may be in body. There are many evidences of experience, even in the natural world, which attest to this.
It is apparent from this that conjugial love joins two souls and minds into one.
각주:
1. See, for example, Arcana Coelestia (The Secrets of Heaven) (1749-1756), Heaven and Hell (1758), Divine Love and Wisdom (1763), Divine Providence (1764), The Apocalypse Revealed (1766).
