It is her internal wisdom that led me to write this book as-of myself. She brought into our marriage the conjugial love she has in her from the Lord, inborn from nativity

An inclination to love one of the opposite sex, and with it a capacity for receiving that love, has been implanted in Christians from birth, for the reason that this love comes from the Lord alone

(CL 466).

Wives are by birth forms of love, so that it is innate in them to wish to be one with their husbands … But it is different with husbands; since they are not by birth forms of love, but designed to receive that love from their wives (CL 216)

The intelligence of women is by nature modest, gracious, peaceable, compliant, soft and gentle, while the intelligence of men is by nature critical, rough, resistant, argumentative, and given to intemperance. Evidence that this is the nature of women and the nature of men is clearly apparent from the body, face, tone of voice, speech, bearing and behavior of each sex.

(…)

From this I could clearly see that a man is born a form of the intellect, and a woman a form of love. I could also see what the nature of the intellect is and what the nature of love is in their beginnings, and thus what a man's intellect in its development would be like without conjunction with feminine love and eventually conjugial love.

(CL 218)

Chapter 2 The Doctrine of the Wife

The Word is vivified with man, according to his life of love and faith … They whose internal is open, and who thus as to their internal man are capable of being elevated into the light of heaven, are enlightened … Enlightenment is an actual opening of the interiors of the mind, and elevation of them into the light of heaven …. Holiness from the internal, that is, through the internal from the Lord, inflows with those who esteem the Word to be holy … They who are led by the Lord are enlightened, and see truths in the Word, but not they who are led by self (NJHD 256)

Chapter 2, Section 1

1. Introduction: Subduing The External Man

Now as merely natural truths and goods, which in their essence are falsities and evils, are altogether opposite to spiritual truths and goods, which in their essence are truths and goods, therefore the devil, by whom is meant hell, is in unceasing hatred against them. This is why hatreds of various kinds are unceasingly ascending from the hells; while on the other hand, spiritual loves also of various kinds descend from the heavens, and between the hatreds of the hells and the loves of the heavens there is an equilibrium, in which the men in the world are held, in order that they may be able to act from freedom according to reason.

Consequently those who do not live from the Word but from the world, since they continue natural, receive evils and the falsities thence from hell, and conceive from them hatred against spiritual truths and goods. Their hatred does not appear in the world, because it lies concealed inwardly in their spirit; but it becomes manifest after death, when they become spirits. Then they burn against those who are in spiritual truths and goods with a hatred so great that it cannot be described; it is indeed a deadly hatred; for as soon as they see an angel who is in these truths and goods, or if they merely hear the Lord named, from whom these truths and goods are, they instantly come into a fury of hatred, and feel nothing more delightful than to pursue them and to do evil to them. And as they are unable to slay their body they endeavor with a burning heart to slay their soul. (AE 754)

The absolute duality of heaven and hell cannot be escaped. While we are in the world, the Lord keeps us in equilibrium between evil affections from the hells and good affections from the angels. Who are these evil spirits, called the devil? Ordinary folks like we are who lived a normal life according to their self-intelligence, exercising their freedom to chose what to think and love. They are the future devils who have an insane hatred for all truth and good they sense in the angels. It is said that “their hatred does not appear in the world, because it lies concealed inwardly in their spirit.” We are them in our unregenerate state regardless of religion, philosophy, or lifestyle. We become those devils in the afterlife unless we compel ourselves to live by the Writings rather than by the world. To live by the Writings means to monitor our daily willing and thinking and subjugate them to conform to the Writings, shunning whatever is not in agreement, and desisting from willing and thinking in that way.

To compel ourselves to live by the Writings is to obey the Divine commandment that we cooperate in our regeneration. This cooperation includes fighting as-of self in our temptations, refusing to give in to them.

Temptations, therefore, have for their end that the externals of man may be subdued and thus be rendered obedient to his internals, as may be evident to everyone from the fact that as soon as man's loves are assaulted and broken (as during misfortunes, sickness, and grief of mind), his cupidities begin to subside, and he at the same time begins to talk piously; but as soon as he returns to his former state, the external man prevails and he scarcely thinks of such things. The like happens at the hour of death, when corporeal things begin to be extinguished; and hence everyone may see what the internal man is, and what the external; and also what remains are, and how cupidities and pleasures, which are of the external man, hinder the Lord's operation through the internal man.

From this it is also plain to everyone what temptations, or the internal pains called the stings of conscience, effect, namely, that the external man is made obedient to the internal. The obedience of the external man is nothing else than this: that the affections of what is good and true are not hindered, resisted, and suffocated by cupidities and their derivative falsities. (AC 857:2)

The “external man” refers to our corporeal-sensuous self. We can also call it the “sensorimotor mind” to distinguish it from the cognitive and affective portions of the mind, which refer to the understanding and the will (see Chapter 8 Section 6). These three portions of the natural mind are arranged in distance from the physical body. The affective functions of the mind are in the will, or the inmost. The sensorimotor functions of the mind are close to the body senses and the brain. The sensory organs of the body and the brain are physical objects. They receive the chemical stimulation but they do not contain any sensations because these are spiritual in substance, not chemical. The sensations are in the natural mind, not the physical brain whose activity is nothing but molecules and electricity moving in patterned motion. So to feel sensations, we need a sensory portion of the natural mind which is made of spiritual fibers. These can contain the sensations we experience when our physical organs are stimulated by the natural environment.

This sensorimotor mind is a receptor of stimuli from the spiritual world, of pleasures and cupidities. The passage above says that this lower mind is a hindrance to regeneration because it resists obedience to the higher portion of the natural mind called the “internal man.” The internal man discussed here is that which is in the depth of the natural mind. When speaking of the spiritual mind, the internal man is the inmost of the spiritual mind called the celestial mind, while the lower portion of the spiritual mind is called the external man. So, both the natural mind and the spiritual mind have an external and an internal portion.

The internal man of the natural mind operates with concepts and reasoning that is called the rational level of thinking. The Lord operates into this level by means of the voice of conscience which is activated by our affections for good and true, as the passage says. This means that our rational mind prefers the good to the evil, and the true to the false. The Lord insures that every human being is equipped with a conscience, for without it, one cannot be saved for life in heaven.

From this you can see that we are divided men, at war with ourselves. The higher wrestles with the lower and the lower resists, hinders, and tries to suffocate the voice of conscience. These battles can be severe and we experience inner pain, or the sting of conscience, when the lower wins over the higher. Temptations play a crucial role in our regeneration because they compel us to face the battle. Without temptations we can continue ignoring our evil affections until death, and so come into the afterlife with the evil loves. These evil loves cannot be removed in the spiritual world and prevent us from choosing life in heaven.

Through temptations in the natural mind, our external man is beaten into subservience to the internal man. Gradually there is a realignment of the external man through obedience to conscience and to the commandments contained in our Doctrine from the Writings. Our life is thereby regenerated and the delights we then experience are far more intense and blissful than former cupidities of our unregenerate state. Sensorimotor pleasures are still retained as proven by the immeasurably stronger sensations good spirits and angels experience in comparison to life with a physical body (CL 44[8]). ). But spirits and angels do not value sensuous pleasures highly in comparison to the rational delights of the internal man. Yet the pleasure and happiness experienced by angels from sexual love is immeasurable finer and superior than the strongest pleasures we can have in the physical body. So we are not losing anything or giving up anything when our external man is subservient to the internal man. On the contrary, we are losing most of what we can have by continuing in a state of disobedience to conscience and Doctrine.

Conjugial disciplines are techniques we can use to fight our battles on behalf of conscience and Doctrine.

One might at first think: Why do I need conjugial disciplines? Do I not love my wife dearly? Do I not pray to the Lord to unite me with her in conjugial love? Do I not feel it strongly enough? But I think these are vain thoughts, even meritorious. Conjugial love is not a feeling or a status obtained by declarations and reputation. Conjugial love is a doing. It is an activity of willing and thinking not as oneself but as the conjoint self. To the extent that we will and think as the conjoint self, to that extent we are progressing towards conjugial love. It stand to reason therefore we have to take charge and make sure that we are performing conjugial love daily, hourly, and minute by minute. Doing this vigilantly and effectively is called a conjugial discipline.

1. Discounting Our Wife’s Opinion Relative To Our Own

For many years I hear my wife saying to me that I don’t listen to her, that I don’t value her ideas, that I have an automatic prejudice against her because she is a woman and women have no credibility with men. I did not appreciate this wisdom and insight she was trying to pass on to me. I did not listen to this idea, automatically assuming she was talking in hyperboles and exaggerating, since she is a woman. This proved her point, of course, but I was too much into my obscurities from ego to want to really figure out what she was saying and whether it was correct. I was able to make progress in my regeneration to the extent that I was willing to listen to my wife. The more I listened, the more I got to find out that she was correct and insightful in her observations, philosophy, and principles. This dawning realization continued to the extent that I was willing to admit to myself that my ideas are frequently mistaken and inaccurate. This was a totally new experience as I always implicitly had full confidence in my own ideas.

There arrived a stage where I was eager to listen to her wisdom, insights, and opinions. I valued them as I saw their intelligence and depth of comprehension. I discovered a new aspect to feminine intelligence and can clearly see how superior it is to male intelligence. The Writings reveal that feminine intelligence and wisdom is in their interior mind, thus of celestial origin, while male intelligence is in the external mind, thus of natural origin (xx). This gender-typed difference in intelligence enters into every single thing of the threefold self—every feeling, every aspect of thinking, and every acting. Women are very capable in enacting male styles of reasoning, acting, and speaking in various social situations and roles. But these are surface appearances enacted for natural reasons (power sharing and equal access), not spiritual. In the interior mind, in which every thing is spiritual, women retain feminine structures of feeling and thinking, by necessity of permanent creation and eternal being.

The intelligence of women is in essence modest, refined, peaceful, yielding, gentle and tender; but that of men is in essence serious, harsh, hard, spirited and disposed to license.

(…) Men's gestures are bolder and stronger, women's weaker and feebler. Men's behavior is less restrained, women's more elegant.

[2] I was able clearly to see the innate difference of character between men and women by observing how boys and girls behaved when they got together, a sight I have several times seen from a window in a large city overlooking a street, where twenty or more children gathered every day. The boys, in keeping with their innate character, played together making a noise, shouting, fighting, beating and throwing stones at one another.

But the girls sat quietly by the doors of their houses, some playing with babies, some dressing up dolls, some embroidering on small pieces of linen, some kissing one another. I was surprised to see that the girls still looked favorably on the boys, for all their behavior.

This experience allowed me to see plainly that a man is by birth an intellect, a woman a love, and what kind of intellect and what kind of love they are in their beginnings. So I could see what a man's intellect would be like, if it developed without being linked with feminine love, and later with conjugial love. (CL 218)

Consider the last sentence: “So I could see what a man's intellect would be like, if it developed without being linked with feminine love, and later with conjugial love.” Remember this is the Word of the Lord in His Second Coming to the New Church mind. When it says “I could see what a man's intellect would be like” it means that this is how a man’s intellect is like, for it is the Lord speaking to us through this sentence. Let’s apply this to husbands: this is what a husband is like prior to his reformation. Also, this is how a husband is after reformation in proportion to his progress in regeneration. Let’s look at this character we men have by birth, and how it holds sway over every husband prior to his reformation. To do this, we can reread the passage with the goal substituting “husbands” for “boys”:

Husbands, in keeping with their innate character, played together making a noise, shouting, fighting, beating and throwing stones at one another.

“Making noise” means that they accuse each other, but in this case, the wife (AC 375). Also: that husbands are subjected to the greatest temptations on account of their inherited nature (AC 756). “Noise” also means that husbands are kept in the emotion of fear “in order that they may be deterred from evils” (AC 4942). The evils here refer to the husband’s abusive treatment of his wife. “Shouting” refers to the “spirit of war” (AC 1664), which is alternately applied to protect “the Lord’s truth” or to rob a neighbor’s goods, in this case, the conjugial happiness of his wife. “The Lord’s truth” here refers to the Writings. “Shouting” also refers to declaring one’s faith to others (AC 5323). Here this means preaching to the wife about how to interpret what the Writings say, by which husbands intimidate their wife. “Fighting” refers to “fierce conflict … and laboring … in thoughts and developments of truth” (AC 263). Here this refers to the husband’s struggle for reformation. “Beating” is a sign of rebellion against authority or legitimate officials (AC 4324).

In other words, husbands reinterpret the literal text of the Writings to support their dominion over the wife. “Throwing” in a bad sense means attacking truth and “drowning in falsity” (AC 6693), and in a good sense it refers to “initiation of truth into good” (AC 4266). “Stones” refers to “the truth of faith” (AC 114, 4672). “At one another” designates the husband and the wife. In other words, husbands alternate between periods of conjugial cooperation with their wife and periods of enmity against the wife. When cooperating, husbands are initiated in the interior truths of the Writings, and thus they are regenerated.

To summarize what the passage says about how husbands treat their wives: A husband makes accusations or is verbally abusive to his wife . This evil behavior is inherited and in order to get rid of it the husband must be willing to undergo the greatest temptations. In order to deter the husband from injuring his wife physically, the Lord keeps him in fear of the consequences. During regeneration, the husband alternates between periods of warring against his wife and periods of cooperating. When he is aversive to his wife, he is also rebellious against the Writings, reinterpreting passages therein to justify his dominion over the wife. When he cooperates with his wife, he is initiated into the interior truths of the Writings, by which he is enlightened and prepared for life in heaven.

Another passage tells us about wives:

The nerves are softer in women; the veins somewhat wider, and the arteries stronger [than] in men: the hips broader, because the hips signify conjugial love, see Arcana Coelestia (SE 6110)

We can apply this passage to our wife by substituting “wives” for “women.” “Nerves” refer to truth (AC 4303). The truth in the wife’s understanding is “softer” than the truth in the husband. Truth that is softer is more compatible to love (AC 185). In other words, the wife’s understanding is higher than the husband’s because it accords better with love. That the wife’s understanding is celestial while the husband’s is more outward and less perfect is revealed in many places in the Writings (see Sections 1and 2 below). “Veins” is used to discuss purification of the blood, that is, rendering suitable for celestial life (AC 5174). “Wider” means greater in scope (AC 8121). “Wider veins” therefore means that the wife is regenerated from the inmost and sits waiting for the husband that he may catch up to her and conjoin with her in conjugial love, which celestial from the inmost.

The wife is more willing than the husband to suffer herself to undergo rigorous regeneration by the Lord since she is motivated by conjugial love and the desire to conjoin with her husband from within. The husband is less willing to do this. His love for conjunction is not as deep. He must struggle in regeneration to attain to the same celestial depth. “Arteries” refers to “genuine good” which is compared to the blood in the arteries (AC 3470). This good “leads and applies truths into form” which means that the wife’s higher love acquires to itself a greater wisdom. The wife’s wisdom, therefore, is to “lead” and the husband’s wisdom is to cooperate with her leading. Thus he is obedient to a higher good, whereby he can be regenerated still further.

Chapter 9, Section 2

2. The Doctrine of the Wife

In heaven a married pair is spoken of, not as two, but as one angel (HH 367)

Each love knows its own love, and they unite reciprocally, or mutually and alternately. (TCR Additions 4)

One of the truly remarkable revelations given in the Writings is that the chief power and dynamic spiritual force that animates the universe is conjugial love, the love that internally binds and unites the minds of a husband and wife. Conjugial love is the chief love that rules all other loves in the universe.

The chief love is sexual love; and in the case of those who reach heaven, that is, those who become spiritual on earth, it is conjugial love.

The reason why a person's sexual love remains after death is that a male remains a male and a female remains a female, and the male's masculinity pervades the whole and every part of him, and likewise a female's femininity; and the impulse to be joined is present in every detail down to the smallest. Since that impulse to be joined was implanted from creation and is therefore continually present, it follows that the one desires the other and longs to be joined to the other.

Love taken by itself is nothing but a desire and hence an impulse to be joined; conjugial love is an impulse to be joined into one. For the male and the female of the human species are so created as to be able to become like a single individual, that is, one flesh; and when united, then they are, taken together, the full expression of humanity. If not so joined, they are two, each being as it were a divided person or half a person. Since that impulse to be joined lies deeply hidden in every part of both male and female, and every part has the ability and desire to be joined into one, it follows that people retain mutual and reciprocal sexual love after death. (CL 37)

The extending power and influence of this love can be seen in all living species whose survival depends on male-female bonding for propagation. The supremacy of conjugial love expresses God’s chief purpose in creating and maintaining the universe. This purpose is to create an ever growing heaven populated by angel couples who were born on some earth, developed a spiritual mind by living rightly, then went on living to eternity in one of the many heavenly societies Swedenborg has witnessed. The afterlife consists of a heavenly life for soul mates bonded in marriage love between a husband and a wife. This life constitutes the highest human spiritual state and is called heaven. The inhabitants of heaven are all human beings born on one of the many earths in the universe and are called angels in the Writings. We can truly say that this revelation is good news.

The bad news is that conjugial life does not come to us automatically and that most people on this earth reject it and act against it, especially men. This is so because we inherit our parents’ traits, both physical and spiritual or mental (CL 202). Scientists today are unaware of these revelations in the Writings. It is believed that psychological traits are not inherited, and it is not known that psychological traits are spiritual organs constructed out of spiritual substances from the spiritual world. These spiritual substances are carriers of the mental or spiritual traits of parents. We thus inherit tendencies that oppose conjugial love. One example is people’s desire to know more than one partner sexually. Individuals who exhibit this interest on Earth, continue to experience the desire for or interest in other partners. But conjugial love does not allow this interest to remain in one’s organic constitution, even when it is expressed merely hypothetically or in fantasy.

This tendency and proneness to evils just mentioned, which is transmitted from parents to their children and descendants, can only be broken down by a person being born anew by the Lord's help, a process called regeneration. Without this not only does the tendency remain unbroken, but it is reinforced by a succession of parents, becoming more prone to evils, and eventually to every kind of evil. (TCR 521)

Another example of how conjugial love is opposed by inherited traits is the desire for independence based on the false idea that the individual is the unit of life and self-fulfillment. When people marry there is often a sense of loss of freedom due to the marriage bond. But this idea is false because the bonds of marriage and union create a state of heavenly freedom, while what is opposed to this bond is rooted in infernal freedom, which is actually slavery to inherited evil traits. Conjugial love establishes the married couple as the unit of human life giving the partners a wholeness and completeness they do not have outside the union. Independence is incompatible with wholeness, and this reality is resisted by many inherited and acquired traits (CL 202).

For conjugial love to develop with a couple it is necessary for both husband and wife to overcome the inborn resistance husbands have for it. Marriage starts in the external mind of the partners through commitment and natural love for one another. This love is not yet conjugial love, which is a spiritual love, and the relationship is not yet a spiritual one, not yet an inner union of minds. In order for conjugial love to develop and grow the husband and wife must change their inner character by defeating all the inherited forces that are opposed to their conjugial union. The Writings teach that only couples that go beyond the external bond of marriage into an internal union of minds can be together as an angel couple in heaven. It is therefore of the utmost importance to gain the knowledge of how to accomplish this since it doesn’t happen automatically even with married individuals who sincerely love each other from a natural love and are devoted to each other from loyalty and friendship.

The Writings show how the natural love between partners joined together through an external bond is not spiritually deep enough and as soon as external conditions change and become a challenge, the love seems to evaporate and instead there is anger, rage, resentment, and disdain. Due to the spiritual constitution of men and women, there is more resistance to conjugial love on the part of husbands. Wives are born with an inclination towards marriage and a desire to move on to an internal or spiritual union, as long as the husband also desires it. Husbands on the other hand are born with an inclination for having multiple sexual partners and feel restricted by the marriage bond to one wife. As a result, husbands need special help in order to be able to overcome their inborn resistance to conjugial love, which is “the love of one of the sex,” in contrast to the “love of the sex,” which is natural, not spiritual, and roving.

1. A Philosophy Of Action Or Spiritual Discipline

The “Doctrine of the Wife” designates a philosophy of action, or spiritual discipline, for husbands that is based on the Writings and is intended to help them overcome their resistance to conjugial love.

In summary, this doctrine says that the husband's regeneration or self-change efforts, to be successful, must be focused on his wife and through his wife. She is to be accepted as the seeing eye in the marriage relationship and he needs to agree to voluntarily subjugate all of his resistances to her wisdom and inner perception in everything pertaining to their relationship. Swedenborg explains the mechanism whereby the Lord gives a special perception to each wife about her husband's affections and inclinations, knowledge which is not given to the husband so that he is only dimly aware of his own inner tendencies. The spiritual purpose for this difference in perceptual powers is to make the husband's regeneration dependent on his wife. This is called "cleaving to the wife" in the Old Testament, and is a Divine commandment enjoined on every husband. Without following this commandment the husband cannot be regenerated, hence cannot have an eternal marriage in heaven with this or any other wife.

People who are in a state of truly conjugial love look to eternity in their marriage because eternity is inherent in this love. Its eternity is owing to the fact that this love in the wife and wisdom in the husband grow to eternity, and as these grow or progress, the partners enter more and more deeply into the blessings of heaven -- blessings which their wisdom and love of wisdom at the same time carry concealed within them. If one were to snatch away an idea of eternity, therefore, or if by some chance it should slip from their minds, it would be as though they were cast down from heaven. (CL. 216)

In people who did not have conjugial love there is no spiritual or inner bond, but only a natural or outer one; and if an inner bond does not hold the outer one in its order and course, it does not last. (CL 320)

Conjugial union depends therefore on the willingness of the two partners to modify their inner character into a form that makes them fit together spiritually. Since husbands put up more resistance to this union than wives, it is necessary to give them spiritual tools that can overcome their own internal resistance.

2. Men’s Resistance To Conjugial Love

Wives are by birth forms of love, so that it is innate in them to wish to be one with their husbands, and by keeping this thought in their will they constantly nurture their love. So abandoning the effort to unite themselves with their husbands would be abandoning their own nature. But it is different with husbands; since they are not by birth forms of love, but designed to receive that love from their wives, the more readily they receive it, the more readily do their wives come in with their love. But if they fail to receive it, their wives equally stay outside with their love and wait. (CL 216)

Many husbands resist the process of conjugial unification with such intensity and ferocity that it appears they are hell-bent on destroying their union, their marriage, and their heavenly place with their wife. This is true whether or not the husband is a member of the New Church. Even husbands who love the Writings and consider it the Word of God along with the Old Testament and New Testament, experience resistance to conjugial union. They may not be aware of it and may deny it, yet the Writings show that this male recalcitrance is widespread. For wives this is a major problem since by denying their resistance, husbands neutralize the wife’s power to work towards conjugial unity. Removing her spiritual role makes the wife suffer and feel desperate. The Doctrine of the Wife will help husbands become aware of their coldness and lack of desire for a conjugial relationship. At first husbands may deny they are in such a state of conjugial cold, but later they can acknowledge, confess, repent, and change.

Concerning conjugial love, the Writings identify a natural opposition between men and women regarding their receptivity to it:

Wives love the bonds of marriage, provided that their husbands love them too. (CL 217)

It is different with husbands. Because they are not born forms of love, but are receivers of that love from their wives, therefore to the degree that they receive it, to that degree their wives enter into them with their love. But to the degree they do not receive it, their wives stand outside with their love and wait. (CL 216)

Avoiding the conjugial union is natural and inherited for men as well as being fully supported and reinforced by a masculinized society. New Church husbands have a distinct opportunity to liberate themselves from this inherited evil by using a systematic self-change method to achieve freedom. This method is the Doctrine of the Wife, namely, a set of commandments extracted from the Writings to help New Church husbands and wives work toward achieving conjugial union.

Passages in the Writings that discuss men's understanding and women's affections are sometimes interpreted by men to mean that Scripture gives them the role of ruling over women or "having predominance" in relation to understanding or intellectual things, since men are born a form of understanding. While women should rule or "have predominance" in relation to affect ional things relating to feelings and love. In order to see the error of this attitude, we need to draw a distinction between

(a) what the Writings say in the literal

and

(b) the conclusion we draw from the literal.

In this case the Writings say that men are a form of understanding and women a form of love. What conclusion are we to draw? Are we to conclude,

(c) that in matters of Church governance or some other forensic or intellectual issue, men should predominate; but in matters of domestic order and works of charity or community, women should predominate?

Is this a correct conclusion? Part (a) is far from part (c) which is a political application having to do with governance and community relations. Whatever social applications one makes from Doctrine or from the Word is not in itself the Word or Doctrine. The Doctrine of the Church in the Writings does not actually say that men should predominate in Church administration or that women should be excluded. It is not correct to say that the Writings or the Doctrine of the Church give men the Divine right to have predominance over women in any area of life, intellectual or otherwise.

The claim that men should predominate over women in decision-making in any given area of society appears to be a self-serving policy by a masculinized society. The persuasion guarantees that men will rule over women in everyday life--at home, Church, profession, in managing things, making the final decisions, prevailing in opinion, in short, recreating and maintaining a man's world. The Doctrine of the Wife interprets the passages in the Writings relating to men’s understanding and women’s affections as indicating that the husband's understanding should unite with the wife's will, instead of predominate. And since the will rules the understanding, it would make more sense to say that it is the wife who is to rule the husband's understanding. It is therefore the feminization of marriage that creates its sanctification and fulfillment.

Note carefully that this is totally different from the idea that women should rule over men. For we are talking about men’s voluntary choice of acting form themselves or from their wife. When a wife rules over her husband it is a disorderly state (CL 291). Instead, the husband chooses to act from his wife’s will instead of his own. This is a free choice and can end at any time he so wishes. The wife has no power to make him act from herself. This is something the husband must do and enforce on himself.

Whether you say "ruling over" or "having predominance over" is the same in terms of the actual consequence, which is that the will of one prevails over the other. But there is an essential difference between ruling over someone by domination and ruling over someone by voluntary submission or cooperation. For instance, the police force in a democracy rules over the population in daily activities in public places. This is not oppression or domination as long as the population willingly and rationally submits to the authority of the law and its legitimate agents. But in an autocratic society the law rules by dominion and is hostile to the population.

The Doctrine of the Wife deals with the husband's voluntary and rational submission of his will and judgment to that of his wife in all matters pertaining to their relationship and interaction. If he refuses, there is nothing she can do to compel him since he has the greater power. In other words, the husband must listen and choose to follow the wife's directives in all things of their decision-making. Obviously this must be a voluntary submission on the part of the husband and not a dominion over him by his wife. Dominion of one over the other is destructive of the conjugial union but voluntary submission for the sake of union promotes it and makes it spiritual.

The infernal marriage, with those who are in the love of ruling and are atheists. On the part of the man there is deadly hatred. But, still, he is manifestly the servant and slave of the wife, so that he dares not murmur against her will: but [this], when she, by various means, has obtained the ascendancy. The reason is, because the man's understanding is subjugated. These have no interior virtue and honor: consequently, [such a one] is not a man. (SE 6110)

Every man who is not spiritually rational and moral but only naturally so possesses a coldness towards his wife, such a coldness being inherent in him in his inmost elements. (...) It comes from a lack of rationality on their part in matters of the spirit. Every man who is irrational in matters of the spirit is inmostly cold to his wife and inmostly warm toward harlots." (CL 294).

New Church husbands who acknowledge the Writings as the Word may have the temptation of thinking that because they possess the Word of the Second Coming, they are automatically spiritual. However the Writings teach that it is not the Word that makes the Church but the understanding of the Word, and not even this, but the degree to which people live in accordance with their understanding of the Word (TCR 245). And so the study of and expertise in the Writings do not in themselves make us spiritual. Husbands who study the Writings and worship the Divine Human nevertheless remain natural, hate the conjugial, remain unregenerate, and love unchaste sex--until and to the extent that they live their daily life in accordance with their doctrine. The Doctrine of the Wife will help husbands live their life according to their understanding of Divine Truth. Every husband must create adequate and effective Doctrine for himself so that he may strive to live according to it. It is in this striving that the Lord can be present by influx. Without this striving the Lord cannot be present in actuality, as taught in the Writings (xx).

3. Conjugial Commandments In The Writings

The Word cannot be understood except by means of doctrine from the Word. The doctrine of the church must be from the Word … The Word without doctrine is not understood … They who are in enlightenment form for themselves doctrine from the Word … Doctrine formed by one enlightened may afterwards be confirmed by things rational and scientific; and that thus it is more fully understood, and is corroborated (WH 8)

In the Word of the Writings, the Lord has given a number of new commandments to husbands who aspire to become one angel with a conjugial wife. The Doctrine of the Wife is a collection of these commandments and its purpose is to assist regenerating husbands in their difficult task. I can hope that the Doctrine of the Wife will become an ever-expanding body of knowledge, as future generations of regenerating husbands contribute to it through the expansion and deepening of their conjugial relationship. Representing the ideas of the wife will be a primary concern in this knowledge base cumulated by New Church husbands for each other. Through it conjugial love can return to this earth and all nations can return to a state of civilized paradise.

This new state of culture and consciousness will be higher than all the preceding states of humanity on this earth. This is why the Writings call the New Church “the Crown” of all previous Churches in history (TCR 787). The “Church” refers not only to the external organization and its buildings and rituals but to the “church within” or the individual’s mind and its content relative to truth and good from the Writings and its Doctrine (NJHD 244). The church “within” is the truth within our faith or understanding and the good within our will or love.

The future of humanity depends on the success of husbands in learning to conjoin to their wife on the internal plane of the mind and not just on the external plane of the body and material possessions. This internal conjunction is called conjugial love and is the basis of all other loves in the universe. All other loves are derivative of this one great love. But the husband cannot from his own self conjoin to his wife in an internal way. He appears to be able to do this externally or socially, but he cannot be conjoined in the internal mind without becoming aware of the existence of the internal mind. This is normally closed to his conscious awareness while he is still in the early stages of regeneration. By acknowledging the Doctrine of the Wife, and then striving to follow it, the husband is spiritually empowered by the Lord to overcome himself through the act of enthroning the wife in his mind. By doing this, the husband’s internal mind is activated and made operative in his awareness or consciousness. The principles in the Doctrine of the Wife make explicit in the husband’s mind that there needs to be an internal relationship with the wife and how he can foster it.

To enthrone the wife means to conjoin his cognitions or reasoning quality with her affections or needs. This can be done only by loving her affections more than his own, which means following her will or judgment rather than his own whenever they are opposed. By suffering himself to be led by her affections, the husband receives new cognitions that are harmonious with the wife’s affections. These new cognitions are new spiritual truths from the Lord given the man through his acceptance of the wife’s affections as-if his own. In the Heavenly Doctrine (or Swedenborg’s Writings) the Lord gave husbands a long list of commandments to follow in order to allow them to achieve this internal union, each husband with his wife. The Doctrine of the Wife is not only a collection of these commandments but an exposition and explanation of them.

The following are some examples of conjugial commandments for husbands. Note how easy it would be to overlook these passages and not see them as commandments, but husbands who are zealous for conjugial love can perceive and acknowledge the commandments in these passages.

(1) All human development is in relation to marriage

(see CL 191).

Therefore unmarried men are to be considered "pre-husbands" in the sense we think of "preschool" as a state that prepares for the real thing. One implication of this commandment is that the curriculum in biology and psychology needs to introduce all concepts and goals in human behavior as arranged in a hierarchy with the top always being the conjugial union. The hierarchy of affections corresponds to the hierarchy of goals so that the top affection or love is also the primary goal that governs all other goals.

(2) Husbands are wiser and more spiritual than unmarried men

(see CL 199).

The Lord's commandment in the Old and New Testaments that a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife, means that the man should dethrone his own affections ("father and mother") and enthrone his wife's affections in his own mind, thus to "cleave" unto her (Conjugial Love No 194). The implication of this principle is that every boy’s education and socialization process ought to be oriented towards becoming a husband and letting his wife change his old character called “father and mother” into a new conjoint character called “one flesh.” In order for her to achieve this, he must give her all the help he can muster through daily interactions of a conjoint nature called “cleaving to his wife.” The Doctrine of the Wife is a collection of principles that foster the husband’s angelic development. A single man ought to think of himself as a pre-husband. A single man should look at every woman as someone’s wife. Feminity and feminization ought to be valued as the ideal state of society and the world. Becoming a husband ought to be seen as a biological necessity and an essential step for spiritual development towards becoming whole and complete. As the Writings put it “marriage is a person's fulfillment, since it makes a person fully a person” (CL 156).

(3) Women's intelligence is like the Lord's intelligence, but men's intelligence is not

(see CL 218).

And behold Isaac was laughing with Rebekah his woman. That this signifies that … Divine good was adjoined to Divine truth, is evident from the representation of Isaac, as being the Divine good of the Lord's rational … and from the representation of Rebekah, as being the Divine truth of the Lord's rational (AC 3392)

The rational with the Lord … is represented by Sarah (AC 2189)

Here it is said that the Lord’s Divine Rational within which is the Divine Truth is represented by the wife. Women's intelligence, like the Lord's, is described in the Writings as "modest, gracious, peaceable, compliant, soft and gentle," while men's is described as "critical, rough, resistant, argumentative, and given to intemperance." The implication of this for husbands is to reinforce in their mind the Doctrine of the Wife as long as their highest objective in life is to form a conjoint union. Unless husbands elevate the conjugial goal to the highest position in their goal-hierarchy, their life is not in the Lord’s order of things.

The central feature of the conjoint couple is that the husband loves to be led by his wife’s affections more than by his own. In this way man can be redeemed from his nature as critical, rough, resistant, argumentative, and intemperate, traits, which gradually but inexorably take him to hell. His wife is a man’s ticket to heaven, her heaven, for all the societies of heaven exist in a feminized atmosphere, which is the Lord’s Proprium—modest, gracious, peaceable, compliant, soft, gentle.

(4) Conjugial love is the state of internal union between husband and wife and it is achieved when they will that their two lives shall become one life

(see CL 215).

The “two lives” in the Writings refer to the will and the understanding, or, the affections in the will and the cognitions in the understanding. To will that the two lives become one life means therefore that the will of the wife must be conjoined to the understanding of the husband. Conjugial love is a biological growth process of the mind or spirit that is achieved when the wife's affections (or will) are joined to the husband's cognitions (or understanding). In other words, the husband's thoughts and understanding are joined to the wife's will and affections. This is not an automatic growth process that comes with merely living together. Both partners must consciously will the conjunction. The husband must will to conjoin his own understanding or thinking to his wife's affections or will. This is not easy to achieve because of the inner resistance he experiences and requires persistent effort into which the Lord's power can inflow and achieve the union.

Before being regenerated, men have an inborn tendency to discount the opinion or judgment of women in comparison to their own. Husbands experience a sense of revolt at the notion that they give up their own independent ideas and desires in favor of their wife’s judgment with regard to all things involving their joint life. This is why husbands must appeal to the Lord for strength and resolve to overcome their inner resistance to the process of conjugial union.

The husband can overcome his resistance entirely if he is willing to follow this one rule on a daily and regular basis: When his wife expresses her affections in the form of a direct request or an implied one, the husband must give and follow these minimally appropriate replies:

Yes.

O.K.

That's right.

I will.

And never anything else, for it is always offensive and disagreeable to the wife's affections. (Of course variations, extensions and equivalents of these are also acceptable.) This principle may strike some as excessive or perhaps emasculating and denigrating to men. But this is not the case. On the contrary, it is angelic. The Writings reveal that the lower angels, called spiritual, reason about truths before confirming them in their understanding and thereby accepting them as genuine. But the higher angels, called celestial, do not reason about truths so as to confirm them because they are given by the Lord to perceive truths instantly, that they are genuine. They do not need to reason about them. All they have to say to anything by way of confirmation is Yea or Nay. It is not denigrating but elevating for a husband to keep himself from disagreeing with his wife’s affectional requests. If she makes a request of him, his only rational and loving answer is to confirm and go along. This relationship mode builds and fosters their conjoint union.

4. Commitment To Conjugial Unity

Women are born willingnesses and never cease their striving to conjoin internally to their husbands. Since wives are conjugial willingnesses by spiritual necessity, they are zealously involved in leading their husband out of their inborn hell of unwillingness or independence. This is why husbands must bend over backwards to accommodate and adjust to their wife’s affections all the time and without exception of situation, topic, or area of contention. It doesn’t matter that the wife may appear wrong in some situation and it doesn’t matter if she makes mistakes, or if she fails in something due to her own temptations and regeneration needs. Despite her failings, the husband should honor her at all times. After all, the husband makes plenty of mistakes yet expects her to honor his unilateral decisions. The rationale for his compelling himself to abide by her affections is not that she is more right or smarter than he. It is his acknowledgment of the Doctrine of the Wife that provides the rationale, and this must be constant and continuous to eternity.

The most important part is that the husband remains unfailingly committed to internal union—this must never fail if we are to achieve success. This unfailing commitment becomes real and actual when the husband does the following:

(a) He acknowledges that he is out of line as soon as his wife tells him this.

(b) He promises her in the name of the Lord that he is determined to change his behavior.

(d) He makes reparations by fixing the problem and adding a treat as a sign of friendship.

(e) He honestly strives to be true to his word by being watchful, even keeping a diary if it’s helpful.

And when he fails again, he repeats these steps—which for most husbands may be necessary to do several times every day, year after year for decades.

5. The Four-Step Conjoining Process

Conjugial love grows spiritually when the couple repeatedly goes through the following four steps on a daily and hourly basis (based on CL 293-294):

Step 1: The wife acts. She reveals her affections to her husband in the form of a direct request or an implied request, either in word, gesture, facial expression, or mere expectation.

Step 2: The husband receives. He wills himself to love her affection—which is within the request, and by this, he receives it, that is, conjoins his cognitions to it. Her affection now is as-if his own. He chooses to act from his wife’s will.

Step 3: The husband acts out. He says one or more of these four things: Yes. O.K. That's right. I will, (and equivalents).

Step 4: The wife reacts. She feels his reaction of conjunction as her bosom delight.

These are the four steps of conjunction. The husband must constantly strive to build up the network that conjoins his cognitions or thoughts to his wife's affections, which are expressed as her moment-to-moment needs and requests. The conjunction steps must be performed. Unition of mind or spirit cannot develop from mere declarations and promises, or even occasional and intermittent good behavior. The conjunction steps have to be performed continuously. Think about muscle building exercises, how we repeat the same movement in series or in sets during one workout session. Muscle tissue is built up, fiber-by-fiber, cell-by-cell, with each repetition of a movement. In a similar manner the husband builds up the spiritual fibers of conjunction with his wife when he repeats these four steps on a daily and hourly basis. The Writings make it clear that the mind is a spiritual organ made of functioning parts and fibers just as the organs and muscles of the physical body. Repeating these four steps of conjunction gradually but cumulatively builds up the united mind of the conjugial couple. This united mind is a new spiritual organ called the angelic mind. Couples in heaven have such a mind and those who have not developed such a mind while on earth are unable to be immersed in the atmosphere of heaven and live there to eternity.

To show how the four-step conjunction process works in practice, consider this example on the next page, to which most couples can relate:

The usual way

(does not build conjoining fibers)

The conjugial way

(builds conjoining fibers)

Step 1:

The wife acts

Wife says: “Honey, we need to talk about this now” (=her affectional request).

Ditto

Step 2:

The husband receives (or rejects)

The husband internally disagrees (=hates conjugial unity and feels it’s a loss of individuality). He wants to tell her several reasons why it’s a bad idea to talk about it now (=discounts her intelligence). He thinks about those reasons and loves them (=clinging to father and mother).

He is conscious of an inner feeling of anger and his mind begins to rehearse reasons why they should not talk about it now. But he just laughs at himself doing that. He turns away from himself and turns to his wife and to her affection and intention. He embraces her affection and immerses himself in it (=cleaves to his wife)

Step 3: