214 HEAVEN and HELL §373
373 We can now see from the foregoing where true marriage love comes
from, namely, that it first takes form in the minds of the individuals in
the marriage and then comes down and flows into their bodies, where it
is perceived and felt as love. Actually, everything that is perceived and felt
in the body finds its origin in its spiritual counterpart because it comes
from our intellect and volition. Intellect and volition make up our spiri-
tual person. Everything that comes down into the body from our spiritual
person comes to view there in some other guise; but there is still a similar-
ity and agreement like that between the soul and the body, like a cause
and its effect, as can be gathered from what was presented in the two
chapters on correspondences.374 I once heard an angel describe true marriage love and its heavenly
pleasures along these lines: It is the Lord’s divine nature in the heavens,
that is, divine good and divine truth, united in two individuals to the
point that they are no longer two but one. The angel said that two spouses
in heaven are that love because each is her or his own good and truth in
both mind and body. This is because the body is the outward model of
the mind, having been formed as its image. It follows that the Divine is
imaged in two people who are immersed in true marriage love; and
because the Divine is imaged, so is heaven, since the totality of heaven is
divine good and divine truth emanating from the Lord. This is why every-
thing heavenly has this love engraved upon it, along with so many bless-
ings and pleasures that they cannot be numbered. Expressing the number
with a word that suggested ten thousands times ten thousands, the angel
was astonished that church people do not know anything about this when
the church is the Lord’s heaven on earth and heaven is a marriage of the
good and the true; and the angel described being dumbfounded at the
thought that adultery was practiced and even rationalized more within
the church than outside it, because spiritually understood (and therefore
in the spiritual world), the pleasure of adultery is essentially nothing but
the pleasure of a love of the union of what is false and what is evil. This is
a hellish pleasure, because it is diametrically opposed to the pleasure of
heaven, which is the pleasure of a love of what is true united to the good.
375 Everyone knows that two spouses who love each other are intimately
united, and that the essence of marriage is the union of spirits or minds.
People might therefore realize that the essential nature of the spirits or
minds determines the nature of the union and the nature of the love the
two have for each other. The mind is formed from nothing but things
that are true and things that are good, since everything in the universe
goes back to the good and the true and also to their union. So the quality