Conjugial Love (Rogers) n. 439

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439. (14) Each atmosphere brings with it delights. That is to say, each atmosphere - namely, the atmosphere of licentious love which ascends from hell and the atmosphere of conjugial love which descends from heaven - affects the person receiving it with delights. The reason is that the lowest plane in which the delights of either love terminate, where they come to fulfillment and realization, and which renders them perceptible in its power of sensation, is the same. So it is that licentious intimacies and conjugial intimacies in outmost respects are perceived as being alike, even though they are entirely unalike in their inner qualities. People do not judge that they are also unalike therefore in their outmost expressions, because they lack any sensation of the difference. The dissimilarities from differences in their outmost expressions are felt only by those who are in a state of truly conjugial love. For evil is recognized from the experience of good, but not good from the experience of evil, even as a sweet smell is not detected by the nose when it has a foul odor clinging to it. I have heard from angels that they discern in outmost expressions what is lascivious from what is not lascivious as clearly as one discerns the fire of burning dung or horn by its foul odor from the fire of burning incense or cinnamon wood by its sweet aroma. Moreover, that this results from the difference in internal delights, which enter into the outward ones and form them.


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