Once on looking out into the world of spirits I saw in a meadow some men dressed in clothing like that worn by people in the world. This told me that they were newly arrived from the world. I approached them and stood beside them, so that I could listen to their conversation.

They were talking about heaven, and one among them, who knew something about heaven, said that it contains wonderful sights, which no one could believe in without seeing them. He said that there are gardens like paradise, magnificent palaces constructed with superb architecture, because they are triumphs of that art, gleaming as if with gold, and fronted by columns of silver decorated with heavenly designs in precious stones. Moreover, there are houses of jasper and sapphire, with imposing porticoes in front by which the angels go in. Inside the houses there are decorations which neither art nor words can describe.

[2] 'As for the angels themselves,' he said, 'they are of both sexes, young men and husbands, young women and wives. The young women are so beautiful there is no match for such beauty in the world. But the wives are even more beautiful, looking like real models of heavenly love. Their husbands look like models of heavenly wisdom, and all of them are young men in the prime of life. What is more, no one is aware of the existence of any kind of sexual love other than conjugial love. Something that will surprise you is that the husbands have a perpetual ability to experience its delights.'

When the newly arrived spirits heard that there was no other kind of sexual love than conjugial love, and that they had a perpetual ability to experience its delights, they laughed among themselves and said, 'What you say is incredible. Such ability is impossible, so perhaps you are telling tall stories.'

[3] But at this moment an angel from heaven suddenly appeared standing among them 'Listen to me, please,' he said. 'I am an angel in heaven, and I have now been living with my wife for a thousand years, and all that time I have been in the prime of life, just as you see me now. This is the result of the conjugial love I share with my wife. I can assure you that I have had, and still have, perpetual ability. Since I perceive that you believe this to be impossible, I will speak on this subject rationally, so as to suit the illumination of your intellect. You are totally ignorant of the primeval state of human beings, what you call a state of integrity. People in that state had all the inner regions of their minds open directly to the Lord, and so these were in the marriage of love and wisdom, or of good and truth. Since the good of love and the truth of wisdom are perpetually loving each other, they perpetually want to be united. When the inner regions of the mind are open, this spiritual conjugial love has a perpetual impulse to flow freely down and produce that ability.

[4] 'A person's soul, being in the marriage of good and truth, is not only subject to a perpetual impulse towards this union, but also towards bearing fruit and reproducing its likeness. And when a person's inner regions are held open by that marriage right to the soul, and these continually have in view as their aim the realisation of their effects at the lowest level, as a result the perpetual impulse towards bearing fruit and reproducing its kind, that is, the soul, becomes bodily. Since the lowest level at which the soul operates on the body in the case of a married couple is upon the lowest expression of love there, and since this depends on the state of the soul, it is obvious from what source they have this perpetually.

[5] 'The reason the fruitfulness is perpetual is that there radiates from the Lord a universal sphere producing and propagating the celestial effects of love, and the spiritual effects of wisdom, and so the natural procreation of children, and filling the whole of heaven and the whole of the world. This celestial sphere fills the souls of all human beings, and comes down through their minds into their bodies, down to the lowest level, and confers reproductive power. But this is only possible for those who have open the passage from the soul through the higher and lower regions of the mind to the lowest levels of the body; this happens in the case of those who allow themselves to be brought back by the Lord into the primeval state of creation. I can declare that for a thousand years now I have never lacked ability or strength or virility. I have never been aware of any diminution of my powers, since they are continually renewed by the constant influence of the universal sphere just mentioned, and they also then make the disposition cheerful, without the sadness felt by those who suffer the loss of those powers.

[6] 'Moreover, truly conjugial love is exactly like the warmth of springtime, under the influence of which everything strives for germination and fruiting. That is the only warmth in our heaven. So married couples there have spring perpetually striving to break out, and it is this which is the source of their virility. But we in the heaven have different kinds of fruitfulness from that of people on earth. Ours is the production of spiritual fruit, those of love and wisdom, or good and truth. A wife receives into herself the love for her husband coming from his wisdom, and a husband receives into himself wisdom coming from his wife's love for him. In fact a wife is actually shaped to become the love of her husband's wisdom, something that happens by receiving the propagations of his soul with the delight which arises from wanting to be the love of her husband's wisdom. So she changes from a young woman into a wife and a likeness. As a result love together with intimate friendship perpetually increases in the wife, and wisdom together with its happiness increases in the husband; and this continues for ever. This is the state of the angels in heaven.'

[7] After saying this the angel looked towards those who had lately come from the world. 'You know,' he told them, 'that when you were in the potency of love you loved your wives, and after its delight you turned away from them. But you do not know that it is not that potency which makes us in heaven love our wives, but it is love that gives us that potency; and since we perpetually love our wives, that too is perpetual for us. So you can grasp this, if you reverse the terms. Surely someone who loves his wife perpetually, loves her with the whole of his mind and the whole of his body. For love turns the whole of the mind and the whole of the body in the direction of what he loves; and since this happens reciprocally, it links them so that they become as one.'

[8] 'I shall not talk to you,' he went on, 'about conjugial love being innate from creation in male and female, and their inclination towards being lawfully joined; nor about the male's capacity for procreating offspring, which makes one with the capacity for multiplying wisdom as the result of a love of truth; nor the fact that the more a person loves wisdom as the result of a love for it, that is, truth as the result of good, the more he has truly conjugial love, and the potency which accompanies it.'