with his wives in the same order that he did on earth, but only while he is still in the "external" state. When he has been induced into sincerity, "He either adopts one or leaves them all." The same with women, but, "It is to be observed that husbands rarely know their wives, but that wives well know their husbands, women having an interior perception of love and men only an exterior."
Separations take place after death, because so many marriages in the natural world are made for geographic reasons or for ambition or purely of the body, "when yet it is the conjunction of souls which constitutes a real marriage."
"All those married partners who are merely natural are separated after death." (Here as nearly always Swedenborg means by "natural" those who are without any real love.) "Married partners of whom one is spiritual and the other natural are also separated after death; and to the spiritual is given a suitable married partner; whereas the natural one is sent to the resorts of the lascivious among his like." 6
Those celibates who "have altogether alienated their minds from marriage" remain single if spiritual, but if natural they become "whoremongers" in the lower world. As to monks and nuns, they are given their choice. If they really prefer celibacy, "they are conveyed to those who live in celibacy on the side of heaven." This, Swedenborg says (with perhaps the greatest compliment a bachelor ever paid to marriage) is because the sphere of perpetual celibacy disturbs that of conjugial love, "which is the very essential sphere of heaven."
Blessed marriages are provided, he says, for those who in their single state have desired marriage, if they are spiritual, "but not until they come into heaven."
In one passage Swedenborg hints that the heavenly marriage of the celibates or the mismarried may take place on the basis of a union of souls which has already taken place on earth, "as happens with those who from an early age have loved, have desired, and have asked of the Lord an honorable and holy connection with one of the sex, shunning and abominating the impulses of a loose and wandering lust." 7
Whether he was speaking of himself here, one can only guess.
