Emanuel Swedenborg, Epigenetics, Sex and Marriage
Emanuel Swedenborg is without question one of the most remarkable people recorded by history. He was a scientist once described as the “last man to know everything.” Yet he was also a philosopher, mystic spiritual explorer and theologian. He has been called the “Buddha of the North.”
For people who worry that it may be too late in life to start on something new, he began his main work when he was fifty-six years old, and the next 28 years of his life generated an extraordinary number of books. As I am writing this, I can see his collected works that run to some 30 volumes.
Like most genuine spiritual teachers, Swedenborg has been much maligned, and some years ago a famous psychiatrist wrote a paper in which he “diagnosed” Swedenborg with a mental illness. A neat trick to do on someone whom he had never examined. On account of him having been dead for two centuries. Posthumous diagnosis is fraught with difficulty, and there was a glaring problem with the psychiatrist’s theory: very few men develop a psychotic illness in their fifties, and it is almost unheard of for them to remain highly functional.
Oh yes, and there’s also the fact that Swedenborg made some remarkable predictions that have proven to be true.
One of them was this. He said that during sexual intercourse between a married couple there is a soul linkage and a transfer of some soul essence between the couple. That was one of the reasons why he was against casual sex for both men and women. In those days there was little talk about the reality of same-sex unions.
Was he just a child of his puritanical times, or was there something more to it?
Soul linkage may be just that. But if that is uncomfortable, try this: For “soul linkage,” read, first, subtle systems. One of the most convincing pieces of evidence for the existence of these systems is the subjective experience of couples who feel energized after spending intimate moments together. While others feel totally drained, as if a psychic vampire has sucked their essential essence from them.
Second, let’s read epigenetic transfer. We are all used to the transfer of maternal and paternal DNA during sex. We are also uncomfortably aware of the extraordinarily high rates of sexually transmitted diseases. One of the most extraordinary of the new findings if that environment may have effects down through the generations, and that these effects must clearly be transmitted during sexual intercourse. Sex transmits not just DNA, but epigenetic codes and perhaps also passenger genes that may enter each partner.
Perhaps we should consider that before dismissing Swedenborg’s ideas as the fruits of an outdated moral and ethical system. Forget for just one moment about religious, spiritual and moral conventions: perhaps there are also biological reasons and subtle system explanations for restricting the numbers of partners that we have.
Marilyn Monroe is said to have once made the remark that, “I don’t see anything wrong with having lots of sex, after all, it doesn’t give you cancer.” Well, as thousands of young women have found, it can do just that, and what other damage may it do to a person?
Dr. Richard G. Petty, MD is a world-renowned authority on the brain, and his revolutionary work on human energy systems has been acclaimed around the globe.
He is also an accredited specialist in internal and metabolic medicine, endocrinology, psychiatry, acupuncture and homeopathy. He has been an innovator and leader of the human potential movement for over thirty years and is also an active researcher, teacher, writer, professional speaker and broadcaster. He is the author of five books, including the groundbreaking and best selling CD series Healing, Meaning and Purpose. He has taught in over 45 countries and 48 states in the last ten years, but spends as much time as possible on his horse farm in Georgia.
