Love letters from a widower - The mystery of soul mates in light of ancient wisdom

 

For this reason, a man will leave his

father and mother and be united

to his wife and the two will become

flesh. This mystery is profound.

 

St. Paul, Ephesians 5:31–32

 

 

 

 

 

Barcelona, June 17th, 1999

 

 

Dear Blanca:

 

From time to time, you talked to me about God. Fortunatly, it was very sporadically, really: because hearing about a supreme being that, back then, did not exist for me, would get on my nerves, to tell you the truth. On the other hand, I could hear you talk about Jesus for hours. In fact, you know the Gospels were, and still are, one of my favourite reads. For me, Jesus existed on an extraordinary level: he existed, most of all, in his message of love for everyone, in his predilection for the humble and the afflicted, in his unconditional love for humanity, and in his sacrifice. But God, that invisible God to whom Jesus, hanging from the cross, screamed in agony “Why have you forsaken me?” That God did not exist to me. So, hearing you talk about Him bothered me, I’m sorry; it riled me up, no matter how much I tried to hide it.

However... no, look, now I’m thinking that what really upset me was not that; maybe I was aware that, even though reason denied it, my heart agreed with it. Do you know what I mean? Ah, but the heart always stands on the losing side: since to know about such matters, reason always appeared to be the most reliable approach. Theologians are probably right when they claim all of us harbour a feeling of God, it’s just that sometimes we ignore it. But note, though, how theologians go even further: they maintain that the mere presence of a feeling of God in Man’s heart is in itself a proof of His existence. Since –as they assure us- that feeling is innate, it’s actually a reminiscence. Well, if it’s as they say, Blanca, then along with a feeling of God (and, as I hope to demonstrate during the course of these letters, closely bound to it), there exists in Man’s heart another innate feeling of no less power. The feeling of the twin soul, of the one creature who, out of every other, is destined to us, for it’s the other half that will complete us.

Yes, you’re right: To be fair, we have to recognise that, in this world, it’s very rare to have those two feelings validated by our immediate reality. It often seems like reality is actively intent on denying them. One only has to turn on the news, open the newspapers, look around, or look to oneself. If we are talking about God, we have the countless adversities and injustices overshadowing the world; if we are talking about twin souls, the proliferation of divorces, disagreements and loneliness… One thing makes you think, though, Blanca: those feelings seem to possess a strange tenacity. How many people continue to believe in God after a tragedy? And how many drag behind them a long list of heartbreaks and failed love affairs, and still refuse to give up the search for their other half?... And then we have the exceptions; the rare cases where those feelings do find some kind of validation –even if subjective– in our immediate reality. And so, speaking of the feeling of God, I am reminded of these words by C.G. Jung, the modern sage with an “ancient perspective” I mentioned before. While preparing his memoirs, Jung confided in his collaborator, Aniela Jaffé, something quite surprising for a psychologist: He told her that, for him, God had always been “one of the most immediate experiences”41.

But let’s continue with the feeling we were discussing: that of the twin soul. As far as we know, the first westerner to give it a theoretical shape was the Greek philosopher Plato, who, in the fifth century BC, told the following wonderful story, as if being told by his contemporary Aristophanes: Formerly –he explains– human beings were dual… “the primeval man was round, his back and sides forming a circle; and he had four hands and the same number of feet, one head with two faces, looking opposite ways, set on a round neck and precisely alike; also four ears, two privy members, and the remainder to correspond.”42 That made Man extremely powerful. However, since such power defied the Gods, Zeus broke them in half. Since then, each half is looking for the other half that completes it: “Each of us when separated, having one side only, like a flat fish, is but the tally–half of a man, and he is always looking for his other half.”43

There are those who, to discredit this speech, Blanca (people are very fussy), would point out that Aristophanes was a comic playwright. But that would be missing Plato’s intended effect; he used a comic mask to hide from the majority what was for him –from what we can gather from the testimonies of his disciple, Aristotle– one of his most valuable theories, the core of Plato’s so–called “unwritten doctrines”. In another of his Dialogues, Plato clearly said that the philosopher never writes down what for him holds the “highest value”44. Others, to depreciate the testimony, would object to the fact that Aristophanes differentiates three separate bi–units: one male/female, one male/male, and one female/female when scholars agree to see it as Plato’s attempt to justify homosexuality, which was rather widespread in his homeland. Referring to the passage in question, interpreters often translate into “tally–half” the Greek word symbolon. A symbolon, Blanca, was a wooden tally stick split into two that allowed two people who had never met to recognise each other by joining both halves of the stick. In ancient China, they had a similar practice, only it was for a different purpose. Chinese couples who got along well, if they were to be apart for a long time, would break a hand mirror in two, each keeping one–half. This way, by looking into their split mirrors, they would have their feelings confirmed: the current absence of their other half. In China, the mirror was a symbol of conjugal happiness and, universally (due to it duplicating individuals), a traditional symbol of kinship…, for which reason a broken mirror certainly becomes an ideal tally–half between twin souls, my dear. For us, on the other hand, the wooden tally will also work as a metaphor.

Doesn’t the definition of the Greek symbolon remind you of that idea we spoke of last time? The concept of a beauty subjective to each individual, that sort of encrypted message decipherable only to the holder of the key? Your subjective beauty, Blanca –that hidden beauty made for my eyes only– would be the counterpart to my half of the symbolon. In the story of Shakuntala that I told you in my previous letter, that tally–half would be symbolised by the ring, thanks to which King Duyshanta recognises his secret wife. In another famous Eastern book (a book that, with its six volumes bound in a midnight blue that matches its title, stands out from all the other tomes in your library), in One Thousand and One Nights I mean, there is a delightful story in which rings also seem to play the part of symbolon, of a tally–half for recognition. Even though we read that story in one of those dearly missed domestic soirees, it’s been many years (One Thousand and One Nights, you’ll remember, was one of the first books we read together), and there are so many Nights, so many stories, that maybe you don’t remember the one I’m about to tell you:

In two kingdoms very far apart, lived a prince and a princess unknown to each other; yet they were so alike one could take them for twins (again and again, narrators resorts to this metaphorical kinship). One morning, the young princes wake up wearing each other’s rings, remembering and missing each other. What happened? Something very odd happened, my dear. You see, that night they had the attention of a couple of genies –the invisible and improbable beings that populate One Thousand and One Nights. The female genie discovered the prince, the male genie the princess, and both argued over who was the most beautiful. To compare them, they moved the sleeping princess across the skies, and placed her next to the prince in his bed. Lying next to each other, their kinship became so evident; it delighted the mischievous genies, who decided to wake them up one at a time to observe their reaction. Obviously, the young couple immediately fell in love; it was a case of mutual love at first sight. As proof of their love, they each took the other’s ring before falling asleep again at the hands of the genies, who quickly returned the princess back to her bed in the faraway kingdom. This exchange of rings, though, will later serve for them to, sight unseen, mutually recognise each other as their “lost love.”45

Going back to Plato’s story, there are similar tales concerning the double nature of the Primordial Man in several spiritual traditions. Thus, one of the key pieces of Hermetic tradition (about which we will have the opportunity to talk at length in a future letter), a treaty called Poemander, recounts the excision God inflicted upon the original Men, the ones considered to have been dual, simultaneously male and female. It says, “...the bond that bound them all was loosened by God’s Will... and some became male, some in like fashion female...” We can also find stories of the same tenor in...