Soul mates and
eternal halves
 

We present in this issue the topic #72 from the Systematized Study of the Spiritist Doctrine, that is being presented weekly, according to the programme elaborated by the Brazilian Spiritist Federation (FEB), structured in 6 modules and 147 topics.

If the reader uses this program for a study group, we suggest that questions proposed be discussed freely before the reading of the text that follows. If you would like to study alone, we ask you to try to answer the questions at first and only then read the text that follows. The answer key can be found at the end of the lesson.

Questions

1. Is the theory of “the other half” true?
2. What can we understand by “soul mates”?
3. Why do soul mates not always remain together to accomplish their tasks?
4. Do soul mates always have the same evolution degree?
5. Does the concept of “soul mates” mean the same as “the other half”?

Text

The expression the other half is simply a metaphor

1. Question 298 of The Spirits’ Book tells us that “there is no such thing as any special and fated union between any two souls. Union exists between all spirits, but in different degrees, according to the rank they occupy,-that is to say, according to the degree of perfection they have acquired.”

2. In the other question of the same book: The expression is incorrect. If one spirit were the half of another spirit, he would, if separated from that other, be incomplete. “The hypothesis of twin-souls is merely a figurative representation of the union of two sympathetic spirits, and must not be understood literally.”

3. Talking about the subject, Emmanuel tells us, in questions 323 on of the book The Consoler, which, in the sacred mystery of life, each heart owns in the Infinity its soul mate, divine partner to the trip of immortality.

Soul mates look for each other, whenever they are apart

4. Created one to another – says Emmanuel –; soul mates look for each other, whenever they are apart. The perennial union is for them the supreme and indefinable aspiration. Thousands of beings, if lost in crime or unconscious, experiment the separation of souls that they bear, as a harder trial, and, in the drama of more obscure existences, we always see the eternal attraction of souls who love each other. When they meet each other, in the human works, they feel owners of the real happiness for their hearts – their sheer union. And the only setback that could spoil this is the perspective of a new separation by death, which the Spiritist Doctrine arrived to explain.

5. We cannot explain the reason of the existing attraction between two Spirits, to make them soul mates. For us, the first moment of the creation of a being is still a mystery, as well as the deep and indefinable attraction that drags one soul to the other, in the ways of works, experiences and trials, in the infinite path of Time.

6. Not always soul mates are in the same evolutional plan. In the book Diary of the Invisible, by Zilda Gama, the Spirit of Victor Hugo says that souls created at the same era, starting “useful immigrations in the primitive worlds, and, then, separated in diverse points of Earth, keep, one of the other, eternal reminiscences”. Sometimes, they do not meet each other in some of their earthly journeys – when of them makes serious mistakes and slows down its development; there are others, though, that, as soon as the first existence, get together and recognize each other, staring at one another indefinitely, sometimes by the affect of being related, born at the same home.

Soul mates have nothing to do with eternal halves

7. Still Victor Hugo (Spirit): “When they understand they met each other again, that their Spirits were created at the same time, they became twins by the perpetual ties of affinity – a great happiness starts in their intimate just like the dawn finishes a night that seemed endless... Yes, the darkness that was before they met again, because isolated souls, misunderstood, while they miss each other, the fragment that keeps them integrated by a celestial bond – Love, the eternal tie that makes them inseparable for all the time – they get immersed in gloom, asphyxiated with no hope, covered in polar haze...”

8. In the book Resignation, book psychographed by Chico Xavier, Emmanuel tells us the story of the Spirit Alcíone, who gets away, temporarily, from the High Sphere where he resided to help his soul mate Pólux. The history of Alcíone and Pólux is an expressive example of Spirits too distant evolution-wise, but that, because they were soul mates, they keep being united.

9. It is important, though, to be clear the concept of soul mates. As Emmanuel says in the book The Consoler, with the expression “soul mates” he did not mean “eternal halves”. In fact, says the noble Spirit, the thesis is more complex than it seems at first and suggests meditation to the tendencies of the century, in the chapter of “divorce” and “Pansexualism”, but no one can deny the task of important commitments taken at the redemption school of the world, under the threat of increasing their own debts.
 

Answer key