The Spiritist review — Journal of psychological studies — 1858

Allan Kardec

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Eternal halves

The text below is an excerpt from a letter of one of our subscribers.

“A few years ago I lost a good and virtuous wife and, despite the six children she left me with, I felt completely isolated, when I then heard about the spiritist manifestations. I was soon part of a group of good friends who would engage this subject every evening. I then learned, from the communications received, that the true life is not on Earth but in the spiritual world; that my Clemency was happy there, working, like others, for the happiness of those who she had met here.”

“Well, there is a point about which I eagerly wish you can clarify.”

“One evening I said to my Clemency: my dear friend, despite our love, as it happened, we did not always have the same opinion in many things during our life. Why then did we have to make so many reciprocal concessions in order to live a harmonious life?”

“She then answered:”

“My friend, we were good and honest; we lived together and we can say, in the best possible way on this Earth of trials but, we were not our eternal halves. Such unions are rare on Earth. Yet they can be found and do represent a great favor from God. Those who enjoy such happiness experience a delight that you ignore.”

“Can you tell me if you see your eternal half?”

“- Yes, she said. He is a poor man living in Asia; we will be only able to unite in 175 years, according to the way you count.”

“Will the union be on Earth or in another planet?”

“- On Earth! But, listen: I cannot describe well enough the happiness of those united in such a way. I will ask Heloise and Abelard to come to explain to you.”

“Then, Sir, those happy creatures came to talk to us about such an unspeakable happiness.”

“- Attending our will, they said, two don’t do more than one. We travel through space; we enjoy everything; we love each other with an endless love, above which there is only God’s love and that of the perfect beings. Your greatest joys are not worth one of our glances and our handshakes.”

“The thought of the eternal halves pleases me. It seems that God, on creating humanity, made it double, and separating the two halves of the same soul, he said: Go through this world and look for incarnations. If you do good, the trip will be short and I will allow your union. On the contrary, centuries will pass before you can enjoy such happiness. Such is, as it seems to me, the primary cause of the instinctive movement that drags humanity towards happiness, the happiness which we do not understand and do not strive to understand.”

“I eagerly wish, Sir, a clarification about that theory of the eternal halves, and would feel very happy if I had the explanation about this subject in one of the next issues...”

***
Questioned about the subject, Abelard and Heloise gave us the following answers:

1. Were the souls created as a pair?
- Had they been created as a pair, they would be imperfect as single.

  1. Is it possible that two souls may unite in eternity, forming one whole?

    - No.

  2. You and your Heloise make, since the origin, two perfectly distinct souls?

    - Yes.

  3. Still now are you two distinct souls?

- Yes, but always united.
5. Are all men in the same condition?

- It depends if they are more or less perfect.
6. Are all souls destined to unite one day to another soul?

- Each spirit tends to look for another similar spirit. It is what you call sympathy. 7. In such union is there a condition of sex?

- The souls have no sex.
As much to satisfy our correspondent as to our own instruction, we addressed the following

questions to the spirit of St. Louis:
1. Are the souls, who must unite, predestined since their origin, to such a union and each one

of us has, in any part of the Universe, their half, to which will fatally unite one day?

- No. There is no fatal and particular union of two souls. There is the union of all spirits but at different degrees, according to the position they occupy, that is, according to the acquired perfection: the more perfect, the more united. It is from discord that all human evils originate; complete happiness results from concord.

2. How can we understand the word half, sometimes used by the spirits to designate sympathetic spirits?

- The expression is inaccurate. If a spirit were the half of another, once separated they would be incomplete.

3. Once united, do two perfectly sympathetic spirits remain united throughout eternity or can they separate and unite to other spirits?

- All spirits are united among themselves. I speak about those who achieved perfection. In the inferior spheres, when one spirit elevates, they are no longer sympathetic to those they left.

4. Are two sympathetic spirits the complement of one another or is that sympathy the result of a perfect identity?

- The sympathy that attracts one spirit to the other results from the perfect agreement of their instincts and inclinations. If one had to complement the other they would lose their identity.

5. The necessary identity to the perfect sympathy, would it only consist of the similarity of thoughts and feelings or also of uniformity of acquired knowledge?

- In the equality of the degree of elevation.
6. The spirits who are not sympathetic today, can they be later?

- Yes, they will all be. Thus, the spirit who is in an inferior sphere today will reach, by perfecting, the sphere where another one resides. Their union will happen more promptly if the more elevated spirit, hardly withstanding the trials of their choice, stays in the same state.

7. Can two spirits who are sympathetic no longer be? - Certainly if one of them is lazy.

Those answers perfectly resolve the question.

The theory of eternal halves is a figure relative to the union of two sympathetic spirits; it is an expression even used in the common language, referring to a couple, and that should not be taken literally. The spirits who have used them certainly do not belong to the highest order. The scope of their knowledge is necessarily limited. They have expressed their thoughts with the words they would have used in their corporeal life. It is then necessary to reject such an idea that two spirits, created one to the other, should one day unite in eternity, after a more or less lengthy separation.

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