Café de Sophia, page 12
With this, our conversation came to an end. Even though I didn’t find Plato in the café that day, I was really glad to have had this conversation with Luqman and really excited to have learned this information about wisdom. But what I was most happy about was that Luqman had relieved me from the fear I had for failure. It was such an infuriating issue to me that I was happy it was gone now and I couldn’t care less whether Luqman had noticed it in me or not, considering that he addressed me directly with his reply. Now, with this behind me, I could move forward and focus on things that truly contributed to the value of the mind.
CHAPTER 8
Love
‘Hey, Alfred, can I ask you a question real quick?’ I said to Alfred, who was passing near the table I was sitting at in the café.
‘Sure, Nate. You can ask me anything,’ replied Alfred.
‘It’s been a few days now that I’ve come here and have been me sitting alone without seeing any of the group. I have been wondering about something,’ I spoke. ‘What’s the reason behind the decision of coming to the café without agreeing with others to meet here beforehand and only hoping to run into other members by chance? Wouldn’t it be easier if they all agreed, via any social phone app, on a date and a time of meeting? Especially since there are not that many members in the group, which makes it even harder to run into someone by chance.’
Alfred laughed and said, ‘I understand why you would think something like that considering the fact you haven’t met all of the group.’
‘Really? Who else is there that I haven’t met?’ I asked, a little curious.
‘I don’t know. Tell me who have you met from the group?’ replied Alfred.
I answered, ‘I’ve met Plato, Hypatia, Luqman, Protagoras and… that’s pretty much it.’
‘You haven’t even come close to half of the group,’ said Alfred.
‘Really! Who else is there that I haven’t met yet?’ I replied, really intrigued now.
‘I could tell you their names, or rather nicknames, but it is better for you to get introduced to them by meeting them in person,’ said Alfred.
‘Where are they? I’ve been coming here for a few months and I haven’t met any of them,’ I said.
‘To your luck, most of them are out of town, if I recall correctly.’ Alfred continued, ‘Nonetheless, when they’re all in town, there won’t be a day on the weekend where you’d come here to the café and not run into one of them.’
‘I understand,’ I said. ‘Now, the decision of just coming here without any further notice seems reasonable.’
‘You know what, kiddo,’ spoke Alfred, ‘since there isn’t much work in the café right now, is it all right if I sat down with you and have a little conversation?’
‘Of course,’ I replied. Alfred’s request interested me and I was eager to hear what he had to say.
After a while, Alfred came and joined my table, bringing with him his own tea.
‘Sorry to keep you waiting,’ said Alfred.
‘It’s ok,’ I replied. ‘So, what is it that you wanted to talk to me about?’
‘These guys, I mean the members of the group, have had a lot of conversations over the years, some I’ve had the pleasure of listening to while some I didn’t.’ Alfred continued, ‘One of those conversations that I was lucky to hear just came to my mind, which I think you’re going to like, and I want to share it with you. If you have the time, of course?’
‘Of course, I have the time and the interest to hear it,’ I replied. I was really excited to hear what Alfred had to say. Alfred’s short white hair and chevron-style mustache reminded me of my grandfather who I used to sit down with and listen to his many stories. I had loved that very much.
‘Before we start,’ spoke Alfred, ‘let me mention the people who were in the conversation. The first two you already know, Plato and Luqman, while the other two you haven’t met yet; they are named, or nicknamed, Laozi and Hermes.’
‘Back in the day,’ Alfred began, ‘I was working as a bartender in a bar downtown. The bar was classic and had dim, blue lighting giving a wonderful, cosy atmosphere to the place. One night, where there weren’t many costumers, four people entered the bar and, despite the many empty tables, they sat at a corner of the bar counter, two on each side. To this day, I remember the drinks that I served them. I served Scotch to Plato, gin martini to Hermes, whiskey to Laozi, and a Shirley Temple to Luqman. It was a day that I would never forget. After all, it was also the day that I met these guys.
‘Anyway, after I served them their drinks, I stood nearby cleaning and polishing glasses where I was able to hear their conversation clearly, as it wasn’t a busy night and there wasn’t much hubbub in the bar.
‘Plato came in and asked Hermes what he would like to talk about.’ Alfred paused and looked at me. ‘I remember that Hermes said it wasn’t so much a discussion as a speech, and Laozi wanted to know what he meant. Well,’ Alfred said, taking a sip of his tea, ‘Hermes told us he had just read Plato’s The Symposium and he wanted to hear our ideas on Love. Everybody praised the idea and Laozi went on to share his thoughts about Love saying,
“Everything in existence is in constant movement of vibration, from the corporeal to the incorporeal. Everything vibrates, nothing rests. Vibration has a large bandwidth of frequency and everything vibrates in a different frequency. Some things vibrate in high frequencies while others vibrate in low ones. Those who vibrate in high frequencies are incorporeal or spiritual in nature whilst those who vibrate in low frequencies are corporeal or material in nature. An example of things of lower frequency would be anything that is tangible like earthly and watery bodies. Whilst an example of things of higher frequency would be anything perceptible by feelings like air, fire, and light.
“Light is the element that resonates the highest among the elements, and so, it’s of the highest purity. Light has a large bandwidth of frequencies. There are many different lights, or radiations, that vibrates at different frequencies, the highest among them is known as the Empyrean light. Souls are spiritual bodies made of light. They are of the highest resonating incorporeal bodies but being trapped in corporeal ones makes their resonance receptible to change.
“Let us now focus our attention to the human soul. The soul and the body are interconnected together via the chakra system, an energy system. Actions influence the chakras, and the chakras influence the resonance of the soul. Good actions will feed the chakras with positive energy, thus increasing their vibrations, and the chakras in turn will make the soul resonate in a higher frequency. Bad actions will feed the chakras with negative energy, thus decreasing their vibrations, and the chakras, in turn, will make the soul resonate in a lower frequency. The higher the frequency of a soul is, the purer and light-like it is, and the lower the frequency of a soul is, the more impure and dark-like it is. We can summarize the relation between the body and soul in the mentioned regard with the following sentence; the body is the tuning tool of the soul.
“The bandwidth of souls is wide and vast. Similar frequencies attract and are attracted to each other while different frequencies repel from each other. The closer the frequencies of souls are to each other, the more harmonious they are with each other, whether they are resonating in low or high frequencies. The feeling that is produced by harmony is what we call Love.
“Love is not exclusive and limited to one person only; instead, it is felt with the souls that are resonating in frequencies closer to each other. Love can be felt with any human no matter what the relation is, whether it is parental, fraternal, filial, spousal, or that of relatives and friends. Also, love can be felt with all sorts of animals as they have souls themselves.
“Harmony produces two kinds of feelings; one that is produced in higher frequencies which is Love and one that is produced in lower frequencies which is Lust. Love should never be confused or associated with Lust for the former relates to incorporeal bodies whilst the latter to corporeal ones. The former is spiritual and the latter is ignorance. The former is immortal and the latter is changing. The former is enlightening and the latter is evil.”
‘With this Laozi had finished his speech and I started clapping to him taking the attention of the group towards me.’ Alfred smiled for a moment and continued saying, ‘I apologized to the group for eavesdropping on them and I praised Loazi for a wonderful speech. In response, Hermes invited me to join them and my workmate agreed to cover for me. Then, I thanked my workmate and joined the group. Before we continued with the remaining speeches, I introduced myself to the group and Plato introduced the group to me. He mentioned both of their real names and nicknames which I found a little hilarious at the time.
‘Afterward, Plato started speaking his thoughts on Love saying, “Every soul is incomplete by nature. Every soul is partial, or not whole. That is, of course, when it is all alone, a soul feels emptiness inside of it. It is also compelled by its nature to seek out and fill that emptiness in order to become complete and whole. A good question to be asked here is, what completes a soul?
“In order to answer that question, we need to see how partials and fragments get created in the first place. A whole is a complete thing that, if it were ever divided, would leave out parts of it. Also, a whole has one nature to it that will be passed down to all the parts unchanged. Knowing this, let’s examine the following argument. A fragment is a part of a whole, a whole is of one nature, and as the parts have that same nature as the whole, all of the parts of the same whole share the same nature. Apply the same logic and argument to souls. If a soul is a partial of a whole, then the only thing to unite with the soul, in order to make it whole again, is another soul.
“The next question to be answered now is which soul is fit enough or suitable to complete another soul? Continuing where Laozi has left off, I agree with him when he said that souls resonate in different frequencies, some in high frequencies and some in low ones, but, unfortunately, this is where my agreement ends. Souls do harmonize more with those which resonate closer to their own frequency, but it is not enough to fill that emptiness and make the incomplete whole again. The only possible way for a soul to be complete is by uniting with another soul that resonates in the same frequency as its own. Such souls are called soulmates.
“Some couples prefer to have similar hobbies and interests so that they get to practice them together and some couples prefer to have different hobbies and interests so that they get to teach each other, but, as for soulmates, these things are irrelevant to their relationship. To them, hobbies and interests fall under the criteria of choosing friends not lovers. What soulmates seek and find in their partner is a feeling of belonging to one another. A feeling of happiness resulting from the sole reason that their partner is part of their life. When two souls resonate in the same frequency, they are lost in true harmony and wonder. They complete each other and together they are whole again.
“Now, allow me to quote the philosopher Plato when he said in his Symposium, ‘Love is the name for our pursuit of wholeness, for our desire to be complete.’”
“The philosopher Plato said it well and was directly to the point. When a soul searches for its soulmate, the soul that will complete it and make it whole, it searches for the feeling of love with, and towards, the other soul. And since Love happens only between soulmates, the search for the soulmate is the same as the search for Love. Thus, Love can be described as the pursuit of wholeness and as the desire to be complete, just like how the Philosopher Plato described it.”
‘With this Plato finished his speech,’ said Alfred.
‘That was delightful to hear,’ I said.
‘My thoughts exactly back then,’ said Alfred. ‘And now, after Plato, Hermes started his speech about Love saying, “Love occurs between two souls, one masculine and the other is feminine,’ spoke Hermes. ‘In order to understand the nature of this relation, we need to go all the way to the beginning, to the creation of the male and female souls. Let’s start with a part Plato spoke about in his speech which is that each soul is a part of a whole. Now, parts are created by the division of a whole, and wholes precede parts in existence; therefore, regarding souls, they must originally have been created as a whole before getting divided into their individual parts of male and female. This being, which contains both aspects of male and female, is of androgynous nature.
“Now, let’s examine the following two verses from the Holy Quran,
“O mankind, fear you Lord, who created you from one soul and created from it its mate and dispersed from both of them many men and women. And fear Allah, through whom you ask one another, and the wombs. Indeed, Allah is ever, over you, an Observer.” (The Holy Qur’an 4:1)
And,
“And Allah has made for you from your soul mates and has made for you from your mates sons and grandchildren and has provided for you from the good things. Then in falsehood do they believe and in the favor of Allah they disbelieve.” (The Holy Qur’an 16:72)
“The first verse speaks about the creation of all the souls of men and women and it goes as follows; it all started by the creation of the one original soul, then out of this soul its mate was created. Afterward, all of the rest of the souls were created from this pair of souls.
“The second verse speaks about the pattern and gender of creation of the other souls. Regarding the gender of the first two souls, since both of the souls and humans are the work of God, The Almighty, we can assume that the same pattern of creation that occurred to humans also occurred to souls. Thus, the first soul was androgynous in nature and out of it the feminine soul was created, or rather parted away from it, leaving the male part behind. Now, regarding the creation of the next generation of souls, the second verse states that it was through the female soul that male, and only male, souls were created. The verse then goes on to state that in the following generation, God has created for the original two souls, grandchildren souls. The use of the term ‘grandchildren’ and not ‘grandsons’ indicates that the genders of the souls that are in the grandchildren generation are both male and female in nature. This indicates that female souls were created even though they did not arise from the original female soul.
“All of these genders and generations might seem confusing so let’s tie it all up. At first, an androgynous soul was created, then out of this soul its female part was created. Then, the female soul gave birth to androgynous souls as children. Afterwards, those androgynous souls went through the same process of division and giving birth that the first and second souls had gone through. And following this pattern of multiplication, all the rest of the souls were born.
“Let us now move on to the next step succeeding the creation of any pair of souls. In doing so, please pay close attention to the following excerpt from the Zohar,
“When they first issue forth, they issue as male and female together. Subsequently, when they descend [to this world] they separate, one to one side and the other to the other, and God afterwards unites them, God and no other. He alone knowing the mate proper to each. Happy the man who is upright in his works, or pure, and walks in the way of truth, so that his soul may find its original mate, for then he becomes indeed perfect, and through his perfection the whole world is blessed.” (The Zohar)
“The Zohar clearly states that when the androgynous soul descends to the world, it splits into its male and female parts where each would be born into a physical body that matches their gender. The female and male souls don’t have to descend to the world at the same time—there can be a gap of several years between each of them, and the male soul doesn’t have to descend first before the female soul and vice versa. What is certain is that the split occurs when one of them is about to descend.
“Now, let us speak about the nature of the relationship between these two male and female souls that once have shared an androgynous spiritual body. Soulmates might be an appropriate term here, but it carries some inconsistency with what we said earlier about the creation of the male and female souls. Soulmates, as Plato said earlier, is a relation between two souls that resonate at the same frequency. And as Laozi said earlier, the resonance of a soul can be tuned via its actions. Therefore, the soulmate of a soul will not be constant along the years as both sides of the relationship will have their resonance changed a few times along the span of their lives.
“It was stated in the excerpts mentioned from the holy and sacred books, that soulmates, let’s call them by that right now, have been decided from the moment they’ve been created. Meaning, there is only one fixed mate for each soul, not many or changing. These two male and female souls that have been whole once before are referred to by the esoteric name of Twin Flames.
“And now, let’s divert our attention to how those twin flames reunite with each other. It is mentioned in the Talmud that;
Forty days prior to the formation of a child, a heavenly voice cries out saying, “the daughter of so and so is destined for so and so.” (The Talmud Sotah 2B)
This is, of course, the ideal case, but not every soul is fortunate to meets its true other half. In the Zohar excerpt that I mentioned earlier, it is stated that a man must live a pure and pious life so that God may reward him by reuniting him with his actual other half. It is only logical that since God is the one who created all of the androgynous souls, split those souls into male and female parts, and put each one into a corresponding physical body, that through him, and only him, the union of twin flames is ever possible. There is a saying for Prophet Mohammed, peace be upon him and his family, that reads;
“No building has been built in Islam more beloved to Allah Almighty than marriage.”
Although many see that the saying refers to normal marriage, the Arabic word used for ‘marriage’ has the same root as the word mentioned in the Qur’anic verse for ‘mates’. Thus, the marriage mentioned in the saying can also be interpreted as referring to the union of twin flames.
