An essay by S D Anugyan on the phenomenon of Twin Flame relationships
One of the most unique and bewildering spiritual beliefs is that of the Twin Flame. It defies – well, everything. When I’ve tried to explain it to meditators their reaction is nearly always one of dismissal: ‘It’s Form, therefore irrelevant’, ‘It’s an outer concept, therefore not an inner truth’ etc. Materialists, whilst often finding the romantic connotations appealing, find it too esoteric in the face of having to deal with mortgages, bills, school fees, where to go on holiday etc.
Paradox is at the heart of the Twin Flame phenomenon. So what is it? Essentially it goes like this: While we may experience soul mates in our lives, those with whom we have a profound and unspoken resonance, the Flame is actually the missing half of our selves i.e. not just a complementary part of ourselves, it is us in another form. That form may be physical, someone we meet and have a strong strange connection with, or it may be immaterial, someone met through dreams or visions; or both.
For the meditator that is immediately problematic: ‘Who is this self?’ ‘Is it just about our ego then?’ Others may object, ‘Does that mean my relationship with my partner, whom I love and adore, is bogus?’ ‘I’m certainly not with any Twin Flame, but we’ve been happily married for thirty years, and have wonderful children of whom we are very proud. Does this mean it was all a waste of time?’ Those of a romantic disposition, on the other hand, may accept the idea wholeheartedly but use it as an excuse not to forge meaningful relationships: ‘You’re not my other half, so I’ll ignore you.’
The trouble is, these are all concepts, pre-judgements of what the Twin Flame is: it is not limited to Form, nor to Formlessness, to Ego nor Egolessness. And either you have experienced it or you have not. The closest I can describe the experience, it is like encountering a spiritual master who opens up doors that you did not know existed. You then try to describe what the view is like through those doors to others, but words and other forms of expression nearly always fail. Still, the artist who knows, must, due to their nature, try.
Doing an internet search, you will discover numerous sites devoted to TF experiences. Though helpful to some extent, one cannot help but wonder if some of the experiences described are not just romantic fantasy; for the one thing the Flame does is kick your ass. Just one encounter is a spiritual awakening, and the Flame doesn’t allow you to rest. Because of this intensity, a physical relationship between Flames is often too much, and untenable. The few people I have known personally in TF marriages have testified as to how spiritually demanding their relationships are. Again, the paradox, as one also feels a profound relaxation when with your Flame, that nothing else matters.
This contradictory nature is captured beautifully by P L Travers in one of her books. Travers was a mystic and Gurdjieffian, her children’s books brilliant exercises of hiding in plain sight. In Mary Poppins in the Park, the story opens with her telling a story – one where everybody is under the impression they’re someone else, someone more ‘marvellous and grand’. The tramp who enlightens them to the fact they are perfectly marvellous and grand just being themselves, turns out to be an angel in disguise. There is a subtle paradox here, and a fitting analogy for the Mary Poppins books which are perfectly marvellous and grand simply as children’s stories.
On another level, Mary Poppins Opens the Door contains a chapter where she reveals a ‘Crack’ in the world between the last stroke of the Old Year and the first stroke of the New. A meditator may find this redolent of the gap between the in-breath and the out-breath, and Travers uses this metaphor and that of fairy tales to reveal a startling new reality:
And inside the Crack all things are at one. The eternal opposites meet and kiss. The wolf and the lamb lie down together, the dove and the serpent share one nest. The stars bend down and touch the earth and the young and the old forgive each other. Night and day meet here, so do the poles. The East leans over towards the West and the circle is complete. This is the time and place, my darlings—the only time and the only place—where everybody lives happily ever after. Look!
Everybody had a partner. No one was lonely or left out. All the fairy tales ever told were gathered together on that square of grass, embracing each other with joy.
A more fitting metaphor for the Twin Flame would be hard to find. It is also unusual for Travers to stray into this territory, akin to a seven-dimensional perspective with the reconciling of opposites. The Mary Poppins books encompass easily five and six dimensions, the eponymous character herself a daimonic entity at home in the sixth, and a much more fierce and ambiguous character than that depicted in the films.
It has been commented that when I write about the extra dimensions, whether from a mystical, scientific or artistic viewpoint, I rarely mention the seventh. This is because it is extraordinarily difficult to articulate. The previous are difficult enough. It is also the point at which one has to be invited. One cannot will oneself to experience it. Being is the key rather than doing.
One of the rare times I have even read about what seven dimensions are like is the account of William Blake meeting the angel Gabriel. Blake is sceptical as to it really being Gabriel, until the latter says (and I paraphrase), ‘If I were not who I say I were, could I do this?’ At which point, with a gesture he dismisses the room in which Blake is sitting, revealing the stars and the cosmos, which he also sweeps away. This can only be accomplished from a seven-dimensional perspective; one has to be able to stand outside the wonders and mysteries of the six-dimensional universe in order to manipulate it, much as a sculptor has to be living with the fourth dimension of time in order to manipulate three-dimensional clay. With seven dimensions, a resting place is achieved, much like the fifth with its heavens, hells and Plum Blossom Paradises, and unlike the sixth with its constant flux. (My earlier novella The God of New York is an attempt to demonstrate how this flux may manifest in our world.)
Imagination takes on a startling new perspective, and is certainly no longer limited to fantasy or wish-fulfillment. That Imagined is now conscious, exists, and capable of standing up for itself. You are sometimes the creator, but those created may not perform your will, interacting with you and behaving like the independent beings they are. There is a good chance, indeed, that they created you.
I scour mystical accounts and treatises for seven-dimensional depictions, and only very occasionally come across anything. One could argue that, as Ouspensky suggests, it is purely imaginary and therefore inconsequential. Yet this is what makes it so powerful. To take a numerical analogy, consider what are known in mathematics as imaginary numbers. The square root of 4 is 2 because 2 x 2 = 4, the root of 9 is 3 etc. But what is the square root of -4? One would think, without being taught, it is -2 but two negative numbers are positive so -2 x -2 is actually 4. The way mathematics solves the problem is by creating imaginary numbers, therefore the square root of -4 is written as 2i.
These imaginary numbers do not exist in ‘real’ life, but they have an enormous impact on it because many complex equations can only be achieved by using them. This computer I am writing on may well only exist because of imaginary numbers.
Thus it is with seven dimensions. I have hitherto not written about this and rarely talk about it, partly because of the difficulty in demonstrating just how real and important it is, and also because it can be deeply personal and unique to the individual. This is where the Twin Flame comes in, because it has the ability to open the door to any dimension including the seventh, thus providing the essential invite, and with the power to extend that invitation indefinitely. Once it does so, nothing is ever the same.
The Twin Flame and seven dimensions have that in common, that they are seldom referenced in traditional literature, but there are more examples of the former than the latter. It could be argued that Dante’s relationship with Beatrice in the afterlife is a TF one, with her as a guide to the hells and heavens of five dimensions. (D H Lawrence took umbrage, arguing that it was hypocritical of Dante to lust after a spiritual entity whilst having a flesh-and-blood wife and children on the earthly plane. Thus, one of the paradoxes of the TF phenomenon is touched upon unwittingly.)
Other examples tend to be of when two Flames force circumstances in order to be together, no matter the cost to those around them; in Wuthering Heights Heathcliff and Cathy’s love has a supernatural aura about it, for instance. Cathy’s account of Heaven is an indication of someone apart from conventional society, as when she speaks disparagingly of her husband Linton: ‘He wanted all to lie in an ecstasy of peace; I wanted all to sparkle and dance in a glorious jubilee. I said his heaven would be only half alive; and he said mine would be drunk: I said I should fall asleep in his; and he said he could not breathe in mine.’ (Chapter 24) Again, the paradox inherent in the seventh, and with the Twin Flame, as both peace and restlessness are forever entwined.
One of the most extensive explorations of a relationship with a Twin Flame can be seen in Shakespeare’s sonnets. In the plays a certain obsession with twins is recurring, as in Twelfth Night, where the powerful imagery of losing one’s other half to the ‘foaming sea’ is a source of profound almost inexpressible loss. Though the flesh-and-blood romantic unions at the end of the play satisfy the need for romance, it is the reunion of the twins that brings this about, restoring order. In his sonnets Shakespeare provides an in-depth exploration, and not once does he mention the word ‘twin’.
Sonnet 29 is an accurate depiction of a TF relationship when things are going well:
When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts my self almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
The ability of a TF relationship to put everything else in perspective is here captured perfectly but, over the course of the sonnets numerous ups and downs are chronicled in no less accurate a manner; including the complexity when a ‘normal’ love relationship comes into the picture, that with the famous ‘dark-eyed lady’.
Sonnet 87 contrasts with the bliss of 29, revealing another aspect, beginning with the line ‘Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing…’ and ending with the couplet:
Thus have I had thee, as a dream doth flatter,
In sleep a king, but waking no such matter.
The Flame indeed may come to one through dreams and visions, changing everything in its wake, becoming a tangible presence, yet depart just as mysteriously.
Someone once asked me if Flame relationships were always heterosexual. I had no reason to think so, nor that they were necessarily sexual at all, but had to concede they were in all the cases I personally knew. Shakespeare certainly doesn’t adhere to heterosexuality, the predominant relationship in the Sonnets being unequivocally that with another man. The TF relationship may not actually be so much to do with sex, as with gender. The Hermetic teachings from The Kybalion (by Three Initiates) are clear on this:
[W]e think it well to call your attention to the fact that Gender, in its Hermetic sense, and Sex in the ordinarily accepted use of the term, are not the same.
The word ‘Gender’ is derived from the Latin root meaning ‘to beget; to procreate; to generate; to create; to produce’. A moment’s consideration will show you that the word has a much broader and more general meaning than the term ‘Sex’, the latter referring to the physical distinctions between male and female living things. Sex is merely a manifestation of Gender on a certain plane of the Great Physical Plane – the plane of organic life.
And now I think it is time to pause here. I notice that in fitting parallel with any discussions regarding seven dimensions or the Twin Flame, I began with a very simple introduction, and ended up in a maze of complexities.
What grates here is not that any of it is incorrect – it’s not – but one of the graces of seven dimensions is the ability to condense complexity into very simple, elegant packages. Once mental analysis steps in, things become unnecessarily complicated. This is why I prefer fiction. A good piece of literature can contain all this complexity in deceptively simple forms, much like life. Ah well, I guess you’ll just have to await the publication of my next novella for further enlightenment. Or perhaps your Twin Flame will reveal some secrets to you, even of yourself and beyond.
Featured image by the author
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