SOUL MATES
AND
TWIN FLAMES
The Spiritual Dimension of Love and Relationships
ELIZABETH CLARE PROPHET
SOUL MATES AND TWIN FLAMES
The Spiritual Dimension of Love and Relationships
by Elizabeth Clare Prophet
Copyright 1999 Summit Publications, Inc.
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced, translated, or used in any format or medium whatsoever without prior written permission, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review. For information, contact
Summit University Press, PO Box 5000, Gardiner, MT 59030-5000.
Tel: 1-800-245-5445 or 406-848-9500
Fax: 1-800-221-8307 or 406-848-9555
www.SummitUniversityPress.com
Library of Congress Control Number: 2001096848
ISBN (paperback) 978-0-922729-48-7
ISBN (eBook) 978-1-932890-32-7
PICTURE CREDITS:
Illustration before chapter 1: by Raphael Lopez
Pictures in chapter 1 courtesy of the collection of Sharon Rich. For more information about the lives and romance of Jeanette and Nelson, contact the Mac/Eddy Club, P.O. Box 1077, New York, NY 10002, e-mail to maceddyclub@aol.com or visit their website at maceddy.com. Excerpts from Farewell to Dreams by Diane Goodrich and Sharon Rich, copyright 1979, the Jeanette MacDonald/Nelson Eddy Friendship Club, Inc., are used with permission. That book is now out of print, but Sharon Rich has updated her research with even more documentation, including love letters, in a newer book, Sweethearts: The Timeless Love AffairOn Stage and OffBetween Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy, published by Donald I. Fine, 1994, available through the above website.
Contents
I am my beloveds, and my beloved is mine.
SONG OF SOLOMON 6:3
I will rise now, and go about the city in the streets, and in the broad ways I will seek him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, but I found him not. The watchmen that go about the city found me: to whom I said, Saw ye him whom my soul loveth? It was but a little that I passed from them, but I found him whom my soul loveth: I held him, and would not let him go.
SONG OF SOLOMON 3:24
The Perfect Match
Trapped in the Net of Karma
THE STORY OF
Jeanette MacDonald
Nelson Eddy
Sweetheart, sweetheart, sweetheart, Nelson Eddy sang. Suddenly from the rear of the theater came the voice of a woman, joining him in duet. The packed audience turned in amazement. She was walking down the aisle, singing back to him. By the end of the song, she was on stage looking into his eyes and the audience was standing and cheering.
She was his co-star in eight films, Jeanette MacDonald. Their love was plain for all to see, recalls Frank Laric, who was sitting in the third row. Nelson hadnt even known she was in town. Whered you come from? he asked as the audience wildly applauded.
I got in last night, she said. He asked her to dinner, and then they sang Indian Love Call together.
In these magic moments and in those replayed in theaters across the nation, America discovered twin flamessouls who were created together in the beginning, two halves of a divine whole.
It was the summer of 1941. Theirs was the perfect match and more, twin flames to a Ttwo hearts in three-quarter time. Although their romance blossomed in May, it never came to fruition.
Seeing their love on screen, hearing it in their duets as their eyes told one another and the whole world the pain of a forbidden love, more than one generation of Americans have been introduced to that special love of twin flames. Although not many people today sit down and listen to Jeanette and Nelson sing arias, their music and especially their films have a timeless appeal, which transcends a bland corniness in plot and dialogue. That appeal, that mysterious ingredient, is the love that everyone seeks, but few find, in the union of twin flames.
Yet they were forced to hide that real-life romance from the world. Official studio history and fan magazines billed them as casual friends who sometimes argued and who were blissfully married to other people.
And that story might have stood forever had it not been for the efforts of Sharon Rich and Diane Goodrich who released their book Farewell to Dreams in 1979. They compiled it not from the papier-mch newspaper accounts of the day, but from Nelsons and Jeanettes friends, neighbors, and relatives who finally agreed to tell the truth and from doormen, maids, and extras who filled in details and corroborated evidence. Every line in there, Sharon says, is verbatim from what somebody told us, as closely as possible.
Sharon and Diane discovered a massive cover-up by the studio and by Nelson and Jeanette, who swore their friends to secrecy. They found that they were in fact wildly in love, more deeply than any of their characters, in a romance that spanned 30 years.
But Jeanettes ambition, their occasionally violent tempers, and a strange combination of people and circumstances kept them apart for their entire lives. So it seems that things do not always turn out right, even when you do find your twin flame.
Their life story is a tragedy of twin flames. It includes an implicit warning to us in our quest for our perfect love: if we do not overcome the negatives of our karma, we can never enjoy complete happiness, whether or not we find our twin flame.
Not a publicity photo. This shows their real-life romance as Nelson throws caution to the winds and gives Jeanette a birthday embrace.
Naturally, Sharon and Dianes story begins as a fairy tale should: love at first sight, or at least instant recognition. Jeanettes sister Blossom was flipping through a newspaper when a picture caught her eye. Who is that? said Jeanette, making her go back to a certain page. She knew she had to go and hear Nelson Eddy sing.
Nelson first saw, or rather heard, Jeanette at MGM studios where they were both under contract. He had been signed on in 1933, a successful opera singer andas young, handsome opera singers were in those daysa sex symbol. His fans, mostly women, treated him like a rock star, even ripping his clothes off after concerts.
Nelson followed her bewitching voice into a sound stage where she was filming The Merry Widow. As he watched her on stage, he fell in love. She fit the image of that one girl hed always dreamed of. A few days later, he asked her to lunch. She agreed, but only reluctantly as she did not want to become entangled in a relationship that might endanger her career. Yet as their romance continued, her love grew. Nelson made her, a 30-year-old glamour queen, feel like she was on her first date. Could the fairy tale she had portrayed so many times on screen be happening to her?
He kissed me, its like nothing I ever felt before, she told her mother. Around him I feel beautifully elated, and when he looks at you, theres no one else, just you.
