Marriage
(Shyam Sunder on a meeting with Mother, 19 October 1972:) “Incidentally the question of marriages came up.
Mother said that it is an old system. The basis of faithfulness in marriage is the preference of a man for one woman and the preference of a woman for one man. For some time it goes on, but later one loses the preference and the trouble starts. If the marriage is for association for a work it is different, but it is so for only one in a million. Then it lasts.
“Mother, at the time of marriage one has not even fixed the ideal or aim of life.”
“At that time,” said Mother, “it is impulse... sexual impulse. At that time if you tell them something, they will not understand. Marriages arranged by parents have other conveniences, but... Marriages on impulse fade with the impulse. It is an old thing... I have to say many things. The union should be for association for an ideal, a work, otherwise it is a stupidity.” ”[1]
(Mother:) “To unite your physical lives, your material interests, to become partners in order to face together the difficulties and successes, the defeats and victories of life — that is the very foundation of marriage, but you already know that it is not enough.
To be united in your sensations, to have the same aesthetic tastes and enjoyments, to be moved in common by the same things, one through the other and one for the other — that is good, that is necessary, but it is not enough.
To be one in your deeper feelings, to keep a mutual affection and tenderness that never vary in spite of all the blows of life and can withstand every weariness and irritation and disappointment, to be always and on every occasion happy, extremely happy, to be together, to find in every circumstance tranquillity, peace and joy in each other — that is good, that is very good, that is indispensable, but it is not enough.
To unite your minds, to harmonise your thoughts and make them complementary, to share your intellectual preoccupations and discoveries; in short, to make your sphere of mental activity identical through a widening and enrichment acquired by both at once — that is good, that is absolutely necessary, but it is not enough.
Beyond all that, in the depths, at the centre, at the summit of the being, there is a Supreme Truth of being, an Eternal Light, independent of all the circumstances of birth, country, environment, education; That is the origin, cause and master of our spiritual development; it is That which gives a permanent direction to our lives; it is That which determines our destinies; it is in the consciousness of That that you must unite. To be one in aspiration and ascension, to move forward at the same pace on the same spiritual path, that is the secret of a lasting union.”[2]
(Sri Aurobindo to his wife, 1920:) “We say that the wife is the śakti of the husband, that means that the husband sees his own reflection in the wife, finds the echo of his own noble aspiration in her and thereby redoubles his force.”[3]
- (Disciple, 1936:) “Somebody writing a biography of Confucius in Bengali says: “Why do the Dharmagurus marry, we can’t understand. Buddha did and his wife’s tale is heart-rending [হৃদয়-বিদারক].”
(Sri Aurobindo:) Why? What is there বিদারক in it?
- He goes on: “Aurobindo Ghose, not a Dharmaguru, though he may be called Dharma-mad [ধমর্পাগল]” — how do you feel about that, Sir? — “has done it too.”
Well, it is better to be ধমর্পাগল than to be a sententious ass and pronounce on what one does not understand.
- “We don’t understand why they marry and why this change comes soon after marriage.”
Perfectly natural — they marry before the change — then the change comes and the marriage belongs to the past self, not to the new one.
- “The wives of Buddha and Ramakrishna felt proud when they were deserted.”
Then what’s the harm?
- “If married life is an obstacle to spirituality, then they might as well not marry.”
No doubt. But then when they marry, there is not an omniscient ass like this biographer to tell them that they were going to be ধমর্গুরু or ধমর্পাগল or in any way concerned with any other ধম than the biographer’s.
- So, according to the biographer, all of you, except Christ, showed a lack of wisdom by marrying.
Well, if a biographer of Confucius can be such an unmitigated ass, Confucius may be allowed to be unwise once or twice, I suppose.
- I touch upon a delicate subject, but it is a puzzle.
Why delicate? and why a puzzle? Do you think that Buddha or Confucius or myself were born with a prevision that they or I would take to the spiritual life? So long as one is in the ordinary consciousness, one lives the ordinary life — when the awakening and the new consciousness come, one leaves it — nothing puzzling in that.”[4]
- (Dyuman, 1936:) “My dear Mother,
C wrote me a letter. She wants to come here and is thinking of using a trick. She will agree to marriage on one condition: that her family allows her to come to Pondicherry before the wedding; then she will not return to Gujarat. She puts this trick idea before You and asks for Your advice.
(Mother:) I do not approve of tricks like that – they can only bring trouble.”[5]
- “All now is changed, yet all is still the same.
- Lo, we have looked upon the face of God,
- Our life has opened with divinity.
- We have borne identity with the Supreme
- And known his meaning in our mortal lives.
- Our love has grown greater by that mighty touch
- And learned its heavenly significance,
- Yet nothing is lost of mortal love’s delight.
- Heaven’s touch fulfils but cancels not our earth:
- Our bodies need each other in the same last;
- Still in our breasts repeat heavenly secret rhythm
- Our human heart-beats passionately close.
- Still am I she who came to thee mid the murmur
- Of sunlit leaves upon this forest verge;
- I am the Madran, I am Savitri.
- All that I was before, I am to thee still,
- Close comrade of thy thoughts and hopes and toils,
- All happy contraries I would join for thee.
- All sweet relations marry in our life;
- I am thy kingdom even as thou art mine,
- The sovereign and the slave of thy desire,
- Thy prone possessor, sister of thy soul
- And mother of thy wants; thou art my world,
- The earth I need, the heaven my thoughts desire,
- The world I inhabit and the god I adore.
- Thy body is my body’s counterpart
- Whose every limb my answering limb desires,
- Whose heart is key to all my heart-beats, — this
- I am and thou to me, O Satyavan.
- Our wedded walk through life begins anew,
- No gladness lost, no depth of mortal joy.
- Let us go through this new world that is the same,
- For it is given back, but it is known,
- A playing-ground and dwelling-house of God
- Who hides himself in bird and beast and man
- Sweetly to find himself again by love,
- By oneness. His presence leads the rhythms of life
- That seek for mutual joy in spite of pain.
- We have each other found, O Satyavan,
- In the great light of the discovered soul.
- Let us go back, for eve is in the skies.
- Now grief is dead and serene bliss remains
- The heart of all our days for evermore.
- Lo, all these beings in this wonderful world!
- Let us give joy to all, for joy is ours.
- For not for ourselves alone our spirits came
- Out of the veil of the Unmanifest,
- Out of the deep immense Unknowable
- Upon the ignorant breast of dubious earth,
- Into the ways of labouring, seeking men,
- Two fires that burn towards that parent Sun,
- Two rays that travel to the original Light.
- To lead man’s soul towards truth and God we are born,
- To draw the chequered scheme of mortal life
- Into some semblance of the Immortal’s plan,
- To shape it closer to an image of God,
- A little nearer to the Idea divine.”
- She closed her arms about his breast and head
- As if to keep him on her bosom worn
- For ever through the journeying of the years.
- So for a while they stood entwined, their kiss
- And passion-tranced embrace a meeting-point
- In their commingling spirits one for ever,
- Two-souled, two-bodied for the joys of Time.”[6]
- ↑ Shyam Sunder Jhunjhunwala, Down Memory Lane, p.237
- ↑ Words of the Mother – I, p.236, March 1933
- ↑ Bengali writings translated into English, p.354
- ↑ Letters on Himself and the Ashram, p.228, 27 April 1936
- ↑ New Correspondences of the Mother, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 2020, p.175
- ↑ Savitri, p.719, “The Return to Earth”
See also
- He goes on: “Aurobindo Ghose, not a Dharmaguru, though he may be called Dharma-mad [ধমর্পাগল]” — how do you feel about that, Sir? — “has done it too.”