EWS #17: Human relationships, marriage, love, sex, celibacy and Yoga (1)
Jan 19, 2019
Topics:
Narad (00:00:54):
Welcom(e to our continuing series, Evenings with Sraddhalu. Today, we will cover human relationships, marriage, love, sex, celibacy, and yoga. And I want to say something very important in that Sraddhalu has the courage to speak on subjects that others feel perhaps too sensitive or off topic. The problem that we see today with young children being indoctrinated, at the age of six in schools being taught sex, is a very serious one and the youth are inundated with films, music, everything, advertising. So please begin.
Sraddhalu (00:02:13):
I've seen two generations of families connected with the ashram and with the general spiritual orientation. And through those two full generations, I've seen so many problems, misunderstandings, misconceptions around this whole question of relationships, marriage, the place of sex in marriage, in life which is spiritually oriented. And a lot of it goes back to certain mixed ideas that come from religion and from the ascetic traditions, which look upon both marriage sex as something which is not only forbidden, but something inferior, wrong, anti spiritual, and the form that it takes normally, as I see so many young people, because they've grown up in a spiritual climate in the house, they have a spiritual ideal or at least a spiritually inclined life. And so they will come up with things like, I want to dedicate my life to the Mother. I don't want that kind of life that is bad, that is inferior to be married, is somehow infra dig or even anti spiritual. And you can see very clearly that they're not ready for a life which is totally consecrated to exclusive spiritual development. Very few people are really, most people are in a phase of development where a spiritual inclination is there and there is a preparation for a more concentrated spirituality, which may come later, but there is a growth which has begun, which is good. But at that stage to declare that you do not wish to get married, you do not wish to enter a family life often leads them at late teenage or early twenties into all kinds of conflicts and difficulties. Some of them even come to the ashram thinking that they're ready to dedicate their lives to a spiritual focus. And then they either end up leaving in order to get married or within the ashram developed marital relations, which then they feel guilty about. And if they leave, then they feel that they have somehow fallen out from their ideal and they end up with some kind of self-criticism and confusion.
And there are others who having been married somehow feel guilty that they have a married life or they have sexual relations with their partner, and somehow it conflicts with their spiritual aspiration because they have this idea that it should not be so always the end result is internal confusion, conflict, and some kind of division where a part of them has this ideal, which is semi ascetic, and another part which is needs human relationship, human intimacy, and even sexual relations. And the two don't link. And I saw this, I've seen this happening so often, among so many that I think it's so important for us to be able to discuss this freely and bring clarity into this whole space. Unfortunately, most of the material that you'll find of Sri Aurobindo's letters on the theme, have to do with the period in which all the sadhakas in the ashram were in a state of conscious, intense, dedicated sadhana, where even casual visitors were not permitted to the ashram. If someone came as a devotee, well, they were first verified whether they were ready enough to be in a space with that kind of intensity, and they would not bring in a mixture because that was a time when they were building that foundation on which the supramental consciousness could settle in a community vessel for which people were selected, who were ready for that kind of exclusive dedication.
Narad (00:06:19):
What years were these?
Sraddhalu (00:06:20):
This is up to 1938, let's say, until the second World War begins. And after that comes this whole rush of refugees. They're primarily refugees from the Second World War fearing invasions on the northeast borders of India. And the Mother graciously accepts them. They're married with children, they have marital relations after coming here. And at no point does Mother tell them, stop your marital relations. Now you have to become sadhaks. Now you have to dedicate yourself to exclusive concentration. They live their life. They're part of the ashram community. Of course, it created a massive dilution of what was intended, but that was one of the things they accepted. And we have discussed this theme earlier, but those letters which Sri Aurobindo wrote were to those sadhaks who were already in that exclusive focus and were facing occasional difficulties with sexual impulses in dream, sleep or some subconscious impulse. They were already in an environment which was completely insulated from these vibrations. When they joined the ashram, if they had already been married, they were asked to live as brother and sister, if at all, and they were of course in separate housing. So that phase and those letters are not the guidance given to the others who came later and even to the children who grew up in the ashram or to the very large number of devotees or spiritual seekers or even practitioners of the integral yoga where they may be in the world in the current context. And so this is one of the things which we need to be clear about.
Narad (00:08:01):
Also to Mother, I have an interesting story to relate of a friend who came to the Mother and said, 'Mother, I want to get married. And Mother said, oh, you've met a nice ashram girl'. He said, 'no, she's not from the ashram, she's from outside'. Well, she said, 'it's all right', but 'Mother, we can't stay in the ashram because we want to have sex'. 'Well, it's all right', but 'Mother, we want to have children also'. Mother said, 'it's all right'. And she gave them a house. This is a sadhak who is here now.
Sraddhalu (00:08:38):
Yes, exactly. And there's another example of a person who was in the ashram, grew up here as a child, and then when he completed his education, he said to the Mother that I want to stay here as an ashramite, as a sadhak. And Mother said, 'no, I want you to get married to so-and-so woman and you will go and live abroad'. And the fellow said, 'but I want to do sadhana'. She said, 'yes, but you will do that wherever you are', and I will be with you where you are. And so why this woman? And apparently Mother told him, 'because I want her to be connected with this consciousness'. So when you think about these examples, it seems so strange. There were people in the ashram for example, growing up as teenagers and then further who were having sexual relations. So many of them got pregnant, they had abortions. It's not something which is spoken about, but hush hush whispers. You hear these stories as children, we knew a few of our teachers had abortions in Mother's time and what relations they had. We would hear these stories and some of them with multiple examples of, I know many yes. And the point was Mother allowed it. She did not tell them, stop this nonsense, get out of here if you have sex. Her effort was to direct their consciousness and see if she was able to bring about the basis of a relationship where they could rise out of these difficulties and build something of a different grade. To what degree?
An example, which was shared to us by one of our teachers, and she was one of those who had relation with a man.And the Mother said to her very simply, whenever you're together, make sure you don't lock the door. And that was all. And that itself became a reference for her and she did what she could in her own space. Now remember Mother was trying to create here a new kind of humanity. She was trying to deal with the problems that humanity has as far as the sex impulse is concerned and related drives associated with it to see if a greater refinement could be brought. And to that extent, she permitted these mixtures and ashram as a community in consciousness terms was a slope, a core which was concentrated as before. And then from there, various degrees where you could find your level as you slid up or down according to your current context or situation in your passage. So all of these are problems which Mother implied would have to be dealt with later if the ashram had grown as a small narrow community. But now because of the mixture of the people who came in, those problems were taken up earlier. Now, all of this is just to set a background that the situation is in fact more complex than people normally understand. And so I want to get to first principles. Why at all is marriage considered so important and what's the place of sex at all in human life? If you look at the basis for this, Sri Aurobindo explains this, the sex impulse itself is created by nature in order for procreation, very simply. For the purpose of procreation, it should be something so powerful that it should be compelled on a species irrespective of what happens, as for example, the hunger for food. These are two impulses which are so deeply rooted because they relate to survival of a species. You should eat, you cannot say there's no food I don't feel like, and so I won't eat. And then the whole system collapses. The drive for hunger should compel you whether you like it or not. Equally the drive for procreation, but there's a timing. And in animals it is seasonal. Hunger is daily, procreation is seasonal. That impulse being so deeply founded from its early beginnings as the human being evolves out of the animal, we inherit all of these animal tendencies except as we come into our own as thinking beings, the mind takes over all of the animal tendencies, including tendencies of fear, anger, hatred, which are all survival instincts, takes them up and begins to regulate them, tries to put them in a framework of the mind's values, tries to refine them and raise to the mind's ideals to whatever extent it can. And that's part of the civilization in emergence from barbarism, part of the whole refining and culturing of human nature itself, which is an effort to rise out of the animal.
Sraddhalu (00:13:20):
Marriage in that framework takes a very important place because it takes this overpowering instinct and tries to contain it and divert it into stable forms. So if you see societies at various stages of development or refinement, you will see that the moment they notice, ah the drives are getting very strong in our youngsters, they get them married off. So now you've contained the impulse, otherwise it destabilises society. What if somebody young person with a high drive now starts interfering with existing balance of the marriage in the community and anything is like that is possible. So you direct them, put them in their little box and the word interestingly used in India particularly, 'we are settled'. So someone once they're married, they have children, they say now he's settled in life, and the parents will say, my children are now settled and now we are whatever, free to do what we want.
Settled means you have got into the groove where you're married and you have children and now you're so busy surviving with the family unit that you can't go astray. Very simply put. Whereas individuals who are not settled, they're unsettled, they had this dangerous unit unstable somehow, and they could rock the boat, until you get them settled somehow. And this is the pattern we see across history, across cultures. In perspective of the church, for example, in the West, you will see the three points that it grips people on, births and you go through the christening process to be put under the influence of the church in an occult way, death you have to be passing through the church in order to ensure you go to heaven. And in between marriage. Birth, marriage, death are the three points where they grip a person. And if you can grip these three, your whole life is in the grip of the church.
Very simply, you see the place of marriage in this context because it seizes upon one of the most powerful instincts. This is also the reason why we see today in the world this exaggerated sex energy, which comes as you said, through cinema, through advertising, even in novels, everywhere where there is some form of advertising to sell to people. What's the mechanism by which you can hook a person's interest and you can attempt by touching ideals? Well, for a civilization which is idealistic, that would be the drive. But for a civilization which is now in semi barbarism, what's the primary drive? Well, it is not even survival, it is procreative instinct, the sex instinct. And so you will see increasingly there is this scramble for every competing advertiser to more sexualize their ad. But obviously society has put certain limits of how much can come into public domain, and the trick for them is how to bypass those limits and catch people with a sexual hook while remaining within the defined acceptability of society. Except that, the long-term goal is actually to push the envelope of definition of normal. If you go back to the Indian cinema barely 20 years ago, then a person coming close together as if about to kiss and the scene would cut, they held hands and that was considered extremely outgoing because on cinema, the couple held hands openly. Today it's gone into the most crass Hollywood style sexual forms openly exposed. The difference between the two though in terms of the effect of consciousness on the viewers, in the first there was a refined form and almost bordering on the idealistic. Love in the cinema of 20 years ago or 30 years ago had this very romantic, idealistic turn and there was a subtlety and a raising to something which is pointing to an ideal at least. Whereas the moment you've reduced it to very crass, hard kissing and sexual moves, the quality of vibe coming through is coarse, vital, crude.
Sraddhalu (00:17:51):
And now suddenly the same relationship, which was earlier uplifting, the same form of say marriage or romance has been downgraded and actually has crude content. And this is one of the problems we face today. It's the vehicle through which the cinema or the advertising tries to seize upon people. If you look at the advertisements as they're produced, when they shoot photographs of models for let's say you're selling a perfume or you're selling a car somewhere, you have to put a skimpily clad woman and the photographer for the model will tell the woman, 'bring out the animal in you'. Oh my god. And this is the phrase used actually, 'bring out the animal in you, more, more'. And the person takes on this form, more and more crude and suggestive and garish, throwing out a vital energy, which then is what you're capturing, which comes in the image when you see the photo. The vital energy is as if hooking you and pulling you to pay attention and awakening that vibration in you and in awakening it, they have seized your attention and now compelled you to do something. It's a very interesting study. Remember all of advertising is guided by market driven studies and they do these studies which show that if you excite a person sexually, the person's behaviour will become more risky. So if you're about to sell me something which is more expensive than my reason will allow, okay, it looks nice, but it's too expensive. I would rather go for something, I'll barely use it for six months. I wouldn't be spending a month's salary on this. But if you excite the person sexually, he will look at this and somehow the mind's objectivity is clouded. The state of risky behaviour now kicks in, which is what nature used for the procreation by the way. Now you've kicked it in and now I look and on impulse I buy and later I will regret. And so to trigger impulse buying, you have to titillate or stimulate sexually in order to get that response. And this is all part of the marketing strategy. It's taught in marketing schools and it's all part of the finely honed science of selling. Now what's happening to the common man, he doesn't realise he's being played. You walk along the road, you have advertising holdings, you're watching tv, and you have in the middle of a very beautiful movie or intellectual discussion and an ad comes and hammers away certain things, shakes you up, changes your internal state you're not even conscious of. It punches ideas into you and energy is in impulses. Now, one of the things you will see in every movie from Hollywood that somehow the guy gets the girl at the end of the movie and then he's happy.
But the suggestion is, the suggestion is that until you get the girl, you will not be happy. Until you are stable in some kind of emotional relationship, you cannot be complete. Now, I remember this experience, we would go to the playground cinema in the ashram, remember they were edited. The mother had set a framework where certain scenes which were not appropriate or had crude vibrations would be removed. Now the editing is very different. They don't really care about it because people are getting it anyway from advertising on the streets. But I remember I would go there and some of these movies which had strong romantic content, I would come out with this kind of strange yearning in the emotions, something missing, something wanting to reach out. And I'm saying, where is this coming from? Because it's not there in my life at all in the way the community life was there, very protective and where did this come from? And eventually I recognised that it was associated with certain types of movies and I was able to distinguish that particular vibe which came in. But the result is it's programming society and placing these values into society. Now, in the old movies, again, you would see the romantic exchange through subtle glances, today's movies, it is much more garish, up in the front, making strong, suggestive, attractive, crude sexual gestures or language to provoke the attraction, et cetera. And all of this stuff programmes itself into society where this now becomes the acceptable norm. What's happening to a person who now grows up in this atmosphere when these become the values and particularly the coarsening when they now conceive of marriage? These are the values, this is the framework that is given to them by society through the cinema, except that if they're more refined internally, there is a more subtle or psychic turn of character, it feels screwed, but somehow 'I feel as if I don't fit into the society and I don't like this, I don't want to be in it', that's the feeling that he gets and it separates that whole part of life and compels you either to an ascetic turn or an acceptance of the crude values as the only way in which you can manage in life and only because the standards have become more coarse and crude. So the correction we need to recognise is this. First, that the human relationships, the sense of companionship, even the need for intimacy or sexual relations is an acceptable and valid part of human life. All of these need not be crude as they're projected in a large part of the content. All of these can be refined and raised, not only refined to ideals of the mind, but even raised in a spiritual direction. And if you accept this basis, this principle, then you do not feel the need to be in a contradiction with your deeper or higher sensitivity or spiritual aspiration and values. I remember Panditji wrote about this when he approached the Mother with a question from somebody who asked Mother, 'should I get married?'. And Panditji was sure that Mother would say no, but he was surprised when Mother said, her reply was simply, 'it depends. For what and what will be the relationship you have'. Now this was somebody who obviously had a certain refinement and that's why the point was not marriage. Marriage is only an external form. What is the nature of the relationship whether that relationship is conducive to a conscious evolution or whether the relationship contradicts the possibilities of your growth and refinement of consciousness. That's the only criteria
Narad (00:25:17):
In Auroville, Mother said there should be no marriages. And she said, how should a contract hold one down? If you cease to love someone, you can leave them. She was very clear on all of these.
Sraddhalu (00:25:32):
And in being so frank, people misused, they misused what she said by turning it into free sex. And there's a whole discussion the Mother has of somebody in Auroville who promoted Auroville as a city of love and the Mother says what they're trying to do is sexualize the whole thing and presented as a space for free sex. She said the correction would be to say, put the word Divine before love, then straight away everybody will back off. On the other hand, she said, if the person in relation to the person was promoting this, if the person really thinks that this kind of sexual thing is going to lead to spiritual because she was involved in a whole kind of weird stuff, if she thinks it's going to lead to some spiritual awakening, then she's heading for disaster. That's the word that the Mother uses. So we'll come to that portion later, but for now, let's just look at the legitimacy of this in life and in the life of an aspirant. It is acceptable to have, not only to feel the need for human companionship or even the need for sex, marriage if necessary as an institution. But in the sixties the Mother spoke of this in the context of Auroville and then for the world she said, marriage as an institution is dead. It's over. And when asked for clarification, she said, it just means that the institution which bound people together is no more valid. You may still get married, you may still have the same degree of commitment and all the rest that goes with the marriage, but as an institution that you're now stuck in and in which you have to suffer through once you've got married. That of course is pointless, because why should you suffer? And we see this happening all over the world. Marriages are breaking rapidly.
I know recently a friend who was living abroad, he had a very clear spiritual sensitivity, I won't even say spiritual life, but sensitivity. He goes home and his parents say, you have to get married to this girl. He sent the photograph and it was obvious the girl had no spiritual sensitivity. It was completely wrong match, and everybody among his friends told him, this is not going to work out. And the fellow said, 'What to do? I have to accept, my parents insist', and so to please them, he accepts within I think one month after marriage, they separated. The girl just left and he told his father, look, now you forced me into this. This is how it is. Next time I'm going to choose you don't get involved, but how much loss, how much needless suffering for everybody's life. And I've seen other cases also people connected with the ashram. The parents are devotees, their child is about to get married and they choose somebody based on some criteria of community, culture, caste something, not looking at the basic criteria of compatibility, of spiritual values or inclination. And of course the marriage becomes unstable, breaks or heads to basically what if a person is good in the marriage, if they're suffering incompatibility, they'll basically spread their life. This is my spiritual life and this is what my compromise is. But still it ends up being in a kind of a division and split. The question then we need to take forward, where does this fit? Is romance acceptable? Is sex acceptable? What about the need for companionship and so on. And there I have a very clear reference. Does it help you to grow in your consciousness? I'm not using the word spiritually, I'm saying in your consciousness, will you become a better person?
Sraddhalu (00:29:33):
Will you become more sensitive, more caring? Will you work better to fulfil your higher values and ideals? If so, go ahead and you're not talking spirituality yet. If it'll help you grow in your spiritual consciousness, all the better. But just at a very basic human level, will it help you to grow? Yes. If not marrying is going to get you into the opposite way. You'll become more harsh, less sensitive because you have to hold back and repress or suppress your emotions. If it's going to create instabilities because you're holding back a sexual need and a need for companionship, which now you have to enforce by isolation and it's going to destabilise you, then I will suggest that you don't do that. Please go ahead and get married. Find someone compatible, of course. That's extremely important. But will it help you to grow? This should be your only first reference and it may not come in the way of spirituality. This is the important part. You can grow spiritually together as companions. Why not? If you could grow together as friends, well, why not in a married life? And the question then boils down to finally, what about sex? Is it not unspiritual? And this is the idea primarily dominantly coming from Christianity, where the church associated Adam and Eve having sex with the original sin, which has now driven all humanity into some kind of hell, as the eventual destination to be redeemed only by the church by the way. And if the church sanctions the sex, then somehow it is acceptable. Or the church, depending on the types of church, they will say, only sex if you're going to have a child, but not otherwise, but you must have children because the church needs more followers. They're all very messy,
So much guilt has been associated with it. On the other hand, in a reaction to this, there is in the new age a lot of junk which comes in the form of spiritual sexuality or sexual yoga or what they call tantric yoga. Unfortunately this has added more confusion rather than bringing clarity. First of all, what you see in the west as projected as tantra or tantric yoga is not tantra. What they have taken is the text of the Kama Sutra. Now, Kama Sutra is a text which has to do with sexuality and it focuses on the psychological, biological, physical and other aspects of sexual fulfilment and variety, et cetera, which as one of the manuals of practise was a reference point for the young couples to explore possibilities in India. Acceptable. But that is taken mixed with certain traditions which are associated with the tantra. And what they end up teaching is how to make sex more pleasurable and make it last longer. And that is somehow tantra yoga, as if it's going to lead to spiritual awakening. And that is a complete, as Mother used the word, disaster because what you have done is going to only lead to further excitation and not to spirit. The very first basis of spiritual development is to be able to create a base which is stable and calm in consciousness, in which you can open to something deeper and higher. Whereas what you're trying to do here is provoke excitement and further exaggerate excitement and pleasure. And pleasure is not ananda, the pleasure is not delight, pleasure is only physical sensation which is always part of the duality. You're not freeing yourself from the duality, but it's somehow very attractive to some part of the western tradition because there is this idea of sex and then you have the spirituality and somehow it should be possible to mix the two.
I remember in one of the discussions I had in Europe with a group of devotees associated with one of the centres, one of them asked, what about psychic sex? And if you have spirituality, you must somehow bring in sex because you have to get it in. And so I said, well, it's a contradiction in terms, and they were not happy with that. But I explained Mother's observation that the nature of the sexual excitation is in vibration equivalent to anger. Very interesting. Both take place in the belly, both involve strong agitation disturbance which shakes up your whole personality. Your mind becomes clouded, your body becomes unstable, your nerves get intensely stressed except in one, it takes the form of force thrown out, in action or speech, that's the anger. In another, there's a pleasurable sensation of an energy thrown out, other than the variation of physical pleasure, sensory pleasure. There's practically no difference between the two. But the factor though, and that's she's speaking of the vibrational quality of consciousness. So I said simply, can you have psychic anger? If anger is contradictory to your psychic, well then the sexual excitation is going to be contrary also. But I'm pointing to these because of the attempt to mix the two, which creates more confusion. But yes, sex and sexual relations can be a part of somebody's spiritual life as a concession to the need that is felt at a certain level of your consciousness, at a certain stage of your development. But my insistence is it's not something to feel guilty about.
Sraddhalu (00:35:41):
Do you feel guilty about getting angry? Do you feel guilty about feeling jealous? You'd rather accept it as okay, things which are there in my nature and you work along it. You get over it eventually. And sex again as an instinct, as an impulse, if it is strong enough, I would say yes, take it to a level of refinement. Raise the quality of the relationship even in your physical interchange as in your psychological interchange and in your spiritual aspirations. If you bring it in that sense, it's completely acceptable as a part of your life and there need be no contradiction at all with your spiritual aspiration. A point will come in your evolution when the sex impulse will cease to have the same compelling character, the character of deeper intimacy, companionship and inner closeness in your relationship will fill to a degree that the physical component of it will become negligible or irrelevant and at some point it'll have no distraction at all. I would not even place that as an ideal to be worked for unless you feel the need for it. There are many who are not in a spiritual life where they want to enter into higher supramental experience or to work on a physical transformation of their physical consciousness. All they want is a general devotion, love for the Divine and a general sense of proximity to the Divine presence or at the very least just the Divine blessing so that they'll be comfortable, happy, healthy, and their children will get good jobs. If that's your basic frame and it is still a spiritual orientation of life, it does not matter. If your goal is to take it higher, and I think most people would agree that they're not at least now in their stage of life looking for self-realisation or psychic realisation or physical transformation. And if that's not your immediate goal, then it is not an issue at all.
You can have your normal sexual relations build into it refinement, as you would for everything else as you do with your food, as you do with your emotional being. And not only bring refinement, but use it as an occasion for something which is uplifting to everybody and it's fine as a part of your life. For you, there may be the idea that someday, you will dedicate your life to self-realisation or psychic realisation. And when it comes to that automatically, because that's the priority of your consciousness, anything which contradicts it will automatically fade away. Will sex contradict it? And my response would be, what's your experience? If it does not, don't worry. When it begins to contradict, it'll automatically become not interesting for you and it'll fade out of your life. And so there is no need at any stage to get into conflict and struggle with the impulse as something wrong or sinful or anti spiritual. Rather dedicate your energies to building the deeper spiritual values, to building a growth of the closeness of the divine presence in your heart, in your mind, in your actions, in your service. And these things are not important. If necessary, get married, have healthy sexual relations in your marriage. Use it to build intimacy together, in joy, in aspiration for the Divine. With certain couples when they had problems in this context, the person said to me, I feel guilty that I enjoy sex. And I said, why? And well, because it contradicts my idea of spirituality. I can't think of the Mother when I'm enjoying sex with my partner. So I said, well, in that case, why don't you give it this form that when you enjoy the pleasure, remember the Mother and say, 'thank you Mother for this pleasure. Thank you, for this gift of the enjoyment'. And he said, yes, it worked for him, it helped him. Nothing in your life need to have that contradiction that you're doing something that you cannot remember the Mother. And this contradiction came in him only because of the idea that sex was anti spiritual or a sin or whatever the source of the invention. But the moment he could accept this, I said, what do you do when you eat good food? You're enjoying the food. You say, I'm feeling guilty. I can't remember the Mother because I'm enjoying the good food. And you say, 'thank you, Mother. It is so wonderful', and why not bring that into all your other forms of sensory enjoyment? And it was fine. It worked for him.
Sraddhalu (00:40:49):
So having discussed this, we still need to understand why celibacy was so important in the context of the ashram and in those letters of Sri Aurobindo or when we speak of self-realisation or the psychic realisation, is self really, is sex really an issue or is companionship an issue? So companionship surely is not. You can be in companionship with your partner. You can be married, you can still be together in your aspiration or separate in your aspiration. One may have a primarily religious turn, not needing a deeper spiritual development, but there's no conflict there. Or both may share the deeper spiritual aspiration, which is even better than you can be mutually nourishing or supportive of each other. But where does sex come into this? And here is the point why Sri Aurobindo's insistence on celibacy in the ashram in that period and why it becomes relevant in the yoga. In the way the human biology is organised, there is in the very procreative process the throwing out not only of the essential substance which contains the life force for the purpose of creating another life, but there is also a huge throwing out of energies in the excitation, which is vital energies, mental energies and large portions of the subconscious content of your vital and physical. Now nature uses this, nature uses this as a mechanism for bonding and we need to recognise the value of this mechanism. And it comes back to a lot of confusion in the younger people today, who get into casual sex and casual relationships. What nature has done is that she uses the sexual act to create a strong formation of energy and identification between the couple, that it'll keep them together for the purpose of now looking after the child.
If you see in the gradations of evolution of animals, the higher up you go among animals, the more they bond and stay in bond for life. The lower down you go among animals, the more they have casual sexual relations and they move off. So dogs inseminate, move off to others. Chicken, similarly, the same male can inseminate several females, but once you come up to the level of animals which are evolved, elephants for example, you will find they pair with their mate and they stay together as a family. They look after their young, they have such deep emotions. When the child elephant is in danger, all the herd will form a protection around the child. When one child elephant died, it fell into a pit and it died, the mother stood there without eating for weeks. She felt such grief, that level of sensitivity you will find human beings find difficult to match. But equally, you will see in the most refined animals like swans, they mate for life. Once mated, they would never accept another mate. And you wonder why the swan, interestingly in the yogic tradition, is a symbol for the soul and it tells you something very important there. So there is something in the bonding, in the act of mating, which nature uses to bind you in a way that if you're sufficiently evolved, it's not a casual event. It is going to connect you for life in a way that you are almost a unit in consciousness. Similarly among penguins, surprisingly they're very evolved birds, very conscious. Once a penguin is mated, they're bonded for life. And there's interesting documentaries which show this, the father penguin now goes to catch fish, which it'll bring back to its mother, to the mother penguin who is now sitting on or is about to hatch. And then they'll take turns. Sometimes once the chick is born, when it comes back from the fish, fishing expedition, there are a thousand penguins. If you have seen those pictures, they all look exactly the same, black and white, all with the same sound. And meanwhile, the mother penguin may wandered around in the group, how do you recognise? Smell? How do you smell among a thousand people? How do you identify the smell? And this penguin is going to waddle along and wander through this crowd of a thousand and find its mate and recognise and be with them. Amazing! Amazing that kind of commitment and dedication and it's all instinctive you say, but look at what nature is showing you as an example. As you go up the ladder of evolution, there is a kind of a permanence to the mating. There is a certain sanctity, we may say to that.
Sraddhalu (00:46:13):
So now when you come to the marriage institution itself, the institution attempts to bring this sanctity to the wedding and that's why they bound people. Now you're married, now it's sacred, you can't break it. There was of course under the church it took a very crude form, but if you see the form of the wedding ceremony, you'll see broadly three patterns in the Christian tradition, the church would have the vows, wedding vows where the priest now officiating will say, do you so and so agree to take so-and-so as your husband, wife in sickness and health, in good times, bad times until death do you apart? And you say, yes, I do. And the other says, yes I do. So it's a contract. Now that you have agreed under the authority given to me by the church or by God I pronounce your man and wife until death do you apart by the way.
So it's a contract, you have agreed to it, now you're bound. In the Islamic tradition, it goes back to a period when the slaves would be sold. And so that pattern remains. The male will declare to the female the price that he's willing to pay to own her. And he asks, do you agree? And she agrees. And then because of an agreement of a price in exchange, you are bound now and you are his possession technically because he has purchased you. Now in the more refined societies, for example, among the Shias in Iran, they will only have one partner. They will not accept multiple wives. And because that's still a remnant of the pre-Islamic tradition of the values which came into the marriage and it was a very high culture at one point and those values still remain, but still there's an element of a contract. In India, the meaning is completely different and it tries to capture this ideal and give to it the most concrete form so far developed in any culture by saying that, up there in the spiritual realms there are always the masculine and feminine aspects of the divine. Vishnu is with Lakshmi and the two represent together the completeness of the Divine consciousness and its supporting and its manifesting aspect. And here on earth, the male aligns to this aspect. The female aligns to that aspect. And you are replicating in your wedding, the union of the gods. And so from the Vedas, the verses associated with the union of the gods are recited and the husband is told, now you are Vishnu and the wife is told, now you're Lakshmi. Or if the tradition is Shivite, they'll say, now you are Shiva and now you're Parvati, and the idea is to invoke that spiritual principle into both. And then the unity of the two is formed in that ceremony. So in this, the attempt to bring together a unit and to lift it to its highest sacred possibilities is made. At least symbolically, how much people take it is a different story.
Increasingly among young people. Today you'll see people saying, I don't want all those ceremonies. You have to sit for hours and hours while the priest is mumbling certain verses, which you don't understand because you never learn Sanskrit, because the British stopped you from learning Sanskrit. Then by the way, that's a different story, but I don't want all that. We'll just do a quiet ceremony. We'll just do a quiet registered marriage and that's fine. Also, the question is, if that ceremony was done, would it help you to feel the sanctity of the bond? If it does, surely go ahead. If you can evoke that sanctity by other means, certainly go ahead. But point is to build consciously that sense of sanctity in the marriage, and at least from the spiritual perspective, this would give to it a deeper value than merely an association for companionship or for comforts. So again, in this you will recall the Mother's message that she gave to the first couple that got married and in the ashram. And the Mother gave a message which had five levels on which to consciously cultivate your alignment of physical interests, emotional interests and mental ideals and in your spiritual aspiration. And in that you will see the sequence beginning from below goes up. And then the suggestion is the higher up you're able to bring a ironment, the better it is for you. As it turned out that very first couple, which was formally allowed to marry in Sri Aurobindo's room, they divorced after a few years.
And so the question really is how do you select your partner? What is going to be the basis? And in that message that the Mother gave, there are these five levels of possible alignment and we need to consider from that perspective. Traditionally in India it was done by parents, grandparents meeting possible partners, assessing them from a position of a greater wisdom supposedly, from their maturity. Today, in a large part it is the young people who choose based on what? And the younger they are, the more the basis is shallow and superficial, often from a physical attraction or a vital attraction. And eventually in a few years when they outgrow that level of their development, suddenly that attraction or that base is no more valid and the partnership fails. Can you have a deeper, more mature perception? And that's why, they use always the elders who had that maturity to assist in the selection as it takes place. Practically today in India, in most families the elders do a first level filtration and then they make the younger, they give them the option, here are the ones we found good, and then the younger one chooses according to what he feels comfortable. But again, coming from a spiritual perspective, you have to see ultimately there has to be an alignment on five levels. If among these five levels, if you are intending for a spiritual life, then the higher levels alignment is most important. If you're not intending for a spiritual life entirely, but a spiritual inclination, then the psychological alignment will be more important. And the spiritual alignment may be secondary, not so critical, but we have to begin to review the basis on which the partnerships are made. In the US you will find typically currently 50% of the marriages, first marriages end in divorce within a few years. Typically the stable marriages are the ones you have the third or fourth time because that's the time by which you become more mature. Your reference basis for alignment is more deep. And so that's the form it takes. In India, again, we are having a lot of divorces rising, catching up with the US, all pointing to this need for a deeper evaluation. At the same time, we find as society is now losing interest in the institution of marriage, the law has to catch up with the change. In France, the numbers of couples living together far exceed the number of people who choose to get married. And so eventually the law realised that the law has become pointless. So they're to review the law and they said, if you're living together more than five years, technically you're considered married and the marriage laws will apply to you. But it shows how rapidly society has changed and the institution of marriage itself has broken. But the principle of that institution, the truth behind it, that there's a unit which is being built and that unit can even have a sanctity and can even have a spiritual value or basis, is the reference that we can keep as the support for that institution and it may not therefore contradict your spiritual aspiration. So this will be the base for our first level of discussion. Would you make some observations before we close?
Narad (00:55:21):
A personal one? Yes. I have it in Mother's letter. 'No doubt and no hesitation, you must marry'. So I got married, but I wrote to Mother, what kind of ceremony?" Mother said, ‘fire ceremony’, and it was performed by a pandit, in New York City.
Sraddhalu (00:55:48):
Interesting.
Narad (00:55:50):
So we will continue in part two in just a few minutes. Thank you.