EWS #18: Human relationships, marriage, love, sex, celibacy and Yoga (2)

Jan 19, 2019

Topics:

Narad (00:00:48):

Welcome to our continuing series, Evenings with Sraddhalu. This is part two of our discussion on human relationships, marriage, sex, et cetera. You had a question?

Audience (00:01:09):

Previously, you told that about the amazing faithfulness of swans or penguins and et cetera. So why do human beings cannot be so peaceful and stable and you know like animals, they're considered to be our lower kind of, you know...

Sraddhalu (00:01:29):

In fact, I'm glad you raised this. In fact, first as a backdrop for those who are viewing this without context to the previous discussion, we discussed last time that the higher up you go in evolution, the more you see in nature, the pair bonding after the sexual act and remaining bonded for life. Most obviously seen in swans, also in penguins, in elephants where the family unit is so strong, everywhere as, among dolphins I don't know enough about, but they do have complex social relationships. But higher up you go, the more evolved, the more the act of sex is a point of bonding, which is for life. And this is so obvious in nature, it suggests that for the human being also this should be a point of bonding, which should represent something much more than just a casual companionship or convenience of sexual relations, friends with benefits type relations and something more than that. It suggests that and an attempt is made in the marriage as an institution to somehow compel this to become true with society, forcing you to stay stuck once you're married, which doesn't work, which has led to a lot of disaster and led to depressions, led to internal, I would say breakdown of individuality in one or the other of the partners because they're not compelled even a lot of internal conflict and psychological problems. And the one who is dissatisfied often has no way out. They're trapped and that's why Mother said the institution of marriage is going to break or is broken in the context of the increasing individualization of humanity. Because we are at that end of the age of intellectualism and reason and individuality which grows with it, we also see the exaggeration of individuality to a degree that in a partnership one person cannot be allowed to be subjugated by the other. I remember once meeting somebody, he was a businessman, a very successful man and he had a family seemed to be stable from outside, but he had his own flirtations outside the public space. And he said to me very proudly, for any marriage to be successful, one of the persons has to become a doormat to the other. He could say that proudly because he was the one trampling his wife. But the very fact that one holds that position as the secret for success is one of the vehicles, one of the mechanisms by which the institution of marriage was compelled to be held and the cause also for its breakdown. With the increasing individualization, this relationship cannot last obviously.

Narad (00:04:43):

It was promulgated by the Church from Eve being born from Adam's rib. And the female was always subservient to the male.

Sraddhalu (00:04:54):

In the very definition of the woman's role, she had to become subservient because she had no independent identity of her own except from emerging from Adam's rib. That story needs a clarification though. If you go back to the origin of it, it's pre-Christian, it is part of that whole region. It comes from a Sumerian tradition in fact, and if you go back to the original Greek term for rib, the original word has the same meaning as will and Adam and Eve represent the Purusha and the Prakriti, which emerges from the will of Purusha and it had a spiritual basis, not a literal sense. The garden of Eden is the state of Ananda in which the Divine consciousness lives. And by the separation of Purusha and Prakriti or its fall from that poise, you have the lower nature and the soul which is bound in ignorance and so on. So the whole imagery, if you see in its original sense, is very yogic. In its literal translation, of course it put women as inferior and even a product of man, can be discarded and so on. One of the means by which they compelled the woman to remain not individualised, to be effectively the bulwark of the marriage institution that she's the one who holds it up by sacrificing herself was to ensure that the woman was married early on. Before her individualization took place, you marry her off. The result is as she grows, she forms around her husband and family responsibilities and never gets a chance to individuate sufficiently.

There's an interesting incident which was narrated by somebody who was Mother's attendant. She was with the Mother when the Mother went to play tennis and she noted over several weeks, perhaps months, that every now and then Mother would ask her, who is that person? And her attendant would say, it is so and so. And after a while the attendant asked the Mother, Mother, why is it that every time you ask me who is this person? It is a woman. And so the Mother explained that when I look at a person, I don't see so much their physical form, but their whole subtle body. And if the person is not sufficiently individualised, the form of the subtle body is also more fluid and blurred, not individualised. And she pointed out that most women had been brought up to be not individualised. That's the suppression of the women's development across centuries. And that's why she couldn't make out the form clearly because it was blurred in the aura. And then Mother says, but now that I'm here, all this will change. And this is in the fifties. And you can see from that point on early sixties you have the sexual revolution. And after that, all the changes which in such a short time you see fully individualised women, you also see women partly or damaged in their individualization, but you see fully individualised women now playing equal role in every sphere of life. But it has changed the nature of the marriage as an institution. On the one hand, it has brought about the instability that people complain about because now if the marriage doesn't work well, you just separate. A woman will not accept to sacrifice her life because it's not working out. She'll just walk out. Just before coming here I saw in the news, news item about this woman who was about to get married and the husband walked into the marriage ritual space drunk. She walked out and cancelled the marriage. That kind of courage to face the pressure of society that is possible today because of the individualization. And increasingly parents also have become accepted to this. They do not want to see their daughter suffer and they equally will accept to support her through this passage and they break the marriage as easily. So on the one hand, it seems to have created instability there. On the other hand, it has opened a way for a real relationship. And I mentioned this last time in France, the living relationships which are often more successful than formal marriages, and so the law has to be readjusted now to accept if you have lived in for five years, then you're effectively married and all the divorce proceedings will now apply to you automatically. And so all of these indicate that while the institution of compelling has been broken, the identification that a couple can have and which can be successful in its sanctity or in its sense of underlying unity or companionship can still have a deeper or higher value.

Sraddhalu (00:10:00):

So coming to your question, why is it that in those developed animals it is so easy and in human beings it is not, first because the animals are fulfilling nature's refinement, which has been developed by an instinct, and so it's almost automatic. Second, there is not this individualised mind which says, you are not giving me as much as I'm giving you, or I feel that in this relationship, I'm losing more and I'm not gaining enough. These are all the kinds of ego issues. And in Savitri, you'll find this line in which Sri Aurobindo describes "two egos bound on a leash" as how Death describes the romantic relationships between people. Imagine if you bind two dogs on the same leash and then let them lose. Each one is trying to pull in its own direction, what a mess it'll make. But that's what happens when two egos are tied in this way. On the other hand, if there is an alignment, then they can grow together. But and this is the important thing. The instinct that nature built into the swan or the penguin or the elephants is not gone. It is also given to the human. And if we were to align our deeper psychological temperament and spiritual aspiration between the two and catch that instinct, you can actually build a physical bond that will stay the same way as the animals. But this is the catch, nature uses the first sexual act as the means for bonding, in the animal, and it is the same in human. But if you follow the modern value system where you have casual sex with dozens of people along the way, you've already broken that key that she gives you for a physical basis for the bonding. So I want to touch upon this. This is extremely important. What happens in the sexual act and especially the first time is that there is an enormous release of all kinds of hormones, endorphins, oxytocin and all kinds of things. The brain is triggered massively. These are all today, we are able to map it out through MRI, FMRI scans and things like that. The brain is triggered massively, and when you have gone through that first act and you observe the brain structure in the brain working, it has been changed permanently. Fascinating. Before the sexual act, your brain was functioning in a particular pattern. Having gone through that act, now there's a shift which is permanent. A single act, to what, permanent, entire brain's working is shifted. What happened in that act, you thought you were busy with the physical sexual impulse, but in your brain, which is the base of your entire mind template, it's not one part of the brain which has changed. The entire brain in its functioning has shifted.

Your entire mind template has shifted. What happened? And this is most visible of course in women, much more than in men. In that act, first of all, you cannot perform that act particularly from a woman's instinctive point of view, unless you trust entirely the other, you're willing to give yourself entirely. You're willing to belong to another, to feel safe in the arms of another. You have to overcome all these instinctive barriers that nature has placed. And in the act of giving up yourself, you are accepting to belong in permanence at the level of the instinct. Now, if you are doing this because of the social compulsion, as it happens in America, you have the prom night and everybody has to lose their virginity on the prom night. If you have not, then you're somehow in FRE.... The entire movie is brought out by Hollywood only on this theme that's such and such boy or girl could not have sex at the end of prom night. And so he is miserable, he's depressed and he's now the outcast in the school and he's somehow unfulfilled in life. Best if you have already had sex many times before prom night, then you have your best date in the prom night. But you see the ideal that's being projected, in the US and this is still now 15 or 20 years old information I'm giving, children at the age of nine or 10 were distributed condoms as part of sex education, to teach them how they should have sex at the age of nine. What happens when you have sex? You're biologically not ready, psychologically not ready, and we'll touch upon these factors shortly and it'll all tie in with the concept of celibacy and the sexual act itself and what happens at that if you start experimenting when you're not ready and you've already damaged the basic instinct of bonding. Sex has become for you now, not only something painful, uncomfortable, but the very act has coarsened your consciousness and dulled your sensitivities and you're damaged on some level by that premature act.

Sraddhalu (00:15:15):

There's a very interesting conversation with the Mother about sex education and she's saying something like, why do you want to do all this kind of stuff. In our time, she says, it was never an issue. You grew up and then when it was time to get married, you had your marriage. What's the big deal? And then the person says to the Mother that, no, but they're doing this now in other places, in other countries, and the government has programmes for sex education. And then the Mother simply says, oh, okay, in that case, we will have to adjust also, because that has become the norm of society. Then you have to adapt to that invasion of those standards and values into your space and through what vehicle it is coming through, cinema primarily, and the values which come with those, so-called prom events or equivalent events. Now you'll be very disturbed to hear this and it's a few months old. I mentioned it perhaps earlier that I was a couple of months earlier in Delhi with a family of good people and at the age of 16, 15, their child is going to a party at night, which is organised by the children. So the school had a parting party for the old batch that leaves, but these children now are going to have a party. They have paid for it. They have alcohol brought in. They have 15 bouncers to bring the alcohol for them and to protect them from the police interference. They pay off the police who comes to check them. What else they do in that space when they're totally boozed out, indescribable. But what's happening to the sensitivity of your consciousness? First, when you drink alcohol, your higher faculties get numbed. So if you look at it purely from the brain perspective, the frontal part of your brain becomes numbed, dulled by the alcohol. It's the first part to become neutralised by alcohol in the blood. The basal part of your brain, which is the reptilian brain, is the one which is the most active at that point because it is the part of the brain most resilient to any destruction. Those are the parts where all your basic instincts are rooted, survival instincts. The higher part, the frontal lobe is the part where all your higher ideals, discrimination, values of good and bad, right and wrong are based. That has just been dulled. Your basal instincts are the most active right now. What happens then and in that state of inebriation, to whatever degree it can be mild or excessive, all your higher consciousness is dulled. Your lower consciousness exaggerated and the patterns of behaviour that take place become now the grooves of your personality because you repeat those patterns of behaviour. Interesting.

Now, people may say, what's the problem with just a little bit of alcohol? That's the common response from children. So again, in the same family, the girl sends her mother a picture of herself drinking alcohol with friends and she said, 'don't worry, it was just once, just once. What's your problem, mom? It's just once'. And the mom says, 'but why do you even need to do just once?'. Of course, it's peer pressure supported by the alcohol industry, which wants you to be into it as quickly as possible, advertising. But what it does here is dulling straight away the upper, exaggerating the lower and shaping your personality in the process. I'm going to compare it also with cigarette smoking, which also becomes now at that age common because it's the peer pressure and the pressure of the industry. When the US cigarette sales began to drop in the late eighties, early nineties, the industries decided in their plan that they had to open new markets and they moved to third world countries, where their strategy was to go in front of schools and colleges and distribute free packets of cigarettes to the children. Once they began to smoke in private, in secrecy, they were hooked. And then of course you had the market was opened and it was all done. The result of it is of course that the tobacco going into the bloodstream again affects the same tendency. It clouds the higher faculties. The Mother uses this reference. She says that the cigarette smoking cuts off, screens from the higher consciousness. But interestingly today we have brain studies and we have also genetic studies, and this is evidence you have to bring forward when you educate your children, that a person who starts smoking, the imprint of the tobacco smoking is felt in the genetic structure. It damages the telomeres in a way that is detectable and you can see from their genetic sample that this fellow has smoked. But what's the interesting thing is if you have smoked before 21 before the age of 21, this imprint is there in your genes. If you smoke after the age of 21, then it is not seen in the genes, at least not so obviously. Why? Because your biology is still at a stage of development till the age of approximately 21, where it is taking in all the environment and influences to form its very substance not only physically, but psychologically. It is soaking in, taking in and imprinting, embedding at the level of the genes, even all the influences that come through the environment. And if you can hold off until this process is complete, your unit which is formed is more stable and more resilient. If at that time you have eaten good food, healthy food, not exposed to drugs, not exposed to smoking or alcohol, not had sex, and we'll discuss the importance of this later, then you will have the most complete and holistic development possible, assuming of course you've also done other things to further develop your higher potentialities. After 21, it's almost as if it doesn't matter because the unit is formed now your body is resilient enough to do anything.

Narad (00:21:33):

Mother speaks of a town in France that she knew of where the people drank a very diluted form of wine every day. She said every one of them had physical difficulties afterwards.

Audience (00:21:50):

I have a question. Yes, but you mentioned that the first sexual union, it creates a difference in the brain forever. I had seen one video in which the fellow said that it's the karmic streams of the two people that get mingled, and that's why after marriage you say the luck changes, but it's just because somebody else's karma has flowed into your karmic stream. Can you explain this?

Sraddhalu (00:22:14):

Yes. I'm coming to that. So I kind of digressed to show you also the influences of alcohol and other things which are affecting this formation. So coming back to the whole question of the first sexual relation, when the brain imprint is changed, what does it mean? It means psychologically you have been deeply imprinted by that experience to such a degree that you're no more the same person. And most obviously, this is seen in the woman. It is equally seen in the man, but not as intensely. But what is happening from a spiritual or yogic perspective, when you look at not just the biology but the other gradations of the aura, you realise you notice what happens in the sexual act. First, the need for sex does not arise until the individuality is reasonably formed. Okay? So a child does not feel sexual initially, does not even feel I'm boy or girl. We feel we are the same. When the biological changes kick in, when the hormones begin to shift, that's when the sense of the distinction of sex is felt because there's a shift also energetically, okay? That's when the sense of difference begins to form. But still the first instinct is to separate yourself. The boys come together, the girls come together because they feel separate. And then after a while the sense of attraction begins to form. But the attraction does not form until the individuality is sufficiently developed, which comes in late teenage normally, unless you've excited it earlier, then you have damaged that process. Okay? So you see what nature is doing. First she builds the unit. Once the units are formed, then she joins the units. So in the act of the building process of a unit, why I was speaking earlier about the damage done by premature sex is the breaking of the unit that takes place. You break the individuality before it could form, and after that you do not have a sense of individuality anymore. You have formed a group which is homogeneous type energetically. So if you see children as they're growing up, the harmful influence kicks in, sexualizes them. They begin to experiment by sexual interchange, they grow up. You do not see individuals emerging. You see this mass which is energetically mixed and much later in life when they're trying to live their own independent lives with an unformed individuality, literally in the aura, you can see the unformed individuality. They're struggling now to complete the process which had otherwise been damaged and delayed because of the premature sexual relations.

Now, what happens when the unit is reasonably formed and now the attractions begin, you'll see the attractions have that idealism, 'We will be forever. You are the one that my life was waiting for' that sense, which is felt, everybody feels it. And again, that's a hint. Nature is trying to bond you for life. So in the Indian context, when I spoke of the marriage ceremony where you're replicating the marriage of the gods in these individuals, the vocabulary that is taken in the culture is we will be together for seven lives. Why seven lives? Because that's the sense of permanence in the continuing stream of the energy of your ancestry. And this is an Ayurvedic principle that what you have inherited from your parents, the material that comes to you biologically, is not only biological, it is also psychological. And elements of the spiritual energy, which is inherited from your immediate parents, includes elements they receive from their parents. How far does it go? Seven levels up. So seven generations of hereditary influence come into you to form you and your influence subsequently will be for seven generations. So when they say you're together for seven lives, it's the similar idea. Now, in your stream of evolution, we will be together, well reasonably practically forever. That's the idea at least. Why? You're catching this idealism in nature implanted in every child. If they have not been damaged by casual sex before, then they're waiting for the one to whom they will belong forever. That's the form it takes. I want to touch upon this also in more detail later, but when we therefore come together, that hesitation of the initial idealism eventually moves into a full fledged physical act of sex. At that point, the shell which has formed the individuality, which is now so distinctly even hard to a degree, is made to crack. In the very process of the sexual contact, there is the breakdown of the boundaries of your aura. And there's a huge mixture, mingling of energies on all levels at the level of the biological physical energy, the vital energy, the mental energy and enormous content of the subconscious of all these levels is suddenly opened up and just flows across. And at that point, there's the movement of the bounding as a result of this mingling. To the extent that you literally feel the other as yourself energetically, you forget even who is you, who is the other in a sense that you feel the other person's body as if your own to that degree, if you have not already damaged it by casual sex. But at this point now, the bonding is so complete, you can feel like the penguin, where is my other part, and you feel somewhere there and when you come closer together you realise, ah, this is my other part. You do not need physical mapping. The energy is what bonded calls you together.

I had heard of this from somebody long ago when I was a child that during the second World War in the northeast region of India, the freedom fighters used to communicate across the hills using a technique. There is a Beatle, I don't remember the name of it, a Beatle which mates during the rainy season, once it mates, it is bonded in a certain way. And the one beetle, if you flip it, the other flips, and they would take the beetles separate to different camps and they would flip this one, the other one would flip, and they knew they were communicating with each other. So I'm giving this as an example because at a human level, something similar happens. The feelings of the other are now registered in your consciousness as long as the bond is still there down to physical level. And so when you said the exchange of karma, there's a huge exchange. Sri Aurobindo refers to this in one of his letters where he says the sexual act involves an enormous exchange of subconscious material, to the extent that if one person has a tendency for anger, that imprint can transfer into the other and vice versa. So equally, the positive things can transfer as the negative things can transfer because there's a blending between the two. And you notice when a couple is like this together long enough, they begin to resemble each other. Why? Because the psychological temperament in the subtle body is now becoming qualitatively so similar from the continued exchange of energy that the physical body, which is nothing but the condensation of the subtle physical, which is condensation of the subtle, also begins to become similar.

Audience (00:30:19):

Does it ruin your whole life with you? Or if you separate with the person it goes away also, breaking of contact?

Sraddhalu (00:30:25):

Okay, so lemme just complete this discussion and I'll pick up this point. What that means is, if you followed nature's normal process of bonding, then this ideal which she has awakened in you, 'forever together, the one' can actually take a practical form, if you have allowed that and if there is affinity on higher levels. Now if you prematurely had that contact and bonded, but on your other levels you have not yet sufficiently matured, then as you continue to grow because your evolution is not complete, as you continue to grow, you're going out of sync with the other to such a degree that eventually you're incompatible. And normally the marriage would break except that this exchange has already created a strong enough bond that you don't know what it's like to break away. You can't peel off, it's too painful, et cetera. And that's why the divorce process, the separation and it is like a tearing apart of the bond that nature has created. And the tearing apart can be so painful because you can literally see in the aura, threads which are snapping, and when they snap, they're like raw wounds, bleeding energetically and they tend to reconnect. And again, you tear, reconnect and tear and the bleeding is what creates the pain and all the suffering that is accompanied with a divorce, especially if there has been a strong bonding earlier. Of course, if you had multiple casual relations, then you could snap this out as easily because anyway, there's nothing of significant value in the casual, casual formal marriage also. It's still casual. But you recognise the importance of this fact that having sexual relations is not something casual from a purely psycho-spiritual viewpoint. It is not a physical act. It is an entire psychological exposure and the spiritual exposure also, and this is the part I want to touch upon.

If there is on one part in one person, a strong developed spiritual consciousness, this mixture will create a sharing also on that level, you will lose what is gathered as the intensity of the tapas and the others, if you're not sufficiently developed, their junk or darkness will flow into you, creating in you a dulling, a huge dulling, which will be like a loss, even a blinding of your higher spiritual consciousness and fall as a result from that loss. Of course you can recover, of course you can undo it, it takes a little while, but we'll see even there's a time factor involved there. I'll come to that shortly. But in this process of exchange, if there is not sufficient purity on the higher levels, there can be a spiritual damage or loss and something else which is more significant, if you're in a state of concentrated purpose that is a gathered energy opening for a deeper or higher purpose, remember the shells cannot join. The auras cannot join unless they first open up. So the sexual act is accompanied by the breaking of the shell of your individual boundary of aura. And so anything contained within it is spilled out, not only exchanged, it is also spilled out into the environment. If the grade of the sexual act is crude, coarse, primarily driven by hard, emotional or vital passion, then what you've created is a resonance of a exciting disturbing passion which attracts beings of that grade who come to feed on that energy. Interesting! And it is to this that Sri Aurobindo makes a reference in the context of the ashram. He says that if you allowed, in that context, remember before 1938, to allow sexual relations within that space would invite the forces of lower passion energy would invite the forces whose purpose it is to prevent the supramental descent. And for that reason, it was essential not to allow those vibrations of any kind to come in that protective space.

Today, of course the question does not arise. With the huge influx of tourists which come, cars honking just outside the gate of the ashram, people with the most crude coarse vibrations throwing it all over, it's suffocating sometimes around the ashram. You cannot create that kind of environment anymore. It's impossible. That opportunity is lost here and we have to recognise it. What can be done is to create small units within the ashram space among ourselves, within Auroville, where we can create units where we can rebuild that kind of a tapas in a collective space. But the important thing here is the spilling of that energy is also attracting other beings who come to feed on it and the result will be practically where you have had that kind of crude exchange, those energies come to feed, and so we got lots of stuff here. They hang around waiting for more, but the presence now brings the chaotic energy. The presence now brings conflict, and you notice people who have that kind of relation in their life, there's always some confusion and chaos surrounding it. On the other hand, the same sexual relation could be had with a very high idealistic term, not primarily driven by coarse passion, not just for satisfying a basal instinct and done in a shared aspiration even. And at that point the same bubble breaking, et cetera will happen, but the quality of vibration is completely different. But in the breaking of the bubble, the tapas you have built up will be also spilt. Of course you can rebuild, but you have spilt something. This is the reason why you have all those stories in the Indian tradition of a sage who is doing intense tappa for example, and then Indra gets a little worried as the king of the gods, 'this fellow is going to grow more spiritually powerful than me'. So he sends one of the damsels, apsaras, heavenly damsels to go and entice the Rishi and break his concentration. And when he successfully does that, the rishi is of course upset. Why? Because the tapas he has built up is now spilt and he has to as if restart. Now in practice, of course it's not going back to zero, in practice you rebuild more quickly, et cetera.

But the point, the principle is valid here, that when the act takes place in this manner, there's the breaking of that shell and the loss of what may be gathered. On the other hand, if a unit is built up in a harmonious way, then effectively a kind of a bubble forms around the couple, and if both are in a conscious aspiration and tapas, you build a shared tapas which is mutually nourishing and helpful where one person's growth and effort helps the other and nourishes and there is not necessarily the spilling of the bubble. Of course, in that kind of concentration, the sexual act physically may become almost trivial because you're already concentrating on higher levels. The primary basis of the relationship will be an intimacy, companionship, a sharing and opening of the heart and so on, which are the elements which give really the satisfaction to the sexual relation even. So you asked the question.

Audience (00:38:23):

If let's say what you're saying, the exchange happening, if you separate with that person, right, and you're not having any contact with. To me...

Sraddhalu (00:38:32):

It will, yes. So now what happens if after forming this unit to whatever degree in practice it may be, you break, you separate. First of all, it's difficult to separate for that reason because you've already built up so much identification. When you do separate, there's a period of breaking, pain and the tearing of the cords in consciousness. It can last typically one and a half years and after that, meanwhile there's a gradual healing of each where the individuality once again closes the aura, reforms its boundaries and so on. And that's when you can healthily relate with another. The thing which normally happens, what they call rebound is when you've just separated, you are bleeding, you get into another relation to fill the gap of your bleeding. Your wound feels momentarily assuaged, the pain is lessened and you get into a similar cathecting relationship of dependence of some kind, not ever having had time to recover your individuality. And so rebounds generally don't last. You're fortunate if in the rebound you made a positive contact, which is healthy. But the principle, you have to understand that there is a time needed for healing and then on which you can then rebuild in a different relationship. But this is the interesting thing, at a purely biological level, and so this also means psychologically, that first sexual act and it imprint it left in you never really goes away. Your later bonds, later relationships do not have the same kind of dramatic shift that the first one has. And what often happens, which is the experience of many people, that even when they have second or third relations of lasting kind, sometimes the image or feel of the first relationship blends into this in the moment of sexual closeness, because it is rooted in the biological imprint.

My point in bringing this up is to show that nature actually has given us the mechanism for that kind of bonding at a biological level, bio-psychological level, and if we can tap into it and if right at the beginning there's a positive alignment of even higher aspirations, it could lead to very stable bonds and even spiritually supportive relationships. It does not happen generally because we are still immature when we first get into our first relationships, and especially if you have a spiritual inclination or an inclination for a conscious development of your personality, people grow at different paces and as they grow, they unfold and take different directions of temperament and eventually, often early partnerships don't last because it's very rare to find someone with whom you match at the age of let's say 24 or so. And after 20 years of growth, you'll still have a matching growth and alignment, very rare. If it does, then it is very fortunate, but otherwise the principle remains that, well, if it does not work, you part happily as friends because you realise now you've outgrown each other. You may move to other relationships where you find greater affinity, but it does not have the same characteristic as the conflicting divorce because you've both realised that now while you have to part and go different ways, this also is more natural in a conscious evolving relationship. Do you want to, maybe we have 15 minutes. Do you want to add some observations from your own life experience and at any point feel free to just share and otherwise I will keep on going with.

Audience (00:42:34):

One point was remaining about you said for the age of 21 how abstinence can help in building the strength, something like that. You said you saw it later. Yes, celibacy.

Sraddhalu (00:42:45):

Yes. So I'll come back to the point of celibacy a little later and then also link it with the spiritual practices, especially certain advanced practices. But for now, just this point of the way the joining takes place is very important because in the exchange with your partner, you have a huge amount of psychological substance which is being exchanged. If you do not share higher spiritual values and spiritual alignments, the very fact that you're in a relationship which is causing this exchange will make your spiritual progress that much more difficult. It doesn't mean both have to be doing the same thing at the same time, but it does mean both have to have a similar inclination or aspiration or affinity at least, that in the exchange one person's special development is not contradicted by the other person's dullness or grossness or contrary faith or doubts, which they throw into you because you're actually now open and helpless in a sense, in that kind of opening, one point I wanted to make, this initial bonding that takes place does not last, if you do not have frequent sexual contact, what happens is automatically after the act, your aura begins gradually to reform its own separateness, but it takes at least three days to form a basic boundary. And so it happens. If somebody comes, let's say for some counselling, they're going through some difficulties, the person comes, their aura is still carrying the mix of the other person's energies for at least up to three days. That's the criteria generally given. And if you try to then assess the person's problems, you are not able to distinguish between the other person's mix into it. But after three days, generally automatically there's this formation of closing. If you're of course a couple, there's a continued exchange on higher levels, but the lower levels of exchange bond are formed only when you have the physical relations, sexually.

So this is again, to show you that it's a very dynamic condition and at different levels, different kinds of exchanges can take place. If you're conscious of it, then of course the whole thing becomes much more simple. What's good, what's not helpful, you can compensate for it. But this is the complex picture I want to place and to understand the nature of the relations. There is the factor of love which is different from sex. So two people can be in deep love with no sex. Two people can have frequent sex, but no love of course. And during the act of sex, because of the oxytocin released and all the other hormonal shifts, there is a kind of sense of affinity, but that's not love. That's more, almost a physical energetic affinity. But love itself is a different grade altogether. The sense of companionship, again, is more mental. The sense of intimacy is even more profound. What in the relationship gives to it satisfaction. If you raise this question, people get married, they have affairs, they have whatever, what gives to it satisfaction?

If you look at all the self-help literature, you go to any bookstore, look up online, self-help, all the things to do with the marriage and relationships are about how to bring back the spark. Your life has got boring, your sex life has got boring, your relationship has become now uninteresting. How to bring it back, how to get back to the old initial thing which you had. You can't, not by mechanism, not by methods. And why? Because the Mother's explanation is very interesting. She says at the physical level, any experience that you have after a while, the body dulls to it. And so the only way you can recreate the original excitement of the sexual attraction is by having an out of the extramarital affair because that's something new. Within the marriage, you cannot recreate that kind of excitement. And if that was the basis of the marriage, then obviously it's not going to last, unless you build a deeper or higher basis. Now, again, if you come back to the whole relationship, what gives to it satisfaction, you had physical excitement. Then what? There was an example of a person who asked my advice when she was about to choose the husband that her family had proposed to her. And I asked her, what do you feel when you're with him? And she said, I feel nice, I feel comfortable, but somehow I don't feel excited. And I said, when you're married, considering you're going to be married for the rest of your life, all the hours that you will spend together, it's more important that you're comfortable in a relaxed state than you're excited. Excitement will not last. You will tire of excitement, and then it's how you feel when you're comfortable together that will matter and you feel compatible on that level. The reference will be what makes for a lasting partnership or marriage is not the grade of excitement, is not going to be the quality of your sex life. It'll be the quality of psychological affinity and whatever other deeper values you have if you have spiritual or psychic values. And at that level you may use the words like companionship, intimacy, closeness, trust, sharing, caring and love.

Narad (00:49:20):

I had 31 years with Mary Helen. Yes, Both of us, given to Mother. It was a totally different experience and maybe you could address that, with two people who are united in your aspiration, it was mostly spiritual life.

Sraddhalu (00:49:45):

Yes, Well, primarily. And that has to be the base if that is your aspiration. But you're fortunate if that is possible. So we'll continue this theme into the next discussion,

Narad (00:50:04):

I suppose. I think it's necessary, yes. We still have five minutes.

Sraddhalu (00:50:10):

So the themes I would want to then continue into the next discussion would be the relationship between the love and the sex because they're so different. Can the two be compatible? Is it possible even to have both? And if so, how do you manage it? And then lead it to the discussion of the importance of celibacy and its place. Why nature builds in you the instinct of celibacy up to a certain point before she breaks the individuality to form the group unit. What's really happening and what is that process? How does it affect you, for your health? How does it affect you in your psychological development, particularly in your higher mental faculties, and what is its impact in your spiritual consciousness and for the spiritual evolution? And with that, we will review the place of celibacy or sex in marriage for someone who is in a spiritual concentration.

That will be the discussion for our next meeting. Thank you.