EWS #19: Human relationships, marriage, love, sex, celibacy and Yoga (3)
Jan 23, 2019
Topics:
Narad (0:00:00):
Welcome to our continuing series, Evenings with Sraddhalu. The two previous talks were on human relationships, marriage, sex, and we will continue those two today. I'd like to begin by asking you what you would advise young people in America and India on the subject of casual sex, relationships, etc.
Sraddhalu (0:01:24):
In our discussion, the last two times in our discussion, we took a very big picture of the place of sex in evolution, the place of marriage in society. We looked at the direction in which nature is pushing the evolutionary process where she actually leads them to pair, to bond for life and which relates very closely to the human idealism regarding what marriage could or should be and yet there is a breaking of that unit and all the confusion that comes with the mixed values which are being promoted today. The natural bonding process that nature has in a couple in their first encounters, particularly first sexual encounters, which are full of idealism and romance, and we looked also at the angle of the breaking of the boundaries, which takes place literally in the breaking of the aura itself in the attempt to join and unify an individual and the exchange of energies or even subconscious material that takes place. And all of these are coming from a context of yoga. It's the yogic perspective looking at these relationships, looking at what's happening. It's not yet for yoga.
Narad (0:03:08):
But it's also not moral.
Sraddhalu (0:03:10):
It's not moral either. It is looking at things at a very realistic position and we saw also that a lot of the morality and the guilt associated with sex come mostly from religion and a large part from Christianity. Some of it, particularly in India, may come from an embarrassment but much more to do with the ascetic ideal which renounces sex as anti-spiritual and the two are completely split in some sense. And the result is most people who have a spiritual aspiration either attempt wrongly to get into a sex-free life for which they are not ready or when they get back into a sexual relations or marital life then they feel guilty and they feel as if they have fallen out of spirituality. And so the whole purpose of this discussion is really to try to bring a more comprehensive perspective that one need not see these as opposed or rather they are opposed only for an ascetic spirituality and not for a life affirming spirituality. And particularly in the context of the integral yoga, that the phase where you have sexual relations, marriage and all the associated social components of life that come with normal life, none of these in themselves need be contradictory to the spiritual aspiration or even evolution. And so I will get into some of these aspects which are very troubling because they are confused, precisely for the purpose of bringing greater clarity and some of it may be detailed, some of it will repeat elements that we have discussed but it will be worth it for the discussion.
Narad (0:04:57):
What about the constraints of family in India? It's no longer in the West, obviously.
Sraddhalu (0:05:03):
In the West it's gone the opposite direction. In the West, the family unit is pretty much broken. You have many more single parents than family units. Children often grow up in the second marriages of their parents and things like that. So it goes both ways. If you have a very strong family unit, there are certain constraints which come from limitation and the need of society to keep a stable unit. If you break out of it too much, then you have instability which damages children psychologically, it creates deep confusions. But to come back to your point about America and India, the important thing to recognize is beginning with the shifts that took place in America and those ideas spreading in the rest of the world, sex and love have been enormously confused and I want to start with clarifying the relationship between these two and what we can do in our own subjective experience in bringing greater clarity but first to understand if you go back even in the English language barely 50 years ago the phrase to make love referred to flirting and casual light romantic banter. So to make love to a woman was you know talking soft, make friendship, was leaning on the romantic and that was it. Today and particularly this comes from America, to make love means to have physical sex. And with it the word love and sex have got so deeply joined that most people think that if they don't have sex then they don't love or if someone shows sexual interest then that's their expression of love and so that has created huge confusions and I want to look at the historical passage here by first asking a question and it's a very provocative question, most people don't think about it. What if, let's say each one has an ideal of partner, what if you met somebody who is your ideal partner in every way possible, but you felt no attraction, no passion, would you accept to marry? In every other way the person fits perfectly your ideal. And interestingly the response for most people would be, no, not quite. Why would I marry if I don't feel attraction or passion?
On the other side, take an example where you feel very strongly attracted to somebody, but you see huge incompatibilities. What would you do? You would submit to the passion, to the attraction. This is at least how the value system today goes. And this shift took place in the 1960s largely in America. It spread to the world very rapidly because what it did, it didn't come from America, it represented a certain shift in humanity but it began in the 1960s. And with the pill, the ability for a woman to choose to have sex and not get pregnant put the power in her hands to have casual sex without the consequences. If you go back just before that and then stretch back thousands of years you will find all the time first focus was, are you compatible?, and if you're compatible when you get together you will learn to love each other, you do not need passion, you do not need strong romantic attractions. In fact, those were seen more as casual and unstable attractions which pass very quickly. And so they were discouraged or when they happened, you allowed them to pass and then you got into a stable marital relation where the alignment of types of human types and interests and personality was the primary concern and that's why the arranged marriage system was so effective. What happened in the sixties was when the power to have casual sex came into their hands, people began to follow what was otherwise the primary instinctive drive which attracts couples and the result was a lowering of standards in selection.
Remember we discussed last time how there is an evolutionary ascent which is taking what is otherwise primarily a procreative process in the animals into the human domain of mind and the mind has to give to it values. The mind has to align it and push it into its terms. And when the mind starts doing that, it uses the procreative instinct or directs it and guides it into some subtle grooves to create stability in society. It tries to pull out of the instinctive passions which burst out intensely for a while and then collapse, and do not lead to lasting relationships. But what happened with this in the 60s was people fell back to what was closer to the animal instinct. And particularly in the Woodstock and the late 60s, it took the form where there was a strong aspiration and even imagination for a beautiful future, which the Mother actually connects to a special descent that took place in the late 60s. That was turned into free sex, casual sex, group sex and LSD and drugs and all the rest which very quickly debased the upward idealistic turn into coarse crude vital instincts again.
Narad (0:10:59):
But Mother did see it as a breakthrough in consciousness.
Sraddhalu (0:11:04):
And it is that generation which became the dreamers for the future which can be beautiful and so on. But they have drifted and or many of them have fallen into cynicism.
Audience (0:11:15):
They call themselves children of flowers
Sraddhalu (0:11:18):
Yes, flower children. But they quickly fell into some kind of cynicism because their idealism could not stand the reality. Why? Because it degraded itself, rather than rising with what the ideal offered, they fell back to instinctive forms and they defined the ideal in terms of group sex and make love not war. But what do they mean by ‘make love’ was have sex. And so what happens with sex? We discussed this briefly last time that the grade of energy or the vibration of consciousness associated with intense passion is, the Mother says of the same grade as anger. And agitation it creates in the system destabilizes the nervous system for a while, also attracts energies which are of that grade. The result is it is inevitably followed with strong impulses of emotions of jealousy, insecurity, expectation, domination, disappointment and violent exchange of emotions which follows inevitably with strong passionate love. The stronger the passion of love, or lack of a better word, but sexual love, the stronger the violence of the emotional demand, exchange, misunderstanding and confusion which follows.
Interestingly, the only way you can break out of it is to rise out of passion to something which is more sustainable and stable. Passion inherently exhausts. It tires the system, depletes the system and makes you collapse. And so this is what they describe as sexual satisfaction for those who seek that grade. You collapse in tiredness, exhaustion and you feel as if now I am free of the impulse, I don't need it until it builds up again. The moment your energy is raised, now you have a groove and again it follows the same pattern. and the fact that American society and a large part from this misunderstanding and mixing with Freudian ideas which put very high premium on sex and instinctive values has led to the fact that the entire civilization has been driven by the sexual priority and domination of the sexual sexual idea which makes the whole culture vitally driven for vital satisfaction and the idealisms are at best like a sugar coating on top, but the primary drives are vital satisfaction. This you see the broad characteristic of the American modern culture, current culture.
[Narad] Should we not see it coming up in India now?
[Sraddhalu] Everywhere, everywhere in the world it is the same values spreading and while we can blame Hollywood cinema and influences the fact that all these cultures around the world could accept these values so easily say something about a lack within their own values that if they had refined values they could not reject the coarsening influence and fell back to it because there was something there undeveloped and to put it in the context of India and in a large part in Europe also, many of the Victorian values which involved suppression of not only the sexual instinct but anything to do with satisfaction or enjoyment of life they associated with guilt. In India it came through the ascetic spirituality that if you are enjoying life even if it's marital life or any other kind of enjoyment, somewhere the idea was, one day I have to get free of this attachment to life, so that I may have a spiritual life. Whereas in the West, with the Christianity, it took a similar form, but with the idea that you have to renounce, you have to deny, in order to be rewarded in heaven after death and so on.
Narad (0:15:15):
But not procreation. I attended a wedding once and the priest said to the couple, 'go ye out and multiply'. This is in the 1980s. So, how many billions of people on the earth?
Sraddhalu (0:15:34):
And of course this had many variations within the Christian tradition also, some which considered sex only for child procreation and nothing else and others which were more permissive. The priests themselves having to be celibate, the practical result has been the most of the Catholic Church is rife with homosexuals, many of them are pedophiles and the rampant abuse of sexuality with children is alarming and all suppressed by the church. They paid millions of dollars in settling cases rather than getting bad publicity. But all of this shows massive suppression of something. And so my point was, these values declining could easily spread into these spaces because something was missing. What they have brought in directly but in a negative form is acceptance. Acceptance that you can enjoy life, acceptance that you can do the things which you find enjoyable even if earlier you were told it's bad or it's somehow morally inferior. And this was perhaps a necessary passage but it needs to be corrected and to be understood more deeply.
Narad (0:16:46):
How do the Asuric forces play into this?
Sraddhalu (0:16:53):
Sri Aurobindo writes three powers which were rejected by the ascetic phase of spirituality- money, sex and power and because the ascetic spirituality said these things are anti-spiritual and threw them out of its scope and influence, the Asura seized upon them. And the imprint of that seizure is there for many thousand years already. And the result is these things have to be won back, so to say. What it means for money is obvious. You bring money back in service of evolution, in service of the Divine, in service of uplifting consciousness. What it means of power is also quite obvious, because it is to serve evolution. What it means of sex is not so obvious. And this is what I want to touch upon in the rest of our discussion today. I am not sure what I will present will be complete in terms of what this represents, in terms of bringing sex back into the ambit of spirituality, but at least it will give a direction which I hope will be helpful for viewers. So I go back to this confusion of love and sex, and in part the whole spreading of this permissive culture has been a move to bring acceptance that you can enjoy life even including sexual relations, marital relations or anything which gives some kind of enjoyment or satisfaction to life and this is the justification for this permissive passage but then what kind of enjoyment? Will it be coarse enjoyment? Will it be refined enjoyment? Will it be egoistic, centric satisfaction or something more wide, more essential, more true and so on.
And so I want to explore this angle from an evolutionary viewpoint. You see what nature has had to do. When she brought a couple together for procreation, in the lower animals it didn't matter. There is a birth, there is a multiplication, it takes place. In the higher animals, the investment in procreation is very high, particularly for the female, because she has to carry the child, she has to nurture the child or someone has to nurture the child. So, nature uses the mechanism first, the one who gives birth is the one most suited for nurturing. So, obviously that comes upon the female, but what to do from the male side at the time when the female is most vulnerable because she is weak, she cannot move around fast, she needs food and so the child is vulnerable and so on. So nature has paired the father with the mother using the bonding process which we have discussed yesterday, last time already, but also the bonding initially you may say it's chemical bonding, it's bonding of consciousness, but for what? What does the bond represent? And it is nature looking ahead, a million years ahead, to the possibility of a divine love upon earth, which is the spiritual purpose of evolution, but she is then trying to create a replica of what she sees in the future, but at a level which is still so crude in material. So nature is trying to create some form of love, however crude or coarse it is. And if you see in insects, it takes a very interesting form. The praying mantis, at the time when the female mates or the male mates with the female, the sexual act is not complete until the female turns around and bites off the neck of the male, cutting off its head, which completes the sexual act by causing an orgasm at that moment. And then she eats up the male, which becomes the nourishment for her. But if you think about it, the male is not trying to escape that. It allows itself, the male allows itself to be eaten. And Mother refers to this. She gives another example of the snake that she saw.
[Narad] It was a rabbit.
[Sraddhalu] Was it a rabbit?
[Narad] I think it was a rabbit, yes.
[Sraddhalu] And at first the animal was afraid and then the snake waited and then the animal became calm and then approached the snake and allowed itself to be eaten. And what the Mother saw was a movement of love. And I think it is Sri Aurobindo, one of them. They explain how at a very low level in evolution, the movement of love takes the form of eating or hunger. The basis of the human kiss is rooted in that. If you think about it, why should you kiss as an expression of affection? And if you go back to the original impulse, it is the hunger impulse associated with love which you see in the praying mantis and other such animals. But it grows until in the human kissing you will see there is a movement of suction, of taking in of the other, taking in even vital energy, feeding upon the other. Now if you observe a couple, you will see each feeding upon the other energetically but the problem is in that act they have also broken their shell of individuality. So what they take in depletes the other mutually, but also they cannot contain and it dissipates. The practical result is both decline in energy through a passionate process, which is of course very pleasurable. So at that moment you don't realize and then after a few days you realize your energies have dipped. But from what and you're not too sure. Because immediately after you felt good your energies were on a high, not realizing that you were depleting energy in the process. But the act of kissing really is one of taking in energy, feeding upon each other. But all of this really you see is a process by which nature is trying to create in a substance which is very coarse, the first nature of love. And so what she does, it has two elements. One is a possessiveness to want to take in the other which is the cruder form, to eat, so to say, the other. And the second movement is of giving oneself, which is not so developed in the early stages, but in the human or the idealistic human takes a very high form. And so you'll see in teenagers for example, when the teenager is wooing his beloved, he will say things like, I am perfect for you, I will do this for you, I will bring the moon for you, I will look after you forever. All these high ideals are really an attempt to give yourself to serve. But the moment that is broken and the lover is spurned, what happens? Immediate collapse, a complete breakdown of individuality, inability to function, fall into depression or it takes a reverse form of anger, hatred, revulsion etc. and they are all violent variations of emotions, which shows that that impulse, although having a very strong idealistic form, was still primarily a drive of the vital and the lower vital, it's not even the higher vital. So this is the strange part. You have a strong drive of the lower vital, which is the passionate content, and then upon that rides this idealistic form of the love, which nature has had to build. And this is the reason for the mixture. Sex and love being mixed is primarily because they are two different levels operating at the same time, one of which is emerging out of the other in normal evolution. And in the human being, this may have got barely organized, and I won't say sufficiently organized, to last by itself. If you hung on, let's say a few thousand years, perhaps this higher grade of love, let's say the higher vital and something of the mental, would grow and then the passionate form might decline. In fact, this is what happens even within our current phase of evolution, but over a shorter time.
Sraddhalu (0:25:32):
So, let's take a typical example, passionate, romantic and finally against their parents wishes who keep warning them, no but you are not compatible, this is wrong and that is wrong, 'but we love each other'. So they go ahead, they get married. Interestingly, within a very short time of marriage, the passion drops. Very short time, often within days, sometimes within months, depending on the character of the vital attraction. But why does that happen? This is the interesting thing. And when it drops, suddenly they realize the thing which brought us together is not gone. And why should we stay together? Or they start looking for that passion. They start trying to create the excitement and the intensity, which can be reawakened, but again is essentially unsustainable. Anything which involves such strong passions cannot sustain because it simply depletes the system. And so you will see a lot of the therapy and the self-help etc. is all about bringing back the spark and the romance and the passion and all that. But if you see the couples that survive, and a few do even though they had kind of an origin because the other factors were already in place. And those who do, and there have been couples, unstable relationships going now 40-50 years ahead, you will find passion was not their primary drive. It was also present because they were teenagers when they fell in love, but their primary base of attraction or companionship was not passion but some deeper kind of let's say harmony or affinity which became friendship more than passion or which had a friendship component more than the passionate component and therefore they could stay as friends.
So what makes for a lasting relationship or marriage is this is the fact that you can be friends first. Everything else will be second and if that is there, interesting, if that is not there, in any case with time, the sexual drive itself weakens, the satisfaction you have from sex also drops and very quickly, once the initial novelty wears off, what happens next? And you'll see, again the therapists will guide you with things like, well you have to get into role-playing, have sex in different places to bring variety. Okay, you do that, how many more places can you go to? You run out of numbers eventually. You've been there, done that, now what? Okay, bring variety, do some role-playing, okay, play roles. After that, then what? It ends very quickly. Then what is the question? And if there is nothing left after that, you don't last. You move on to other relationships. So the primary reason why America developed this problem that every second marriage, 50% of marriages break within a few years. Second marriages may have slightly greater chance of lasting. Typically it is third or fourth marriages which last and are stable, which also you have only when you are in your 30s or 40s, when this is no more the criteria. The passion and drive of passion is not your primary criteria. You are already seeking affinity and compatibility. With passion of course, makes it interesting for a while and then you have other things to do once that passes. So this is a very important factor we need to bring back into the consciousness of the youngsters. What has happened is the media has given them this false idea that when you experience strong attraction and passion with another that is your partner and then they get into trouble. But we need to bring back this deeper understanding of things.
And so now, coming back to love, nature is trying to replicate love, and she is building something, which is still nowhere near true love. But it's her first imitation of love, and you see that in animals, you see that as what we may call an emotional love, a vital love. And the nature of vital love also is that it tires, it consumes and it does not last in itself. But it is a strong enough bond in the instinctive phase of animal life. In the human being when the mind kicks in, you find that you need something more. And so you will see the Mother's message, what she gave to the first couple that got married, and it's very interesting message and I want to read from it. The first level, she speaks of five levels of the relationship. The first level, she says, "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 is not enough". If you stop here you will see this is what you can have with many people you don't need to be married for this, you can have it in your friend's circle but you cannot of course speak uniting a physical life but you can speak of being friends in your your material interests and facing difficulties together as a team and so on. Uniting takes it to a degree further which will fulfill itself only in the fifth level. Everything else is only preparation.
Sraddhalu (0:31:26):
So the second level she says, "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". So this whole thing about aesthetic tastes and enjoyments would include sex. The sexual act itself moves from being purely an instinctive scratch my itch to something which is an expression of something aesthetic and something which is enjoyed together, up to a point, but then, after that what? In itself the sexual act cannot give you more and that's where the third level comes, "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 together, to be together. To find in every circumstance tranquility, peace and joy in each other. That is good. That is very good. That is indispensable. But it is not enough". If you stop here, this affection, tenderness, happiness, being together and peace and joy with each other is what gives to sex its value. And this is the point I want to highlight, that the sexual act itself can only satisfy a very crude grade and it is all the rest when infused into the sexual act that gives to it meaning. And after a while as the age and the sexual drive weakens, it is all this rest which is what sustains the true relationship and you do not need the physical component of the sexual act anymore if this remains. And if at all the physical sexual component is there, it becomes meaningful with this component. Remove this and it's no different from an animal satisfying an instinctive drive. And so the problem which people face in marriage when they say they have lost the spark and lost the attraction etc. It is not by having more sex as Freudian therapists would teach you. It is rather accepting that, ok, the sexual phase of priority is now passed, and now you need to cultivate these deeper values of again, what I will use the word love, but an emotional grade of love. And that's why the Mother says that is good, that is very good, that is indispensable. And this is what we may call love at a human level. It is not what we will call love at its essential level, but it is the expression of the true love in the domain of the emotions as far as we can represent them.
And then she takes it a step further because after you have the deep feelings, mutuality, affection and tenderness and this is what makes for lasting marriages I still find when I meet people who have been married for a very long time when they are asked what is the secret of your marriage or they will on their own volunteer the secret of their marriage, the man will say she looks after the house, I look after the business and we don't interfere with each other. Secret of lasting marriage, stay out of each other's hair. It's very interesting. Very interesting. And when they actually sit together and watching TV at the same time, they can't stand each other's choices. So each one needs to have his own TV, or read his own thing, do his own thing. When they start talking about each other, one person starts talking, the other turns away, 'Oh yeah, I've heard that story a hundred times'. And you can see the bored look on their face. And after a while, he is always like this, she says. And he says, 'she never understands these things, she is too emotional' and these are the stayed judgments, they each pass over each other's views and the only way they are managing together is because they stay out of not saying these things. They believe these things, they think these things. So where is the affinity? You have the emotional love but do you have affinity? Now you may stop here and say, but I am not looking for that affinity. I have that with my other friends, I have that in my job satisfaction, whatever. And so that's fine. But it will not take you closer to that ideal, which is what the whole point of the marriage and the marriage ceremony, which we discussed last time, is about. So you can be good friends in that narrow band, you have affectionate support for each other, but you still look away.
And so comes the next level, "To unite your minds, to harmonize 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". If you look at just this, I don't think most people are capable of it. For the simple reason that men and women think so differently, their priorities are so different, their values are so different that even if you attempt to do this to harmonize your thoughts and make them complimentary it's not going to happen because you are unable to recognize how the other thinks or feels and you will see very often they break down into, 'the man thinks, the woman feels' and that's about it but what she is speaking of is complimentary, not the same. Can the thinking person now relate to the emotions? Can the feeling person recognize the value of a mind standing back? And can both grow from that mutuality of frequent contact, interaction? Unless you are prepared to make an effort to reshape your mind and emotions, to actually grow consciously, this is not going to happen. It's not going to happen automatically, it will just create a partitioned space. And in that partitioned space, the complementarity can exist. Once in a while when he finds he can't solve his problem, she gives some suggestion and he says, oh yeah, that makes sense, I never thought of it. Because she comes from a different band of interests and he is usually like that. But that's about all it is. But to bring this in already demands what I would describe as an intention, a conscious intention to grow and change yourself, which is difficult for most people. You have already gone above the norm of the common mass of humanity.
Sraddhalu (0:39:14):
And then finally she comes to something which brings it into the spiritual sphere. "Beyond that, in the depths, at the center, 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". So far it has nothing to do with the marriage. It is all a spiritual focus. And then she says, "It is in the consciousness of that, that you must unite". Now straight away, if you are going to even attempt this, you must first become conscious of the spiritual or the psychic, and then seek to unite on that. And that's way out already, of common human interest or idealism. Their idealism will stop well before. This already brings it into a conscious spiritual seeking and if you do not have it this has no meaning. But it is here that you can have the real sense of unity. You cannot have a unity in the body, you cannot have unity in the life energies, you cannot have unity in the mind but this is only place you can have a true unity. "To be one in aspiration and ascension, to move forward at the same space on the same spiritual path, that is the secret of a lasting union". So this last one line if you just take, it can stand in itself even without the rest. To be one in aspiration and ascension, do you share in the same aspiration, otherwise there is no question of a lasting unity. Then to move forward at the same pace on the same spiritual path and you cannot say you have the same spiritual path just because you have the same guru or the same idol or the same religion. That does not make it the same spiritual path. It means what you choose as your spiritual goal must also be the same and that's again very difficult but possible and then to move forward at the same pace that's again very difficult but that is the secret of a lasting union. So having made a union in the first part of it, in the second part is how you can sustain the union as you grow together.
So if you look at this statement of the Mother, you get a framework for also what nature is doing in her evolutionary process. If you hung on a few more thousand years, this is what she would be leading you towards. The question can still be asked, is the family unit that is already pretty much broken everywhere in the world and continuing to break even more, will it even survive? And what is the point of this fragmentation? Is it merely an Asuric attack or can it serve an evolutionary purpose? And my view of this and I will admit it to my perception is that this passage where the unit is being broken is a temporary passage. Sri Aurobindo specifically mentions that in nature's steps she creates these units from the individual, the family, the tribe and then the community and then the nation leading to human unity. And then having prepared this ground, having formed the nation unit and he mentions this I believe in his thoughts and aphorisms, all the other in between units she is no more interested in. What she will preserve will be individual, family and nation as the base upon which human unity can be formed.
So if human unity is to be practical, the national identity is a unit that must be protected. First, you cannot mix nations, you cannot have large-scale migrations across national boundaries and expect to have what Sri Aurobindo conceives of as human unity, which is a rich, diverse, mutual sharing of unity. It would create uniformity and chaos and conflict within uniformity, but not human unity. So the national unit is extremely important and the unit before which nature has chosen to preserve is the family unit. Everything else in between is being weakened and even dissolved. They will stay perhaps, the tribe identity, the community and the larger what they call caste or community in India. Their identities have value but they will be subserved by these other. But family unit, he says, nature has chosen to preserve and if that be the case then this weakening of family bonds is a temporary passage. The breakup of the family will now move back to something based on a higher grade of unit. And I want to elaborate on this briefly. We discussed last time how the breakup of the family unit has been largely driven by the individualization. And this Sri Aurobindo describing as the age of individualism and reason, when the rational mind comes into its own and acquires its own separateness of individuality, then how do you expect a couple to stay together when they are two egos on a leash, so to say. But that leads to fragmentation. Now I have observed many partnerships and how they evolve. I have seen people for example having been through many partnerships that broke, they came to a reasonably stable partnership where, I will give an example, an actual example of a friend in Auroville. He has built his house, he has built a house for her and they made a passage in between. So each has its individual space, even individual life, but with some shared component, physically represented in the construction of the house. I am not sure it is exactly what nature is heading to, but it is an attempt in a transition by nature to now form stable units where both can be equal partners and equally individualized, unlike the previous phase in which one had to become the doormat as we discussed last time and one had to suppress individuality, generally the woman, for the stability of the unit. Once the woman can be equally formed as an individual, what happens now? A new rhythm, a new framework has to emerge, but it will still hold the family unit. Although as the Mother said the marriage as an institution is dead, is finished, but the family unit will still remain because it will serve a purpose as nature has selected but it has not yet found its new stability. It may even be a semi-stable unit, it's not that you are together for life but at least up to the stage where the support for the child is required you may still move on perhaps, I don't know what form it will take.
Narad (0:47:00):
But you say it has to be settled, you spoke about settling last time.
Sraddhalu (0:47:02):
Yes, the settling takes a different form in this case. Earlier we used that phrase in the way people use it here that you're now stuck in the process, you're married, you have children, you're busy in a job paying back your debts, you're stuck in the groove, that's settled. But what you see here in the stable unit, even in the individualized families is that somewhere in their mutuality they build this complementarity both emotional and intellectual. And when that complementarity is built, you find something very healthy which can grow in that relationship. And the relationship that I have seen where this is actually there, there are still few. But where they are there, you can see how it is extremely nourishing and helpful to both, and the children who are born in such families are extremely healthy emotionally, intellectually. I am not speaking of the biology here but on the level of possibilities for a spiritual growth they get everything necessary for a stable foundation to enter a spiritual life. But these are still emerging, they are not yet stable. But the basis of that settling will be now the joining both at the emotional and the complete psychological complementarity that will emerge from this. It demands great maturity on the side of both and it is possible only if both have at least developed equally in their intellectual and emotional development, at least to some closeness. If one has no intellectual development and the other has only intellectual but not emotional, you will not get this kind of a settled partnership that the mother describes and which I would say evolution is pushing us towards. So emerging out of this whole process through all these stages is nature's attempt to build higher and higher grades of true love. That would be the basis for the true partnership.
And if we look at it this way, and if we have a natural inclination to speed up that process, to give to your life a spiritual orientation, the turn of conscious accelerated evolution or yoga, then we can recognize this pattern and assist it. In that case you will see the nurturing of love, the affinity and alignment on different levels, all the way to the spiritual. None of these need be in any way contradictory to your spiritual aspiration or your spiritual life. And to the extent that the sexual relations are a part of it, they too can be taken up into this larger movement. As the true love grows, the coarser components will fade, there will be an automatic refinement of the emotions and even of the physical sexual act, all of which would lead to a transition where it may or may not have any more relevance once you move into a higher grade of relationship. So I want to close this part of the discussion by reading from the Mother what she says in the Agenda, where she discusses this very transition but in a more general way. She says, "but I see clearly that when the work is done as I am made to do it, it becomes that way very spontaneously. So she is basically describing things which happen spontaneously. For instance, one of the very concrete things which shows the problem clearly. Humanity has the sex impulse quite naturally, spontaneously and I may say legitimately. This impulse will naturally and spontaneously disappear along with animality. A lot of other things will disappear such as for instance the need to eat, perhaps also the need to sleep the way we do". Now the moment people read this they get into a guilt trip. Oh sex has to disappear in evolution that means spirituality is not sex, does not permit sex and all those associations come from the ascetic phase and we must clearly see what she is describing is only a long-term movement of evolution, of course accelerated in those who are conscious of it. "But the most conscious impulse in a higher humanity and which has remained as a source of bliss is a big word, but of joy, of delight, is certainly the sexual activity which will have absolutely no more reason to exist in the functions of nature when the need to create in that way no longer exists. Now when that will be, we are still looking at a passage which may take a few thousand years even". But the point is, the distinction she makes, the pleasurable component is different from the sex component and the sex component comes only from the past animal evolution that provides you a pleasurable or enjoyment form is just a way for having an enjoyment.
Again to step back from this for a moment there are interesting polls, which, the studies done, people who have been married long enough, let's say three or four years, where already sex is no more, does not have the same level of novelty. When they are asked, how would you prefer to spend an evening together? Would you prefer to have sex or would you go for a music concert? The overwhelming majority will prefer to go to a music concert. And that already shows that in that initial passage through, the coarser part of it has faded. Now you are more interested in a refined sharing and enjoyment, but enjoyment certainly. So therefore, she says, "the capacity to come into contact with the joy in life will go up one rung or will orient itself differently. The whole point is the joy in life. But what the spiritual aspirants of old had attempted on principle, sexual negation, is an absurd thing, because it must exist only in those who have gone beyond that stage and no longer have any animality in them. And it must fall off naturally, effortlessly, without struggle, just like that. Making it a focus of conflict, struggle and effort is ridiculous". And this is the point which I want to highlight also. In the ascetic tradition, because so much importance is given to a forced celibacy, and in society that is now adored as a great ideal. People are given this either total celibacy or total immersion and nothing in between and that is an error. I want to share with you an example of a very great Buddhist master of whom, for whom I have very great respect and I was listening to his life story from one of his very senior disciples and somewhere along the way I think the incident came up and I asked about it and he said to me that it is recorded in his life, the man himself records it how at a certain stage in his late 20s perhaps when he had he was already a monk he had sworn taken the oaths no sexual thoughts or feelings. Obviously when they came he was fighting, that is why you need a monastery to isolate the group so that they don't get infusions which might provoke the thoughts. But when it was coming he was struggling with it because they were almost biological impulses and he records how for a period of almost two or three years he would run in the forest screaming in intense pain just to somehow fight that impulse and to suppress it. Two or three years of suffering to fight an impulse. When does it fade eventually? When they grow old enough that the biological impulse fades. What have you benefited from all that personal torture when anyway it dropped only when the biological impulse faded.
Sraddhalu (0:56:04):
There are a few, who by a refinement of consciousness may have attained to it. But again as the Mother says, to force that and to fight it, make it a focus of conflict, struggle and effort is ridiculous. It's a very strong word, ridiculous. It doesn't make sense because after all the suffering that you've put your body through, what do you do when you have to suppress it? You beat back at the body, violently, physically even sometimes, or emotionally, or mentally, and you split your consciousness from the body. You treat the body as your trap, as the cause of your suffering and distress. You coarsen and harden it to reduce its sensitivity, that you may be less affected. All of which are utterly contrary to the goal of the integral yoga which is to take up the body into the spiritual awakening and even transformation. And so you cannot do anything which punishes the body. You have to refuse this method at least.
I want to make a very important observation here. In the West, particularly in America, the moment you use the phrase include the body in the yoga, they understand it as include sex in the yoga. Because for them body and sex is identified and that's not at all what is meant here. To be sure, Mother says, "my experience with the ashram has absolutely proved that to me. Remember she brought up an entire generation of children all the way into adulthood. Because I have seen all the stages and that all the ideas and prohibitions are absolutely useless". We'll have occasion to discuss this next time, which is, I want to discuss what she tried to do with this humanity and in what way she tried to sublimate even their passions and human relationship tendencies: "It's absolutely useless. That it's only when the consciousness stops being human that it falls off quite naturally. There is a transition there and that may be somewhat difficult because transitional beings are always in a precarious balance. But inside oneself there is a sort of flame or need thanks to which the transition isn't painful. It's not a painful effort. It's something that can be done with a smile. But to want to impose that on those who aren't ready for that transition is absurd. I have been much reproached for encouraging certain people to marry". Mother says, "there are lots of these children to whom I say, get married, get married. I am told, what? you encourage them?". And mother's reply, "It's common sense, it's common sense, they are human, but let them not pretend they aren't. It's only when the impulse spontaneously becomes impossible for you, when you feel it as something painful and contrary to your deeper need, then it becomes easy. At that time, well, outwardly, you cut the links, then it's over. This is one of the most convincing examples". And then she goes on to discuss food and sleep. But here we get a broad framework in which we recognize how in evolution, nature had to use the sex mechanism as a way of building a coarse form of love, as a way of providing a base for even some kind of an enjoyment of companionship and mutuality. But once it comes to the domain of the human mental evolution, all of these tendencies can be taken up to a much higher grade and then even turned to higher spiritual possibility.
Thank you.