LOVE AND MARRIAGE AS A BOND
Although love is elevating, many people say they fall in love with each other, and when two people get together, they think that they formed a bond, but most times, what happens is that they have gone into bondage. Bond is something that brings about freedom and not bondage. Bondage is servitude; bondage is enclosing oneself by building walls within oneself, and you cannot hear what is happening outside and or what is happening inside. So, the most significant obstacle we find in marriages today is bondage instead of a bond.
What is a bond? That is the question. Where does this bond come from, how far does it go back, and what are the causes of the bond?
Bond means to bind. When two people are bound together in beauty, oneness and joy, bondage ceases because bondage is an encumbrance. However, the freedom one experiences in the bond between two people would be like two flowers growing in the same garden so close to each other. Yet, both are growing individually and similarly because of the same species.
Usually, the bond starts with physical or mental attraction, but that is not where it should end because if it should just be a physical or psychological attraction, then definitely it would end. A man might seem very handsome to a woman, but in a few weeks, he will just be a man, and the same applies to the woman. She could be gorgeous, but in a few weeks or some months, when the honeymoon period is over, the attraction would cease; it is like buying a new motorcar and having the new motorcar you would enjoy it so, so much for a few weeks but then after that, you get tired of it. It is a car that takes you from point A to point B.
When there is bondage, then definitely there is dependency, the man on the woman or the woman on the man, and dependency, of course, is a weakness where we use the spouse as a crutch; we use a spouse to vent our inner turmoil, the inner turbulences, job difficulties, communication difficulties and we take it out on the wife or the husband because bondage to repeat is dependence. But in the bond of love, there is independence, and I have said before that two people in love do not necessarily look into each other’s eyes, but two pairs of eyes look in the same direction.
The bond might have roots in many past lives, perhaps where there has been a great love, a great bond. Then, in this life, because of the attraction, as a magnet would attract filings, they would come together even from opposite sides of the world; circumstance would happen by that supernatural force, that supernatural gravitational force, if you would like to call it that, that would bring those two people together.
In the bond, you are bound with positive qualities. You become more responsible and caring; you put the other person before you and take a secondary place. That is what the man does and the same thing the woman does. The woman would say he is essential, and the man would say no, she is crucial, and when both have that attitude, it would be like climbing a ladder from two sides and meeting up at the centre where they stand equal.
It might start with dependence, but one grows and outgrows the dependence and becomes interdependent, which one could not do without the other, not in the sense of a crutch but just by the sheer force of what is known to be love. But that is not where the story ends; even interdependence must cease. From dependence, you go to interdependence, then to independence, yet the deep love remains. The profound love to stay is a job you must work at. Self-sacrifice is not only from one party because people tend to demand more from the other party than they deserve.
DESERVE AND THEN YOU CAN DEMAND
The principle is this: deserve it, and then you can demand it. When that principle is applied to both parties, greater harmony exists between them. I have known many cases, for example, myself. I might just think of having a cup of tea, and here, the tea would be coming along, and she would be bringing it to me. A total closeness where even the thoughts are known before they are uttered.
This is brought about by devotion, sacrifice and a total mergence into each other where you do not say, “I love you.” Love comes between the I and the you. The “I” and the “You” must vanish because that causes a separation. Love brings about a togetherness and not a separation. You do not say “I” because as soon as you say “I”, you are exerting your personality, your little ego self, your little selfishness, your little greed, your little lusts. And “You” means that I do not regard you as myself; you are a part of me. So, these words are used so much that the true context is not understood. I love you – in the “I” and “You”, there is separation. Only love must be there, and one would say, “I am you,” that is to be told by both so that her pains would be your pains, and your joys would be hers.
In the initial stages, you share, but you still go further. You do not share anymore, for when your beloved is regarded as yourself, then with whom will you share? You can only share with someone that is apart from you. So, even the question of sharing disappears. The question of devotion disappears. The question of sacrifice disappears. We live in a relative life where these very relative qualities are necessary in the beginning stages, but that is not the ultimateness of the relationship between man and woman.
“MY HUSBAND IS MY GOD” & “MY WIFE IS MY GODDESS”
In one of the Eastern languages, it is said, “My husband is my God”, and it is also said, “My wife is my Goddess.” So, in human life, the ordinary physical body is elevated to the level of a God and Goddess. There is no difference between a God and a Goddess because God and Goddess become an energy at that level of love. Two aspects of the same energy. One portrays itself with specific qualities and the other with other attributes. A woman is born with a tremendous amount of sympathy, a significant amount of tolerance, and an enormous amount of patience. Those are womanly qualities, and if she did not have qualities like those, she would not be qualified to be a mother. And if you ask any woman who has children, she will tell you what a job it is to raise them.
The man has his qualities: the breadwinner, the fighter, the protector. So, all these qualities are combined, you make a wholeness. In India, there is a beautiful statue that a particular sect believes in, and if you look at the statue, you will see that it is half woman and half man. So, at the level of the God and Goddess that one aspires to and that one has reached you will find the mergence between the woman and the man so that they function, and they walk through life in that beautiful divine oneness, and where there is oneness there is no friction. It takes two to tango, as the saying goes.
THE ULTIMATE GOAL IS TO FIND TOTAL ONENESS WITH EITHER SPOUSE
So, the ultimate goal is to find that total oneness with either spouse. Speaking of myself, I could close my eyes and have Lata, my wife’s name, right before me. Totally, totally, totally, so tangible as if I could touch her. So, these things are not impossible. What makes her appear in front of me in fullness and tangibleness is not my mind; if it were my mind, it would be a projection. You can project anything from your mind. It comes from deep within; the hearts have merged. You are never total, never complete without that woman. So, the completion of a woman lies in having her beloved and the completion of the man lies in having his beloved.
So, two people cease to be two people; they become one. At first, two people walk with four legs, but in true union, they walk with three legs; they are joined together. I call it the three-legged run. The union is not only physical, although because of man’s biology and physiology, a physical union is necessary, and there is nothing wrong with it apart from what some systems talk about celibacy and all that. That is nonsense. If you had to be celibate, you would not be born with the organs that you are born with. Excess is no good. Normalcy is always good. And what are we striving for? Are we not striving for normalcy and balance? So, apart from the physical union comes the mental union.
The mental union does not necessarily mean you must have the same interests. You can have opposing interests. The husband might like soccer, and the wife might want music. It does not matter. These are just the outward actions, but what are the inner actions of the mind – writing, cooking music or hockey by the women? The man likes football or soccer, whatever the case might be. It is only an expression of the conscious level of the mind. But to go back further deeper, there is still that harmony. You do not even need to have the same beliefs. I have some friends who are meditators, and they still go to church. The husband is a Baptist, and the wife is a Catholic. So, he drops her off at her church and goes to his church after dropping her off. They do their worship, and then the husband picks her up again at her church, and they go home and live in such beautiful harmony.
WHEN FRICTIONS – FORGETFULNESS IS A GREAT GIFT GIVEN TO MANKIND
The entire world is going through friction. The supreme bond, the super-glue, is not there – ninety-nine, point nine, nine per cent of lovers or married couples have their tiffs. I said some while ago that if I should meet Marie Stopes, I would like to shoot her. She advocated sleeping on separate beds and twin beds. No good. Have a double bed, so whatever squabbles during the day can be resolved at night because it is a double bed. Just a touch, a smile, a peck on the cheek and all is gone, forgotten, forgiven.
It is easy to forgive but challenging to forget. The man or the woman would say, “I forgive you, my darling”. The woman or the man apologizes, but do they ignore it? How does one forget the little squabbles, major quarrels, or whatever have been? That can only be done by strengthening ourselves through meditation and spiritual practices. So, as I have said many times before, forgetfulness is a great gift given to humankind. If someone has wronged you, the idea of getting one back is wrong. For it does not harm the other person; it harms you more. Your mind is filled with mental turmoil, and it harms you more.
Let us take the case of jealousy. A man is jealous of his wife. Who suffers more, the man himself because he knows that this is mental agony and just when he cannot take it anymore, he would blurt out and explode, and yet the jealousy can be just imaginary. There could be nothing the reasonable woman would be doing, just imagination, and so much trouble is caused by that imagination. But if the man’s mind is strong, his thought processes are positive, and strength is gained by meditation. That green-eyed monster would not be there, and jealousy, of course, is based mainly upon one’s sense of inadequacy and insecurity that I am not worth it. There is no such thing. Everyone is worth it.
LIFE IS AN ART, AND SO IS LOVEMAKING
On a more intimate level, the man might think that I might not be physically satisfying my wife. But do you create the conditions? Do you just want to go to bed and copulate? No. If you want to go to bed at ten o clock at night, the whole love process must start here from the afternoon and not caressing each other when you are lying in bed. It is wrong. It is a gradual process from the afternoon, with little teasing and merrymaking, laughter, and togetherness, and that is how it starts. Then it builds up and builds up and builds up to a crescendo where the husband and wife want to be together, really together. Here, by building up to that crescendo, all inhibitions are lost. All self-consciousness is lost, and it is essential to get rid of the inhibitions that one has in one’s mind. The surest way to do that is meditation. During meditation, you find thoughts flowing in and out of your mind and watch them as an observer. That is how the power of those inhibitory thoughts would gradually fade away. For in lovemaking, there is no such thing as frigidity or impotence. It is just conditioning that man brings upon himself because of past experiences.
I had an occasion when someone came to see me, and he told me that he felt so inadequate because he was genetically built very small, and I said that did not matter. Life is an art, and so is lovemaking. I went into detail explaining to him and giving him confidence, and slowly, slowly, he got over that.
I am trying to point out that there are various levels, even in the bond between two people, and of course, the worst is bondage between two people. Bondage is a compulsion or something forceful or forced upon each other. While in a genuine bond, despite the petty differences, despite the petty squabbles, that love is always there, as it should be.
TRUE LOVE TAKES TIME TO DEVELOP; YOU GROW IN LOVE
So many people take things for granted. The father showed his daughter his marriage album and explained it to the daughter, a little 6-year-old daughter. This is what we looked like when we were married, and we were married in this church, and these are the pictures. He explained that they got married. So, the daughter says, “Oh Daddy, is that the day when Mammy came to work for us?” and that happens in many homes where the wife is just regarded as a maid. It happens a lot in Eastern homes; I know more so than in the West, where you are only taken to be a piece of furniture, a paid servant. People have found that if a woman should be paid for everything she does, her salary would be five figures a year, at least. An outstanding contribution the woman plays in a man’s life.
Of course, man, too, being the provider and protector, goes through so many problems in his work-a-day life, but he should not come home and pour it on his wife’s head because she has had a long day, too. One day, a man came home and found his house in a shambles. The beds were not made up; the dirty dishes were piled up in the basin; the children’s toys were lying around; the books and things were lying around, and the house was in shambles. So, when the husband came home from work, he asked, “What has happened here?” So, the wife replies, “You always say “What do you do the whole day at home? So today, I did nothing.” So here, appreciation is so important, and when a man truly loves a woman, he appreciates from his heart and not just politeness, “Oh thank you, darling, thank you honey”, and what have you. No, no, no from the heart, and when anything is appreciated at the level of love, it is deeply felt by the other person. You do not need to say thank you in words; just a glance and a look, and she will know how much she is appreciated.
This bond can go back into so many previous lifetimes. If you are very fortunate enough, the bond might start here. If two people tell me that they have fallen in love at first sight, there will not be any great truth in it unless there is a bond of the past. But who knows if there was or there was not? Let us say that two people meet each other and they say that they fall in love; ninety-nine times, I would not believe it, it is an infatuation that has occurred, an infatuation. True love takes time to develop. You grow in love.
WHEN YOU HAVE REAL LOVE, YOU LOVE GOD AND LOVE IS GOD
As the leaves on the stem grow, so does the flower. It is a combination. Can you say the leaves are apart from that stem on which the flower stands so beautifully? Is the stalk apart? No. Are the roots apart? No. It forms a wholeness, and if everything is coordinated in this variety of life, then you can indeed say that I have experienced some love. But experience the highest acme of love. The final would be when two melt away into what we could call Divinity. Godhead. Then you do not exist, and she does not exist; only Divinity exists.
Loving a woman because she is so pretty or a man so handsome is no use. When you have real love, you love God, and love is God, and that is how two people merge to find joy, not happiness, for that is temporary. For with happiness, there would be pain, but one experiences an indefinable pleasure. There is just that oneness; you can be thousands of miles apart from your beloved yet experience that oneness as if they were always near you.
ANYTHING BASED ON SELFISHNESS WILL NOT LAST
So many men try to be superior to women. So, this man goes to a bookstore and says at the counter, “Have you got a book, something like “How to Master a Woman”?” So, the attendant says, “You are in the wrong department, Sir; the fiction section is on the other side.”
We must forget the mastery of anyone. Absolute mastery is within ourselves; if your hearts are filled with love, you can attract that love. The leading cause of divorce is that it starts on the wrong footing, with selfishness and infatuation. Many a man would say, or a woman would say, “Ah, he is rich, and he can look after me; he can provide for me. I will marry him.” It is the wrong way.
This man proposed to this girl, saying, “I love you very much, and will you marry me? Remember, I am not a rich man; I am a hard-working, honest man, but I am not a rich man. I am unlike Jack, who owns a yacht, a big mansion and half a dozen motor cars. I am not rich like Jack, but I love you” “The woman replies, “Well, that is true, but tell me more about Jack.” It is selfishness, and anything based on selfishness can never last. It has to be selflessness, and then only things can last. Love is so vast; it is eternal.
You start realizing that two waves in the ocean are none other than the ocean, and when that realization dawns through spiritual practices, the two waves might go up and down, yet the inner knowledge is there that it is just but the water. It is the ocean, and one discovers when one dives a little deeper and finds calmness, for the other side of love is peace, which brings joy and calmness.
LOVE DOES NOT THINK
In a relative sense, it is very accurate that you must be considerate to others. Still, consideration also means that you have considered, you have deliberated a sure thing, and therefore, you are being polite.
You see how it is based on thinking of the mind, while love does not believe. You are considerate to your staff, you are considerate to your servants, you are considerate to this and that, and you feel fine for them. But to your wife, you must never be considerate because considerateness implies pre-thinking, and the kindness which is considerateness that comes about must be spontaneous; then, it is a mark of love without pre-thinking. You think, this morning when I left for work, she was not in a good mood, so let me take a bunch of flowers to her. Here you are reasoning, weighing up pros and cons not to make her happy but so that you could feel happiness yourself, not meeting up with a sour face when you reach home. So, you are doing it for yourself. “Oh, this will please her; we had a little squabble this morning; she burnt the toast, and I lost my temper.” So now you feel remorseful, which is good, but this is still on the ladder’s lower rungs. But if those flowers were brought home spontaneously, an impulsive act that is not thought about before for any particular result. That is love.
So, love demands and requires ease, spontaneity, and a spontaneous action where you just flow, and when you can just flow, you will find yourself more relaxed. The stress and tension go because you are flowing. Then, there is neither fight nor flight but flow, which is the mark of love. That is a mark of love.
The highest thing a man can experience is love; when you experience true love, you experience God, for God is love. You do not need to believe in a power above or a power below or divine energy; forget it for the moment, and if you merge in her or she in you, you can find that very divine energy in your beloved.
Yet the minds do not even need to think alike. They might have different interests, so why not? You can pursue your interests, you like tennis, and I like football. It does not matter at all. Love does not seek outer attractions. “I can only love a woman because she is attractive” is a misconception and a selfish attitude. For here, you would be projecting your ideal of beauty. It is your mind that has projected the ideal, and when, after living together for a little while, the ideal is not met up with, the trouble begins, divorces occur, and separations occur.
WESTERN VS EASTERN WAY OF MARRIAGE
Unfortunately, in Western countries, there is one divorce in every three, which is unfortunate. In the East, you might find one divorce every fifty thousand. In my time, all marriages were arranged; today, times have changed, and the Indians have become Anglicized. They try to become modern, so-called modern. But when marriages are arranged, those marriages at the age of fifteen, going on sixteen. My parents arranged my marriage. I was taken around to see so many girls and liked Lata. She was not allowed in the room, but the way to introduce her was by letting her bring in the tea tray; she put it down on the table, and you just glanced at her because her eyes drooped. She could hardly look at me. That is all, no conversation, nothing. She is a lovely girl. I liked her, and when I reached home, my parents asked me, what do you have to say, son? I say yes, good. Her parents asked her what she had to say. She said good, and the marriage was arranged.
It is not lovemaking courtship first and then marriage, but here it is the other way round: first marriage, and then the courtship begins. It is enjoyable, beautiful, and an exploration. In the West, they explore first, and then they get married. In my time in the East, they used to marry first and explore after, which can be done with Divinity. Through meditation, you find Divinity instantly when you are ready, and then you start exploring its various facets. But the most essential quality is this. I am married to Lata, and I accept her as my wife. She would say, “I married Preatam, and I accept him as my husband.”
LIFE IS JOY, LIFE IS LOVE, LIFE IS GOD
From acceptance, love blossoms. This acceptance nurtures it. So, when two people say they are incompatible, I am unprepared to believe it. Compatibility can be achieved if both parties are willing to do so. So, on the ladder’s lower rungs, you need a lot of understanding, patience, tolerance, and all that is required. It starts with dependence, then moves to interdependence and then to independence. They both grow in their beauty, and because they become more and more beautiful, they merge together, and real life is experienced. For life is joy, life is love, life is God. So, you see, God is experience and then life becomes worthwhile.
This young couple were in love, so the woman asked, “Darling, you say you love me so much, would you die for me?” So, he says, “No, because mine is an undying love.”
… Gururaj Ananda Yogi: Satsang CAN 1983 – 01
