Spiritual Marriage
The Purpose of Marriage
"We are waves of human consciousness"
Paramahansa Yogananda explains our exiled position in this world by using the metaphor of the ocean and waves. He writes, "We are waves of human consciousness spumed from the ocean of His consciousness. The only way to destroy human imperfection is to unite the temporarily isolated human consciousness with omnipresent God’s consciousness."
The great yogi’s message, basic to all of his teachings, is that the ultimate goal of a human being is to unite the little human soul with the great Soul, that is God. Everything else the great guru says is always in service to this ideal. Thinking people forever wonder, “What is the purpose of life?” “Why am I here?” Yoganandaji’s answer is so simple: The purpose of life is to find God. We are here to find God.
The answer is simple—but not easy. Life is complex, and unless we are very advanced spiritually as Guruji was, we need constant guidance on our path though life—even if we have a spiritual path, we find that following it still requires much study and practice.
The Mystery of Marriage
One of the great mysteries of human organization is marriage. It is estimated that half the marriages today fail. Because of such a high rate of failure, activist groups are trying to reform marriage as an institution. By blaming the institution itself, those groups are relieving those who are truly responsible for the failure of marriage: those who do not understand the purpose of marriage. Marriage should offer partners the opportunity to advance spiritually—not just materially.
Marriage offers not only the best place for raising children and offering companionship, but marriage also offers the opportunity to learn valuable spiritual lessons of love, loyalty, commitment, compassion, self-control, and self-discipline. Those who marry thinking that their companion will satisfy all of their hopes and dreams are destined for disappointment.
Sri Daya Mata says, “It is not realistic, it isn’t fair, to expect or to demand the ultimate perfection from another human being, when we ourselves are not perfect.” She also adds, “We must expect nothing from others, but much of ourselves.” Imagine the difference living by such a principle would make in this world, if we expected more from ourselves and less from others.
Reason and Feeling
Yoganandaji teaches that in men, reason is ascendant, and in women, feeling is ascendant. Perfection is a balance of reason and feeling, and both men and women need that balance. Since they do not have that balance, they can learn much from each other. A truly spiritual marriage exists when the partners are practicing a discipline that helps them seek that perfect balance of reason and feeling.
In Spiritual Marriage, a booklet from SRF’s“How-to-Live” Series, Brother Anandamoy says, “The ideal of spiritual union between [man and woman] is that man might bring out the hidden reason in woman, and that woman might help man uncover his hidden feeling.” The bond of mutual spiritual aid to each marriage partner creates the “spiritual marriage” or the highest purpose of human marriage.
Material Existence Over-Emphasized
Too much emphasis on the material level of human existence dooms a marriage, for example, when people marry for the wrong reasons, such as sexual attraction, or financial gain, or status in society. When they seek perpetual romance and do not grow into the calm, serene state of spiritual striving and when love remains on the surface and vanishes with youthful physical beauty, the marriage does not grow into a spiritual experience but disintegrates as the partners try to capture the original youthful blindness that attracted them in the beginning of the relationship.
Love must be allowed to mature and deepen into a genuine caring about the partner if the relationship is to become spiritual and not merely a physical bond.
Divorce Rate Too High
The high marriage failure rate demonstrates that many people do not try to save marriages but are too quick to seek divorce as a solution to personal unhappiness. Dr. Sidney Sharmin, a psychiatrist and marriage counselor, claims that although he has seen cases where a divorce and remarriage was helpful to some people, he has seen many more cases where the divorce and remarriage were not helpful, because the marriage partner simply carried the same problems into the subsequent marriage and ended up divorcing and remarrying many more times.
Taking Responsibility for One's Own Happiness
People many times blame their partner for their own unhappiness, and as Daya Mata has said, we can find our happiness only within ourselves, not in others, and it is unfair to blame others for our unhappiness.
Those who learn that within marriage they are provided the opportunity to practice a spiritual discipline will evolve their marriage to that exalted stated called “Spiritual Marriage.” And through a spiritual marriage, each partner has the optimum chance of reaching that real goal of each human being, uniting the soul with God.
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