Only the Mother or the person can decide
Being married or not, being bachelor or spinster
How can others know, where the progress lies?
Everyone is unique here, so does the life
Who knows, how that is to be moulded, refined?
What's in store, which way will it surprise?
Till the life is trapped and follower of the Mind
Till the vital can influence, lead and drive
Irrespective of the condition, yet not touched by the inside...
The Lord does not care for this or that kind
Not going to punish or favour any such tribe
The practice to Perfection is the only life line.
"The attitude matters and not the action type"
Preached and practiced by the masters every time.
Prime condition is the inner, that's what defines.
Whichever is the relationship or the status
Important is; how much, how tight that has tied,
Or how dutiful from within to the outside.
Every inclination, preference has a hidden guide
If approached through the Mother's light
Everything turns fruitful, to leap and rise.
Be open to the Mother, be receptive sponge like
Be the aspirant ardent, a constant flame bright
Then any situation will turn to the Grace Divine.
The life is a massive opportunity to find
That buried beneath light thumb size
Grant realization to reach there and be enlit child!
O Human, be honest, humble and honour the life
Utilize utmost to climb and progress high
Live it by, by offering and surrender, to be the Divine delight...
O Lord...May all those aspirations get your light...
Thank you...
- Morli Pandya
May, 2018
In one case, he encouraged a person to get married:
It is not helpful to abandon the ordinary life before the being is ready for the full spiritual life. To do so means to precipitate a struggle between the different elements and exasperate it to a point of intensity which the nature is not ready to bear. The vital elements in you have partly to be met by the discipline and experience of life, while keeping the spiritual aim in view and trying to govern life by it progressively in the spirit of Karmayoga. It is for this reason that we gave our approval to your marriage.
* Letters on Yoga SABCL vol. 23, section on Sadhana in the Ashram and outside, p 849
In another case, he dissuaded a promising individual from marriage:
Regarding your question about a complementary soul and marriage, the answer is easy to give; the way of the spiritual life lies for you in one direction and marriage lies in quite another and opposite. All talk about a complementary soul is a camouflage with which the mind tries to cover the sentimental, sensational and physical wants of the lower vital nature. It is that vital nature in you which puts the question and would like an answer reconciling its desires and demands with the call of the true soul in you.
* Letters on Yoga SABCL vol. 23, section on Human Relationships In Yoga, p 811
A disciple, Dilip Kumar Roy, wrote a letter in 1924 to Sri Aurobindo asking certain questions regarding marriage. The answer depends on many factors, as Sri Aurobindo indicates in the following text. He outlines the three kinds of bonds which usually form in a marital union: (a) vital or physical, (b) psychic and (c) spiritual. His insights must be read with the understanding that no cut and dried answers can be given to such intricate questions.
Bonds of union between man and woman are generally of three kinds.
The first is the vital and the physical (having sex, traveling to exotic places, eating good food, socializing, making money and so on.) bond. This is very common and ninety nine out of every hundred marriages result in this type of union. This is the only possible bond among men and women of ordinary type and there is absolutely nothing wrong in it. In fact it is neither right nor wrong, but is rather necessary for them for gaining experience in their progress of life. It is also there for fulfilling a great purpose of Nature, that is, reproduction or the continuity of the race. You ask why sexual impulse is so strong in man making him almost a helpless tool in its hand. Because, as Sri Aurobindo has said, it is there placed by Nature for fulfilling her most primary and primitive purpose, that of reproduction, and it is strong in order to compel man to do it in spite of himself. For ordinary men it is the only principle and in fact the sole impulse, however man may try to cover it with his emotional and aesthetic ideas and ideals.
The second type of union between man and woman is the psychic bond. Those who are extraordinary in type, of rare refinement and culture and have a call for a greater ideal in life than the average man and woman, as for instance, for art, music, poetry, patriotism, they should seek their life companion not from sexual desires but from a higher outlook so that their union may result in this type of pure and psychic bond. In such a case of an extra-ordinary man a psychic woman alone can be his real partner of life. She alone can help him to fulfil himself and add to his power and Ananda. A wrong choice for him spells a set-back, and even ruin. A vital and physical union with a lower type of woman may blunt his aspirations and even wreck his life according as the woman is. This psychic union is very rare in the world and is so difficult to find — especially as your seeking for a partner is always coloured by your clamouring of desires and lower impulses. On the other hand, when found, your life is extremely happy and both of you grow in power and purity and may even develop the highest type of bond — the spiritual out of this psychic one. Because psychic union is so rare and a real companion of life is so hard to find for a man of higher ideal, they generally remain single.
The spiritual bond is the third and the highest and is for him who feels the true call for spiritual life and has to find his Shakti or complementary soul who will be at once his partner and guide in his sadhana(askesis). If you have spiritual life as an ideal in view, you must not seek either an ordinary woman or a mere psychic one but a woman of that spiritual type who is also psychic and something more. This spiritual bond between man and woman is still more difficult to find and only one per cent of the marriages in the world, if at all, result in such a union. When found, a spiritual companion doubles your life and power and increases your speed of progress tenfold. It is really the Purusha and Prakriti fulfilling themselves in their world and raising themselves to the Divine plane by their united power. A wrong choice in the type of one who seeks spiritual greatness is worse than in the psychic bond, the fall is swifter and the result may be fatal. Where there is spiritual union, the psychic is sure to be, but where there is psychic, the higher may not be; only in some cases the higher can be evolved out of it. But out of the lowest the highest cannot certainly come and even the psychic is hardly possible.
* Champaklal. Champaklal Treasures, pp 224-226
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 it is not enough.
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.
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, to be together, to find in every circumstance tranquillity, peace and joy in each other — that is good, that is very good, that is indispensable, but it is not enough.
To unite your minds, to harmonise 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.
Beyond all that, in the depths, at the centre, 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; it is in the consciousness of That that you must unite. To be one in aspiration and ascension, to move forward at the same pace on the same spiritual path, that is the secret of a lasting union.
* CWM Vol 14, Pg 291, Mar 1933
Flower Name: Polygonum
Knotweed, Smartweed
Significance: UNION
Vital Aspiration for the Union with the Divine
It raises straight up in an intense and concentrated movement.
