Thoughts on Developing a Mature Marriage

For those starting out on the wonderful journey of marriage, here’s a perspective of depth that may help. Following are excerpts from an interview with Sadhguru Vasudev, one of the world’s most prominent spiritual leaders and a highly sought-after international speaker who has been named as one of India’s 50 most influential people. Interviewing him on the topic of marriage is acclaimed filmmaker Shekhar Kapur.

Shekhar Kapur: Sadhguru, the most talked about thing in this world is relationships, and especially man-woman love. Why is this such a challenging relationship, and is there is a potential spiritual dimension to the nature of man-woman love?

Sadhguru: There is no such thing as man-woman love, man-dog love, man-mother love, man-son love, or man-daughter love. Love is just a certain sweetness of emotion. How you arrive at is the only question. So the man-woman thing is a compulsive love affair. Nature is pushing you towards each other because nature is interested in only thing, in perpetuating herself. If somehow nature doesn’t put a man-woman together, you and me wouldn’t be here. This is one love affair chemically supported by nature. All the other love affairs are not chemically supported by nature. But unfortunately, once the chemistry runs out, [some couples] wonder why the hell they are together. So before the chemistry runs out you’re supposed to establish a different level of conscious love affair, which is beyond the chemistry. If that doesn’t happen, it turns ugly.

Shekhar Kapur: So what is that love affair which is a conscious love affair? When the chemicals don’t react anymore, what reacts? What makes it work?

Sadhguru: The bodily chemistry plays up certain things according to its needs. That is nature’s trick. Very few individuals have the necessary awareness to look beyond that at life. Everybody else gets flooded by this process. By the time they recover usually it’s too late. There’s nothing wrong or right, it’s just limited—that’s all. Is being limited a crime? No. But the nature of the human being is such he suffers limitations. There are many angles to this relationship—social, physical, psychological and emotional. We form relationships with a variety of people in our lives—business relationships, personal relationships, and professional relationships—to fulfill different types of needs or to fulfill somebody else’s needs. But what you refer to as love is just the sweetness of your emotion. You can use another person to stimulate that within you or you can have it on self-start.

Shekhar Kapur: So it’s possible for two people, if they’ve been together beyond the chemistry or the hormones, to be self starters, to be starters for each other and continue that relationship? Do you see value in people staying together for so long in a marriage, beyond duty, beyond [the fact that] we have children?

Sadhguru: There is a certain beauty in two human beings weaving their lives as one. If you have to really be with somebody you have to give up a part of yourself in some way. So the English expression, “falling in love,” is very significant. Falling means some part of you has to go to accommodate another, which is a good thing for a human being to do, that he doesn’t think too much of himself. Somewhere you have to surrender a part of yourself to be in a love affair. In that sense it’s a very beautiful thing.

Shekhar Kapur: But in this weaving, as you called it, is it possible for you to be with another person that becomes, I’m just guessing here, a conduit towards your own self-realization?

Sadhguru: It is definitely a possibility but it’s a risky possibility. (Laughs) You may just get entangled and lost in so many complexities of the relationship rather than finding the ultimate nature. So that is why in India when we got people married, we tied what’s called a Mangalsutra. Today it’s just a ritualistic thread but that’s not how it originally started. There is a way of taking a strand of energy from you and your partner and tying it up in a certain way so that beyond your logic, your understanding, your psychological, emotional and physical needs, somewhere deep inside two beings are tied together. So a lot of people cannot understand how these two people are together, because nothing seems too common in them but still they’re like one because at another level they’re tied up. This can happen because of the physical proximity and the intimacy of the whole relationship but even before you start it we have a whole technology as to how to tie up two lives together. So we always said this is a lifelong thing you cannot break it. If you break it you have to tear two lives apart. It was not just an arrangement, it was a kind of a union. Thirty years ago every song in Bollywood was about “janam janam janam.” Now they’re talking expiry date. (Laughs) So the whole context of relationships has changed, which is sad because the profoundness of being with another being has been lost in this. When it’s all about yourself you will not know the beauty of life. If both the people think it’s about the other person, it’s a beautiful place to be.

Inner Engineering, a special 3-day course conducted personally by Sadhguru, will be offered in Atlanta April 19 to 21, at the Georgia International Convention Center in College Park. Whether for marriage or for life in general, the Inner Engineering event is a life-transforming program to bring your entire system into alignment so that your body, mind, emotions, and energies function in harmony. To register or for more information, please e-mail register@innerengineering.com, or call (678) 390-ISHA.