Nirodbaran

Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo

Second Series

1. Spirituality

Spiritual Gurus and Marriage

Somebody writing a life of Confucius in Bengali says: “Why do the Dharmagurus marry, we can't understand. Buddha did and his wife's tale is heart-rending...”

Why? what is there [heart-rending] in it?

He goes on: “Sri Aurobindo, though not a dharmaguru but dharma-mad, has done it too...” Well, Sir?

Well, it is better to be [dharma-mad] than to be a sententious ass and pronounce on what one does not understand.

“We feel so sad about his wife, so too about the wife of Confucius.”

Poor sorrowful fellows!

“So we don't understand why they marry and why this change comes soon after the marriage.”

Perfectly natural – they marry before the change, then the change comes and the marriage belongs to the past self, not to the new one.

“The wives of Buddha and Ramakrishna felt proud when they were left.”

Then what's the harm?

“If married life were an obstacle to spirituality, then they might as well have not married.”

No doubt. But then when they marry, there is not an omniscient ass like this biographer to tell them that they were going to be or [dharmaguru or dharma-mad] or in any way concerned with any other [dharma] than the biographer's.

Well, if the biographer of Confucius can be such an unmitigated ass, Confucius may be allowed to be unwise once or twice, I suppose.

I touch upon a delicate subject, but it is a puzzle.

Why delicate? and why a puzzle? Do you think that Buddha or Confucius or myself were born with a prevision that they or I would take to the spiritual life? So long as one is in the ordinary consciousness, one lives the ordinary life. When the awakening and the new consciousness come, one leaves it – nothing puzzling in that.

27.04.1936