MARRY or Not? [Your Choice Made Simple]

Questioner: The last session was really deep and I have a confession. I asked you here because there was something really important that I wanted to talk about. The night after the sex when we got up, there was a word in the air. It was a scary word, at least for me. It’s also a very common word. And that word was marriage. And part of why I wanted this chat with you was because I knew this video would get published and it would kind of prevent that word from taking place. And then at the same time, there’s also part of me that says, “So what? Everyone else does that.”

Acharya Prashant: So, you’ve used me.

Questioner: Same centre. Once it’s a woman, once it’s a man.

Acharya Prashant: No, no, not really the same centre. In fact, it’s a good lesson here. You were using your degree, your pomp, your money almost to buy sex that night. You were using a human being’s body, a woman’s body, to satiate your lust. And now you are using me. You made a choice that day, that night, by using one person. And now you are making another choice, to use another person to reverse the previous choice, or at least to prevent the fruit of the previous choice from materializing.

To me, that tells us something very important about choices. If life is a series of choices, as we said a while back, then each successive choice has to be made in a way that it corrects the follies of the previous choice. Because obviously no choice is perfect. You have a range of options to choose from. We rarely ever choose the highest because we do not even know that there does exist a highest option to choose.

So, we make some in between kind of choice and then there comes the opportunity to make the next choice. The next choice has to be made to better the previous one. Are you getting it? Which means that choices often or probably always, have to be an act of negation. You have to choose to negate what you have already chosen. Because what you have chosen is rarely good enough and almost never the highest.

I do not know whether you would go ahead with the relationship. I do not know whether you would proceed with the marriage or whatever. That’s for two, free adults to decide. But surely, I can say a thing or two about the right kind of company, the right choice, the right centre, the right union. It’s bad enough to fall for a suboptimal thing.

That thing could be money, a car or even a person. Excuse me for calling a person a thing, but when you are using a person, the person indeed is a thing for you. The first thing, the first folly, is that you made a suboptimal choice. That’s what we all do. And then, to top it, we consolidate that choice.

We cement it and we fortify it. We make it irreversible. That’s why this word is a very, is a very important word — Marriage. You’re telling yourself that you’re making a choice that is almost irreversible. Are you so sure? What are you committing yourself to? Not that sureness is not achievable. Not that commitment is in itself a problem. But what exactly are you committing yourself to?

If marriage is another name for long term commitment, what exactly have you seen there worth committing yourself to? Have you seen anything at all? Are your eyes even open and you say, “You are entering a long-term thing” — commitment, contract, relationship, call it what you may. But it’s a fad — “Everybody does it, so will I.” And then, so that we may not be ashamed of what we have done, we say marriages are made in heaven.

It’s interesting how a part of us, instead of correcting ourselves, wants to continue the flawed and fallen self. We need to be extremely cautious. We are born with an inbuilt enemy. And almost everything that we do, we do just to feed our own enemy. It’s almost like having a disease and eating the type of food that furthers the disease. That’s how we live.

We are born with a centre of disease within us and then we live and decide and choose in a way that results in growth of the disease. Most of that which we call as growth in life is nothing but the growth of the disease within us. The tumor is growing and we say, “Wow, this year was a year of growth.” And nobody asks, “Of what.” Yes, yes, yes, there has been a lot of growth. 17.4% growth. “Sir, of what?”

Questioner: Yeah.

Acharya Prashant: You know what’s interesting? If somehow, I could have a similar discussion with the lady in question. Her story, her description, her feelings would almost mirror those of yours. You said, “The word marriage was floating in the air.” It was floating in the air for both of you. Do consider the possibility that a part of herself is equally averse to the “marriage” word as you are right now.

Do consider the possibility that when she was not paying up at the restaurant or when she was acting the way she did on Valentine's Day, a part of her knew the rottenness of it all, and she still continued with what she was doing. Just as you continued with what you were doing, in spite of knowing that all this is just rotten. So, I wish the lady were here. And now that there is. Now that there is so much clarity, I hope and the video is going to be published.

If the next time you could request her to come over and participate in this discussion, the truth would shine even more brightly. Because one human being’s story is not very different from the story of the other. At some place, we are all victims of ignorance and Maya, and we all operate from a false centre, albeit in our personal ways. You are operating from a false centre in the man’s way, and she is operating from a false centre in the woman’s way.

Questioner: And this false centre is the conditioning we are born with and we acquire from outside.

Acharya Prashant: Yeah. Yeah. Do not be surprised if she says that she is massively relieved that the “M-word” is out of the equation now. And a part of her might disagree. A part of her might have been quite happy and eager to hitch up. Which wolf to feed? If you could answer that rightly, we would be winners in life.

Questioner: But it seems like wherever I’ve gone, India, the US, Europe, seems like marriage is just thrust down your throat, that this is what you aspire to, whether you’re a man or a woman.

Acharya Prashant: When you say that, you almost say that there are things that are not thrust down your throat. In singularly picking up marriage, why are you exonerating all other institutions? Has your institution not been… Has your education, institutional education, not been rammed down your throat? Right? Is it not a matter of common desire to have a high-paying job?

And if it’s a common and shared desire, how is it truly yours? So, just as, just as we get educated in the common way; just as we have our fashion choices, our sartorial choices, our food, and dietary choices in the common way; similarly, when we turn 28 or 30, we choose what is commonly done — marriage. And obviously it doesn’t stop there.

Then you make the next common choice as well, which is to have a decent and cozy house to lay eggs in. And then you have kids, and then you do what is commonly done. And I want to ask, “How much of the individual, the true self, is there in any of this? In the sense that had you not been told that there is something called an MBA, would you have still cried aloud for it?”

In the sense that if nobody tells you there is something called water, you’d still be thirsty, right? Society doesn’t need to tell you that you need water. Your biology will tell you that you need water. So, biology is deeper than society. Now is there something deeper than even society and biology, which even biology need not suggest to you? Okay, I’ll give you an example. Can love be taught? Can compassion be taught?

The right conditions can be created for love to manifest itself. But love by itself cannot be a taught act. Mostly for us, it is a taught act. Our definitions of love, our images of love, they are all imported and imbibed images. But it is possible, at least theoretically, that even if nobody tells you what true love is, you still do come upon it. The chances are one in a million, but it still can happen.

Questioner: And by true love, you mean the aspiration to raise, rather than…

Acharya Prashant: The aspiration to rise.

Questioner: So I’m gonna… Maybe this is a smart-alec question, but didn’t you read that somewhere, or didn’t you learn that from somewhere?

Acharya Prashant: I had to unlearn a lot of things, seriously, I had to unlearn a lot of things. And I’m grateful to all the sources, the books, the people, and the experiences that helped me unlearn. And I’m helpful to that within me that had the courage to unlearn. I’m thankful to everybody, including that within me, that powered the courage. A lot of unlearning is needed, I often say you need to learn love. By that, what I mean is that you need to unlearn false love. And it’s one mighty task to unlearn false love.

Questioner: And by false love, you mean transactional love.

Acharya Prashant: The transactional love that both biology and society teach you. Society tells you, “Go for the one who has degrees, this, that, money. Biology tells you, “Go for the one who is likely to be more fertile in the reproductive sense.” Right? So, you have to unlearn both of these. You have to defeat both of these. And it’s then that true love happens. And that’s the entire purpose of life, is it not, to fall in true love and rise?

Questioner: So most, if not all of the stuff that I learned or that’s portrayed in the media, movies is just perpetuating this cycle of false love. If I were to offer this to maybe someone outside of our conversation, he or she might just not even get it. That, what is this true love that you claim to be talking about? I guess I feel that it’s such a daunting task.

Acharya Prashant: Internally, it is the urge of your consciousness to rise, rise and dissolve. Externally, it is a relationship that uplifts; uplifts both of you. So, saints, seers — they sang of love. They were talking of internal love. Your mind wants to come to a final peace. Your mind wants to rise to a final peace. This ascension they would call as their love affair with the sky.

There’s the mind at this level and the mind must rise up to that level to come to a peace. And in rising to that level, the mind just sublimates. Very little of it is left. But that’s at an abstract level. Externally, true love is about being with someone for the right reason. That someone is anybody who is either helping you be better or is getting helped to be better.

I know it sounds quite dry. It sounds very transactional. But that’s the limitation of words. When I say true love involves betterment, we have such dry images of betterment that we just cannot associate love with betterment. Love to us has to be something colourful, musical, vibrant. Whereas betterment is almost a dour, a very tasteless word.

Questioner: Yeah. Love sounds like fun. This sounds like work.

Acharya Prashant: Betterment sounds like work. Love sounds like fun. And to be honest, love is serious, hard work. And love is not really fun. You need to learn to have fun in hard work. And that’s love. In love, you start loving the hard work and the hardship that comes your way.

Questioner: Hard work, hardship. And the benefit is more peace.

Acharya Prashant: The benefit is that you are not left what you are. Not that you are not left with what you have. You are not left as what you are.

Questioner: By not left as what you are, is that reference to the forces of conditioning, the blind navigating through life?

Acharya Prashant: To see the life and the importance in that sentence — “to not to be left as one is,” one first has to see how upset and how miserable one is internally and how beautiful is one’s potential. You have to see these two things concurrently. What have I made of myself and what I can potentially be? To see what you have made of yourself, you need to be in touch with the facts of your life very, very honestly.

You need mirrors around you. And to see what you potentially can be, you require some seriously good company. If you don’t get that company in a human form, then you need the company of books. You need to see how human beings, so much similar to you, have been in the past, able to transcend their limitations and live extremely extraordinary lives. And when you know these two at once and you juxtapose these two against each other, that’s when a great dissatisfaction arises within you.

Love is very closely related to that great dissatisfaction. You just cannot summon the will to love the peaks unless you realize how badly you are down in the dumps and how it stinks there. Both these things the ego abhors. It won’t want to admit that it’s down in the dumps and it does not want to take up the effort of the laborious, long winded, steep climb to the peak.

So, we remain loveless and comfortably spend an entire lifetime without any real love. All we have to do is not admit, not acknowledge the lovelessness in our lives. Self-deception is cool, facile. And there are, you know, deceptions of all kinds. You might know in theory what we have talked about over the last 2 hours, because it is not something new. It has been spoken of again and again by the wise men over the ages. So, you know all these things.

You know, for example, that the person you sleep with must be a person who uplifts your consciousness. So, what do you do? You play a dirty and an easy trick upon yourself, knowing fully well that the primary reason for this togetherness is either ignorance or lust. You still tell yourself and the entire world that your husband or wife is your biggest inspiration in the journey of life.

And if you are interviewed, you say, “You know, I couldn’t have done what I have done without my wife at my back.” So, it appears to everybody, and probably even to yourself, that you are in the right kind of relationship. All you have to do is proclaim, declare. Who will be able to unearth the truth?

Only you really know what’s going on in your life, don’t you? And the wife has to say, “Oh, I’m so lucky I had such a great husband. He always encouraged me to rise and shine.” And when you say these things, then you feel satisfied that you have ticked another box. What is the fact of a relationship? That only you know. We are masters at this one thing — self- deception.

Questioner: So, it sounds like the word that scared me, “marriage,” is basically just the form that physical nature takes to keep itself going. And we’ve helped it by coming up with songs and movies and chocolates and apps.

Acharya Prashant: Actually, physical nature is not all that vicious. It didn’t intend to do us so much harm. If you look at the physical, the animal world, there, the male and the female are together for a while. Their biological urges bring them together in the period of mating. And then nature excuses you.

Once that mating period is over, Prakriti says, “Now the two of you can fly your own way.” What man has is a double whammy. Biological forces bring us together and social forces keep us together. In the case of animals, there is only the biological force. It brings them together, they mate; they stay together for a week, for a month, for three months, and then they’re off.

Questioner: But isn’t the human child different in that it’s very vulnerable? It can’t be left on its own. And it needs love, nurturance, and physical support.

Acharya Prashant: It needs love. Without love, what kind of nutrition or support can you give? So, first of all, the human child needs love. And if the relationship between the human male and the human female itself is not of true love, what kind of upbringing are you going to give to the child born as a result of this relationship?

Questioner: Sounds like we will just perpetuate the old cycle. So, what’s coming up for me is that this is such a revelation. My eyes are opened and just wondering, “Why is this knowledge not more widely known or taught?”

Acharya Prashant: Because our bodies neither want this knowledge nor would allow this knowledge to be common. It’s against the interest of Prakriti for this knowledge to be widespread. Prakriti wants us to breed like rabbits.

And if you are someone who understands life and self and love, you won’t oblige prakriti. You won’t breed like rabbits. You won’t dedicate your life to the wrong centre. So, there is something within us that opposes, rather militates against true knowledge. And that’s the reason why my favourite scriptures, the Upanishads, are so rarely read.

I keep talking of them, I teach them, I run courses on them. My purpose is to bring them to people. But we would read fiction; we would read this, that. Even in the name of spiritual literature, we would read garbage. And the market is full of garbage in the name of spiritual books. But we would not go to the kind of knowledge that really sets us free.

Questioner: It seems like, at least to me, this is one of the worst things in the world, that garbage is being touted as spiritual knowledge or belief. And that, people doing really stupid things, thinking that they’re doing it in peace and love and compassion.

Acharya Prashant: Most of what we call as spiritual literature or what we call as spiritual understanding; all this peace, love, compassion business and the meditation thing, as they are prevalent today, are extremely stupid. And that’s the reason they do very little to alleviate our inner suffering. They just become, just become convenient painkillers; we want to be anesthetized.

Questioner: Seems like when I came across you in Rishikesh, a lot of people come there to be anesthetized for a little bit and then go back. Stuff that doesn’t make sense, like crystals and reading charts and all sorts of what I consider nonsense.

Acharya Prashant: Crystals and cards and so many other things in the name of spirituality. And we become spiritual and we continue to remain as we are.

Questioner: Ignorant of what’s really…

Acharya Prashant: Ignorant and loveless. Loveless.

Questioner: So, I started off wanting this video to be published because I didn’t want to get married. And now I still want this video to get published but just in the hope that what you’ve shared might impact and reach other people and save them from marriage and other things.

Acharya Prashant: See, it’s not as if people need to be saved from marriage. People need to be saved from themselves. If marriage is companionship, there is a possibility that there can be a great marriage. If marriage is just another name for great companionship, it is wonderful. But then we do not know the right company. And that’s the reason why marriage is often, almost always the hell that it is.

So, it’s not one particular institution people need to be saved from. If one has understanding, if one has love, then one could be possibly beautifully married. But then the occurrence of understanding and love in an individual is just so rare. Therefore, good marriages are equally rare. What happens most of the times is that an individual, if he or she has understanding, wisdom, love, mostly sees no need to marry then.

But in case such a person does decide to marry, the marriage would be beautiful. So, it’s not the institution that’s to be castigated. We’re talking of the individual. The centre we operate from, the centre we choose from. Since we choose wrongly in everything, therefore we choose wrongly even in matters of marital union or sexual union.

Questioner: It sounds like having the intent to educate the centre is very important.

Acharya Prashant: Yes, the intent to uplift the very centre you come from. The courage to admit that you are operating way below your potential. And the thirst to rise; that has to be there.

Questioner: What’s scary, at least what sounds scary, as I listen to you, is that if I really listened, I’ve got to change how I live. And that doesn’t sound very pleasant.

Acharya Prashant: That doesn’t sound very comfortable, because it involves work. The principle in Prakriti is to take the root of least effort. If you can get it without expending yourself too much, why bother? Why bother?

So that’s the reason why the animal world does not have very deep codes of ethics. The larger animal will simply extract from the smaller animal what it needs. Within the same species, animals bully each other. The little rabbit has the carrot. The bigger rabbit comes and snatches it.

Questioner: In some way, human children are like that till they train.

Acharya Prashant: So we want it using the minimum effort possible. Why do I need to go and dig out a fresh carrot for myself? Here is the carrot and here is the smaller rabbit. All I need to do is bully it. I bully it, I get the carrot. So, we are designed to take the root of the least effort. Spiritual elevation, inner growth is some serious hard work. Therefore, the ego resists it. But then the fruits are beyond one’s imagination. So, I would recommend you go for it.

Questioner: And when you talk of these fruits, I just want to… A lot of people tout seemingly magical and mystical things as the fruits.

Acharya Prashant: No, no, no.

Questioner: And my sense is that, suggesting something.

Acharya Prashant: No, no, you won’t start levitating. You won’t start walking on water. You won’t get paranormal powers.

Questioner: Yeah, that seems to be common.

Acharya Prashant: No, no, that’s not spiritual attainment. In fact, in spiritual attainment you drop your fancy for any such thing. When you’re not spiritually evolved, that’s when you have a fancy for paranormal powers. That’s when you want to have the power to just think and heal somebody in the next continent.

So, once you are spiritually evolved you drop all this nonsense. Anybody who says that he has these kinds of powers or wants these kinds of powers is just displaying a proof of his spiritual bankruptcy.

Questioner: And again, the cruel irony seems to be that the people with the fame and the following all espouse this type of unscientific superstition.

Acharya Prashant: Yeah. Because, that’s what na. When in a loveless society, the most loveless one will be the leader, including the spiritual leader. In a society centred on ignorance, the most ignorant one, the most blatantly ignorant one will be the spiritual leader.

Questioner: Makes sense when you put it that way.

Acharya Prashant: If ignorance is your centre, who’s going to be the topmost one? The most ignorant one. The one who is not merely ignorant, but is so shamelessly and arrogantly ignorant that he wants to propagate ignorance, he is going to be the top, most spiritual guru.

Questioner: So, I know we’ve talked a lot and its getting late. But if I can ask just one last question, which is, “How do I and others do our bit to move towards true love?”

Acharya Prashant: We talked of it, right? It’s an exercise in negation. You’ll have to very dispassionately look at the choices you are living right now. And you’ll have to negate those choices by making better choices. But you cannot have any betterment without very honest, very sharp, very penetrative self-consciousness. You need to know what is really going on and you must have the guts to admit what is going on.

Questioner: Yeah. So, as they say, simple but not easy.

Acharya Prashant: Simple but not easy because we are accustomed to the complex.

Questioner: You give me a lot to think about. I will go back and sleep alone and ponder over this and…

Acharya Prashant: In case you decide in the coming few days or weeks that this video need not be published, do not hesitate to let me know.

Questioner: I don’t think that will happen, but I appreciate your offer. I want it to go viral.

show_less