Only for Those Seriously Suffering in Relationships
Acharya Prashant: The question is from Sonali, “I got married after six years of relationship and five years of married life now. Due to contrasting personalities, my husband and I fight a lot. In April, we had a very big conflict and the police got involved. Now we are living separately and both of us are traumatized. And I do not know whether the situation will lead to divorce. I don’t want to go to the court. I don’t know what to do, I cry myself to sleep every night. He doesn’t talk to me. I love him a lot, I want him back. How to deal with the situation?”
Sonali, you want an answer, and you want an answer within the framework you have narrated to me. The framework involves attraction, conflict, repulsion, reconciliation, breaking up, patching-up. And you want to spend your life in this way? There was a time when your mind was full of romantic thoughts, and now your mind is full of anxious thoughts. In either case, the relationship is keeping your mind quite occupied and that too with the other person at the centre of all thoughts, all preoccupation.
That’s the framework of the common life in relationships. That’s the framework within which the so-called lovers operate. That’s the framework within which a married couple operates. That is also the framework within which divorced individuals operate. That framework includes everything — coming together, drifting apart, going to the court to solemnize your marriage, going to the court to dissolve your marriage, calling up the parents of the other one to beg for his or her hand, calling up the parents of the other one to threaten them with the clenched fist.
What remains common? — That you dial the same numbers and beat for contrasting purposes? Sometimes he is the prince charming on the white horse, the handsome knight in shining armour and sometimes he is the monster personified who must be accused of misogyny and harassment of all kinds and must be dragged by the collar to the police station and then to the court. One thing does not change. What is that? Your mind is full of that one person. When he is at home, you want to fight with him. When he is not at home, you worry about where has he gone. You are also apprehensive that he might be seeing someone else — applies to both genders more or less — so that’s the framework. Pretty comfortable, no?
All that we need to do is somehow tackle this problem called life, which is time, and we do not know the right solution. So, we go for these kinds of juvenile ways. If you don’t have anything proper to do with life, then just smoke it away, and this and that. Some kind of addiction we need, and there is hardly an addiction bigger than the body of an individual, I specifically said, “the body”, because there is actually not much more really to the relationship or is there? Alright, we wear, we love to wear all kinds of pretences but the woman goes after the man, the man goes after the woman. These days sometimes woman goes after the woman and man goes after the man. Whatever the case, it’s a body chasing another body or it’s a body missing another body!
It’s a top-class addiction really, fantastic, and you can remain caught in this or that, you can remain stuck in the usual cycle and the years will keep rolling past you. You will not realize when you move from fifteen to thirty, from thirty to fifty and from fifty to your death bed, and what were you doing all this while? You were busy with that person of the opposite gender. Seriously? Is he that so worthy? Or is she that worthy? Is that person really so important? What merits did you see in that person?
I did not read out the whole description you sent me, but here you are saying he is an escapist – your very words, “He is an escapist and he shies away from difficult situations.” This is the kind of person you are talking of, what great merit did you see in him then? And I am pretty sure if he’s asked to describe you, he won’t be too kind either. If that’s the assessment the two of you have of each other, shouldn’t you first ask, what is the need to worry and wonder and think so much about the other? After all, such is your affection towards each other that you really had to bring the police in between?
You don’t call the police on God, do you? “Well, we might as well. Never know.” But theoretically, at least, you call the police on the robber, you call the police on the rapist, that’s your assessment of the other person. The other person might certainly be better than your assessment of him, I don’t deny. You will argue, “Well, police were called in a moment of heat and there was really no need and we were just carried away by our emotion and anger. So, we dialled ‘100’ and police came in and we didn’t allow it to escalate and it was all cool down.” That’s fine but still, please tell me, is this the best you can do with your life? Is that person really worthy of being the centre of your universe? But look at your description, you are saying, “I cry myself to sleep every day.” Obviously, all the time you are thinking of him. He, too, must be worried, and might be, as you say, ‘traumatized.’
Why do you need to remain caged in this framework? The worst thing is, you are asking for a solution within this framework. It won’t help! All the solutions that you are potentially going to try are all within this framework. You say you are in Delhi, the fellow is in Mumbai. You will probably fly down to Mumbai and we know the rest of it. That oft-repeated menial filmy story: you go, you knock at his door and one of the three or four possible things happens. And we already know in advance what those three or four possibilities are. No fifth possibility ever exists; has it ever existed? Our movies would have already shown it. After all, the possibilities themselves are created by their movies. We are not internally allowed to go beyond the movies, are we?
There are so many things that just would not have crossed our minds or would not occur to us as thoughts or ideas had the movies not so strongly, so lucratively suggested them to us. “Can we, for a moment talk of something else, please?” And how do you know that talking about something else is any less engaging than talking about your relationship? How do you know that you, as a woman, exist just for the sake of relationships?
I do not feel very inclined towards answering your query your way, because your way is very futile. If I accept your way, I am not helping you. Why are you thinking of this person the entire day? You were once a girl, you would have read mathematics, history, science, geography, languages, didn’t you find inspiring figures there? Didn’t those books arouse fantastic ideas in you? What happened to all of that? How is it so that as an adult, as a mature woman, all you do is think of a man? What happened? Today if I ask you, who is Pythagoras or who is Pascal? Your face would draw a blank. Today if I ask you, what are the most important issues before independent India, you would say, “Well, I haven’t given a thought.”
Why aren’t you thinking of these things? Because the movies never taught you to think about these things and when I say ‘movies,’ I mean popular culture. Do you understand why the ocean waves wave like that? That’s much more exciting and engaging than continuously thinking of an average, common, mediocre man. And when I say that I don’t mean to insult the two of you or either of you.
It’s a fact of life; the majority of mankind is mediocre. I mean, you take any distribution in nature — eighty to ninety per cent of people lay on either side of the median. Who are they? They are the average folk, and most of us are average folk. Why do you want to keep thinking of a common average person who is name-less, face-less, one in the crowd, one with the crowd?
I am sure when you were younger, you thought of excellence. Didn’t you? You would have had dreams. In your dreams, were you only thinking of men? And relationships? And romantic adventures? And male features? Is that so? I don’t believe that. I am sure you are much better than that. You would have thought of penetrating the skies. You would have thought of roaming the world. You would have thought of knowing what mankind is, where we had come from, what our future is. You would have been concerned with politics. You would have been concerned with international relations. With the great events that mankind has seen. With the challenges that we all face today. No?
What happened to all of that? What happened to your love for your favourite author? One day you might have picked up a game of table tennis, a bat, or a lawn tennis racket, where is that racket? You use to love chess once upon a time, where are all the pawns? Or you have just pawned away yourself to a relationship? Tell me, please. It beats me, how one person can cling so desperately to another person, and that to someone who’s practically gone. No, I am not being insensitive, I am not being heartless. I understand what you mean by humanness.
I understand human emotions. I know memories. I know the pain and the bite of the moments you have cherished and I also know that life is enormous and it doesn’t wait for one person. It must not. That one must have a worthy goal in life, a beautiful project to be absorbed in. I see where you are coming from; most people have none of that. No goal, no project, nothing worth doing, then what is that they have? — relationships.
Their internal bulletin board has news on just one topic — what’s the topic? Relationships! And the more existentially jobless you are, the more you will be a sucker for relationships. “He looked at me; I have to prepare breakfast for Chomu. He did not look at me, where has he gone? What will happen to us? All you care for is your friends, but what about us Sona? Have you never thought about our future?”
Please! I am not mocking you; I am trying to wake you up! You gave me three reasons why you didn’t visit him in the other city. It’s quite interesting that those reasons didn’t include the Covid second wave. It does not exist for you, nothing outside the limited domain of Babu and Shona exists for you! The world might be falling apart, it doesn’t matter. All that matters to me is these days I am not with my Babu. Where is Covid in all this? Where is climate change in all this? Tell me, please. And if you are geopolitically inclined, China is making fresh advances in the eastern sector, as well as in Laddakh. Are you thinking about it? When you were a girl, with pride you use to sing Jana Gana Mana Adhinayak , and Vande Mataram was a war cry for you! Was it not? Where is all of that? Nothing! All gone! ‘Doklam’ and ‘Galwan’ (name of places which the Chinese had intruded) does not matter, only Babu and Shona matters.
You probably don’t even bother to read a newspaper, do you? Because newspapers don’t carry a picture of my sweetheart, why should I look at them? Tell me, who are the recent Noble Prize winners? You won’t know because you won’t bother, because all you bother about is the man-women business. Is that all to life? Are you watching the Tokyo games? They are broadcasting the highlights every night. How is it? But you have no time to watch the highlights of the biggest sporting extravaganza, and instead, you say you cry every night to sleep. Instead of crying, why don’t you watch the medal winners?
Australia thrashed India seven-one today, you know? In men’s hockey, why? Because probably the players were missing their ‘Sonas’ a lot. Due to Covid restrictions, the players have not been allowed to carry a lot of people and entourage. I might be factually wrong, but I just want to make a point. I am not mocking our national Hockey team and I wish them good luck in their next match. I suppose they are playing in Spain now.
Did you bother to know what happened to Vikas Krishnan? He was so well prepared, why did he lose in the first round? No. Because it doesn’t matter to you. What matters? “I’ll WhatsApp my Babu. When will the blue colour on the text appear? Why is it remaining so heartlessly grey?” So, the U.S. is pulled out of Afghanistan, what’s your opinion on it? Please, tell me. What do you think are the ramifications for India? “I don’t think about these things, Sir. No, I don’t.” Now, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the U.S. are forming a QUAD. You probably know only one QUAD — Japan, Australia, India, U.S. There is the second one in the making and it’s a pretty dangerous one. What do you think of it?
“I don’t think of it at all, as women all I am supposed to think of is: What is our future? Babu. Our future, I mean, the two of us, please.” The rest of the world can go to hell. “All that matters is me and my Babu.” The pain will remain! We are born with this body and this body has an inherent tendency to stick, we do get attached. I am not asking you to be inhuman or superhuman. Please, I do sympathise with you, and because I do therefore, I am taking the liberty of appearing a bit harsh. I know what you are going through, I have also gone through it. But one has to still keep her mind firm.
One has to know the relative priorities of various things. Yes, it will hurt; it will pinch very badly. I truly empathise with this, but fight it out, and you must know what is important. Life is not a trivial matter, love is not such a cheap thing that you can blow it away. Value your life, take care of yourself, and involve yourself in higher pursuits. This man-women game, every living creature is playing in Prakriti , don’t you know? The cow and the bull — at the bodily level, every woman is a cow and every man is a bull.
Is this what you are born for? Just to keep playing this game endlessly?
Go beyond this game. Go beyond your imagined and restrictive inner framework. Relationships are great only when they help elevate your consciousness and that’s the only purpose of relationships in life. If the relationships are not fulfilling that purpose, then relationships are just a big waste — a great drag. And I repeat, there is no better way, more effective way to waste life than to make a relationship the centre of your existence. For eternity it is a way that is tried and tested, proven and it is supremely successful. Want to waste your life? You don’t have to do anything spectacular, just pick up some random person and make him or her the centre of your life!
And now for sure, at least, this birth is wasted. I am not anti-relationship or something, I am an advocate of great and right relationships, and this is not the right relationship you are describing here. These are not the symptoms. How does one get into the right relationship? Not by searching for the right person, please. Right relationships could be definitely accidental. Involve yourself in a worthy project and then the one who helps you accomplish that project is worthy of being related to.
Move with all your might towards a great destination and then if you come across a sincere co-traveller, then that person is worthy of being related to.
Remember, you walk towards a great destination; you are not wandering around in search of a person. You are not saying, “Oh, I have a vacancy in my heart and I am looking for a sweetheart to fill it up.” You are not looking for a person. You are sold out to a purpose! And in pursuit of that purpose, accidentally, you meet or come across the right person and that’s how the beautiful relationships are born. What purpose do you have in life? And if you raised a relationship sans a purpose, you should have already known the relationship is not going to give you any joy. I am sorry if I hurt you in some way. You will most probably say I did. But try to get the core, the gist of what I want to communicate. Keep the hurt aside for a while.
I would be mighty surprised if some faces here have no questions on this topic. I was not talking to you, the person; I was talking to you, the concept. And it’s a very shared and common concept. Several of us are sold out to that concept, so please speak up. Doesn’t matter what your colour is, maroon or green or whatever. All of you are her (the questioner) in whichever gender, so speak up.
Questioner: Acharya Ji, this problem of attachment in relationships. This is something which people recognize and then they try to remedy it in various ways. Something that is there, especially in the West, people have concepts like open relationships. They say, “We will stay together at the bodily level but we will not be attached.” At a certain level, it seems to work in some sense that we have a relationship at a very bodily level but we will not be attached at an emotional level. They try to remedy it in that way.
Acharya Prashant: See, you cannot have a template-based relationship. Relationships are not commercial agreements where you define the boundaries very clearly and also the timelines and such things. A relationship has to be an exercise in greatness. As a great individual, you want to relate in a great way to another great individual. Now, why do you then want to oblige or constrain the other? Are you insecure? Are you afraid? Do you want to exploit the other? Why do you want to give the relationship a form, a name, a legal or religious structure? Why do you want to be certain in advance that the relationship will include bodily pleasure or that it will not include bodily attachment? If you are coming from the point of greatness, then let the relationship take its due course. If there has to be physical intimacy, it will come. But let it come without you making any compromise on your greatness. Wonderful! You can have kids, you can even be an entire family.
What’s the condition? Don’t deviate from your greatness! That should be your first priority. Adhering to that priority, remaining steadfastly committed to that priority, govern by that priority if you can have physical intimacy — wonderful. Greatness does not preclude anything in particular, all that greatness precludes is smallness, not sex. What is it that greatness is allergic to? — Smallness, not sex. In general, in spirituality, sex has been looked down upon because most people make sexual intimacy an exercise in smallness. Therefore, the sages and the scriptures have been so eloquent against sex.
Actually, it is not sex that they are so much against, it is the smallness that accompanies sex which is the culprit. And ninety-nine point nine per cent of the times when we touch the other, it’s the animal touch. It is a touch coming from a small place within us and it is a touch that seeks to reduce the touched one to a small entity. Therefore, sex is detested and decried. Be great and have a great relationship and then come what may. What of abstinence and what of intimacy, we don’t bother. Nothing is compulsory and nothing is prohibited.
