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Growth Online

Family and Marriage

Knowledge Base

by Roy Posner and MSS

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Family Marriage Love

 

 

Family
(top)

Origins & Purpose of the Family | Family Happiness (as Harmony, Romance, & Spirit)

The Change in, End of the Family | Parent/Children Relations | Miscellaneous
 

Origins & Purpose of the Family

Origins of the Family
Man was living all alone like an animal on fruits and grains. He was his own self, i.e. selfish. He was a unit by himself, not a member of an organised collectivity. If there was a collective, it was a gregarious collective. He was moved by physical sensation of survival, hunger, and sleep. Thought was not needed, it was not born. Man was a physical individual, urged by physical sensations, mastered by the physical environment. The collective he was in was not a social collective, but a biological one.

He started agriculture to produce his own food. By this time, he was part of a socially organised collective community that settled down to a work which was learnt mentally. The single individual now expanded into an individual family. Man who was moved by his own hunger was now moved by the hunger of his family, which he did not feel but understood. (MSS)

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Origins of the Family

• In the earlier species, there was no family of a mother taking care of the offspring until they were weaned away. The male protected the female during the weaning period.
• Family was thus created and became the extended joint family, a unit of the group, because of the necessities of agriculture. Farming needed that social base. (MSS)

Origins of Society & Division of Labour
The origin of family is the division of labour and the first signs of the future birth of the society. (MSS)

Duty a Basis of Family
Duty born out of physical attachment is the basis of the family. (MSS)

Family is First Glimmer of the One Body that is Representative of the Spirit

• The birth of DUTY is the birth of values.
• In that sense, the birth of the family is the first inkling of spirit in life.
• Sri Aurobindo says there is only one body in the world which the ego perceives as many bodies.
• Family and its birth is the earliest recognition of that one body. (MSS)

Family & Sociological Evolution
When the biological evolution matures into sociological evolution, the first appearance was the family. (MSS)

Family as Beginning of Organized Society
Family's coming into existence is the beginning for an organised society. (MSS)

Family as Foremost Social Institution
Social evolution is the growth of social institutions. Family is the foremost of them. Marriage makes family possible. (MSS)

Family & Society
Family, the formation of the family, was the beginning of the society. Perhaps it was the first civilizing influence on  man, an impulse to transform selfishness into selflessness. Family is to the society what act is to the organization.   Family is the first organized unit of the society. (MSS)

Family as Miniature of Society
To consider the family as a miniature whole of the whole society. This view is not there in the world today at all. (MSS)

The Child, Family, and Society
The child through the family gets into touch with the society at several points. (MSS)

Our Values and the Family
The values that enable him to accomplish his goals are primarily given by the family and secondarily by the school education. Later his job supplies a few and on his own chooses or learns a few more. (MSS)

Family Imparts Psychological Skills
Family imparts psychological skills, schools the mental skills and job the work skills, human interaction social skills. (MSS)

Our Attitudes and Family
We are filled with the attitudes that we acquire from our family, friends, and the environment.

School, Family, Society
The school is an intermediary between the family and the society. It is in a position to help the child equip himself with most of the outer and inner endowments. (MSS)

Schools & Family
In certain ways, the school is beginning to replace the family. (MSS)

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Society Developing the Individual of the Future
It is obvious now that the society which educates the individual is well on the way to "develop" the individual in future which function was essentially discharged by the family till now. (MSS)

Man is Weaned by Family the Longest of All Mammals
-Man being the most developed mammal takes the longest period for being weaned away from the family.
-Not only the weaning period lengthens in Man, but the family gets extended developing physical attachment and vital proximity. (MSS)

 

Family Happiness (as Harmony, Romance, & Spirit)

Family Happiness
Family happiness is a sensational product of socially harmonious emotion. (MSS)

Non-Domination & Happiness
Absence of the motive to dominate the other is the eternal source of everlasting happiness. (MSS)

Harmony
All problems in life, are problems of harmony. (Sri Aurobindo)

Quieting Quarrelsome Families with Harmony Flowers
Quarrelsome families become QUIET when harmony flowers (Coral Vine) are brought in. (MSS)

Domestic Happiness
Domestic happiness is a social problem that is solved in the psychological plane. (MSS)

Subtle Gesture that Overcomes Disharmony in Still Walking

Family problems can be deep and troubling. Sometimes they are intractable for years, or even a lifetime. Each individual can find himself stuck in a rut that perpetuates family misery and disharmony. And yet a single insight or gesture on the part of one individual can not only change the immediate conditions for that family member's immediate circle, but can set in motion a wave of goodwill that envelops everyone, reversing circumstance and feelings from the conflicting and contradictory to its opposite.

We see a magnificent example of this dynamic in the recent Japanese film Still Walking. There family members come together to commemorate the death of the eldest son, Junpei, who drowned accidentally 12 years ago. The relatives arrive at the home of the elder father Kyohei, a retired doctor who lives with his wife on a hillside overlooking the spectacular seaside of coastal Japan.

Unfortunately, there is deep psychological misery in the family, not only because of the earlier death of the eldest son, but because of Kyohei's deep resentment toward his younger living child Ryoto who has failed to follow in his footsteps as a doctor. Worse than that, Kyohei has deep resentment toward Ryoto because he feels he has little of the capacity for success that his deceased older son had. In turn, that causes Ryoto to have a deep inferiority complex, which together creates great tension between the two at the family gathering at the parents' seaside home.

Meanwhile, the elder father Kyohei's wife also has questionable feeling about Ryoto's marriage, since he married a divorcee, indicating her prejudice in this regard. In fact, her feelings make Ryoto feel that much more anxious and self-doubting. In addition, the wife also has a difficult relationship with her constantly despondent and bitter husband, Kyohei, mostly over the death of their son. Only the elder couples' daughter, as well as Ryoto's unassuming and pleasant wife Yukari show genuine cheerfulness and goodwill amidst the gloomy family situation.

Now comes the key moment in the story. It is a subtle one, easily missed.

In one scene, Ryoto's wife Yukari and her little son are together in the bedroom talking. She sees that the little boy is indifferent to his step-father Ryoto, and longs for his real father through Yukari's earlier marriage. However, understanding his feelings, Yukari gently tells him that she and her first husband are the two parts that make him the whole that he is, comforting the young child greatly. She then tells him that he should also open himself up to his step-father, Ryoto. Yukari presents this in an endearing and humorous way that charms the little boy, causing him to want to reconcile with Ryoto. Yukari's tactic has proven eminently successful.

Well, at that that very tender moment, Ryoto serendipitously walks into the room, and sees the affection on the face of his little step-son for perhaps the first time, giving Ryoto a deep sense of well being. Soon after Ryoto tears up an old letter that he wrote as a child in which he narrated how he wanted to be a doctor, which is a symbol of his current failures in his career, and all that is wrong with his relationship with his father. In essence, he has now changed his attitude for the better, a direct outgrowth of his son's new born affection toward him.

The ripple affect continues when soon after Ryoto and his father meet on the beach, where the elder, retired doctor out of thin air suddenly changes his attitude toward his only son. It is a subtle response from life to Ryoto's attitudinal shift. This then has the effect of energizing Ryoto's life further, which enables him to shed his past failures and achieve mightily in the years that follow.

In the final analysis, a strong, deep bond amongst all of the family members takes root, a startling reversal from what was there before.

As we see, one simple gesture of understanding and kindness can start the ball rolling and attract a series of circumstance in which years of resentment and bitterness are overcome for an entire family. Yukari's gentle gestures instigated and attracted a procession of outcomes that reversed a near lifetime of family travail.

What can we do if we find ourselves in similar circumstance? For one, through an increasing higher consciousness, we can use our subtle sense to identify that single behavior or attitudes or value that will moves our immediate relationship situation one step to the positive, as Yukari did when she spoke so kindly and insightfully to her once embittered child. Sometimes the key will require an act of self-givingness on our part. Other times, it necessitates an attitude of psychological strength. There are other situations still where the key is simply not to react to another's intensity. These and other inner tactics will certainly prove effective, and have the added benefit of attracting powerful positive conditions, as it did in the case of the Yokahama family.

There are thus a variety of practical psychological methods of overcoming family strife and acrimony. There are also spiritual approaches we can take. For example, one particularly powerful method is to simply offer the entire matter to the spiritual Force, which will tend to on its own break the logjam and acrimony and conflict, while attract powerful positive outcomes. In tandem with the right psychological approach, life will completely reverse in ways one could never have imagined.

By the way, these psychological and spiritual methods to change contradiction into harmony is not only effective for family situations, but for any collective, whether it is a business, in politics, or any other group association. It also works for personal relationships between spouse, friends, and others.

In the final scene of this uplifting film, we observe the elder Kyohei's and his wife "still walking" on the steep hillsides overlooking the beautiful coastal region, now finally rid of decades of bitterness and strife.

Family Happiness through the Romance of the Spirit
If each of us in the family live in Spirit, there can be endless wonder, joy, Romance of living, which can create the greatest possibility for family happiness. (MSS)

Family Happiness + Romance
-Romance is the sensation of adventure in an ever-fresh atmosphere.

-In the combination of family happiness, which is a social emotion, with Romance that is the evolutionary sensation that seeks everlasting intensity, we have a very fertile field of action even though our evolution is social. (MSS, extracted)

The Family Can Offer Spirit, Brahman View
At its very best, a family can give its members the maximum the society can offer. It can go further too. It can show him Brahman. (MSS)

Creating Inner Joy in a Family
Any Westerner who creates a family or an institution that is inwardly joyous and outwardly a shinning star, serves this cause. (MSS)

One Who Can Make a Family Great
If one in the family takes up the role of making everyone get the maximum out of the family, he can raise his family to be the number one family is his world. (MSS)

Non Preference for One Child
When one does not show preference for one child over another, it is a sign of culture.

The Change in, End of the Family

The Profound Relationship Between Love and Pain
Pain itself is the reverse form of Love. In ordinary words, Life permits Arjuna [in the Gita] to express his intense love for Bhishma [who is on the other side and must be killed for Arjuna's side to prevail] by shooting arrows at him.
 
What kind of philosophy is it? It is practical philosophy seen in life more than once. When we meet it, we are baffled. As long as we do not understand it, Love comes to us as Pain. The moment right understanding dawns on us, Love comes to us as Love. The pain is in our lack of understanding, called Ignorance. Ignorance is Pain, knowledge is Love. (MSS)

Great and Noble Sacrifice of Family Members
Sacrifice is a yogic principle. It is said it is a principle that relates man with God. The material sacrifice parents undertake for children is great. The psychological sacrifice children undertake in affectionate families for the parents is noble. (MSS)S)

Change from Joint to Nuclear to Single Parent Family
Now the joint family is yielding place to nuclear family and even a single parents family.  (MSS)

The End of the Family
As marriage and property have to go, the family is on the way out to a great extent. (MSS)

Family Shrinking, Disappearing in the West
The institution of family is shrinking and disappearing in the West. (MSS)

The Change & Future of Marriage & Family; Effect on Children
Children are the most important issue of a marriage.
Socially without the institution of marriage life could not be regulated in the earlier centuries.
Today because of hundreds of government measures to protect the individual, Man can materially survive.
Social services of innumerable kinds have replaced the essential role of a family created around marriage.
In the countries where marriage is on the wane, though Man is materially secure, it is obvious he is like a rudderless ship. At the age of 88 Robert MacNamara married, five years before his death.
Living together for decades with several partners still does not give the psychological security marriage affords.
As long as property is honoured, marriage has a role to play.
Marriage is essential for Man as a psychological institution.
Woman may not need it as much as Man needs. Cultural upbringing of children is entirely out of question in a single parent family. Children directly walk into the centreless social wilderness to entirely destroy themselves.
Out of thousands so degenerated, one individual emerging is Nature's way.
Man who has supplanted Nature in all fields, can do so here also.
Humanity has not embarked on that experiment yet. Even at the level of thought, there is no clear idea still. The father himself cannot be replaced for the children. How is the mother to be substituted?
Steve Jobs was an orphan, but was brought up in a family.
His life, apparently a shining success, is an intense psychological sore which is seen in his being ejected by his own company and cancer.
Children cannot be deprived of parents until humanity is generally capable of a love that is the milk of human kindness. (MSS)

Parent/ Children Relationship

Children's Qualities of Parents

Our Qualities in Our Children
We find more of our qualities in our children. 2. We find a certain quality in us non-existent in them. 3. We find the very opposite quality of ours in them. This is so because characteristics are not fully developed in one birth. When they are fully developed one becomes indifferent or longs for the opposite. (MSS, slightly modified)

What Our Children Represent Relative to Us
Children represent 1. what you are, 2. what you are not, 3. what you really are, but don't want to express. (MSS)

Traits & Skills in Successive Generations
Any trait or skill or attitude has a tendency to grow in subsequent generations, so we say, as is the father, so is the son. (MSS)

Reversal of Trait in a Family
When the particular trait is fully experienced by the being of the family, it readily reverses into the opposite. (MSS)

 

Parent's Attitudes to Children

Attitudes of Parent to Child

Inheritance is a starting point for the soul's progress in this life. Whatever that inheritance, the soul can make the maximum progress in an atmosphere of freedom, truthfulness, affection, tolerance and self-giving.

The greatest gift we can give to our child is not to insist that they are like us, not to impose our values on them. When parents aspire genuinely to embrace the highest values in their own lives, lead by example and give the child freedom to express and become what they are, the lower inherited impulses have an opportunity to work themselves out and the higher potentials of the child can emerge. It is not by instruction that parents can best help their children. It is by example. It is not so much by words and deeds as by inner attitudes -- which get communicated subtlely -- that the best can be given. It is not by being overly protective but by being sincerely responsible. When the parents aspire for their children to receive only the best they have to offer, that aspiration can also attract other positive influences into the life of the child.

Many parents praise their own virtues and condemn the bad influence of their partner. A spouse who accepts his/her partner harmoniously without complaint or reaction and learns to bring out the best in the partner creates the best atmosphere for the blossoming of the child. (MSS)

 

Effect of Non-Attention to Childern
Parents are all the children have. When no attention comes from them, they dry up.
Children are very sensitive to attention.
The child directly becomes refractory when no attention is forthcoming.
Full attention makes a dull child brilliant.
Attention is energy.
Existing intelligence energized stands out.
Children have an accurate knowledge of the attention they receive.
They know what the parents expect and exactly refuse to do it because no attention is received.
It starts as a conscious protest and ends as a subconscious character. (MSS)

The Wrong of Child Partiality of Parent
Partiality to any child is ruinous to other children.
Insufficient energy to attend all children becomes selective partiality. ...

Absence of broad-minded magnanimity leads to partiality.
Partiality is a pride in being able to be selective. (MSS)

Children Asserting their Individuality
With the passage of time, children wean themselves away earlier than is good for them as an exercise in Individuality.
Encouraging Individuality indirectly leads to the child being unemotional and dry.
That way individuality ends up in selfishness. (MSS)

 

Ignorance of Child to Parent; Parent to Child

Parents and Children Not Understanding One Another
No child can understand a parent adequately.
Parents are incapable of understanding their own children.
Any issue fully understood leaves no grievance in our Minds.
Grievance is ignorance formulated as a mental comprehension. (MSS)

Parents and Children's Unawareness of One Another
Children are not fully aware of the inadequacies of parents as they are unaware of their endowments.
They relate to parents from their point of view.
Parents rarely are aware of the aspiration of the children.
What stands in the way is ego and practical ignorance.
This ignorance is the rich field for realising the divine riches.
Such knowledge opens the Marvel. (MSS)

The Change & Future of Marriage & Family; Effect on Children
Children are the most important issue of a marriage.
Socially without the institution of marriage life could not be regulated in the earlier centuries.
Today because of hundreds of government measures to protect the individual, Man can materially survive.
Social services of innumerable kinds have replaced the essential role of a family created around marriage.
In the countries where marriage is on the wane, though Man is materially secure, it is obvious he is like a rudderless ship. At the age of 88 Robert MacNamara married, five years before his death.
Living together for decades with several partners still does not give the psychological security marriage affords.
As long as property is honoured, marriage has a role to play.
Marriage is essential for Man as a psychological institution.
Woman may not need it as much as Man needs. Cultural upbringing of children is entirely out of question in a single parent family. Children directly walk into the centreless social wilderness to entirely destroy themselves.
Out of thousands so degenerated, one individual emerging is Nature's way.
Man who has supplanted Nature in all fields, can do so here also.
Humanity has not embarked on that experiment yet. Even at the level of thought, there is no clear idea still. The father himself cannot be replaced for the children. How is the mother to be substituted?
Steve Jobs was an orphan, but was brought up in a family.
His life, apparently a shining success, is an intense psychological sore which is seen in his being ejected by his own company and cancer.
Children cannot be deprived of parents until humanity is generally capable of a love that is the milk of human kindness. (MSS)

 

Miscellaneous

Husband & Wife's Knowledge & Submission
-Knowledge of one comes to another whose submission to him is total.
-A husband cannot hide any information from a wife who is truly devoted to him. She would know automatically. (MSS)

Privileges and the Family
Privileges were originally for the leader only. Then the rights got extended to his family -- royal family. Later it was for the nobles and aristocracy, now it is the upper middle class. Finally it must be for all. (MSS)

Lack of Integration of Education with Family/Society
We see that education is not systematically merged or integrated with family or society, as employment is merged with family. (MSS)

Limits of Family on Individual Born Free
Man is born free in his soul, but he grows into the various occupations as his mind accepts consciously the limiting emotions of the self, the family, etc. (MSS)

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Untitled
The fashion in which one levels off will be determined by 1) the family, 2) the society, 3) fashion of the hour, 4) our own preferences, 5) available energy, et. Instead of all these determining our future, our own decision to progress should decide at each moment. (MSS)

Untitled
A young man entering life sees he earns and supports the family. He is unable to see that the family fashioned his life and is still making his life possible, because he is selfish as well as looking inside. (MSS)

The Family's Relationship with Member Who Does No Good

• Family is an institution which supports the crimes a member commits and which makes him condemned by the society. In other words, what the society condemns, the family condones.
• That is the essence of the family.
• It is done by personal affection, collective responsibility and a patience that has no end.
• In practical fact, if one member is dissipating and destroying the family, others who work hard and earn deny themselves the necessities and give him the money or material required for dissipation.
• It can be done only with family and friends, not with others.
• Family cannot emerge if this attitude is not there.
• The family must have a patience till the erring member realises on his own and reverses his attitude.
• In all cultured families, the struggle of the elders and other members to practise that is called family culture.
• In other words, one has to appreciate what he understands to be the most horrible fact.
• That is the freedom the family can give.
• Therefore, family is an essential unit of society. Now family is on the way out. (MSS)

Family Supporting Child Internally through the Internet
What Internet does externally to the mind, the teacher, the school or the family can do to the child internally, if they fully appreciate the evolutionary role of Internet in the lives of men. (MSS)

Cultural Transmission by Family in the Process of Social Development
-There are three essential stages in the process of development. In the first stage the society is prepared to move to a higher level of development through its surplus energies, awareness of possibilities, and its aspiration to see the possibilities through. In the second stage pioneer individuals in society express the aspiration in various ways. Finally, in the third stage the initiative of pioneering individuals are accepted, organized, and integrated in society.
-At an even more advanced stage in the maturation of a new social activity, the family assumes an active role in its propagation. Once a new activity has been accepted as desirable by wide sections of the population, families assume an increasing role in equipping the next generation with knowledge, skills and attitudes supportive of the activity. When an activity has matured to the point that family plays a very active role in its transmission, the activity has become a part of the culture of the society. (MSS, extracted)

MSS Articles on the Family
Formula for Family Happiness
Family and Mother's Truth
Peaceful Domestic Happiness 
 

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Marriage
(top)

Biological Mating vs. Romance
The biological mating in which stench and strength are factors grows sophisticated when beauty rises to become one aspect. Its purpose is to get the male to walk into marriage. It is functional. Romance is what man has made for his own self. (MSS)

Marriage
Marriage is a biological, social, psychological activity. (MSS)

Man and Woman in Marriage
Man is not the centre of marriage, but woman is. He needs her for his psychological fulfillment. He is fulfilled in her, while she has been traditionally fulfilled in her children. (MSS, somewhat altered)

Idealism is Born of Spirit when it Survives Employment & Marriage
We are idealistic in youth. Gaining employment and marriage releases us from our vision and idealism. Idealism that survives both of these landmarks is an idealism that is born in the Spirit. In the measure one is rooted in the Spirit, the Spirit offers him a job that does not interfere with his idealism. The same Spirit gives him a wife who lets him follow his ideal. (MSS, somewhat paraphrased)

Not to Dominate and Happy Marriage
-Absence of the motive to dominate the other is the eternal source of everlasting happiness.

-If there is a couple - where one tries to dominate the other partner and spoils the marriage, they can well be contrasted with another couple who struggle NOT to dominate each other and who make their marriage a happy one. (MSS, extracted)

Keys to Lasting Marriage, Love Relationships
Not to try to change, to dominate, to complain about one's partner; and to listen, support, and in general to create harmony between the two of you are keys to lasting love relationships, including marriage.

Love vs. Marriage
You have made a valid and essential distinction between love and marriage. Love is a psychological condition of deep emotional attraction to another person. Marriage is a social arrangement which may or may not be supported by shared emotion. The two are often confused but distinctly difference. Love can lead to marriage, in which case it often disappears. Marriage can and often does exist without love, but in rare instances can mature into a deep abiding love. Friendship, familiarity, acceptance of the other person, enjoying their company, security, sense of belonging come through marriage, but none of them are essential or sufficient for love. (MSS)

Romance Ends with Marriage
Romance, however intense or long, ends with marriage is the human experience. ... Marriages last because of social compulsion, particularly because of children. Romance vanishes into thin air. (MSS)

End of Romance and Marriage
Romance is said to die when it is organised into marriage. What dies is not Romance, it is the dead organisation that gives life to its death. (MSS)

Love and Marriage
Sri Karmayogi indicates that love and its Romantic Adventure essentially ends with marriage, as the biological and social imperative takes over. Yet that does not have to be the case. Marriage can however blossom love eternally in marriage if one moves to ever higher levels of harmony with one's partner. That begins through ever-increasing self-givingness and the removal of all demands on the other. This enables us to move up the scale of romance, enabling a marriage that is long lasting and deeply fulfilling. All of this is brought together as a process to be followed at Appa's new, extraordinary site RomanceEternal.

Romance and Marriage
Normally, romance ends when marriage begins. But it does not have to be.

Growth by Overcoming Difficulty with Partner
A cantankerous spouse is an instrument of perfection. Especially when the husband seeks psychological fulfillment from the wife, she not only withholds it but stings at that point the offending aspect of his character. No one else can do him that service this effectively. When another does he can avoid them, not the wife. (MSS)

Harmonious Relationship in Marriage
In short we can say "Love is two hearts with one song."

If both the partners tastes and interest go together, there is a beautiful Blossoming of Harmonious Marital life. But it is not practically possible after marriage as each others negatives come to light only when we practically start marital life.

He also touches the other possibility that only opposite characters unite in marriage. It is possible to accept the opposite and bring harmony. only thing needed is clear understanding and extreme patience.

This is possible in true friendship because it is not a committed relationship. Karmayogi says "If we can bring about the same mindset of accepting our partner's faults as a reflection of us, sure there is a lasting harmonious relationship." (from karmayogi.net forum)

Harmony Scale in Romance
Romance succeeds in or out of marriage when there is ever increasing harmony. It ranges in a ten stage scale from abhorring opposite traits to adoring them.

Harmonious Romantic Relationships
The first rule of harmonious romantic relationships is non-reaction. Another is infinite patience. A third is never to complain. Any of these will attract positive conditions.

Life is Stronger than Human Love
We see the phenomenon that life [as in life's circumstances, the requirements of marriage, having children, etc. - editor] is stronger than love. Spiritually, love is always stronger than life. Here the person is unable to offer either the seriousness or intensity required of love. Hence it is overcome by the passage of time. The person wears out, not life. (MSS)

Failure of Marriage Due to Unexpected Demand for Psychological Satisfaction
Marriage was a social institution formed to rear the children but man sought from it psychological satisfaction. When it did not respond to his expectations, he broke it. Now he does not know where to turn. (MSS)

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Love & Marriage of People at Comparable Plane
I spoke of four levels, two on the surface and two in the depth. They can be called levels 1, 2, 3 and 4 for convenience. Those persons in level 1 are in the surface of the surface mind, those in 2 are in the depth of the surface, those in 3 are in the shallow depth or the surface of the depth and those in 4 are in the depth of the deep-seated Mind.

When people in one level fall in love with people in the same level, life is smooth, their aspirations are fulfilled to rounded perfection. They are the successful marriages socially as well as psychologically. If both are serious, they are sedately happy. If both are silly, they find extreme happiness in silly pleasures, but they are happy. If people in one level fall in love with people in other levels, apart from the social problems they encounter, they meet with inner psychological obstacles. (MSS)

The End of Marriage in the World
As marriage and property have to go, the family is on the way out to a great extent. (MSS)

Marriage's Usefulness Ending in West
Now society in the West has outlived the usefulness of marriage, but not the wisdom of Nature. (MSS)

The Change & Future of Marriage & Family; Effect on Children
Children are the most important issue of a marriage.
Socially without the institution of marriage life could not be regulated in the earlier centuries.
Today because of hundreds of government measures to protect the individual, Man can materially survive.
Social services of innumerable kinds have replaced the essential role of a family created around marriage.
In the countries where marriage is on the wane, though Man is materially secure, it is obvious he is like a rudderless ship. At the age of 88 Robert MacNamara married, five years before his death.
Living together for decades with several partners still does not give the psychological security marriage affords.
As long as property is honoured, marriage has a role to play.
Marriage is essential for Man as a psychological institution.
Woman may not need it as much as Man needs. Cultural upbringing of children is entirely out of question in a single parent family. Children directly walk into the centreless social wilderness to entirely destroy themselves.
Out of thousands so degenerated, one individual emerging is Nature's way.
Man who has supplanted Nature in all fields, can do so here also.
Humanity has not embarked on that experiment yet. Even at the level of thought, there is no clear idea still. The father himself cannot be replaced for the children. How is the mother to be substituted?
Steve Jobs was an orphan, but was brought up in a family.
His life, apparently a shining success, is an intense psychological sore which is seen in his being ejected by his own company and cancer.
Children cannot be deprived of parents until humanity is generally capable of a love that is the milk of human kindness. (MSS) 

Man Seeking the Feminine Principle
Man in seeking another woman lands exactly on a woman of the same temperament.
Man seeks his mother in his wife.
That is the reason why the mother and wife do not agree.
More than the mother, Man seeks the feminine principle that is his complement.
Ultimately he is trying to bring out the feminine principle in himself.

He becomes the female to God. (MSS)

 

Marriage and Beyond
Nature that acts through the society does not want the rejection before the experience is gained.

Marriage is one of those devices.

Now society in the West has outlived the usefulness of marriage, but not the wisdom of Nature.

Man in seeking another woman lands exactly on a woman of the same temperament.

Man seeks his mother in his wife.

That is the reason why the mother and wife do not agree.

More than the mother, Man seeks the feminine principle that is his complement.

Ultimately he is trying to bring out the feminine principle in himself.

He becomes the female to God. (MSS)

 

The Shining Face of Men
The face of an unmarried bachelor in middle age will often shine compared to the world-weary look of a married man. On the other hand, a man deeply in love with spouse, married or otherwise, will have an innocent, soft, sublime look that will not fail to charm. They are each rare indeed.

The Power of a Wife's Goodwill
Sri Karmayogi says that wives can play a very powerful role in the advancement of their husbands. He says if a woman is truly devoted to her husband and prays for him to get a lot of money that money will move towards him with astonishing speed. He is not confining the amount to thousands and lakhs. He says even crores can move towards a man if his wife wishes him to receive money of that volume.

I know of a few devotee husbands who openly acknowledge that they have risen in their career and have earned a lot of money only because of their wives' good will and only because the punya they have earned by doing service to Mother at centres comes back to them as riches for their husbands as that is what they are praying for. It is a pity that so many husbands and wives do not even know the power of marital good will and are wasting the power of good will by indulging in petty quarrels and ego clashes.

One of the reasons for Gandhiji to become a Mahatma is the loyal devotion and cooperation he got from Kasturibhai his wife. Roosevelt became 4 times president of the U.S.A though he was stricken with polio mainly on the strength of his wife Eleanor Roosevelt's patient and untiring care for her husband.

Napoleon's wife Josephine was a flirt who indulged in affairs behind her husband's back. But Sri Aurobindo says that when he divorced her for being childless, he lost his crown and was imprisioned. According to Bhagwan Josephine was the bringer of fortune into Napoleon's life and it was a foolish thing for him to reject her for being childless.

The good will can work in the reverse also. M.S.Subbhulakshmi's rise to eminence in carnatic music was due in a great measure to the support and cooperation of her husband Sadasivam. Queen Victoria attributed the success of her long reign to the good will of her husband prince Albert. (N. Asokan, MSS)

Devotee couples should fully realise the power of mutual good will and reap the full benefit of mobilising that goodwill.

Marriage, Women, and Property
Marriage for woman is the expectation of pleasure afforded by property.
Woman ardently aspires for property as she has to bring up the children when she would not be able to gather food.
Till recently society did not allow the woman to earn her bread. It is another reason she yearns for a house or property.
The lady behaves as if marriage overtakes her.
She is told not to love anyone except in return of his love.
Even for conceiving a child, she has to lie in wait, not go after the male.
Perhaps, as she has to lie quietly delivering her children and feed them remaining stationary, Nature enjoins on her this poise of life.
The biological significance of the woman is to silently to rear the baby in her womb.
The spiritual significance of the woman is to be the stable foundation of the dynamic activity of Man.
Man brings in the resources and the woman organizes them.
Man seeks loyalty from the wife as it heightens the intensity.
The woman's biological, natural tendency is to let many males avail of her as no male's continued services can be relied on.
Property is a concept of society which generated loyalty that is chastity. (MSS)

MSS Articles on Marriage
Marriage 

 

To Be Categorized

 

Are Marriage, Property, and Family On the Way Out? 

"As marriage and property have to go, the family is on the way out to a great extent." What does this statement of Karmayogi's mean?

Logically we can deduce that family is predicated on marriage and family. Marriage and property are the foundation of family; without them there would be no family in most places around the world. People don't ordinarily have children unless they are going to build a family. People don't commune together in a house, save money, work for a living, etc. in most parts of the world unless one can have a family.

Family thus compels marriage and property, and the other way around. It's a two-way symbiosis.

This is the logic of the world.

The world's logic is predicated on social values.

Marriage, acquiring property, family are social values.

Social values change as the society changes.

Man is ascending amongst physical, vital, mental, spiritual. To that degree the social values change.

In the US the value is extreme individuality, which means fulfilling one's conception of what one can be. (Negatively it can be self-indulgence, which is of course there, but seems not to be the main thrust.)

Individuality is a movement beyond the physical needs of the collective to the individual's fulfillment. It is an evolution to vital and beyond to mental. It can even become spiritual if the individualistic inspiration comes from the Deepest Depths within.

As man becomes mental, his needs for property, to possess weakens. He lives in the mind, and then the mind to spiritual mind.

In many Silicon Valley companies individual employees no longer have offices or desk spaces! They simply arrive, and find a place to plug in and sit. That is their space, their "property." Silicon Valley is the driver of California, and California of America, which is now still the leader and driver of the world.

In the 1950s 90% of households were made up of "nuclear families" in the US. I.e. a father, mother, and children, sometimes extending to elders.

Now even as the US media and popular belief portray this as the norm, it is less than 50% and still dropping. Who can say where it will be in 100 years, let alone 25.

All sorts of household arrangements are in the ascendance.

It may be that collectives of individuals may replace the family. The communal Hippy ethic in this sense may be the forerunner for the future humanity. You see it in New Age type living environments.

The US is the leader of the world because of Economics, Military Might, and Individuality. The latter is the great benefit and inspiration it can provide for the world in the future. (It knows none of the inner rules, which a progressive India can provide.)

Countries are in different stages of development, and have different inner needs, and therefore subscribe to a different hierarchy of individual and social values. Having for the most part attained economic sustenance and well-being, which is physical and vital, America is going on to the mental, expressed in one way through individualism. (Internet is another.) Other countries of the developing world are further or much further behind.

Every way that the US, Europe and elsewhere expresses its mentality, we will see a certain movement away from the physical, which is Property for sure, is likely Marriage, and could therefore one day be the Family itself.

If on the other hand the family model adapts, it can be sustained. That is even true for marriage and property ownership, but the underlying dynamic, including the values would have to change accordingly.

Spiritually, everyone around us becomes an extension of ourselves, and they of us. In that sense, the whole world, even the universe and beyond are our family, who we are married to, attached to.

Romance, Love is of the vital, and can be of the higher vital, the heart center, culminating in soul connection. The scope for Love/Romance is greater than marriage, property, and family in their current arrangement and sense. E.g. evolution of the individual through contradiction with the romantic partner has great scope for furthering the consciousness and progress of the individual, of each partner.

Karmayogi says that Romance ends with marriage. He says it is a social institution. If so, marriage is only a part of the Truth, not the Whole. If it is a Part it must change or be left behind for something else. The same with property. As for family, it is likely to take different forms, as it is doing in the US, and will continue to do in the future.

On the other hand, Love can be Eternal, through Soul to Soul connection - One to One, and One to Many.

Marriage

Aspiration, Desire, and Finding a Marriage Partner

Q: How do we differentiate between desire and aspiration? E.g. I want to have a good married life. What and how should I do, think, act for accomplishing that.

A: If you aspire for a married life, it should be for the sake of giving, not taking. Aspiration has this quality; it is wholesome; useful, helpful. Desire is a form of wanting, rooted in the vital and physical Ego.

To aspire for a life partner, conceive of the best sort of relationship you can have; i.e. at the highest level and purpose you can imagine what is practically possible. Once you know what you want and feel it with intensity, offer the matter to the Spiritual Force (for myself, the Divine Mother and supramental power), and then go about your life, not anticipating results, but patiently waiting for signs of its arrival.

 

Marriage vs. Love

Marriage is a social institution, not a fundamental reality. Love is the reality, and it has many levels we can climb.

Power for Spousal Goodwill that Attracts

-The pure and total goodwill of a wife for her husband turns her into a channel for infinity to enter into his life and as such his accomplishments will know no limits. (Karmayogi)

Comment: If the relationship is enhanced; if respect is increasingly given, then it sets the right conditions for the wife (or husband) to offer that Inner Support and Goodwill on their own that blossoms into infinite-like earnings for the spouse. So RomanceEternal goes hand in hand with Goodwill that leads to great accomplishment.

 

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Love

 

Go to New Location

Introduction

Levels of Love

Love and Hate

Human Love of Partner

The Experience of Love

What One Seeks in a Partner

Problems in Love Partner Relationships

Love Loses Itself to Realities of Life

Selfishness & Blindness of Human Love

Betrayal in Love

Purer, Truer Human Love; Romance as Truer Love; Partner as Higher Complement

Ultimate Personal Growth through the Complementary Partner

Love and Life Response

True Love Towards Anyone (Divine Love)

Love of the Divine

The Divine's Own Love

Romance of Life (i.e. Life of Adventure)

Friendship