Do you love your spouse? If yes, this post is meant for you and if no, then this post certainly is meant for you. And in case you are fortunately unmarried still then don’t get married before you read this post!

The idea of ‘Spiritual Marriage’ and ‘Spiritual Divorce’ propounded here might change for good your perspective towards not only the institution of marriage but also this world and the whole universe.

Ordinarily, marriage is defined in terms of relationship between a man and a woman as ‘the formal union of a man and a woman, typically recognized by law, by which they become husband and wife’. The very use of terms ‘formal’ and ‘law’ depict force and helplessness!

Spiritual marriage, however, goes beyond the limited relationship between man and woman. It is not the marriage between two persons only but it refers to the marriage or relationship that is formed between a human being and this universe right from the moment he is born. Marriage with parents, friends, school, teachers, office, colleagues, children, Mother Nature, God, and of course the spouse.

Spiritual marriage may be defined as ‘an ongoing relationship building process wherein a person consciously enters into a spiritual union with another living being, situation or a thing, recognizing and accepting the other as his partner in life, for howsoever small period of time, with the intention of helping both fulfill their purpose of life and in the process grow and develop as an individual entity’.

Why do we get married? I asked myself this question and was unable to find an answer. In my case, at the best I could tell myself that first of all it was time to do it as my family told me so, then it was because I liked her very much and fell in love with her at first sight during a coaching class, then her family status was comparable to mine, her education was similar to mine, we both liked music, there was an understanding between both of us as regards material world was concerned and finally our family priest approved our horoscopes and declared them ‘matched’.

In most of the cases, reasons for getting married are more or less the same. In developed countries, may be only the fact of liking the same music or falling in love is sufficient to get married whereas in a developing country like India there are many other aspects to be considered as not only a girl and a boy get married but their parents, parents’ family and the family’s family (and sometimes even close neighbors) also get married at the same time!

The love into which a typical married couple feels that they fell into before marriage lasts on an average for around one year or so. In some cases its even lesser. The spark gets lost. But why is this so? Where does this love disappear?

The love doesn’t disappear. It was there and is still there but the problem is that is gets clouded by attachment and is not visible anymore. The so called love, since it was a love of mind and not soul, lacked quality, got clouded by attachment very soon, was unable to shine for long and lost its warmth, just like the Sun behind the clouds.

The very definition that we have given to marriage offers an altogether wrong premise to the relationship and leads to a wrong belief, consciously and sub-consciously, that once married, husband and wife become each other’s property. Wife would say ‘my husband is just mine’ and husband would say ‘this is my woman’. Both start to feel bondage in the relationship very soon (not bonding) and ego now drives the relationship.

The moment we say that she is mine or he is mine, we declare that the person is my property. We declare to this world and also to our own self that this person is not a human being but a thing! And who likes to be a thing? No one. How could a human being like to become a thing?

At the same time the mind gets bored with the same old face and body and starts looking out for weaknesses in the partner. As the love was just a mind affair and mind needs newness, the husband or wife become an old thing for it, as there is no more newness to feed the mind.

Such a marriage is a marriage out of unawareness or sleepiness that leads to nowhere. It is a curse on society rather than a blessing. It is against God.
Some couples submit to this comedy of errors forever and keep on compromising whole life and some take a step forward and once again fool themselves by taking divorce from the situation!

There are, therefore, three types of people in this world. Those who haven’t come aboard the boat of marriage, i.e., unmarried people, then those who are aboard the boat of marriage and have found the leakage at its bottom but have decided to submit to the situation and wait for some miracle to happen that would save them, and finally those who have decided to jump into the ocean rather than waiting for some miracle to happen or in other words simply divorce the situation.

As the ailments are different so should be the prescription/advise. Those who haven’t yet come aboard the boat are advised to properly check the boat for any leakages, understand the working of the boat and most importantly get to know where this journey would lead them to and why do they want to take this journey in the first place! Spiritual Marriage is recommended for these people.

For the other two kinds of people, I would recommend plugging of leakage through ‘Spiritual Divorce’ that may be defined as ‘Total acceptance of the spiritual form a person, situation or a thing by another person, recognizing and accepting the other as his partner in life, for howsoever small period of time, with the intention of helping both fulfill their purpose of life and in the process grow and develop as an individual entity’.

Of course, I don’t advice to legally file for divorce but give divorce mentally! Give divorce to all those expectations that you were having towards your spouse, to that fighting over petty issues, to that ego, to all those limitations of soul that prevented your and your spouse’s growth.

End the marriage that this world has imposed upon you and enter into a spiritual marriage, a spiritual agreement between two souls wherein both promise to help each other grow spiritually, an eternal friendship.

This spiritual marriage would give rise to true love between two individuals that could not be clouded by attachment. Such would be the quality of this love.

Consider the great Buddha. What did he do? He divorced his wife mentally and left her for fourteen years. After his awakening he came back and told her wife what he had achieved. It took him fourteen years. He had to live for fourteen years without his wife.

Actually there was no need for him to physically leave her wife, children and kingdom. He could have mentally divorced all these forms. And that is what is called detachment. Detachment is not a physical isolation; it is rather a mental isolation. There is no need to leave things physically. Simply divorce them mentally, spiritually.

There is no question about the importance of marriage. Otherwise Buddha wouldn’t have come back in the first place. Marriage is the most important institution. But not out of sleepiness. An unaware marriage is a curse rather than a blessing.

Shiva has not been reported to leave Parvati for his awakening. But he must have achieved a state of spiritual divorce or spiritual marriage!

Spiritual divorce would help us find independent solution to various perceived problems in life and facilitate growth of the family as a whole. Wife or husband would no more be a thing for each other but human beings, as they used to be before marriage! Love existed then not now. Now it is clouded by attachment.

Even the children would love such a divorce between their parents. The negative vibes they keep on receiving the whole day through their parents’ continuous negative thinking would get converted into positivity. Parents would be able to love their children more than they do now.

As regards responsibility, there is no reason why it should be shunned. With natural growth of husband-wife relationship, both would act as per their true nature, the egoless nature of altruistic love, joy and compassion. Both would try and help each other in the process leading to harmony.

In fact this is the only way to lower down the number of legal divorces in the world. Suggest to the couple a spiritual divorce instead. I have personally witnessed many homes and many innocent lives getting ruined in the process of divorce. Its time we understood the nature of our mind and soul so as to bring harmony and peace into this world starting at this most basic institution, the sacred institution of marriage.