Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Himself and the Ashram

The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo. Volume 35

Sadhana before Coming to Pondicherry in 1910

Ordinary Consciousness and Awakening

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

Why? What is there in it?

He goes on: “Aurobindo Ghose, not a Dharmaguru, though he may be called Dharma-mad []” — how do you feel about that, Sir? — “has done it too.”

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

“We don’t understand why they marry and why this change comes soon after marriage.”

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

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

Then what’s the harm?

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

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

So, according to the biographer, all of you, except Christ, showed a lack of wisdom by marrying.

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

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

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

27 April 1936