Today we are going to do the last lesson in the series of The Prophet. It’s a very short lesson, because after that lesson I have been asked to take a few questions on whatever subject/s that you all wish me to discuss.

Although the topic is marriage, I am going to discuss it as relationships. I am going to widen this concept into just about all relationships, but I am going to touch mainly upon romantic relationships because I have seen that one of the commonest conflict areas seems to be relationships.

Extra-marital affairs are more common than what we would think they are, and the saddest part of the whole thing is that those who have partners outside of marriage cannot enjoy these partners because they are so burdened with guilt and shame. The whole conditioning of immorality and it being a sin are so ingrained in them that they are end up being in a relationship that brings little joy. I am going to look at it more from our context, the Indian mind, because it very difficult to make the other person understand that if you are involved in a relationship outside your marriage, don’t be burdened by guilt and shame. Let that relationship bring you the joy and the growth that it has come for. I am not recommending extra-marital relationships, but if you are in one recognize the purpose it serves for you.

Every relationship in one’s life comes for one purpose. It comes for joy and growth. When one is able to look at relationships from that perspective there is no relationship that can be wrong, that can be evil, sinful. Yes, you are going outside a contract, but the truth of the matter is that this contract in itself is an illusion created by us. And I think what is happening right now all over the world is, that the universe is asking us to review all our illusory forms; to review them and question, "Do we still need these forms? Do we need them in the same way that they are structured at present? Or does the structuring need a little bit of change?"

And it is from this perspective that I am going to look at marriage and relationships today…. from the perspective that, yes, marriage is certainly a sacred and a wonderful bond, but when it stops being a bond, and becomes a chain, and if you are looking for joy outside of those chains, why are you burdening yourself with guilt? With shame?

The relationship outside maybe a short lived one. It may not be, or you may not want it to be as long and as permanent a one. In fact, you may want it to be just a short lived period one, of just sheer joy. But by bringing in the conditioning, by being convinced that I am doing something wrong, the whole conflict takes the joy out of that relationship. And then the sad truth is that you are still in that relationship looking for joy, which you aren’t getting because the guilt has closed the door to the joy. And this is what we are going to try and look at today.

Friends, this is where the misinterpretation has resulted in the guilt. "That you shall be together forever more." Let’s look at it from a much wider perspective.

What does it mean to be together for ever more? Does it mean, being chained to each other till death do us apart? Does it really mean that? And if it does mean that to you, then are you looking at ‘evermore’ only as ‘one lifetime’? When you know that time itself is an illusion, how do you define ‘evermore’? And if you are going to define evermore as going beyond, far beyond, the boundaries of one lifetime, are you then looking to chain yourself to another soul, lifetime after lifetime? Yes, that becomes a scary prospect. We need to redefine "being together for evermore." Are you together with the same person just because you are bound by a legal contract? Does that define "together" for you? If it doesn’t, then you have to look beyond these illusory forms and redefine "together"

Does it not really mean "to be with each other, as part of each other’s growth process, lifetime after lifetime"? And if one looks at togetherness from that viewpoint, then marriage is not a contract that is there to make you enchained; then marriage becomes a process by which two souls come together in close harmony in order to grow with and through each other. So I recognize Yezad, as a husband, yes, but more importantly as a soul who has come together in this relationship with me, in this lifetime, so that he acts as my catalyst for growth, and I play the part of his catalyst. And if at any point of time either catalyst, feel burdened by the other, then does it not mean that the catalyst has outlived its usefulness. And if, out of conditioning, I persist to be in a ‘legal’ relationship, quite forgetting that the truth of marriage is a bond, then what will happen is that Yezad will stop becoming my catalyst and I will stop becoming his catalyst for growth, and we will in fact become burdens which the two of us will carry, limiting and restricting our growth… the very purpose for which we agreed and chose to be in this bond.

As long as the two souls view each other as harmonious catalysts for growth, that is marriage. That bond lasts beyond all strictures of time. It becomes a bond "for truly evermore" – inseparable, where Yezad and I will come back in marriage, not as husband and wife maybe, but as a marriage of souls, again and again, as catalysts for each other, growing with and through each other till such time when the two souls have grown and expanded so large that there is a merger and no separation.

And one can view all relationships from this viewpoint. Question "Is this soul at present my catalyst or a burden I am carrying?" And if, from the bottom of your heart, you find the answer is "it is a burden" then question yourself… why do you have such lack of self- love that you are willing to stay into a self imposed prison, to carry a burden which you can very easily leave along the way?

I am not advocating ‘divorce’ at the drop of the hat, certainly not. In fact I feel that today’s youth who enter into marriages, enter into it without commitment to themselves. This is important… don’t commit to a relationship. Commit to yourself. Enter the bond knowing that this ‘relationship’, that this bond is going to encourage you to grow. And commit yourself to that growth. And the many of today’s youth don’t have this concept of committing to their growth. And sometimes insignificant disagreements like who reads the newspaper first or leaving the toothpaste tube open, become major issues which then lead to divorce.

This is because when you enter into that marriage, you entered into a legal contract. You didn’t enter into a bond. So I am certainly not advocating the easy way out of divorce, but yet, every catalyst, sometimes loses its power to act as a catalyst. And when you recognize that happening, it is the same commitment to your growth that makes you want to step out of the contract. Or if you don’t wish to step out of the contract and wish to step into another bond which can exist simultaneously, outside the legal contract, then do it again with the same commitment to growth.

If every relationship that you have can be viewed as commitment to growth of self, then that relationship will not be a chain that binds but will be a bond that enriches.

I think he is using the word bond here more like a ‘chain’. What do you mean when you say "I love my husband? Or I love my wife? Or I love my girlfriend?" what does it really mean? Does it mean that this word now gives you proprietary rights over each other? Does it become compulsory then that the pronoun "my" be more important than the word ‘love’. So it becomes "my husband." And as soon as I use that word "my" I have proprietary rights over my partner which my conditioning tells me "I can now exercise to make him talk, be, act, the way I want him to" because it – I am deliberately not using the word "he/she" - becomes a possession. "It’s mine. It’s my husband. It’s my wife. It’s my computer." I can program my computer the way I want, can’t I? So it’s my computer which I call ‘my partner’.

Is that what love is all about… programming someone else or allowing yourself to be programmed? I have been conditioned to believe, that if I am ‘wife’ I have to then be, act and do and say, all that ‘husband’ wants me to. But the fact is that we are not computers. You have a divine right to program and reprogram yourself in order to encourage your growth. But you do not have the divine right to program or reprogram another. How can you be so certain that what you say and do is right for the other’s growth? The sad truth is that often we don’t even know what is really good for our own growth.

So then what does loving one another mean? It means giving each other the freedom to grow in the way, in the direction, and at the pace that is right for the other. This makes loving each other very difficult because very often the pace is not what you wish, the direction is not what you can understand, and the method employed goes completely against all that you believe in. But it is in the face of all this opposition that you can prove that you truly know what LOVE is. By not only giving the freedom to that person to do what that person requires to do, but to accept it joyously. It’s much easier intellectualizing and saying "Ok, I permit xxxx to grow in the way xxxx needs to grow." But to accept it joyously when this process is not according to your definition of the truth, then that is divine love.

And that is what you and I have always experienced. The Masters can truly look at a wider perspective, at a vista that is so expansed, and from their perspective they can see the direction that you are taking and know that this road is a dead end one. And yet from their essence of Divine Love they accept joyously that you need to travel on this dead-end road at present. And not only will they allow you that, they will hold your hand and walk with you knowing that when you reach that dead-end, you will have grown enough to understand that "I need to walk back." That is Divine Love.

This is something very important for us, especially because, as girls, we have been conditioned and we condition our girls to believe that we have to give everything and share everything with our spouses. And somehow, we leave nothing for ourselves. And very often what we do give up due to this misinterpretation of sharing, is OURSELVES.

I have found this I sometimes go to visit people in their homes. If there are a few pieces of cake left, my girl friend won’t eat it. Why? No, there won’t be enough left for ‘my husband’. She has been conditioned to believe that she must give up, even something as insignificant as a slice of cake, but it must be given up so that her Lord and master, her husband, can have it all. But I often question; is this self imposed, or has the husband imposed it? And 90% of the times the husband has not. If she were to ask, her husband he would likely say "Why don’t you have that cake. I don’t particularly fancy it in any case." He hasn’t asked you to sacrifice it. You have. And when you have done this sacrificial act again and again and again, there comes a time when your inner essence cries out for attention. And it cries out in through resentment and anger. That is the quickest way to a separation.

If you want your marriage to be a bond lasting ‘forever more’ don’t sacrifice yourself. You aren’t a sacrificial goat. And if you willingly make that choice, then question, "why am I resenting it?" If it is a willingly made choice there can be no resentment. If there is resentment, it means that it has been imposed. So you need to question yourself then, "Who has imposed it? Has it truly been my husband who has imposed it on me, the same husband whom I am now very angry with, or has it been self-imposed?"

I have done this and it took me several years to realize that I was holding Yezad responsible for my self imposed restriction. It took me many years to realize, that I had made myself into this sacrificial goat. He had never once even asked this of me. Not once. It was something that I did. It is only when I took responsibility that the resentment and anger towards him for this particular ‘restriction’ died.

So, why must we always have our husbands’ approval? Our wives’ agreement? And when that is not forthcoming and we sacrifice, we give up ourselves, our loaf of bread so to speak, then do we really have the right to turn this outwards and put the blame onto the other?

What is sharing then? Sharing is sharing of self, of all that you are. If I had shared ALL that I am with Yezad, I am absolutely convinced that within a short time, even though he disapproved first, the very fact that I was completely ‘fine’ with it and was putting myself in a position of being joyous, that joy would have transmitted to Yezad. It cannot, not transmit. But I didn’t give that joy the permission to transmit. I didn’t give it the time to transmit to Yezad. I killed it, thinking that at all times, I have to do what my husband desires.

Lets see what we are dong in every relationship. And Indian women love to play this role of the martyr. They give up things for their husbands; they give up stuff for their children. And when they do, sometimes very sneakily, not give up, they are so ashamed; they hope and pray that the husband and the children never find out. And that’s not a life of joy. Eventually that has to convert to anger, because the pain that you feel inside is just too immense to bear. And the way the ego deals with pain is to direct it outwards.

So, friends, if you want to truly stay in the bond of marriage forevermore, please acknowledge that it’s fine to keep some things only for yourself. So it’s fine to tell Yezad "Hon, this is not to be touched, its mine." Similarly Yezad tells me very often "Buy another book for yourself, I don’t want you to use this book. This book is mine." And that’s fine. It’s his, with markings that make it private.

Does this mean I love him less? No, it means I love him, and he loves me, so much that we know we have the power in ourselves to designate some areas as exclusively mine and his, knowing that in that designation there is the greatest sharing of Self; that we have gone beyond illusion that conditioning has given us over time.

Very important. Again that word "my" comes up. How can I let him be alone? He’s mine. Private time, time for solitude, is essential for growth. And there are certain private moments you have to have exclusive of the spouse. It’s extremely essential. Unless you respect yourself, you won’t give this time of solitude that you need. It is this time of separation from one another that permits introspection. All relationships have their ups and downs. And if I am constantly caught in his energy and he is caught in mine, how will the two of us introspect? We will only be caught in an entanglement that will further and further the conflict. But time away from each other gives you the much needed relief. Yes, be honest its relief.

I was away 10 days in Kerala. And Yezad said, I had the best time of my life. And did I feel upset about that? Not at all. That’s the whole idea. I had a wonderful time. I looked at things and I would say "Yezad would have liked this." But did I miss him? No, I didn’t. I didn’t miss him. But when I came back after those 10 days, I was so full of joy that I wanted to share all that joy with him. Being alone doesn’t mean betraying your spouse. It means giving time to yourself, to make the bond stronger.

What is ‘my heart’? That is the important question. I define it as my very essence. It’s not for Yezad to keep. It’s not for Yezad to mould. And his heart, his essence is not mine. And this can only be possible when you respect, acknowledge and love your very essence for all that it is. Then you will not feel the need to give yourself up to another, and to say make me what you want of me.

Why? I am wonderfully happy the way I am. With all my ego, I am still wonderfully happy the way I am. Why should I give myself up to ‘you’, to mould me and change me? And what is the need that we feel to take someone else and change them? What we are really feeling is the need to break that mirror and say "Listen, don’t show me what I don’t want to see. You are a very bad mirror." So you take someone’s essence, heart, and you demand that they mirror you as you want to see yourself. That is what we do when we want to change someone else according to our wish.

See the examples of the trees he has given. It conveys the most profound sense of self knowledge. The oak tree is strong and firm and resolute and unbending and the winds of storm can blow and the oak tree will not fall. It will stand its ground. The cypress will bend. It will move with the way the winds blow it. And it’s very tempting for the oak tree to turn to the cypress and say "How weak you are. You can’t even stand your own ground." And how tempting for the cypress to say "When I bend the winds go over me, they don’t toss me about. I will bend but you might break."

In every marriage there is one cypress and one oak. And they cannot grow in each other’s shadow. The oak has to grow strong; that’s what the oak is all about. And the cypress has to bend; that is the strength of the cypress. And the oak and the cypress have to understand and acknowledge that there are so many different kinds of strengths; that ‘my’ strength is not necessarily the only true strength. And you have to move away enough so that your shadow doesn’t fall upon each other. But from that distance the oak can see the cypress and say "Wow, maybe here is something I can learn; how to bend with the strength of adaptability." And the cypress has that distance to look at the oak and say "You know I now see that this kind of strength is not necessarily rigidity. Perhaps, in many situations, it is the strength of Will." But one needs this ‘distance’ to study each other so well.

I can’t see the chair I am sitting on. It’s too close to me. But were it to be kept on the other side of the room I would be able to look at it, study it and gain truths from it. Just because you are husband and wife, or in any other relationship, you don’t have to give up your space. You need to have a small area around you which is exclusively your own.

Ask any farmer….when they plant saplings, they will never plant them too close together. Why? The roots need space to move and grow. And were each root to be entangled in the other, neither tree would grow tall and strong. Both would be stunted. And what a sorry waste it would be of a beautiful oak and a gracious cypress. Give your roots room to expand. Only then will you give another’s roots the same freedom.

I can take your questions now.

Would you have rather lived through those issues in this lifetime?

Then can you see how wonderfully kind the universe has been to you? You have chosen and you have shown your own growth through this choice. When you made this blueprint of yours you saw these two big issues that needed resolution. But you told yourself "I am certainly not living through them again. But I also know I have to resolve it because, it’s still an issue. What if I do it by giving myself enough distance?" If the same thing were to, let’s say, happen to Devika, you would be upset by it but not shattered, because it hasn’t happened to you, it’s happened to Devika. The distance helps you to take a better perspective. Can you now put the old ‘you’ in that place ands say "This is not me; let me help ‘her’ to resolve it. I don’t want to live it again. " And sometimes when distance is permitted to us, and we don’t resolve it, the only way to resolve it is to actually experience it. And the universe has been at its kindest to you to say, go ahead, resolve it; you don’t need to experience the pain again.

I have done that, its damn tough. But the first step to understand is that you experienced that in a past life; that’s not you NOW. Don’t confuse the issues here. You haven’t experienced this, not the present you. That’s another one. That’s another person, another embodiment. Now help that person. You help the whole world; now help that person. That person is crying for help and saying "Release me from this. Help me; you know how to help people. Help me."

Now you need to make a shift in your perspective. That is the first step to release. "I am not X in this moment of NOW. I am N." Friends, see how beautifully we can use the illusion of separation for us. Do you understand how illusions work with us and for us, just depending on our perspective? So I am N and that is X, and X has gone through such pain that I can empathize with as N. But N has a strength that X doesn’t. N has strength to empathize with another’s pain and help them resolve it. The universe is telling you "Can you help her? Can you use your strength as N, to release X?"

Repeatedly we have been told that marriage is a relationship where you won’t get along with that person all the time. Let’s accept that as the truth. Does that mean that all marriages on earth are unhappy? Of course not.

I am going to take an example of my own parents and of my beautiful spiritual Mom, Silla. Both examples of really happy marriages with the strongest foundations of love. Does that mean that my parents don’t squabble or fight? Do they agree on everything? Do you think Silla’s husband was the perfect epitome of husband? Silla’s ideal. Of course not. Of course he had all the various flaws which I am sure Silla must have raged against. And Silla, being as beautiful as she is, do you think she didn’t have her flaws which might have driven Naval insane with irritation? Of course there must have been. Then why do we have these beautiful marriages that worked so well? Because they had their disagreements and had agreed to disagree. The foundation of a marriage is not love, it is self respect. Respect for another can only come when there is self respect. And that is a foundation of a marriage, of a bond. So Silla says "Of course I disagree with Naval and he is doing something that’s really bothering me but all right, that’s Naval and I don’t feel the need to change him. I married him because I loved him as he was."

Now people come to you and say "I can’t get along with my husband." Both husband and wife can’t get along. Don’t belittle their truth, because it is their truth. But if you can find, within the session of counseling, that there is a genuine desire in both to continue and strengthen the bond, that they don’t seem to want out of it, then as a counselor what you need to do is to make them see that they are perceiving it as ‘not getting along’ because they have two diametrically opposite views on many subjects. And in fact that is the foundation of a rich marriage.

If Yezad and I agreed with everything, how boring it would be! I wouldn’t get another viewpoint. However annoying that viewpoint is, it’s still another way of thinking. It forces me out of my comfort groove. So when ‘I don’t get along’, it means that my comfort grove is being shaken and I am damn scared. Now you will have to help them out on that; on the fear of their groove being shaken.

Yes, they do. But, let’s be honest. With all our intellectuality and all our spiritual growth, social approval is a need that has to be fulfilled. Very, very few of us are so strong that we can truly and honestly, every moment in time, say "Up yours, Society." We can do it some of the time and truly mean it. But at others we just tend to toe the line. Social approval is valid. Let’s look at this situation which is so prominent in our Indian society. First of all we must understand men. Have you all read the book, Men Come from Mars, Women Come from Venus? Please read it if you haven’t. We are different, we are very different.

Yes. Why? Because we get a different perspective. Once you accept that the way men think and Be and act, is different from the way women are, then that knowledge itself will lead you to your own growth. Men come from Mars. The author is a very aware author. He has used the planets damn well. Mars is aggression, domination, power. Venus is love, emotion, creativity. So you will accept that the man needs to show his dominance. He needs that; that is his structure. Do you need to be suppressed though? And if you need to be suppressed, the introspection has to be on the part of the wife, not the husband. Why are you being suppressed? Social approval?

Then study the level of social approval required. That’s important. All of us require social approval. But if your level, your need for social approval is so great, that you can suppress ALL that you are in order to get it, then you need to introspect and work on Self. It’s very tempting to say "Man is the bastard." Social approval is something that all of us need to look at and see where on the scale we are. And you won’t remain on that same point always. You will keep going up and down, depending on how Complete you are at that moment of time. The more Complete you are in that period of time, the less social approval will matter then.

Let me tell you one thing. When you go against social norms, but you do it in COMPLETENESS, do you know society doesn’t disapprove? Society maybe surprised, raise its eyebrows, but doesn’t somehow condemn….. because your COMPLETENESS has transmitted itself outwards.

That’s a big question. Maybe it’s something that we need to define for ourselves. Society’s approval is too big a term; I agree with Sheila. So who is ‘society’ for me and who is it for you? For me, it might mean my close family and my close friends, and if an acquaintance disapproves I am ok with it. For someone else it might mean anyone on earth. "I need everyone’s approval. I am that needy." It’s a wonderful thing that you have brought up for us Sheila. We each must define society for ourselves. What does society mean for ME? Whose approval am I seeking? And then you can go into ‘Why’?

Yes, because she is also coming out of the conditioning of marriage. The rage comes, not because he was dishonest with you, not because he has broken his marriage vows; you are not really bothered about that. The rage comes because you have been conditioned to dislike and condemn "the other woman" and that is what you have become now. The vamp in the Hindi movie. And that’s not a very pretty picture for you, because you don’t want to be a ‘vamp’. You want to be the ‘heroine’ and suddenly the picture has changed and you have realized "Oh my hero has another heroine. I am really the vamp." That is the root of rage. She needs to introspect on this.

I have asked that question over and over. You see the situation is often "I don’t exist and it’s when my husband whips me then I exist. It’s only when my husband abuses me that I exist. Otherwise I don’t exist." Women like these have ‘killed’ themselves so often. There is nothing left of their actual being. They don’t know who they are. They don’t know what they feel. They don’t know what they think. Ask them their opinion of things. They will not have an opinion; they will quote someone else’s opinion. Very often, the same husband who beats them up, they will quote his opinion.

For anyone ‘attention’ is very important. Food is not what gives you ‘life’; it is touch, physical touch and emotional touch. Women who live in abusive situations have learnt to adapt themselves to a situation where consistently the ‘touch’ has been negative. One has to accept that the parental environment also was one of lack of positive touch. So as the child began to grow, the child began to understand that if Mom hits me, Mom touches me. When Dad abuses me, Dad knows I am there. And the conditioning starts from there. It may not be as severe as one sees in the marital situation, but it is always present. That is one thing you will have to keep in mind as marriage councilors. Study the parental environment; it’s always present. So the child has already learnt and has adapted and now his own personal conditioning is – negative attention is better than no attention. No attention, no touch, means "I die" The root of every person is, I must survive. Come what may, I must survive.

When she comes from that environment, that conditioning, and that emptiness of self then the husband is only a very magnified mirror. And he does what he does because he too is empty inside. When you are empty inside, you will attract those who are empty. You see you may not manifest it in the same way but an ‘abuser’ is as empty within as the ‘abusee’. And unless both are emotionally guided to look into their own emptiness, into their own pain, the situation will only manifest as abuse, where both are getting their ‘touch’ in this unhealthy manner. Sex becomes more rape than an act of love. But its still touch. Besides that the man has been conditioned to believe that he can dominate, society gives him that permission. So when he needs to go out and ‘touch’ people, he can only do that aggressively, abusively.

When one of these makes a shift, either the wife or the husband, when one of these makes a shift, and can ‘touch’ themselves and know that survival is now no more an issue because I can touch myself, then the whole equation changes. Till then the equation will always remain stat.

You can only empower another with that which you have. You can’t empower anyone that which you don’t have. So when you don’t have self love, self respect, there is no empowerment; not of self, not of another.

Thank you.