You Who Marry Today

A talk given by Francis Brabazon at the first marriage celebrated at Avatar's Abode

On married life, Meher Baba said:

"Most people marry as a matter of course, and it becomes a help or a hindrance to their unfoldment as human beings according to their understanding of what marriage means.

"There are immense spiritual possibilities in married life when it is thoroughly determined by the vision of Truth. It cannot offer much if it is based upon mere sex or those considerations which prevail in business partnerships. It has to be undertaken as a partnership in a spiritual adventure intended to discover what life can be at its best, an exploration of the higher possibilities of spirit, and it cannot be limited by any nice calculations of the nature and amount of individual gain.

"This adventure requires much mutual adjustment and understanding, for it creates problems which cannot be anticipated, because in marriage two souls become linked in many ways and so must necessarily tackle the whole complex problem of personality rather than simple problems created by isolated desires. This is precisely why married life is utterly different from promiscuous relationships.

"The spiritual value of married life is directly related to the nature of the preponderant factors which determine its daily course. If it is based on shallow considerations it can deteriorate into a partnership in selfishness against the rest of the world. If it is inspired by a lofty idealism it can become a comradeship which requires, and calls forth, increasingly greater sacrifices for each other and becomes the means by which two souls can offer their united love and service to the whole family of humanity."

Commentary:

You who marry today are most fortunate, for you have refused to take over the burden of dead tradition and mere respectable custom which the immediately past generations bore from breakfast to bed each day — a journey so intolerable that it was never talked about except in facetious synonyms of well-being and cheer.

You have refused to line up each morning at the loading-bays of spiritual commerce and economic sanctity, leaving your shoulders clean for the burden of the Beloved.

Tradition is a glorious thing when it is rooted in living religion and is a reflection of the natural dignity of man and woman, when it is a stronghold against enemies and a sheltered place where the two separate flames of a man and a woman can unite in the flame of divine Oneness.

But with us, before the Era of Now — the time of empty cups and prostrations and praises — that is, before the Advent of the beautiful God-Man with his whispered heart doctrine of,