Questioner (Q): Is it possible to live alone?
Acharya Prashant (AP): Why does this question arise?
Q: Because I don’t want to get married.
AP: Why don’t you want to get married?
Q: Because I want to go on the path of spirituality. And dependency should not be there. I feel that if I marry someone, I will be dependent.
AP: What if you are dependent on somebody or something else even if you don’t marry?
Q: I feel complete without marriage.
AP: Then, why does this question arise?
Q: Because sometimes there is a loneliness in my mind, I want to get rid of that.
AP: So, you are already in a way wedded to that loneliness. Right?
It is not the woman that troubles you, it is the feeling—the attachment, the loneliness, the dependency. They may be there even if the woman is not there. Had liberation been just about not having a woman in your life or not marrying, then it would have been so simplistic. Don’t marry and you are liberated.
It does not happen that way.
Q: Nobody can live alone.
AP: Yes, we don’t live alone because we live with our despair, our desperation, with all our suppressed desires – we live with them. And because we live that way, so even when a man or a woman comes into our life, we color him/her with these things.
So, a woman or a man is not responsible if we feel bonded or suffocated. That suffocation has only been made manifest by the presence of another person, precipitated by the person. It is actually coming from something in your mind and that something in your mind is your basic sense of becoming.
"I want to become something else, what can help me become that? Without that, I am lonely, I want to become complete. A woman helps me, so, when a woman is not there, I feel lonely. I want to become spiritual, a woman hinders me, so, I want to keep the woman away." This desire to become, this desire to reach, to transform- that is what you need to divorce. The woman you can easily wed, it’s okay. Or you may not wed, that too is okay.
All of that is incidental, secondary.
We all are born married.
So, now it is not in your hands to not to marry. First of all, your wife is this body and it’s a very obsessive wife. Try keeping her away! And a very demanding wife. Then, the mind, the tendencies, ten other things—you are wedded to all of that.
So, where is the question of not marrying?
Get rid of these things, and then, even if a woman comes to your life, it is alright. You feel like, marry her. Don’t feel like, don’t marry her.
It’s okay.
