Sai Baba on marriage

Bhagawan Sathya Sai Baba blessed many marriages. Some succeeded; some failed. In interviews, he sometimes told women to leave their cruel husbands and husbands to let go of wives who no longer wanted to be married. As an observer for more than 20 years, I rarely heard Swami say anything comforting about marital matters. However, he did underscore the fact that if a marriage was to succeed, it was the result of the wife’s efforts.

He said, “Women should take the correct path, then men will follow suit, as it is the women who have to take the leading role. The wife is half of the husband; if she becomes good, then her husband, who is the other half, will also become good.”

This was difficult for me to accept. I had seen so many “good” women beaten, abused, thrown out of their homes by brutal husbands. I was fighting for the rights of women and children abused in a marriage and now I was supposed to say women had to try even harder, again, to make a marriage work. I soon understood that surrender to God’s will was not for beginners.

In his book, The Jnana Vahini, teachings on the path of knowledge, Sathya Sai explained, “When a child cries it is given sweet meats. In the same way for human beings, who are governed by the senses, God has created this union of marriage so to satisfy them. It is for self control that two individuals get married. Selflessness is God. Or, self which is selfless is God.

No matter what he said about the difficulties of marriage, invitation after invitation would arrive in the Avatar’s mail from around the world. Even now, three years after he left his body, there is a large basket at his samadhi where people place their letters and wedding invitations.

Our Beloved God also noted, “A young college student can roam free on his two legs; when he marries, he becomes four-footed! A child makes him six-footed; now the range of his movements is restricted. The more the feet, the less the speed, the stronger their grip on the ground – a centipede can only crawl. More hurdles, more handicaps.

Accumulation of sofas, chairs, cots, tables and shelves clutter the hall and render movements slow and risky. Attachment brings sorrow in its wake; at last, when death demands that everything be left behind and everybody be deserted, you are overpowered with grief!”

Yet most of us want to marry, perhaps, even though we are warned of the pitfalls. We may either fall in love and marry, or marry and fall in love.

Sathya Sai is ready to help. “Life in this phenomenal world is not permanent,” he instructed. “Youth and wealth are not lasting. They are like passing clouds… Wife and children and other relatives are liable to vanish like white mist in a moment.”