Question: Can you please speak about marriage with regard to the spiritual life?

Sri Chinmoy: Each soul is a divine portion of God. Marriage is a sacred matter. Marriage can be something very spiritual. In many marriages we see that the husband is spiritual and the wife is unspiritual, or vice-versa. When this happens, both are caught in a tug-of-war. The husband cannot make satisfactory inner progress and the wife cannot make satisfactory outer progress. But when both husband and wife are with the same Guru and have utmost faith in the Guru, then they can make very fast progress together. Because they have faith in the Guru, he brings down the Supreme Power to help them, guide them and mould them.

Marriage is not necessary in some cases. Those who have gone through family life and have found it a life of misery and frustration should not repeat the same mistake. But those who are young and fresh, who want to have a bridge between the inner world and the outer world, will not be making a mistake if they enter into married life with the proper spiritual partner. If inner necessity demands, at any moment they will give up that tie. Everything depends on whether God wants the individuals to get married or if He wants them to remain unmarried. No unmarried person should feel superior to the married ones. God can take them to Him fast, very fast, through married life as well as through unmarried life.