To unite your physical existences and your material interests, to associate yourselves so as to face together the difficulties and successes, the defeats and victories of life- this is the very basis of marriage-but you know already that it does not suffice.

  To be united in feelings, to have the same tastes and same aesthetic pleasures, to vibrate together in a common response to the same things, one by the other and one for the other-it is good, it is necessary-but it is not enough.

  To be one in profound sentiments, your affections, your feelings of tenderness for each other not varying in spite of all the shocks of existence; withstanding weariness, nervous irritation and disappointments, to be always and in every case happy, most happy to be together; to find, under all circumstances, one in the presence of the other, rest peace and joy-it is good, it is very good, it is indispensable-but it is not enough.

  To unite your mentalities, your thoughts harmonising and becoming complementary to each other, your intellectual preoccupations and discoveries shared between you; in a word, to make your spheres of mental activity identical through a broadening and an enrichment acquired by the two at the same time-it is good, it is absolutely necessary--but it is not enough.

   Beyond it all, at the bottom, at the centre, at the summit of the being, there is a Supreme Truth of the being, an Eternal Light, independent of all circumstances of birth, of country, of environment, of education; the origin, cause and master of our spiritual development-it is That that gives a definite orientation to our existence; it is That that decides our destiny; it is in the consciousness of this that you should unite.

To be one in aspiration and ascension, to advance with the same step on the spiritual path-such is the secret of a durable union.
                         

  THE MOTHER in Mother India, Oct. 1966