Sacred Marriage

Question:

Could you say more about “… the ‘sacred marriage’ archetype permeates the heart-field in a totally holographic way, from the personal right up to the cosmic, so the power of that influences the whole affair and is at work in every chakra . . .”

The universe altogether is some kind of great unity split into a gazillion separatenesses. We are each of us, then, one of these apparently separate entities, a particularity in a great and boundless expanse . . . we are – along with every other ‘thing’ - what Arthur Koestler called a ‘holon’.

Now the thing about this feeling of being separate . . . . it is an easy conclusion to draw when we look around at our environment and see a world of distinctions. We see every ‘thing’ in space and time. Everything has an edge, a duration, a limit on its extent, and a series of qualities that make it discernible. Even the universe we somehow cannot imagine without limits. It seems to have come from a Big Bang . . . but where did the Big Bang come from? We think that way, overlaying these categories on reality, but as science advances we are becoming increasingly aware that these ways of conceiving reality are actually forming our reality. We may be looking at our own mind.

Meanwhile we think in terms of space and time and separateness and we conceive of ourselves similarly.

But are we bound in space and time and separateness? The Buddha says not.

Every apparently separate entity is a holon. Whether we are an amoeba or an ant or an accountant we function as a distinct entity, separated in time and space from the next amoeba, ant or accountant. As part of its nature a holon has two fundamental impulses: the impulse towards self-assertion and the impulse towards union. On the one hand it functions in accord with its own autonomy and on the other it functions in synch with the greater unity of which it is a part.

Each cell and organ in the accountant is also a holon, distinct and functioning according to its own internal logic, but also finding itself inherently oriented to the greater body of which it is a part.

If the liver and lungs of the accountant are not well differentiated in their functions, the accountant is in trouble.

Humans also are holons. Like an organ we function healthily when we are self-assertive in our autonomy but are also integrated into the ‘field’ that is the greater body.

What is this greater body?

You could say that it is our environment, but what do we mean by that?

Is this greater body our social environment, such that we need to be healthily integrated into the collective? That is part of it, but that is just our relationship to other human holons.

Is it our cultural environment? Is this so-called ‘North American culture’ the greater body of which we are part?

What if the culture is unhealthy. How healthy is it to be integrated into a toxic culture, into a fascist state, for instance, or a culture of mindless and endless consumerism? This is to become what Carl Jung called a ‘mass-man’, one who blindly adapts in a confluent way to his social environment.

From a transpersonal perspective however, the greater body of which we are a part is ‘God’ . . . or if you prefer: ‘Spirit’, or one of those other names for the Great Intelligence that is the source of All That Is.

This gives a clue to why Jung called the evolutionary process of human growth ‘individuation’. The sign of an individuated human is not integration with the masses but with the Self. On the self-assertive side it is to be autonomous, a grown-up. On the integrative side it is to be in synch with Heaven. It is to be in the Tao. It is to be living the spiritual life.

And because reality when seen with the eye of awakening is holographic, we are each of us simultaneously a small part of the greater whole but we are also the Whole itself. We are both ego and Self. This is the condition that is realized when we awaken to our Buddha-nature. In the words of the Buddha: “Throughout Heaven and Earth I alone am the Honoured One”. In this non-dual state both God and ego-self are transcended.

Jung recognized that the process of individuation is always moving towards this coming together, this ‘coniunctio’ or sacred marriage. The impulse to this is love and so is its endpoint.

While this is an inner principle, and the coniunctio is an inner attainment, it also finds itself mirrored in the events of one’s life. And so just as the archetypal encounter with the Shadow has its inner and outer representations, so also with the heart’s yearning for union with the Beloved. To taste into this sacred marriage is to experience the union, not only with the Beloved but also with one’s own deepest nature, which is finally recognized to be this self-transcending love.

And so we are blessed with the impulse to love. And although typically this impulse is reduced by the mind of egoity to a series of psychological projections and is shaped by accumulated patterns of mental and emotional disturbance into some kind of sorry soap-opera, nonetheless something in us yearns to fall into the arms of our Immortal Beloved in the form of another human being, and strangely enough, the Immortal Beloved is always present in this yearning.

And so while life and our accumulated karma will undoubtedly throw up obstacles to such a sacred marriage, it is the true destiny of the awakened heart to be forged in the fire of this love . . . and thus it is that this obstacle course becomes the Way whereby we become capable of realizing satchitananda or divine union.

Clearly, love is not a simple matter of finding the right guy or gal . . . although this is what our ego in its naivety tells us. To realize this sacred marriage – spoken of in all spiritual traditions - is to undergo a profound alchemy, a tantric transformation of our being from head to toe . . . all of it in the fiery heart-field of loving relationship with the ‘other’.

Who then is this ‘other’?

This is Love’s Secret . . .

This is the Way of the Heart, of the devotee, of bhakti, of Tantra, of alchemy, the mystical poetry of Rumi, the esoteric path of Shiva and Shakti that is told and re-told in different forms with different names in the ancient texts of India, echoing through the Far East and Middle East, the hidden erotic mysteries of the Kaballah, the ecstatic ‘brides of Christ’ and the bridegroom Jesus, the mysterious attraction of Krishna to the milkmaids, the courtly love of the chivalric knight of the Middle Ages for whom salvation can only come through the Grace of his Lady . . . all of these are the archetype of the sacred marriage permeating and drenching the human psyche, alive in every chakra, permeating the cosmos even . . . almost as if all things under Heaven were a masked version of this one great yearning . . .

This Way of the Heart is not like some course that you take, it is a course that takes you. You can’t enter upon it by choosing it, but only by being chosen. It is bigger than you, bigger than your plans, bigger than life and death . . . and much bigger than the little packet you have wrapped yourself up in . . .

Then let love unwrap you.


‘It is LOVE that holds everything together, and it is the everything also.’ - Rumi