By Basab Dasgupta
Valentine’s Day is coming, and love is in the air. This day is difficult for single people. Flowers, candies, colorful heart-shaped romantic cards and gift boxes are everywhere. Restaurants and movie theaters are crowded with happy, smiling couples hand in hand.
However, some single people, especially women, believe that they can live a happy life without a partner. Two women in India underwent “sologamy” (meaning marriage with oneself) in 2022; one is a Gujarati woman named Kshama Bindu, and the second one is a TV actress, Kanishka Soni.
This new trend reportedly started in countries like Japan, the US, the UK, and Italy in this century, presumably because of the financial independence of women. The marriage ceremonies include wedding rituals, cake, guests, reception, and making promises for the future – just like any other marriage. A travel agency in Kyoto was reportedly offering a “self-marriage package” for wealthy women!
At first glance, it appears to be selfish, narcissistic, if not an absurd and comical act, to draw attention to oneself. However, on closer examination, it may not only be rational but also the answer to many problems in life! A song by Miley Cyrus, titled “Flowers,” which advocates a happy single life with lines like “I can buy myself flowers / I can write my name in the sand / I can love me better than you can,” became overwhelmingly popular, indicating a widespread appeal of the concept of a life without a partner.
Why do people get married in the first place? For men, it is driven mostly by a carnal desire arising from bubbling hormones of younger years, which is beyond their control. For women, more important than physical need is an overwhelming desire to nurture and raise a baby. The marriages legitimize both wishes so that one does not randomly mate with strangers of the opposite sex like animals.
The process of finding a compatible mate involves seeking common ground, including similar socio-economic backgrounds, educational levels, and common interests. In arranged marriages, parents take the lead in finding suitable partners for their children. In Western societies, individuals themselves find compatible partners through dating rituals.
People often describe the most compatible partners as “soulmates”. However, in almost all marriages, people eventually realize that the partners they are married to are far from being their ideal mates. In my view, the concept of a soulmate, compatible with one in every respect, is a myth; a soulmate is just a “reflection” of one’s personality in the opposite gender. In other words, if you are a man, your ideal mate is a female version of you, and if you are a woman, your soulmate is your male counterpart.
Unfortunately, when people are searching for that soulmate, they are really looking for themselves. Why do people do that? Deep down inside, we are looking for someone who would love and admire us completely; someone who would appreciate every single aspect of our personality and behavior, and that would, of course, be possible if that person himself/herself had the same traits. However, that person, just like one’s reflection in a mirror, is not real and exists only in one’s imagination.
The search for this fictitious soulmate is, in fact, the quest for God. Without this realization, the search for a soulmate could continue forever. Until one surrenders completely to God, one would always feel a void in one’s life, no matter who the partner is. In other words, together with our reflection in the opposite gender, we manifest completeness or God! God is Radha and Krishna together. It is a part of our self-realization that we are part of God. What is missing is our complimentary piece.
A self-marriage is an explicit formal recognition of this fact; one can only find one’s soulmate in oneself. Spiritually, it is a complete surrender to God. It is no wonder that holy men live in celibacy and never get married. The entire concept of married life is superficial and has been built by social evolution with the need for survival; our addiction to our senses has also developed from the necessity of living a married life. The goal in life is not to be slaves to our senses.
What about the idea of marrying for the sake of producing children and thus sustaining the human species? The real question is, why do we even want to have children? If we think about it, having children gives us a purpose in life; everything we do in life, from getting an education to finding a job, is to be able to provide for a family. All the recreations, from travel to various entertainments, revolve around family life and keep us busy during our non-working time. It is a selfish act. There is really no need to bring children into this miserable world when we do not even know the reason for our own existence.
Paramhansa Yogananda said that our love for children is the only unconditional love; the purpose of getting married and having children is to experience that unconditional love. The hope is that someday we might be able to learn to love everyone unconditionally, a prerequisite for attaining God.
The challenges in our life, including financial difficulties, providing for our family, taking care of their illnesses, anxiety, and depression from failures, marital problems, etc., all disappear if we are married to ourselves. Many people live a perfectly happy and content life by themselves, especially at an older age. In an ideal scenario, people would start to think about profoundly philosophical and spiritual questions if they were not married, since they would have time for introspection. They may even reach a state of divinity.
If everyone is engaged in self-marriage, then eventually the population of the world would start decreasing. Certainly, that would be a highly desirable development, at least at the beginning, because the earth is running out of resources to support the ever-increasing population.
I cannot predict what will happen to the ultimate survival of the human species if the trend continues. Artificial insemination can be one answer. Mother Nature could provide some new biological processes for humans to replicate.
Remember that famous line from the movie “Jurassic Park” by the character played by Jeff Goldblum, “Nature will find a way,” when a dinosaur's egg was discovered in the park inhabited by an all-female population.
If everyone already feels divinity and universal love, there will be no need to have children. That would mean an eventual extinction of the human species in the form of physical bodies consisting of flesh and blood. Perhaps that could be the beginning of a new paradigm in our existence, where we would exist in astral bodies.
A wide-scale sologamy would be a more generalized approach towards this abandonment. This path may be a much more peaceful and attractive scenario for the future evolution of mankind compared to an end by some Armageddon, such as a natural disaster, diseases, climate change, or nuclear war.
---------------------------------------
(California-based Basab Dasgupta has a doctorate in Physics from the University of Wisconsin and has worked with Sony as Vice President of an operating division.)
The views expressed are personal and not necessarily those of The South Asian Times
