Does God decide who we will marry in future?

[A devotee’s question brought to Swami by Śrī Anil]

Swami replied: It is said that marriages are made in heaven. This does not mean that God is running a matrimony website. The strong attachment of two souls to each other in this birth brings the two souls together again in the next birth. This attachment between the two souls is love in general. It need not specifically be romantic love. In the Aṣṭāvakra Saṃhitā, sage Aṣṭāvakra preaches to king Janaka that the mother of a soul in this birth may become the soul’s wife in the next birth due to her attachment to that soul. We see such changing relations between actors in a movie. Two actors may be mother and son in one movie and husband and wife in another movie. This means that worldly bonds are temporary and unreal. All souls are only actors in this world-cinema and have no permanent relationship with each other. The relationships we have with other souls in this birth are temporary and unreal bonds like the bonds between co-actors in a movie. But the bond between God and every soul is permanent. It is like the employer-employee bond between the movie-producer and the actors that remains constant throughout all movies involving that producer and those actors. God has no hand in determining these bonds since these bonds are the blind fascinations of the souls alone.

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