Idealist leaders of student days often meet with comments when they enter life, "You used to have some FIRE then, now it is not there." Age and experience give a quiet which is mistaken for the loss of FIRE. Marriage helps the fire to die down. Maturity is mistaken for loss of warmth in the personality. The human mind is so constructed that his surface is exactly the reverse of his wider, deeper, truer Mind, called the subliminal. It is said he is compelled by his own subliminal to seek what his surface hates or is disgusted with. It often happens with employment and more often with marriage.
One who is an incessant talker is attracted to a silent wife or a miserly man ardently seeks a spendthrift wife. So begins an eternal divergence in everything he aspires for. He is often consoled by others that marriage is made in heaven. At a ripe old age, such couples do discover that their marital experience was a rewarding one as each was complementary to the other. There are quiet phases in life suddenly followed by a chain of turbulent events and vice versa. Rarely do people understand such a phenomenon and ascribe it to destiny.
When Sardar Vallabhai Patel was enjoying a flourishing barrister's life in Ahmedabad, he met Mahatma Gandhiji and gave it up to become his political lieutenant for the rest of his life. Neither Patel nor Gandhiji could foresee such a development in his life. Rajendra Prasad once said, "If we have an India in which we live proudly, it is because Sardar Patel gave it to us." He was a bully in his early life and was almost brutal to his opponents in the court or life outside. The warm heart of Sardar that loved Bharat Mata as a Mother and was tenderly solicitous to his children was known as the Iron Man of India.
Sri Aurobindo says that the very first spiritual realisation is to know that our Surface Mind is inversely moved by the deep-seated subliminal that knows the entire universe.