''When Naraian, the primeval and dateless sage of old, entered upon austerities in the most secret & desolate recesses of the Snowy Mountains, Indra, prince of the air, always hostile to asceticism, always distrustful of the philosophic & contemplative spirit, was alarmed for the balance of the world and the security of his own rule. He therefore sent the Opsaras to disturb the meditations of Naraian. Then upon the desolate Himalaya Spring set the beauty of his feet; the warm south wind breathed upon those inclement heights, blossoming trees grew in the eternal snow and the voice of the cuckoo was heard upon the mountain tops.
It was amidst this vernal sweetness that the Opsaras came to Naraian; they were the loveliest of all the sisterhood who came, & subtlest & most alluring of feminine arts & enchantments was the way of their wooing; but Naraian, who is Vishnu the World Saviour when he comes in the guise of the ascetic, moved neither by the passion of love nor by the passion of anger, smiled in the large & indulgent mood of his world embracing nature and opening his thigh took from it a radiant and marvellous creature of whose beauty the loveliest Opsaras seemed but pale & broken reflections. Ashamed they veiled their faces & stole silently away from the snowy hermitage. But Naraian called this daughter of his creation Urvasie (she who lies in the thigh of the Supreme, the thigh being the seat of sensuousness) and gave her to Indra to be his most potent defence against the austerities of spiritual longing.
The legend is characteristic of the Hindu mythopoeic faculty both in its slight and unpretentious build and in the number of searching & suggestive thoughts with which it is packed. Indra is the universal cosmic energy limited in the terrestrial forces of conservation; like all active & conservative forces he distrusts the contemplative spirit of philosophy because it is disruptive and tends to cast thought & therefore life into solution towards the creation of fresh forms. Thus he is besieged by a double anxiety; on one side the spirits entrusted with the work of destruction & anarchy are ever endeavouring to seat themselves in the place of Indra, the high conserving force, on the other he dreads to be dethroned by some embodiment of the contemplative spirit, examining, analysing, synthetising new forms.
His method of defence against the former is usually though by no means invariably open warfare, against the latter sensuous seduction. He tempts the mind of the philosopher to sacrifice that aloofness from ordinary sensuous life & its average delights on which his perfect effectiveness depends; or if he cannot succeed in this, to move him to an angry and abhorrent recoil from sensuousness which is equally fatal to complete philosophic efficiency.
This then is the inwardness of the sending of the Opsaras by Indra. Naraian conquers the temptation, not by ignoring or repelling it, but by producing out of the sensuous in himself a lovelier sensuousness than any that can be brought to tempt him.
Here is a peculiarity in the highest Indian conception of ascetism. The sage who delivers the world by his philosophy must not be a half nature; he must contain the whole world in himself. It is told that the great Shankaracharya in the midst of his triumphant religious activity had to turn aside and learn by personal experience the delights of sensuous life and the love of women, because the defect of this experience left him maimed for his philosophic task.
The philosopher must be superior to sensuousness not because he is incapable of experiencing passion & delight, but because he has fathomed their utmost depth and measured their utmost reach, and far passed the stage of soul-evolution where they can satisfy.
And yet the work of the philosophic mind incidentally serves sensuous and material life by increasing its resources and the depth of its charm. For the power of the philosophic ideals which have profoundly affected humanity is not limited to the domain of the intellect but also affects, enlarges and strengthens man's aesthetic outlook upon the world. The sensuous world becomes fuller of beauty, richer in colours, shades and suggestions, more profound and attractive with each widening of the human ideal.''
Sri Aurobindo - The Poetry of Kalidasa/Vikramorvasie
