Sri Aurobindo
Early Cultural Writings
(1890 — 1910)
Part Two. On Literature
The Poetry of Kalidasa
Vikramorvasie. The Characters
Vikramorvasie. The Characters [8]
The legend is characteristic of the Hindu mythopoeic faculty both in its slight and unpretentious build and in the1 number of searching and suggestive thoughts with which it is packed.
Indra is the universal cosmic energy limited in the terrestrial forces of conservation; like all active and conservative forces he distrusts the contemplative spirit of philosophy because it is disruptive and tends to cast thought and 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 and 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 and 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 Opsaras2 by Indra.
Naraian3 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 and 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.
Earlier edition of this work: Archives and Research: A biannual journal.- Volume 5, No2 (1981, December)
1 A&R, 1981 No 2: and the
2 A&R, 1981 No 2: Apsaras
3 A&R, 1981 No 2: Narayan