Does
sexuality and
spirituality co-exist together like water and fire in a human being? If it does, how do we judge that
person? And if a society looks at such individuals with an unperturbed eye, what can we think about that society? Let me be more specific. Yes, I am talking about the ancient India—it's people, it's society and it's morality. If we travel attentively through the pages of Indian epics, we would very soon discover an unusual occurrence: we would find
spirituality and sexuality are walking hand in hand. Peacefully. And that's not really raising eye brows. For an instance, take
Parashara, the great sage. One day he goes to the banks of the Yamuna river. He wants to cross it. He finds that there is one boat and in it, is a young girl—a fisher woman—doing the job of a boatman. He asks the girl to take him to the other side of the river. The girl takes him and starts to row. Parashara keeps looking at the girl. At her nubile body, sunlight on her hair, her lips. He finds himself under a magic spell of beauty. His desires are awakened and it's not love, but pure lust. He asks the girl for sexual favours. The girl is terrified. She's worried about losing her virginity. Parashara promises her that she will not lose her virginity, even if they have union. In those days, sage's words were taken as Truth. She believed him. Parashara with his powers drew a veil of fog around the boat. They united on the boat. After the union, Parashara told her that she'll give birth to a son, who would be famous, erudite and would be hailed as the sage of sages. And he went. We'll stop here. The story moves long way forward, but we wouldn't pursue that. Take another example, Biswamitra, he lost control of himself when Menaka seduced him by bathing naked under a waterfall and made love to her for many years. In fact the great guru of the Kauravas and Pandavas, was born after his father, Sage Bharadwaj got sexually incited and made love with a woman of a low caste (that's the modern interpretation). And of course there are scores of examples like this. SO, this underscores a very clearly complicated reality and that is, sages, who are spiritually sublime, at times reveal their much too human side. But society doesn't ever question their spirituality, their integrity. They are still reverred, in the same old way. And very interestingly, the sages go back to their usual world of meditation, asceticism and knowledge. They are not really interested in a relationship. For them, it's something which was necessary like having water to quench thirst. So, they've never attached importance to this. And they have never thought that celibacy was a very important criteria to merge with the Brahman or to gather the supreme knowledge. Interestingly enough, in that society—though, complete restrain was praised, yet a lapse in that was seen as natural. Thus ancient Indian society offers a very queer, complex, equivocal outlook on sexuality, spirituality and morality.