This is an interesting session, because I have been pondering this just yesterday! I was listening to Alan Watts again yesterday as I was cleaning the house (yes...yes...I adore him, shoot me :-) ...alcoholism and all), and then I felt like reading his wiki page again.
He considered Nature, Man and Woman to be the best book he has ever written (I haven't read it), but then I spotted something interesting further down on the wiki page.
And then my mind just wandered off into all kinds of directions, mostly with how the Abrahamic religions have put a lid on all this... the taboo thing... The Eastern religions are the opposite, is you consider the Kama Sutra as an example, or Tantric literature. If you just consider how Christians reacted to The Da Vinci Code, you realise how very far we have wandered off... it was offensive to them to consider that Jesus had sex... oh goody!
He considered Nature, Man and Woman to be the best book he has ever written (I haven't read it), but then I spotted something interesting further down on the wiki page.
Quote:In his last novel, Island (1962), Aldous Huxley mentions the religious practice of maithuna as being something like what Roman Catholics call "coitus reservatus". A few years before, Watts had discussed the theme in his own book, Nature, Man and Woman, in which he discusses the possibility of the practice being known to early Christians and of it being kept secretly by the Church.
And then my mind just wandered off into all kinds of directions, mostly with how the Abrahamic religions have put a lid on all this... the taboo thing... The Eastern religions are the opposite, is you consider the Kama Sutra as an example, or Tantric literature. If you just consider how Christians reacted to The Da Vinci Code, you realise how very far we have wandered off... it was offensive to them to consider that Jesus had sex... oh goody!