Ep. 25 – Religion and Sexuality
Alan Watts Being in the Way
Be Here Now Network / Love Serve Remember Foundation
4.9 • 748 Ratings
🗓️ 15 September 2023
⏱️ 32 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Bringing awareness to ecstatic grace, Alan Watts enlightens us on the sexual archetypes formed by religion.
Two cultural icons. Two unique perspectives... One understanding of the presence of the way.
Ram Dass' Love Serve Remember Foundation and the Alan Watts Organization invite you to open your mind, open your heart, and tap into the living truth of Alan Watts and Ram Dass. Learn more about this special 4-week Virtual Course:"The Presence of the Way: The Dharma of Alan Watts and Ram Dass"
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In this recording, Alan Watts lectures on:
- Baptism, confirmation, and religious initiation
- Masturbation and other supposedly sinful behaviors
- Defiance and wickedness
- The material world and sexuality
- The Semitic vs. Greek perspective on sex
- Sexual energy for reproduction rather than pleasure
- The fall in the Garden of Eden
- The institution of marriage
- Women throughout western literature
- Love and the illogical promises we make
- Prudism and extreme monogamy
- Subtle eroticism in the Victorian era
- How repression may lead to being overcame
- Libido as a fundamental reality
- Sexuality in religious iconography
- The function of sexual play beyond utilitarianism
- Sex as a sacramental expression of love
- Seeing the divine aspect in a lover
This series is brought to you by the Alan Watts Organization and Ram Dass’ Love Serve Remember Foundation. Visit Alanwatts.org for full talks from Alan Watts.
“The function of sexual play is not merely the survival and utilitarian function of reproducing the species as it is among animals to a very large extent. What peculiarly distinguishes human sexuality is that it brings the partners closer and closer to each other in an intense state of united feeling. In other words, it is a sacrament, the outward invisible sign of an inward and spiritual grace, bringing about love.” – Alan Watts
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Transcript
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| 1:34.5 | Now the problem in this debate, everybody missed the boat. The church should have been in a |
| 1:41.4 | position to say to Freud, well, of course. Thank you very much. |
| 1:45.0 | Yes, indeed, our symbolism is sexual. |
| 1:48.0 | The steeples on our churches. |
| 1:50.0 | The vesicle-shaped windows, these are all quite plainly sexual. |
... |
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