It’s enough to make one question authority, what the Boy Scout handbook of 1942 advised young fellows to do about their “urges.” If a boy were to be troubled by bad desires he should, the guidebook said, take cold showers, long walks, or — here’s the slightly unsettling surprise — “hip baths.” I ran across […] Read More

“Because of its endearing sexual code,” it was “the merriest” of America’s 19th century utopian communities, wrote critic and memoirist Alfred Kazin. The name Oneida is one you may recognize as a brand of forks and spoons — if you know the name at all. But the original Oneida metalsmiths were a commune that preceded […] Read More

This spiritual memoir, Red Hot & Holy by Sera Beak, is a hot mess in itself: wildly emotional, unsparingly personal, and written in a style that the author mentions as “spiritual street slang (‘gangsta goddess’).” It’s about the soul as the meeting place of human body and ethereal spirit, the part of us that connects […] Read More

Fresh experience of ancient mountains evokes awareness of God, the divine, the sublime, in some of the same ways the erotic can. (Or maybe I’m just longing to post some of my vacation pictures.) In my visit (got back last night) to Wyoming, I found in the mountains, geysers, glacier, fumaroles, bubbling “mud pots,” and […] Read More

A Hindu friend — who also admires philosophies of the controversial teacher of Tantra Osho, formerly known as Rajneesh — asked me recently exactly what I saw as the connection between sex and spiritual experience. Pleased to have a succinct answer (my sound byte) to that question, I said that I see both as a […] Read More

I feel almost obligated to be a Madonna fan. How many artists take on sex and religion and do so with such courage and success on an international scale? In fact, I am a fan of sorts. She is assuredly a terrific entertainer; she burns with passion and star power. She sure can sing. And […] Read More

I keep an eye out for what’s new in the world on the subject of kundalini. As you may know, my novel Cobalt Blue focuses on the creative and at the same time disruptive power of this life force, by the Sanskrit name of kundalini, rising to flood level in an unsuspecting woman. Now I […] Read More

I am so excited about my new post on HuffPo: about the family kind enough to befriend me the winter I spent in Varanasi, India, researching my novel Sister India. After 24 years, they are coming to visit!!! Please go read it and LikeLoveShare! Thanks! Read More

(in case you missed the earlier version on HuffPo) You didn’t read it wrong: there’s supposed to be an “r” in “pray.” In setting out to write about praying for better sex, I don’t mean sending up a plea for action in the style of, say, a 14-year-old boy (though that seems perfectly reasonable to […] Read More

A startling idea from Daily Mail India: “Public display of religion more dangerous than private viewing of porn”. The comparison never would have occurred to me. But it does make sense. The idea comes from an unexpected direction. India is generally viewed as the nation that is most public in the daily expression of religious […] Read More