The Temple of Konarak: Erotic Spirituality

by Alan W. Watts, Eliot Elisofon (photographer)

100 evocative black and white photographs.
"A celebration of music, love, & religious ecstasy."--Alex Comfort.
Offers a vision of the infinite moods of sexuality, as captured in stone by sculptors during the 11th to 13th centuries in India.
"The substantial interpretive text by Alan Watts fills out for the reader the cultural context in which Konarak & other temples were built. A fascinating & authoritative work."-- Publishers Weekly.

125 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1971

About the author

Alan Wilson Watts was a British philosopher, writer and speaker, who held both a Master's in Theology and a Doctorate of Divinity. Famous for his research on comparative religion, he was best known as an interpreter and popularizer of Asian philosophies for a Western audience. He wrote over 25 books and numerous articles on subjects such as personal identity, the true nature of reality, higher consciousness, the meaning of life, concepts and images of God and the non-material pursuit of happiness. In his books he relates his experience to scientific knowledge and to the teachings of Eastern and Western religion and philosophy.

Reviews

[Robert Beveridge · Rating 3 out of 5]

Eliot Elisofon, Erotic Spirituality: The Vision of Konarak (Collier Books, 1971)

Those hunting this down expecting prurience are bound to be disappointed. Which makes a good deal of sense considering the stone carvings Elisofon is photographing (over, we find out at the very beginning of the book, the strenuous objections of his tourguides, when he first started out in 1949; they can still see prurience where a great deal of it has rubbed off). As well, roughly half the book is taken up first with Elisofon's own introduction to the photographs, and then with an essay by Alan Watts regarding the nature of sexuality in the Hindu religion, especially as it relates both to the temples themselves (Elisofon not only photographs Konarak, but also the nearby Khajuraho, which is also full of erotic sculpture work) and to yoga. In fact, it sometimes seems as if this is just one long advertisement for yoga, with the obvious subtext of “do yoga, all this will become available to you!” (And to be fair, just like the Kama Sutra, there's some stuff pictured here that you're not going to be able to do if you're not in tip-top shape, so maybe Watts is correct in that...)

But the real draw is the photographs themselves, which are quite attractive. Elisofon does focus on the erotic carvings, but the books isn't exclusive to them; Konarak is, after all, a sun temple, and so there is a good deal of other imagery that is equally well-worked. Looked at forty years later, however, it seems a bit dated—not the photographs themselves, of course, but the surrounding text. ***

[Vincent Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good view into the temple of Konarak with all of its stone carvings from around 1000 AD. The pictures are fantastic and Alan Watts accompanies them with a nice little essay on the coupling of these erotic images with religion and spirituality. One can come away with a different view on sexual intimacies provided that the mind is kept open. He discusses the ways in which religion has sought to divide any "ecstasy" whatsoever from a faith-based life. He attempts to show the linkage that connects the very ground of religion to the act of sex itself. Interesting stuff, to be sure.

[Erik Graff · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is in three parts, one of them strictly illustrative, that being a series of about a hundred photographs mostly about the temples of Konarak and Khajuraho taken by Eliot Elisofon whose essay about his visits to the sites begins the book. This is followed by an essay by Alan Watts concerning the values embodied in these sites and expressed in several Hindu and Buddhist traditions. The set-up of Watts' little essay is quite good, it being an introduction to Eastern thinking in terms of the distinction between immediate, sensed experience and mediated, conceptual thinking. This, his most important point, is handled in just a few pages, clearly and succinctly. The rest of the essay is a series of attempts to help benighted Westerners understand how explicit portrayals of sexual congress and what they represent can, as in Tantra, be conducive to enlightenment.