Sexual Secrets: Twentieth Anniversary Edition: The Alchemy of Ecstasy Paperback - 1999

From the rear cover

SEXUALITY "Monumentally researched, comprehensively detailed, and profusely illustrated. . . . Sexual Secrets is a timely, well-rounded masterpiece. This reviewer's reaction can be summed up in two words: BUY IT!" --Yoga Journal "A remarkably complete book stocked with the knowledge of esoteric Asian traditions never before seen by Western eyes." --The Village Voice "For twenty years Sexual Secrets has been the spiritual person's guide to celestial copulation. Flesh meets faith inside this book and each is the better for it." --ForeWord "A massive compendium, furnishing just about everything you always wanted to know." --The Book Reader "An intriguingly illustrated, thoroughly researched collage designed to enhance sexual consciousness." --New Age Magazine With more than one million copies sold and translations in twenty languages, Sexual Secrets continues to be the definitive, all-encompassing text on sacred sexuality. The distillation of more than two thousand years of practical techniques for enhancing sexual awareness and achieving the transcendental experience of unity, Sexual Secrets explores the path of love and mysticism, making accessible the sexual mysteries of the East. In India, Nepal, Tibet, China, and Japan, sexuality has long been regarded as both an art and a science worthy of detailed study and practice. Virtually unknown to the Western world, a vast and potent body of ancient sacred writings on sexuality exists. The secrets for consciously inducing and maximizing the experience of ecstasy have remained sealed in the ancient texts and art of the East. Sexual Secrets makes available the essential core of this vast literature on sexual wisdom in a vital and practical form. It is meant to be experienced as well as read, for it is the sharing of ecstatic love that unlocks the sexual secrets. THE RICHEST COLLECTION OF EROTIC ART EVER ASSEMBLED More than six hundred color and black-and-white paintings and illustrations have been created and collected to enhance the experience of the text and to unfold these sacred mysteries. The illustrations and paintings in Sexual Secrets are the most comprehensive and diverse collection of images expressing the erotic sentiment ever assembled. Two hundred different sexual postures are depicted, creating a complete illustrated Kama Sutra, Ananga Ranga, and the major Taoist love treatises. These works of art are unique in themselves and represent, as does the text, a gathering together of many streams, leading to the same source--the celebration of sacred sexuality. Sexual Secrets reveals the wisdom of the sages whose teachings on sexuality have stood the test of twenty centuries and, even today, show how physical love can become the pathway to liberation. NIK DOUGLAS Nik Douglas studied Oriental art, philosophy, medicine, and related sexual practices while living for eight years in the Himalayas. He studied with Indian physicians, adepts of Tantra, and Tibetan lamas, at the same time mastering Sanskrit and the Tibetan language. He has organized numerous exhibitions of Eastern art and is called upon by leading museums and private collectors to authenticate Oriental art and writings. PENNY SLINGER An honors graduate of the Chelsea College of Fine Arts, Penny Slinger is one of Europe's leading erotic artists. Her work has been exhibited widely and hailed as "dynamic, progressive eroticism, an exploration of female sexuality." Her illustrations for Sexual Secrets evoke and represent all the major cultures of the East and are inspired by centuries of artistic achievement. Working from life and from ancient images originally commissioned by kings and emperors, Slinger blends the images of the West with the sentiments of the East. Sexual Secrets is the unique product of a journey of discovery. Its pages document how the sexual teachings of the East have remained, to this day, a key to understanding the alchemy of ecstasy.