In the unusual dimensions and worlds of the imagination most of us are foreigners, flatworms stupidly crawling among stars. On the other hand, in each human being there are, however small or undeveloped, imaginative capacities, as there are capacities for speech, for thought and love. There would seem to be no reason then why almost all human beings, qua human being, might not be able to come to a greater or a lesser understanding of what this book is about. Some would understand more; some less; but all would, to one extent or another, comprehend it. Yet we know this will not be the case. Many human beings, even those with normal or above-normal imaginative endowments, will fail to comprehend, at least emotionally, what this book is about. I suspect that in their case the explanation is cultural, not congenital. They, like most of us, have been the objects of a pervasive conditioning process, universal, subtle and pernicious, which restricts the inventiveness of the human mind, the applications of the imagination, to certain approved projects and modes of experience.

It is, for example, acceptable to use the imagination, provided you do not use it too much, in the decoration of one’s home; it is acceptable to use it, if not too wildly, in the naming of one’s children; it is acceptable to use it in the writing of certain forms of approved fiction, etc. On the other hand, daring to apply this remarkable human capacity to sex is likely, at least initially, to jangle an entire warning system of negativities that has been, largely without our awareness, planted in our brains. Imagination should not be applied to sexual relationships, to improve and enhance them. It sounds quite stupid, because it is quite stupid, to say it that way, but that, in effect, is the message.

The human brain, and its inventive power, may be appropriately applied to building bridges and designing guidance systems for missiles, but it may not be appropriately applied to the intimate sexual relations between man and woman. Indeed, at such a thought, the imagination of an otherwise bright, promising individual may tighten into a knot of fumbling, frozen thumbs. You don’t use intelligence in that business. Intelligence, inventiveness, creativity, imagination is for bridges and guidance systems, not people.