Jeffrey J. Kripal Explained

Nationality:	American
Fields:	study of comparative erotics and ethics in mystical literature, American countercultural translations of Asian religions, and the history of Western esotericism from gnosticism to New Age religions
Education:	Conception Seminary College (BA) University of Chicago (PhD)
Workplaces:	Rice University

Jeffrey John Kripal (born 1962) is an American college professor. He is the J. Newton Rayzor Chair in Philosophy and Religious Thought at Rice University in Houston, Texas. While chairman of the Religion Department at Rice, he helped found their "GEM" program, with a doctoral concentration in "Gnosticism, Esotericism, and Mysticism".^{[1] [2]}

His work includes the study of comparative erotics and ethics in mystical literature, American countercultural translations of Asian religions, and the history of Western esotericism from gnosticism to New Age religions.^[3]

Scholarly Impact

Kali's Child

Kripal's 1995 book Kali's Child: The Mystical and the Erotic in the Life and Teachings of Ramakrishna was a study of the Bengali mystic Ramakrishna. The book was a psychoanalytic study arguing that Ramakrishna's mystical experiences involved a strong homoerotic dimension. The book won the American Academy of Religion's History of Religions Prize for the Best First Book of 1995.^[4] A second, revised edition was published in 1998. The book has been dogged by controversy ever since its initial publication in 1995.^[5] The book's claims have been questioned by Alan Roland and other scholars, as well as members of the Ramakrishna Mission such as Swami Tyagananda and Pravrajika Vrajaprana,^[6] often on the grounds of translation errors. However, Bengal scholar Brian Hatcher has defended Kripal's translations.^[7]

Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion

In 2007 The University of Chicago Press released Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion, Kripal's account of the Esalen Institute, the retreat center and think-tank located in Big Sur, California. Writing in the Journal of American History, Catherine Albanese called it "a highly personal account that is also a superb historiographical exercise and a masterful work of analytical cultural criticism."^[8]

Authors of the Impossible

Kripal's 2011 book traces the history of psychic phenomena over the last two centuries. The book profiles four writers: the British psychical researcher F. W. H. Myers, the American anomalist writer and humorist Charles Fort, the astronomer, computer scientist, and ufologist Jacques Vallee, and the French philosopher Bertrand Méheust.

Chronicle of Higher Education

In a March 2014 article for the Chronicle of Higher Education, "Visions of the Impossible", Kripal cited Mark Twain, who wrote that a dream about his brother's death appeared to come true in detail a few weeks later. Kripal writes that

The professional debunker's insistence, then, that the phenomena play by his rules and appear for all to see in a safe and sterile laboratory is little more than a mark of his own ignorance of the nature of the phenomena in question.^[9]

Kripal's article was criticized by Jerry Coyne in The New Republic as "the latest anti-science argument."^[10]

Criticism

Hindu nationalist ideologue Rajiv Malhotra has questioned the view and approach^[11] Kripal takes in Kali's Child, alongside the approach taken by many other scholars of India. In his book, Malhotra's criticisms are primarily based on the work of Swami Tyagananda.^[12]

As a result of criticisms like Malhotra's, Kripal was among a group of scholars receiving death threats and physical attacks from Hindus offended by his portrayals.^[13] He shifted his research focus away from Hinduism afterward, claiming, “I stuck with it and responded as best as I could for about six or seven years. It just wore me down after a while. At some point I felt like it wasn’t worth it anymore, that it was starting to affect my health. I couldn’t go anywhere, any conference or anything, without having to deal with the thought police, as it were.”^[14]

Bibliography

Books authored

• Kali's Child

The Mystical and the Erotic in the Life and Teachings of Ramakrishna (Chicago, 1995, 1998)

• Roads of Excess, Palaces of Wisdom: Eroticism and Reflexivity in the Study of Mysticism (Chicago, 2001)
• The Serpent's Gift: Gnostic Reflections on the Study of Religion (University of Chicago Press, 2006)
• Esalen

America and the Religion of No Religion (Chicago, 2007)

• Authors of the Impossible: The Paranormal and the Sacred (University of Chicago Press, 2010)
• Mutants and Mystics: Science Fiction, Superhero Comics, and the Paranormal (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011)
• Super Natural: A New Vision of the Unexplained, and Whitley Strieber (New York: Tarcher, Penguin, 2016)
• Secret Body: Erotic and Esoteric Currents in the History of Religions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017)
• Changed in a Flash: One Woman's Near-Death Experience and Why a Scholar Thinks It Empowers Us All, and Elizabeth G. Krohn (Berkeley, California: North Atlantic Books, 2018)
• The Flip: Epiphanies of Mind and the Future of Knowledge (New York: Bellevue Literary Press, 2019)
• The Superhumanities: Historical Precedents, Moral Objections, New Realities (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2022)

Books edited

• Vishnu on Freud's Desk: A Reader in Psychoanalysis and Hinduism edited with T.G. Vaidyanathan (Oxford, 1999)
• Crossing Boundaries: Essays on the Ethical Status of Mysticism edited with G. William Barnard (Seven Bridges, 2002)
• Encountering Kali: In the Margins, at the Center, in the West edited with Rachel Fell McDermott (California, 2003)
• On the Edge of the Future: Esalen and the Evolution of American Culture edited with Glenn Shuck (Indiana, 2005)
• Hidden Intercourse: Eros and Sexuality in the History of Western Esotericism edited with Wouter J. Hanegraaff (New York, 2010)

Articles and essays

• Mystical Homoeroticism, Reductionism, and the Reality of Censorship: A Response to Gerald James Larson. Journal of the American Academy of Religion, volume 66, number 3, pages 627–635 (1998).
• Textuality, Sexuality, and the Future of the Past: A Response to Swami Tyagananda. Evam: Forum on Indian Representations, volume 1, issues 1–2, pages 191–205 (2002).
• Foreword to Adi Da's The Knee of Listening (2003)
• Comparative Mystics: Scholars as Gnostic Diplomats. Common Knowledge, volume 3 issue 10, pages 485–517 (2004)
• "Sexuality (Overview)". The Encyclopedia of Religion, 2nd edition (2005)
• "Phallus and Vagina"." In Encyclopedia of Religion (2005)
• Reality Against Society: William Blake, Antinomianism, and the American Counter Culture. Common Knowledge, volume 13, issue 1 (Winter 2007)
• Re-membering Ourselves: Some Countercultural Echoes of Contemporary Tantric Studies, lead-essay of inaugural issue, Journal of South Asian Religion, volume 1 issue 1 (2007)
• "Liminal Pedagogy: The Liberal Arts and the Transforming Ritual of Religious Studies." in How Should We Talk About Religion? Perspectives, Contexts, Particularities, edited by J. White (University of Notre Dame Press, 2006)
• "Western Popular Culture, Hindu Influences On." In The Encyclopedia of Hinduism edited by D. Cush, C. Robinson, and M. York, Routledge/Curzon (2007)
• "The Rise of the Imaginal: Psychical Phenomena on the Horizon of Theory (Again)". Religious Studies Review volume 33 issue 3 (2007)
• "Myth" in The Blackwell Companion to the Study of Religion edited by R. Segal. Wiley-VCH (2008)

See also

• Invading the Sacred
• Academic study of new religious movements

External links

• Kripal's blog on Reality Sandwich
• An excerpt from Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion.
• AUTHORS OF THE IMPOSSIBLE A documentary based on the book by Jeffrey J. Kripal.
• kripal.rice.edu Dr. Kripal's Rice University web page.
• Kali's Child Discussion Site An article by Dr. Kripal regarding the Kali's Child controversy.

Notes and References

1. https://anomalyarchives.org/collections/file/kripal-jeffrey/ Lending library of the Scientific Anomaly Institute
2. https://ga.rice.edu/programs-study/departments-programs/humanities/gnosticism-esotericism-mysticism/ Homepage of the GEM program
3. http://kripal.rice.edu/ Jeffrey J. Kripal's faculty page
4. Book: Kurien, Prema A. . Prema A. Kurien . A place at the multicultural table. Rutgers University Press. 2007. 201–202. Challenging American Pluralism.
5. Balagangadhara. S.N.. Sarah Claerhout. Spring 2008. Are Dialogues Antidotes to Violence? Two Recent Examples From Hinduism Studies. Journal for the Study of Religions and Ideologies. 7. 19. 118–143. 2010-01-15. https://web.archive.org/web/20090820023251/http://www.jsri.ro/new/?download=19_balagangadhara_claerhout.pdf. 2009-08-20. dead.
6. Book: Tyagananda , Swami . Vrajaprana. Huston Smith (foreword). . 2010. Motilal Banarsidass. Delhi. 978-81-208-3499-6. xvii-xviii.
7. Kali's problem child: another look at Jeffrey Kripal's study of Ramakrishna. Hatcher. Brian A.. 1999. International Journal of Hindu Studies. 10.1007/s11407-999-0002-3. 170–1. 147134190.
8. Catherine Albenese, [untitled review] Journal of American History Mar 2008, 1326 https://web.archive.org/web/20160114033717/http://jah.oxfordjournals.org/content/94/4/1325.full.pdf
9. Web site: chronicle.com. Visions of the Impossible. Jeffrey J. Kripal. 31 March 2014. 2014-04-03.
10. newrepublic.com. The Latest Anti-Science Argument Comes Down to ESP. Jerry Coyne. The New Republic. 3 April 2014. Jerry A. Coyne . 2014-04-03.
11. Book: Invading the Sacred: An Analysis of Hinduism Studies in America . Rajiv Malhotra. 2007 . 978-8129111821 . Rajiv Malhotra .
12. Book: Interpreting Ramakrishna: Kali's Child Revisited . Swami Tyagananda. 2010 . 978-8120834996 . Swami Tyagananda .
13. Web site: The University of Chicago Magazine: December 2004. magazine.uchicago.edu. 2019-06-02.
14. Web site: Scholars who study Hinduism and India face hostile climate. www.insidehighered.com. 12 April 2016 . en. 2019-06-02.