Kripal, Jeffrey J. 1962–

views updated

Kripal, Jeffrey J. 1962–

PERSONAL:

Born 1962. Education: Conception Seminary College, B.A., 1985; University of Chicago, M.A., 1987, Ph.D., 1993.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Houston, TX. Office—Department of Religious Studies, Rice University, P.O. Box 1892, Houston, TX 77005-1892; fax: (713) 348-5486. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Writer, editor, and educator. Rice University, Houston, TX, Lynette Autry associate professor of religious studies, beginning 2002, became J. Newton Rayzor professor and chair of religious studies, beginning 2004.

AWARDS, HONORS:

History of Religions Prize for Best First Book of 1995, American Academy of Religion, for Kali's Child; Contemplative practice fellowship, American Council of Learned Societies, 2006.

WRITINGS:

Kali's Child: The Mystical and the Erotic in the Life and Teachings of Ramakrishna, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 1995, 2nd edition, 1998.

(Editor, with T.G. Vaidyanathan) Vishnu on Freud's Desk: A Reader in Psychoanalysis and Hinduism, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1999.

Roads of Excess, Palaces of Wisdom: Eroticism & Reflexivity in the Study of Mysticism, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 2001.

(Editor, with G. William Barnard) Crossing Boundaries: Essays on the Ethical Status of Mysticism, Seven Bridges Press (New York, NY), 2002.

(Editor, with Rachel Fell McDermott) Encountering Kali: In the Margins, at the Center, in the West, University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 2003.

(Editor, with Glenn W. Shuck) On the Edge of the Future: Esalen and the Evolution of American Culture, Indiana University Press (Bloomington, IN), 2005.

The Serpent's Gift: Gnostic Reflections on the Study of Religion, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 2006.

Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 2007.

Contributor to books, including Religion, Homosexuality, and Literature, edited by Michael L. Stemmeler and José Ignacio Cabezón, Monument Press (Las Colinas, TX), 1992; Dreams and Dreaming: A Reader in Religious Studies, Anthropology, History, and Psychology, edited by Kelly Bulkeley, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 2001; and Encyclopedia of Religion, 2nd edition, edited by Lindsay Jones, Macmillan (New York, NY), 2004. Contributor to periodicals, including Tikkun, History of Religions, Common Knowledge, Chronicle of Higher Education, and Religious Studies Review.

SIDELIGHTS:

Jeffrey J. Kripal, a professor of religious studies, is the author of the controversial, award-winning book Kali's Child: The Mystical and the Erotic in the Life and Teachings of Ramakrishna and the critically acclaimed work Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion. "I started out in a Catholic Benedictine seminary, where I became interested in the relationship between sexuality and celibacy," Kripal told Publishers Weekly contributor Donna Freitas. He added, "All of my books are about sexuality and spirituality."

In Kali's Child, Kripal offers a portrait of Ramakrishna, a nineteenth-century Hindu saint whose teachings incorporated Tantric and homoerotic mysticism. The book "was a very public document, taking on multiple public lives as it became the focus of scholarly essays and debates and, more dramatically, became the object of two national ban movements in India," the author noted on the Rice University Web site. Writing in the Journal of the American Oriental Society, Malcolm McLean deemed Kali's Child "a major comprehensive study which must be seen as the most important yet of this fascinating and important religious figure."

In Esalen, Kripal examines the history of California's Esalen Institute, a spiritual retreat and alternative think tank situated on the Big Sur coast. Founded by Michael Murphy and Dick Price in 1962, Esalen is often credited as the birthplace of the "human potential movement," and the center hosted such notable figures as Aldous Huxley, Hunter S. Thompson, Joan Baez, Timothy Leary, and Allen Ginsberg. Embracing a wide range of intellectual frameworks, religious disciplines, and psychological theories, the community endorses a philosophy of a "religion of no religion." "Esalen has always been a place of gnosis where the intellectual and experiential have intersected and coexisted, giving birth to new ideas and practices," Kripal stated in an essay in the Chronicle of Higher Education, noting that the center "played a catalytic role in gestalt and humanistic psychology in the early 60s, educational reform in the late 60s, the embryonic alternative-medicine movement of the early 70s, and the development of citizen diplomacy with the Soviet Union in the late 70s, 80s, and 90s."

Esalen received generally strong reviews. A critic in Publishers Weekly called Kripal "an engaging storyteller" who writes of his subject "with reverence and playfulness," and Library Journal contributor L. Kriz called the work "a spellbinding journey through art, pop psychology, Tantric sex, Cold War physics, psychedelic drugs, and … religion." Though Diane Johnson, writing in the New York Times Book Review, stated, "Kripal gives in considerable, maybe even too much, detail both the gossip and the intellectual developments at Esalen," she also noted that the author "makes many sympathetic points about the present spiritual state of America, even if his argument gets somewhat lost in the more lurid details of suicides, strange deaths and amazing paths to enlightenment." As Kripal told David Ian Miller in the San Francisco Chronicle, "When I look at American religious history, I see a long history of puritanism, of Christian fundamentalism. It's been there from Day One. But I also see what some historians would call American metaphysical religion." The author concluded, "In some ways, the book for me was a cry of the heart over the state of our culture in our country. It's an attempted intervention. Maybe not a very effective one, but nevertheless an attempt."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

California Literary Review, August 1, 2007, Paul Comstock, "Jeffrey J. Kripal: Author of Esalen."

Chronicle of Higher Education, April 13, 2007, Jeffrey J. Kripal, "From Emerson to Esalen: America's Religion of No Religion."

Journal of the American Oriental Society, July 1, 1997, Malcolm McLean, review of Kali's Child: The Mystical and the Erotic in the Life and Teachings of Ramakrishna, p. 571.

Library Journal, March 1, 2007, L. Kriz, review of Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion, p. 88; March 1, 2007, Steve Young, review of The Serpent's Gift: Gnostic Reflections on the Study of Religion, p. 88.

New York Times Book Review, May 6, 2007, Diane Johnson, "Sex, Drugs and Hot Tubs," review of Esalen, p. 12.

Publishers Weekly, February 12, 2007, review of Esalen, p. 83; March 21, 2007, Donna Freitas, "Jeffrey J. Kripal: The Wonder of Esalen."

San Francisco Chronicle, May 21, 2007, David Ian Miller, "Finding My Religion: Author Jeffrey J. Kripal talks about Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion."