Secret Body: Erotic and Esoteric Currents in the History of ReligionsOver the course of his twenty-five-year career, Jeffrey J. Kripal’s study of religion has had two major areas of focus: the erotic expression of mystical experience and the rise of the paranormal in American culture. This book brings these two halves together in surprising ways through a blend of memoir, manifesto, and anthology, drawing new connections between these two realms of human experience and revealing Kripal’s body of work to be a dynamic whole that has the potential to renew and reshape the study of religion. Kripal tells his story, biographically, historically and politically contextualizing each of the six books of his Chicago corpus, from Kali’s Child to Mutants and Mystics, all the while answering his censors and critics and exploring new implications of his thought. In the process, he begins to sketch out a speculative “new comparativism” in twenty theses. The result is a new vision for the study of religion, one that takes in the best of the past, engages with outside critiques from the sciences and the humanities, and begins to blaze a new positive path forward. A major work decades in the making, Secret Body will become a landmark in the study of religion. |
What people are saying - Write a review
We haven't found any reviews in the usual places.
Contents
You Should Write Fiction | 1 |
Corpus | 17 |
Mysticum | 163 |
Meum | 351 |
What the New Sacred Is Not | 399 |
Airport Afterword | 423 |
The Gnomons | 427 |
The Method of All Methods | 433 |
Acknowledgments | 435 |
Notes | 437 |
465 | |
Other editions - View all
Secret Body: Erotic and Esoteric Currents in the History of Religions Jeffrey J. Kripal Limited preview - 2017 |
Secret Body: Erotic and Esoteric Currents in the History of Religions Jeffrey J. Kripal No preview available - 2019 |
Common terms and phrases
abduction Aldous Huxley American antinomian Blake brain Buddhist called Chicago Christian cognitive comparativism consciousness cosmic counterculture course criticism culture divine dream Eliade Eliade’s encounters erotic Esalen esoteric esotericisms essay event experience expression extraterrestrial fiction filter thesis forms gnomon gnostic guru Hanegraaff Hegel Hindu history of religions human Huxley Huxley’s Ian Stevenson Ibid imagination Indian intellectual Jacques Vallée Jesus Kabbalah Kālī’s Child kind look Massignon metaphor mind Mircea Eliade models modern moral mystical literature nature nondual one’s ontological paranormal particular phenomena philosophical physical precognitive psychedelic psychical quantum Ramakrishna reality reason reincarnation religious scholars secret body sense Serpent’s Gift sexual simply social spiritual Stevenson story Strieber study of religion Tantra Tantric telepathy things thought tion traditions transcendent trauma truth ufological understand University Press vision Wendy Western Whitley Whitley Strieber Wouter Hanegraaff writing yoga York Youth Without Youth