Jeffrey Kripal - Esalen and the Mystic Scholar
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If you were to flip through a course catalog from any major university, classes on such subjects as “Out of Body Experiences,” “Supernormal Human Functioning,” and “Evolutionary Metaphysics,” would most likely be rare finds at best. But Rice University’s religious studies chair, Jeffrey Kripal, says that in spite of its seeming bias against the more esoteric branches of human knowledge, “the academy is chock-full of closet mystics.” And every year, he and a collection of mystically inclined scholars from major universities around the world converge at the Esalen Institute’s Center for Theory and Research to explore topics that don’t get much air time in mainstream academia.
In this interview, EnlightenNext’s Joel Pitney speaks with Dr. Kripal about Esalen’s long-running and often overlooked relationship to the academic world. Drawing on his recent book, Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion, Kripal gives a fascinating intellectual history of the institute, from its explosive beginnings as a haven for the human potential movement in the sixties to its role in harmonizing Russian-American relations in the eighties to its ongoing efforts to broker a peace treaty between science and spirituality. In the process he explains why he, as a mainstream academic, finds the work of the institute so important for the continued evolution of human consciousness.
BIO
Dr. Jeffrey J. Kripal is the J. Newton Rayzor Professor of Religious Studies and Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at Rice University in Houston, Texas, where he specializes in the comparative erotics and ethics of mystical literature, American countercultural translations of Asian religions, and the history of Western esotericism from ancient Gnosticism to the New Age. He is also one of the leading scholars at the Esalen Institute’s Center for Theory and Research.
Kripal has authored several books, including Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion (2007); The Serpent’s Gift: Gnostic Reflections on the Study of Religion (2006); Palaces of Wisdom: Eroticism and Reflexivity in the Study of Mysticism (2001), and Kali’s Child: The Mystical and the Erotic in the Life and Teachings of Ramakrishna (1995), all published by the University of Chicago Press.
He has also coedited volumes with Glenn W. Shuck on the history of Esalen, On the Edge of the Future: Esalen and the Evolution of American Culture (Indiana, 2005); with Rachel Fell McDermott on a popular Hindu goddess, Encountering Kali: In the Margins, at the Center, in the West (California, 2003); with G. William Barnard on the ethical critique of mystical traditions, Crossing Boundaries: Essays on the Ethical Status of Mysticism (Seven Bridges, 2002); and with T.G. Vaidyanathan of Bangalore, India, on the dialogue between psychoanalysis and Hinduism, Vishnu on Freud’s Desk: A Reader in Psychoanalysis and Hinduism(Oxford, 1999).
Product Information:
| Media Type | Audio |
| Number of Programs | 1 |
| Format | MP3 |
Programs:
| Program Title | Duration |
|---|---|
| Jeffrey Kripal - Esalen and the Mystic Scholar | 36:15 |
Your download will be available immediately upon purchase and accessible from any computer, any time!
