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Product Description
内容説明
The 19th-century Bengali mystic Ramakrishna played a major role in the development of Hinduism and is regarded as a modern saint. Yet he remains an enigma to followers unable to reconcile his saintly status with his eroticized language and actions. In this work, Jeffrey J. Kripal attempts to untangle the paradox. He demonstrates that Ramakrishna's famous mystical experiences were driven by erotic energies that he neither fully accepted nor understood; the key to understanding him, Kripal argues, lies in Tantra and its ritual, symbolic and doctrinal equation of the mystical and the erotic. Moving through Ramakrishna's world both chronologically and conceptually, this book employs two complementary interpretive strategies: a nuanced phenomenological reinterpretation of original Bengali texts and a non-reductive psychoanalytic reading of Ramakrishna's mystical eroticism. Kripal shows how the heterosexual structure of Tantric symbolism, the abusive way its rituals were often forced upon the saint, and Ramakrishna's own homosexual desires all came together to produce in him profound feelings of shame, disgust and fear. Kripal establishes that the homosexuality of this great, if unwilling, Tantric mystic is linked inextricably to virtually every aspect of his life and teachings.
Book Description
In a book now marked by both critical acclaim and cross-cultural controversy, Jeffrey J. Kripal explores the life and teachings of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, a nineteenth-century Bengali saint who played a major role in the creation of modern Hinduism. Through extended textual and symbolic analyses of Ramakrishna's censored "secret talk," Kripal demonstrates that the saint's famous ecstatic and visionary experiences were driven by mystico-erotic energies that he neither fully accepted nor understood. The result is a striking new vision of Ramakrishna as a conflicted, homoerotic Tantric mystic that is as complex as it is clear and as sympathetic to the historical Ramakrishna as it is critical of his traditional portraits.
In a substantial new preface to this second edition, Kripal answers his critics, addresses the controversy the book has generated in India, and traces the genealogy of his work in the history of psychoanalytic discourse on mysticism, Hinduism, and Ramakrishna himself. Kali's Child has already proven to be provocative, groundbreaking, and immensely enjoyable.
"Only a few books make such a major contribution to their field that from the moment of publication things are never quite the same again. Kali's Child is such a book."--John Stratton Hawley, History of Religions
Winner of the American Academy of Religion's History of Religions Prize for the Best First Book of 1995
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RAMAKRISHNA PARAMAHAMSA was a nineteenth-century Bengali mystic who experienced hundreds of ecstatic states and visions, experimented with different religious traditions, including something he called "the Jesus state," entertained the belief that he was the latest of the incarnations of God, and played a major role in the creation of modern Hinduism, both directly through his teachings and indirectly through the work and writing of his most famous disciple, Swami Vivekananda. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
RAMAKRISHNA PARAMAHAMSA was a nineteenth-century Bengali mystic who experienced hundreds of ecstatic states and visions, experimented with different religious traditions, including something he called "the Jesus state," entertained the belief that he was the latest of the incarnations of God, and played a major role in the creation of modern Hinduism, both directly through his teachings and indirectly through the work and writing of his most famous disciple, Swami Vivekananda. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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