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Kali's Child:

The Mystical and the Erotic in the Life and Teachings of Ramakrishna
Front Cover
3 Reviews
University of Chicago Press, Oct 16, 1995 - Religion - 386 pages
The nineteenth-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 this extraordinary figure, 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, Kali's Child employs two complementary interpretive strategies, a nuanced phenomenological reinterpretation of original Bengali texts and a nonreductive 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.
  

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Review: Kali's Child: The Mystical and the Erotic in the Life and Teachings of Ramakrishna

User Review - Goodreads

Good read. Kripal examine's Ramakrishna's 'secret' teachings via Freudian psychoanalysis. His conclusions upset a good number of Hindus who held public burnings. No book deserves that, particularly ...

Review: Kali's Child: The Mystical and the Erotic in the Life and Teachings of Ramakrishna

User Review - Goodreads

A somewhat scandalous tour de force, although at times it doesn't quite convince, the effort is brilliant. A kind of a psychoanalytic exploration of the life and thought of Ramakrishna, this book ...

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Contents

CHAPTER
47
CHAPTER
85
CHAPTER THREE
145
CHAPTER FOUR
199
CHAPTER FIVE
243
The Fog of Bliss
307
Some Historical and Textual Aspects of Ramakrishnas
329
Works Cited
363
Copyright

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References from web pages

Kali's Child
"Pale Plausibilities: A Preface for the Second Edition," in Kali's Child: The Mystical and the Erotic in the Life and Teachings of Ramakrishna (Chicago: ...
www.ruf.rice.edu/ ~kalischi/

Kali's Child - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Kali's Child: The Mystical and the Erotic in the Life and Teachings of Ramakrishna, was a 1995 psychoanalytic study of the Bengali mystic Ramakrishna ...
en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/ Kali's_Child

JSTOR: Kali's Child: The Mystical and the Erotic in the Life and ...
Book Reviews 287 Kali's Child: The Mystical and the Erotic in the Life and Teachings of Ramakrishna. By JEFFREY J. KRIPAL. With a foreword by Wendy Doniger. ...
links.jstor.org/ sici?sici=1043-4070(199610)7%3A2%3C287%3AKCTMAT%3E2.0.CO%3B2-Y

Kripal, Jeffrey J.: Kali's Child
Kripal, Jeffrey J. Kali's Child: The Mystical and the Erotic in the Life and Teachings of Ramakrishna. 2d edition. 420 p., 6 line drawings. 6 x 9 1998 ...
www.press.uchicago.edu/ cgi-bin/ hfs.cgi/ 00/ 13682.ctl

Jeffrey J. Kripal: The Wonder of Esalen - 3/21/2007 8:26:00 AM ...
Advertisement. Click Here · Home; PW in Print. Current Issue · Print Archives · Virtual Edition · Virtual Edition Archives · Subscribe. Newsletters ...
www.publishersweekly.com/ article/ CA6426454.html?nid=2287

<i>Kali's Child</i>: Psychological And Hermeneutical Problems : <i ...
Kripal, Jeffery J., Kali's Child: The Mystical and the Erotic in the Life and Teachings of Ramakrishna, 2nd Ed., The University of chicagopress,1998. ...
prof-somnath-bhattacharyya.sulekha.com/ blog/ post/ 2002/ 12/ i-kali-s-child-i-psychological-and-hermeneutical.htm

Kali's Child: Psychological And Hermeneutical Problems
Kripal, Jeffery J., Kali's Child: The Mystical and the Erotic in the Life and Teachings of Ramakrishna, 2nd Ed., The University of chicagopress,1998. ...
www.infinityfoundation.com/ mandala/ s_rv/ s_rv_bhatt_kali.htm

Kali's Child Revisited
Kali's Child Revisited. —or—. Didn't Anyone Check the Documentation? Swami Tyagananda*. Jeffrey J. Kripal’s Kali’s Child has tremendous value for one very ...
home.earthlink.net/ ~tyag/ KCR.doc

Ramakrishna: Mystical, Erotic, or Both?
Kripal, jj, Kali's Child: The Mystical and the Erotic in the Life and Teachings of Ramakrishna. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995. ...
www.springerlink.com/ index/ HU55HQ066JH60241.pdf

RESPONSES AND REJOINDERS
In Kali's Child: The Mystical and the Erotic in the Life. and Teachings of Ramakrishna. Chicago: University of. Chicago Press, 2d ed. ...
jaar.oxfordjournals.org/ cgi/ reprint/ 66/ 3/ 627.pdf

About the author (1995)

Jeffrey J. Kripal is the J. Newton Rayzor Professor in and chair of the Department of Religious Studies at Rice University. He is the author of "Kali's Child: The Mystical and the Erotic in the Life and Teachings of Ramakrishna" and "Roads of Excess, Palaces of Wisdom: Eroticism and Reflexivity in the Study of Mysticism," both published by the University of Chicago Press.

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