Kali's Child : The Mystical and the Erotic in the Life and Teachings of Ramakrishna (0226453774)

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.

Product details

• Format Paperback | 420 pages
• Dimensions 156 x 229 x 25mm | 632g
• Publication date 29 Oct 1998
• Publisher The University of Chicago Press
• Imprint University of Chicago Press
• Publication City/Country Chicago, IL, United States
• Language English
• Edition Statement 2nd ed.
• Illustrations note 6 line drawings
• ISBN10 0226453774
• ISBN13 9780226453774
• Bestsellers rank 849,376

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