Kali's Child: The Mystical and the Erotic in the Life and Teachings of Ramakrishna [Paperback]

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 Childhas 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 Childis 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

Foreword
Preface to the Second Edition
Preface to the First Edition
A Note on Transliteration
List of Abbreviations
Introduction: Approaching the Secret
Defining the Study: Recovering the Text and Revealing the Secret
The Mystical and the Erotic
Ramakrishna's Tantric World
The Study's Symbolic Structure: Kali's Child
The Hindu Unconscious
Ch. 1: Kali's Sword: Anxious Desire and the First Vision
Kali's Sword
From the Village to the Temple, 1836-1856
A Textual Study of Ramakrishna's Anxl3/