Seize Roads Of Excess, Palaces Of Wisdom: Eroticism And Reflexivity In The Study Of Mysticism Rendered By Jeffrey J. Kripal Format Brochure

My favorite of Kripal's books, an absolute must for any serious scholar of religion, and particularly for anyone who's interest in religious studies flows from our own spiritual aspirations and experience.
People with a general interest in mysticism, inner experience will also find this interesting, William Blake once wrote that "The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom, " Inspired by these poetic terms, Jeffrey J, Kripal reveals how the works of scholars of mysticism are often rooted in their own mystical experiences, "roads of excess," which can both lead to important insights into these scholars' works and point us to our own "palaces of wisdom.
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In his new book, Kripal addresses the twentiethcentury study of mysticism as a kind of mystical tradition in its own right, with its own unique histories, discourses, sociological dynamics, and rhetorics of secrecy.
Fluidly combining autobiography and biography with scholarly exploration, Kripal takes us on a tour of comparative mystical thought by examining the lives and works of five major historians of mysticismEvelyn Underhill, Louis Massignon, R.
C. Zaehner, Agehananda Bharati, and Elliot Wolfsonas well as relating his

own mystical experiences, The result, Kripal finds, is seven "palaces of wisdom": the religious power of excess, the necessity of distance in the study of mysticism, the relationship between the mystical and art, the dilemmas of male subjectivity and modern heterosexuality, a call for ethical criticism, the paradox of the insideroutsider problem in the study of religion, and the magical power of texts and their interpretation.

An original and penetrating analysis of modern scholarship and scholars of mysticism, Roads of Excess, Palaces of Wisdom is also a persuasive demonstration of the way this scholarly activity is itself a mystical phenomenon.
Jeffrey J. Kripal, Ph. D. History of Religions, The University of Chicago,M, A. , U. Chicago B. A. , Religion, Conception Seminary College,, holds the J, Newton Rayzor Chair in Philosophy and Religious Thought at Rice University, where he serves as Associate Dean of Humanities, Faculty and Graduate Studies.
He also has served as Associate Director of the Center for Theory and Research of the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California.
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