Browsing by Author "Kripal, Jeffrey J"

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    A Genealogy of the Subtle Body
    (2019-10-18) Cox, Simon Paul; Kripal, Jeffrey J; Klein, Anne C
    This dissertation traces the historical genealogy of the term “subtle body,” following it from its initial coinage among the Cambridge Platonists back to the Neoplatonic sources from which they drew, then forward into Indology, Theosophy, Carl Jung, and the American Counterculture, showing the expansion of the term’s semantic range to include Indic, Tibetan, and Chinese materials.
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    Metamodern Mysticisms: Narrative Encounters with Contemporary Western Secular Spiritualities
    (2018-04-19) Ceriello, Linda C.; Kripal, Jeffrey J
    The phenomenon of secular spirituality has grown increasingly visible in the contemporary Western world in the past two decades. From oral or written narratives of life-altering realizations that unchurched individuals describe using spiritual vernacular, to the plethora of encounters with the supernatural and paranormal depicted in popular culture, broad interest in and even comfort with mystical and non-ordinary experience is found more than ever in contexts not considered traditionally religious. The spiritual but not religious (SBNR) identity as a Western contemporary idiom in some sense curates this secular-spiritual space in the current cultural landscape. This project seeks to ask how, why now, and to what effect. To do so, I examine the SBNR and popular cultural instances of lay spiritual encounters that I am calling “secondhand mysticism.” Looking at how contemporary individuals encounter the mystical and non-ordinary will help shed light on the phenomenon of decontextualized, secular mystical experiences themselves, and will help consider new frameworks for viewing some of the central debates within mysticism studies. These types of encounters trouble the well-trodden perennialism-constructivism binary, and will consequently be a rich inroad to illuminating the larger epistemic terrain that undergirds the SBNR that I refer to as metamodernism. This project seeks to add to two types of recent efforts that have forged new theoretical bases for interdisciplinary scholarship in the 21st century: The first is the scholarly engagement with mysticisms as a “gnostic” enterprise. I will explore the idea that a gnostic scholarly perspective, one that neither negates nor endorses any individual’s particular truth claims but instead generates third positions, has the possibility of accessing, performing and/or even, at its most extreme, producing a secondhand mystical moment of “Aha!” The second current interdisciplinary project is the theorizing of metamodernism. Previous studies of the SBNR, of popular culture mysticism, and indeed of this gnostic position, I will argue here, have yet to account for and situate the emergence of this secular-spiritual sensibility within recent shifts in the contemporary Western cultural episteme (a term I borrow from the Foucauldian schema). Whereas the debate dominating mysticism studies that has for decades hinged on a central bifurcation pitting universalism against contextualism is, arguably, the product of modern and postmodern views colliding, I will take the position that the SBNR and the gnostic approach to viewing secular mystical phenomena are something else. That something else, I assert here, is the product and/or producer of a so-called metamodern shift, in which the Western cultural frame enacts a kind of collective emergence out from under the thumb of hyper-relativization and irony, among other postmodern ideas. Metamodernism factors into my study of second-hand mysticisms as a theoretical tool in three senses: as an instrument of historical contextualization or periodization; as an emerging narrative container in the figuring of the SBNR that gives contour to the secular and spiritual bridges and to the Western encounter with “the East”; and as a way of accounting for specific types of content that secular popular culture brings to the exploration of mysticisms. To examine the theoretical work metamodernism can do, I first locate the SBNR in currents of American spiritualities by identifying some of its major narratives as metamodern. I illustrate the intersection of these in chapters one and three by looking at instances of neo-Advaita Vedanta spirituality as performed through the figure of Russell Brand and other contemporary expositors. In chapter two, I use popular culture depictions of monsters such as those in Joss Whedon’s cult television show, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, to show how metamodern monsters have shifted narratives of the monstrous Other in a manner that highlights social shifts toward pluralism and inclusivism. Other ethical considerations related to this post-postmodern epistemic shift will be discussed in chapter four. There I also continue to make my case for the efficacy of theorization of a new episteme—in simple terms, to say why and when the signifier postmodernism needs replacing and what doing so will accomplish for the academic study of religion. Each chapter includes analysis of different types of mystical narrative: In chapter one, an anonymous account from a contemporary “ordinary mystic”, in chapter two, those of fictional television characters, and in chapter three, from a highly visible celebrity—each for how they convey personal transformation and understanding of the secular-spiritual qualities such as I identify here and also for how they illuminate a metamodern immanent soteriology, giving transformational power to the viewer/reader, who becomes, in effect, a secondhand mystic.
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    The Heretical Revival: The Nag Hammadi Library in American Religion and Culture
    (2017-04-20) Dillon, Matthew James; Kripal, Jeffrey J; DeConick, April D
    In December 1945, in the shadow of the towering cliffs of the Jabl al-Tariff, Egyptian peasant Muhammad Ali struck upon an antique jar while digging for fertilizer. The subsequent tale of treasures exhumed, blood feuds, black market intrigue and scholars smuggling texts across national borders has become a modern legend, while the twelve codices found and collectively referred to as the Nag Hammadi Library have revolutionized our understanding of early Christian history. Yet while numerous scholarly texts have theorized how the Nag Hammadi find has altered our understanding of the ancient Mediterranean, there has been comparatively little analysis of how these same texts have impacted, transformed, or inspired contemporary religion. My dissertation, “The Heretical Revival: The Nag Hammadi Library in American Religion and Culture,” is the first book-length study of the reception of the Nag Hammadi Codices (NHC) as religious documents. In it I analyze interpretations of the NHC within orthodox congregations, Gnostic churches, media, the arts, and “spiritual but not religious” individuals. Utilizing cultural memory theory and the social-scientific theory of symbolic loss, I argue that the publication of the NHC has inspired two related lines of interpretation in America. First, the NHC have been met as a “return of the repressed” Christian memory that has generated debates about the true Christian history. Groups, individuals and media use the NHC to assert competing interpretations of the Christian past that contend for authority over Christianity in the present. Secondly, many individuals in this reception history read the NHC after having been alienated from mainstream Christianity. In an effort to reconnect to the Christian tradition, these individuals use the NHC to reinterpret Christian symbols along psychological, feminist, and metaphysical lines. I offer two conclusions. One, that the reception of the NHC exposes a reconfiguration of Christian memory in America that began within new religions and culture (media, art, and academia), but is now entering traditional, mainline churches. Two, that this reconfiguration of memory is itself an attempt to adapt Christianity to fit an America influenced by the counterculture, secularization, and religious pluralization.
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    The Zero-Point Paradigm: "Radical" Hermeneutics of Nonduality in the Work of Adi Da Samraj
    (2023-04-13) Jones, Naamleela Free; Kripal, Jeffrey J; DeConick, April D
    This dissertation examines the paradigm of the "zero-point" in the work of my father, Adi Da Samraj (1939–2008)—philosopher, artist, and founder of a twentieth- to twenty-first century new religious movement. It argues that there are advantages in applying the broader conceptual categories and theoretical framework of esotericism to Adi Da’s spiritual and philosophical worldview. To begin with, I work retroactively to trace the history of the zero-point through key figures in nineteenth to twentieth century esotericism, including H.P. Blavatsky, Rudolf Steiner, C. G. Jung, Thomas Merton, and Ervin Laszlo. Through a close reading of Adi Da’s textual corpus, I then go on to consider how the zero-point paradigm represents a core thread of “radical” nonduality woven through the lens of philosophy and metaphysics, cosmology and anthropology, and ethics and politics. I write this study as both an insider and an outsider—an intimate participant and a historian of religions. Given my history and location, I situate my project as a scholar-practitioner in the academic area of new religious movements, contemporary esotericism, and East-West integrative traditions, or Asian-inspired American spiritualities. In the end, I argue that Adi Da’s zero-point paradigm represents a compelling case study of East-West integrative spirituality, one that exemplifies the mystical epistemologies and rich combinative project that lies at the very heart of American metaphysical religion.
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    To Know a Buddha: A Tibetan Contemplative History and Its Implications for Religious Studies
    (2015-04-23) Villarreal, Elena Claire; Klein, Anne C; Kripal, Jeffrey J; Long, Elizabeth
    This dissertation examines the introduction, critique, and re-framing of other-emptiness (gzhan-stong) by Dolpopa Sherab Gyaltsen (1292–1361), Tsongkhapa Lobsang Drakpa (1357–1419), and Jamgon Kongtrul (1813-1899) respectively. Each author's writings on emptiness were deeply informed by his own contemplative and visionary experiences. Such peak religious moments--along with historical, social, and textual context--must be considered seriously to provide the richest possible history of other-emptiness.