Daily-ist: Wednesday

Jung Center Lecture Series: America and the Religion of No Religion

In this lecture series, drawn from his new history of the Esalen Institute, Rice University professor Jeffrey J. Kripal (pictured) explores how the human potential movement reflects a vital, enduring, and often hidden vein of American religious experience.

Jeffrey J. Kripal is the J. Newton Rayzor Professor of Religious Studies and Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at Rice University. He is the author of The Serpent's Gift: Gnostic Reflections on the Study of Religion; Roads of Excess, Palaces of Wisdom: Eroticism and Reflexivity in the Study of Mysticism; and Kali's Child: The Mystical and the Erotic in the Life and Teachings of Ramakrishna, which won the American Academy of Religion's 1996 History of Religions Prize.

An underground river of religious experience runs through American life. It moves from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s transcendent individualism through a variety of gnostic, mystical, and esoteric traditions to today’s human potential movement. This other, vital stream holds that the deepest implications of democracy are far more radical than any society—including our own—has yet realized.

In these three lectures drawn from Dr. Kripal's new book Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion, he will explore this other stream.
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tonight, June 13th (and Wednesdays, June 13-June 27) | 5:45 - 7:15 pm
The Jung Center | 5200 Montrose
tickets: Series $55, per lecture $20 | call 713.524.8253