Coyne in The New Republic as "the latest anti-science argument." Criticism Businessman Rajiv Malhotra has questioned the view and approach Kripal takes in Kali's Child, alongside the approach taken by many other scholars of India. In his book Invading the Sacred: An Analysis of Hinduism Studies in America, Malhotra's criticisms are primarily based on the work of Swami Tyagananda. As a result of criticisms like Malhotra's, Kripal was among a group of scholars receiving death threats and physical attacks from Hindus offended by his portrayals. He shifted his research focus away from Hinduism afterward, claiming, “I stuck with it and responded as best as I could for about six or seven years. It just wore me down after a while. At some point I felt like it wasn’t worth it anymore, that it was starting to affect my health. I couldn’t go anywhere, any conference or anything, without having to deal with the thought police, as it were.” Bibliography Books authored Kali's Child: The Mystical and the Erotic in the Life and Teachings of Ramakrishna (Chicago, 1995, 1998) Roads of Excess, Palaces of Wisdom: Eroticism and Reflexivity in the Study of Mysticism (Chicago, 2001) The Serpent's Gift: Gnostic Reflections on the Study of Religion (University of Chicago Press, 2006) Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion (Chicago, 2007) Authors of the Impossible: The Paranormal and the Sacred (University of Chicago Press, 2010) Mutants and Mystics: Science Fiction, Superhero Comics, and the Paranormal (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011) Super Natural: A New Vision of the Unexplained, and Whitley Strieber (New York: Tarcher, Penguin, 2016) Secret Body: Erotic and Esoteric Currents in the History of Religions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017) The Flip: Epiphanies of Mind and the Future of Knowledge (New York: Bellevue Literary Press, 2019) The Superhumanities: Historical Precedents, Moral Objections, New Realities (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2022) Books edited Vishnu on Freud's Desk: A Reader in Psychoanalysis and Hinduism edited with T.G. Vaidyanathan (Oxford, 1999) Crossing Boundaries: Essays on the Ethical Status of Mysticism edited with G. William Barnard (Seven Bridges, 2002) Encountering Kali: In the Margins, at the Center, in the West edited with Rachel Fell McDermott (California, 2003) On the Edge of the Future: Esalen and the Evolution of American Culture edited with Glenn Shuck (Indiana, 2005) Hidden Intercourse: Eros and Sexuality in the History of Western Esotericism edited with Wouter J. Hanegraaff