Jeffrey Kripal is a professor of philosophy and religious thought at Rice University, specializing in ethics and eroticism in mystical literature and critical translations of Asian religious texts. His books include Kali's Child and Authors of the Impossible.

"It is unlikely, for example, that I would have located the castration themes of chapter 1 or the virgin-whore plit of chapter 2 without the cultural benefit of Freud's psychoanalytic insights. Nor is it likely that I would have been able to make any sense out of Ramakrishna's eating and defecation practices, as I try to do in chapter 5. My interpretations of Ramakrishna's visions, moreover, owe a great deal to psychoanalytic approaches to the dream."

- Jeffrey Kripal, Kali's Child