Jeffrey J. Kripal holds the J. Newton Rayzor Chair in Philosophy and Religious Thought at Rice University, where he is also the Chair of the Department of Religious Studies. He is the author of Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion (Chicago, 2007) and The Serpent's Gift: Gnostic Reflections on the Study of Religion (Chicago, 2006), and has also co-edited volumes with Wouter Hanegraaff on eroticism and esotericism, Hidden Intercourse: Eros and Sexuality in the History of Western Esotericism (University of Amsterdam Press, forthcoming) and with Glenn W. Shuck on the history of Esalen and the American counterculture, On the Edge of the Future: Esalen and the Evolution of American Culture (Indiana, 2005).