Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. Contents vii
3. Opening: “You Should Write Fiction” 1
4. Corpus
5. 1. In the Land of Oz: Childhood and Adolescence 19
6. 2. “My Eros Has Been Crucified”: Puberty, Asceticism, and Neurosis 30
7. 3. That Night: Wherein the Knowing Energies Zap Me 46
8. 4. The Erotic Mystic: Kālī’s Child and the Backlash against It 56
9. 5. The Transmoral Mystic: What Both the Moralists and the Devotees Get Wrong 79
10. 6. How They Really Came to Their Ideas: The Deeper Roots of Thought and Theory 97
11. 7. The Gnostic Reversal: The Snake That Bites Its Own Tail 119
12. 8. Wendy’s Student: Mythical Paradox and Political Censorship 133
13. Mysticum
14. 9. That Other Night: The Future of the Body and Evolutionary Esotericism 165
15. 10. The Filter Thesis: The Irreducible Nature of Mind and the Spirit of the Humanities 192
16. 11. The Rise of the Paranormal: And Some Related X Factors in the Study of Religion 228
17. 12. La Pensée Surhumaine: Paraphysics, the Super Story, and Invisible Colleges 261
18. 13. Comparing Religions in Public: Rural America, Evangelicals, and the Prophetic Function of the Humanities 296
19. 14. The Super Natural: Biological Gods, the Traumatic Secret, and the Future (of) Race 312
20. Meum
21. 15. The New Comparativism: What It Is and How to Do It 353
22. Closing: What the New Sacred Is (Not) 399
23. Airport Afterword 423
24. Appendix: The Gnomons 427
25. The Method of All Methods 433
26. Acknowledgments 435
27. Notes 437
28. Index of My Brain 465