Hidden Nature: An Erotic Reading of Nature Mysticism

For over twenty years Jeffrey J. Kripal’s classic work, Roads of Excess, Palaces of Wisdom (2001), has served as an enduring source of critical insight into the comparative study of mysticism. Kripal’s concept of “the erotic” plays a central role in defining the theoretical directions of Roads of Excess and today his “comparative erotics” continues to inspire new avenues of theorizing about the mystical dimension of body, sexuality, gender, transgression, and transformation. I propose a paper that extends Kripal’s comparative approach by placing the erotic in dialogue with nature mysticism. I claim that the erotic can enhance the way nature mysticism is addressed in contemporary ecological discourses because it offers a nondualistic lens of interpretation that can integrate the experiential knowledge of both body (nature) and soul (culture). Most significantly, I’m suggesting that constructing an erotic dialogue with the teachings of certain nature mystics, such as Henry David Thoreau and Annie Dillard, underscores the hybrid and ultimately holistic significance of nature mysticism as a uniquely embodied esoteric movement within the history of American environmentalism.  

The paper is structured in three parts that unfold as follows: First, I introduce the work of Kripal by focusing on how he interprets the relationship between mysticism and the erotic. Kripal’s explanation of the erotic evolves over the span of his writings to refer to an ontological fusion of sexual energy and mystical consciousness. From a methodological standpoint, Kripal employs the erotic as a hermeneutical lens designed to deepen his reading of the mystical as it manifests in various cross-cultural contexts.

Roads of Excess marks an important development in Kripal’s application of the erotic and raises two important questions for the study of mysticism: First, what is revealed about the mystical when it is read through the lens of the erotic? And second, what role does hermeneutics play in shaping the comparative study of mysticism? According to Kripal, reading and writing about mysticism can potentially elicit a reader’s personal encounter with the mystical; that is, studying mysticism can lead to a participation in the mystical, a process he refers to as “mystical hermeneutics.” Kripal suggests that a hermeneutical feedback-loop operates within the study of mysticism where scholars, effectively transformed and inspired through their exposure to mystical texts, actively replicate their experience of the mystical through the idiom of their own secret writings, which, in turn, influences other mystics and scholars of mysticism. This hidden mysticism that scholars encode within their texts is revealed when viewed through the lens of the erotic.

In the second part of my paper I examine how the teachings of two authors – Henry David Thoreau and Annie Dillard – can be enriched by interpreting their understanding of the mystical significance of nature in light of the erotic. Following in the footsteps of Kripal’s Roads of Excess, I draw on the erotic as a hermeneutical lens to reread Thoreau’s Walden (1854) and Dillard’s Pilgrim as Tinker Creek (1974) as textual confessionals that seek to evoke a mystical state of intimacy between author, nature, and reader. Both texts – Walden and Pilgrim at Tinker Creek – are widely considered foundational to defining the spiritual ethos of the American environmental movement. But despite their lauded status both works tend to be undervalued as “mystical texts” and both authors are often understudied as “nature mystics.” Perhaps this is largely a result of the hybridity of their teachings; that is, the teachings of Thoreau and Dillard might be considered too nature-oriented to fit the conventional standard of traditional mysticism and too mystical to appeal to rationally-grounded ecological discourses. I claim, however, that this sense of hybridity – namely, how their teachings value both science and spirituality, both body and soul, is the greatest asset of their teachings. In other words, by cultivating a hybrid interpretation of the relationship between themselves and nature – a relationship that can be framed in erotic terms – Thoreau and Dillard present a holistic vision of the mystical that contests shallow anthropocentrism and simultaneously affirms an embodied ontology that is explicitly ecocentric.

Despite the passage of over a century between the two authors, their work is connected by a shared understanding of the mystico-erotic significance of nature. This is due in part to the fact that Dillard turned to Thoreau’s Walden as inspiration for her Pulitzer-prize winning book. Both Walden and Pilgrim can be read as a spiritual pilgrimage of sorts, with a common destination: a state of mystical unity with nature. This experience of mystical unity is characterized most poignantly in erotic terms, as a state of felt intimacy between author and nature. Significantly, this sense of intimacy is often alluded to in subtext, placed strategically in-between-the-lines as a subtle “come hither” to the reader. Such a tactic serves an evocative purpose, to seduce the reader into a state of spiritual (and ecological) receptiveness, which essentially mirrors Kripal’s notion of “mystical hermeneutics.” Further, when identified explicitly in certain imaginative passages of their texts, both Thoreau and Dillard are careful to underscore not only the raw aesthetic power of this mystico-erotic connection with nature, but also that such experiences are embodied and noetic. It is precisely this type of holistic narrative – one that highlights the affective wonder of nature – that can help expand the way we think and feel about the transformative power of environmental ethics.

In the third and final section of my paper I conclude by raising questions about how this erotic reading of nature mysticism might square with contemporary eco-erotic discourses as represented in the work of David Abram and Whitney Bauman. Similar to my erotic reading of nature mysticism, both Abram and Bauman call attention to how a more embodied, holistic, or queer interpretation of the relationship between religion and ecology might help contest the dualistic logic of domination that traditional defines the history of American environmentalism. Theorizing such an erotic narrative is key to unlocking a truly embodied response to the ecological crisis.