Swami Atmajnanananda (also written Svāmī Ātmajñānānanda, born Stuart Elkman) is a

swami Swami ( ; sometimes abbreviated sw.) in Hinduism is an honorific title given to a male or female ascetic who has chosen the path of renunciation (''sanyāsa''), or has been initiated into a religious monastic order of Vaishnavas. It is used eith ...

(monk) of the

Ramakrishna Order The Ramakrishna Order (Bengali: রামকৃষ্ণ সংঘ) is the monastic lineage that was founded by Sri Ramakrishna, when he gave the ochre cloth of renunciation to twelve of his close disciples, in January 1886 at the Cossipore Hous ...

, which he joined in 1981. He has a

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...

oriental studies Oriental studies is the academic field that studies Near Eastern and Far Eastern societies and cultures, languages, peoples, history and archaeology. In recent years, the subject has often been turned into the newer terms of Middle Eastern studi ...

from the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...

. He is currently resident minister at the Vedanta Center of Greater Washington, DC, in

Silver Spring, Maryland Silver Spring is a census-designated place (CDP) in southeastern Montgomery County, Maryland, United States, near Washington, D.C. Although officially unincorporated, in practice it is an edge city, with a population of 81,015 at the 2020 censu ...

, USA. He authored ''Jiva Gosvamin's Tattvasandarbha: A Study on the Philosophical and Sectarian Development of the Gaudiya Vaisnava Movement'', published by

Motilal Banarsidass Motilal Banarsidass Publishing House (MLBD) is an Indian academic publishing house, founded in Delhi, India in 1903. It publishes and distributes serials, monographs, and scholarly publications on Asian religions, Buddhology, Indology, Easte ...

in 1986 under his pre-monastic name. Atmajnanananda was a significant critic of

Jeffrey Kripal Jeffrey John Kripal (born 1962) is an American college professor. He is the J. Newton Rayzor Chair in Philosophy and Religious Thought at Rice University in Houston, Texas. His work includes the study of comparative erotics and ethics in mysti ...

's book ''

Kali's Child ''Kali's Child: The Mystical and the Erotic in the Life and Teachings of Ramakrishna'' is a book on the Indian mystic Ramakrishna by Hindu studies scholar Jeffrey J. Kripal, published in 1995 by the University of Chicago press.Jeffrey J. Kripal ...

''. Swami Atmajnanananda (August 1997), ''Scandals, cover-ups, and other imagined occurrences in the life of Ramakrishna: An examination of Jeffrey Kripal's ''Kali's child.

International Journal of Hindu Studies The ''International Journal of Hindu Studies'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal published by Springer Science+Business Media. The editor-in-chief is Sushil Mittal (James Madison University). The journal was established in 1997 and appears triann ...

, volume 1, issue 2, pages 401–420.
Online version
accessed on 2010-01-20. Jeffrey J. Kripal (January 1998), ''Pale Plausibilities: A Preface for the Second Edition f Kali's Child'. University of Chicago Press
Online version
available at Kripal's Rice University website, accessed on 2010-01-25. "Swami Atmajnanananda, for example, has gone through the first edition with the proverbial "fine-toothed comb" and published his criticisms in a journal article (but only, I might add, after corresponding with me for almost a year)." .."A close reading of tmajnananandaarticle and the present edition will reveal where I agree with Atmajnanananda and where I still disagree. I am deeply grateful to Swamiji for his intellectual honesty, for his religious integrity, and, most of all, for his humane civility."

References

External links

Vedanta Center of Greater Washington, DC website Swami Atmajnanananda (English) Lecture, Boston
Monks of the Ramakrishna Mission Living people Year of birth missing (living people) {{hindu-bio-stub