Jeffrey J. Kripal

Jeffrey J. Kripal holds the J. Newton Rayzor Chair in Philosophy and Religious Thought at Rice University. He is the author of Comparing Religions, Mutants and Mystics: Science Fiction, Superhero Comics, and the Paranormal, Authors of the Impossible: The Paranormal and the Sacred, Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion, The Serpent’s Gift: Gnostic Reflections on the Study of Religion, Roads of Excess, Palaces of Wisdom: Eroticism and Reflexivity in the Study of Mysticism, Kali’s Child: The Mystical and the Erotic in the Life and Teachings of Ramakrishna, and other books, as well as numerous essays and articles. His present areas of writing and research include the articulation of a New Comparativism within the study of religion that will put “the impossible” back on the table again, a robust and even conversation between the sciences and the humanities, and the mapping of an emergent mythology or “Super Story” within paranormal communities and individual visionaries.