Episode 45: Jeffrey J. Kripal on 'Flipping' Out of Materialism

Phil Ford and J. F. Martel — Wed, 24 Apr 2019 11:30:00 -0400

"May the present 'you' not survive this little book," Jeffrey Kripal writes in the prologue to The Flip. "May you be flipped in dramatic or quiet ways." Indeed, Kripal's latest is a kind of manifesto, a call to embrace the metaphysical expanses that reveal themselves to many who dare dip a toe outside the materialist lifeboat we've been rowing away in for a couple of centuries now. In this conversation, Phil and JF talk to the eminent scholar of religion about the life-changing epiphanies that have convinced many a hardboiled materialist that bouncing billiard balls is probably not the best metaphor for what is actually going on in the universe. In essence, this is a conversation about stories, about the fictions we tell ourselves to make sense -- or nonsense -- of our world.

REFERENCES

Jeffrey J. Kripal, The Flip: Epiphanies of Mind and the Future of Knowledge
Henri Bergson, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion
Sigmund Freud, Civilization and its Discontents
Weird Studies, Episode 37: Entities, with Stuart Davis
Special Guest: Jeffrey J. Kripal.

Episode 39: The Challenge of the Paranormal, with Jeffrey J. Kripal

Phil Ford and J. F. Martel — Wed, 30 Jan 2019 13:00:00 -0500

"The world is not simply composed of physical causes strung together in strictly materialistic and mechanical fashion," writes Prof. Jeffrey J. Kripal in his seminal book, Authors of the Impossible. "The world is also a series of meaningful signs requiring a hermeneutics for their decipherment." This, in a nutshell, is Kripal's position vis à vis the fact of paranormal experience, a fact that he has explored in numerous works of scholarship over the last 25 years. For Kripal, whether we see supernatural entities as beings from other worlds or creatures of the human imagination is secondary to the question of whether they merit serious philosophical thought and consideration. On that point, he says, "it's not an option to be neutral." JF and Phil had the honor of sitting down with Jeffrey Kripal to discuss the super-natural, the sacred, and the reasons why these categories remain as vital now as they ever have been.

Header image: "Artist's Impression of the Mothman," by Tim Bertelink, Wikimedia Commons.

REFERENCES

Jeffrey J. Kripal, Authors of the Impossible: The Paranormal and the Sacred, The Serpent's Gift: Gnostic Reflections on the Study of Religion, Mutants and Mystics: Science Fiction, Superhero Comics, and the Paranormal, The Super Natural: Why the Unexplained is Real (with Whitley Strieber), and Changed in a Flash: One Woman's Near-Death Experience and Why a Scholar Thinks it Empowers Us All (with Elizabeth G. Krohn)

Stanley Kubrick's The Shining
Wouter Hanegraaff, historian of hermetic philosophy
John Keel, The Mothman Prophecies
Graham Harman and Eugene Thacker, philosophers
J. F. Martel, Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice
E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic Among the Azande
The X-Men (Marvel Comics)
Special Guest: Jeffrey J. Kripal.

Weird Studies - Episodes Tagged with “Jeffrey Kripal”

Episode 45: Jeffrey J. Kripal on 'Flipping' Out of Materialism

Episode 39: The Challenge of the Paranormal, with Jeffrey J. Kripal