New Thinking • Nov 18, 2024 Jeffrey J. Kripal is the J. Newton Rayzor Professor of Philosophy and Religious Thought and former chair of the Department of Religious Studies at Rice University in Houston, Texas. His books include Kali’s Child, Esalen, Authors of the Impossible, The Serpent’s Gift, Mutants and Mystics, The Supernatural (with Whitley Strieber), Secret Body, The Flip: Epiphanies of Mind and the Future of Knowledge, and Superhumanities. He is coauthor, with Elizabeth Krohn, of Changed in a Flash: One Woman’s Near-Death Experience and Why a Scholar Thinks It Empowers Us All. His most recent book is How to Think Impossibly: About Souls, UFOs, Time, Belief, and Everything Else. His website is https://jeffreyjkripal.com/ Professor Kripal organized the Archives of the Impossible symposium at Ric University. See https://impossiblearchives.rice.edu/ Here he shares his understanding that the humanities (philosophy, religious studies, literature, and history) have always been deeply imbued with an appreciation for the paranormal and the sacred. He cites many examples to support this position, particularly Friedrich Nietzsche’s ideas of the “superman” and “eternal recurrence.” 00:00 Introduction 03:12 Suppression of the paranormal in academia 13:49 The Nietzschean superman 23:27 Rudolf Steiner, G. I. Gurdjieff, & the Harlem Renaissance 30:20 Inner nature versus society 35:04 The dominance of science 41:38 The ridiculous and the sublime 51:20 Entelechy 53:54 Eternal recurrence 58:26 Conclusion New Thinking Allowed host, Jeffrey Mishlove, PhD, is author of The Roots of Consciousness, Psi Development Systems, and The PK Man. Between 1986 and 2002 he hosted and co-produced the original Thinking Allowed public television series. He is the recipient of the only doctoral diploma in “parapsychology” ever awarded by an accredited university (University of California, Berkeley, 1980). He is also the Grand Prize winner of the 2021 Bigelow Institute essay competition regarding the best evidence for survival of human consciousness after permanent bodily death. He is Co-Director of Parapsychology Education at the California Institute for Human Science. (Recorded on November 1, 2024)
