Host Michael Taft speaks with creator and professor Jeffrey Kripal about his early aspiration to be a Benedictine monk, the prophetic dimensions of the humanities, the sudden conversion, or “flip,” right into a weirder worldview experienced by some materialist scientists, the phenomena of UFOs, alien abduction, altered states, Philip K. Dick, and the way most breakthroughs into mysticism occur through trauma.
Jeffrey J. Kripal holds the J. Newton Rayzor Chair in Philosophy and Religious Thought at Rice University, where he served because the Associate Dean of the School of Humanities, chaired the Department of Religion for eight years, and likewise helped create a doctoral concentration within the study of Gnosticism, Esotericism, and Mysticism that’s the most important program of its kind on the planet. He presently helps direct the Center for Theory and Research on the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California.
Jeff is the creator or co-author of thirteen books, and focuses on the study of utmost religious states and putting “the not possible” back on the tutorial table again. He’s presently working on a three-volume study of paranormal currents within the history of religions and the sciences, collectively entitled .
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