Most scholars dismiss research into the paranormal as pseudoscience, a frivolous pursuit for the paranoid or gullible. Even historians of religion, whose work naturally attends to events beyond the realm of empirical science, have shown scant interest in the subject. But the history of psychical phenomena, Jeffrey J. Kripal contends, is an untapped source of insight into the sacred and by tracing that history through the last two centuries of Western thought we can see its potential centrality to the critical study of religion.
Kripal grounds his study in the work of four major figures in the history of paranormal research: psychical researcher Frederic Myers; writer and humorist Charles Fort; astronomer, computer scientist, and ufologist Jacques Vallee; and philosopher and sociologist Bertrand Méheust. Through incisive analyses of these thinkers, Kripal ushers the reader into a beguiling world somewhere between fact, fiction, and fraud. The cultural history of telepathy, teleportation, and UFOs; a ghostly love story; the occult dimensions of science fiction; cold war psychic espionage; galactic colonialism; and the intimate relationship between consciousness and culture all come together in Authors of the Impossible, a dazzling and profound look at how the paranormal bridges the sacred and the scientific.
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“This is an excellent book. As well as being carefully researched and theoretically interesting, it is also engaging, witty, and thoughtful. Writing in an easy, contemplative style, Kripal is never less than rigorous and wide-ranging; he doesn''t get mired in statistics or parapsychological analysis, but instead, drawing on religious studies and cultural analysis, he explores key ideas and thinkers in their respective contexts. In the process, the reader is introduced to the largely rejected knowledge of the psychical, the sacred is resurrected in the paranormal, and lazy skepticism is challenged. Authors of the Impossible will contribute significantly to the intelligent, open-minded study of the sacred, while Kripal will, I suspect, become a key figure in the development of new trajectories in the study of religion.”—Christopher Partridge, Lancaster University
(Christopher Partridge ) “Jeffrey Kripal’s new book represents a serious intellectual challenge to the epistemological assumptions that govern the work of scientists and religion scholars alike. He demands nothing short of a paradigm shift in order to make sense of the odd, the anomalous, and the inexplicable. All of this he calls the impossible—the paranormal situations in which thought forms are said to become physical realities and the future to morph into the present and past. Kripal is no fluffy believer; he argues incisively and in detail in ways that seek to shake our materialist and rational foundations at their base, so that our defensive walls come tumbling down.”—Catherine L. Albanese, University of California, Santa Barbara
(Catherine L. Albanese ) “This is a quietly earth-shattering project that constitutes a logical next step in the development of Kripal’s thinking over the course of his career and grows directly out of Esalen. In Kripal we have a classic Romantic thinker/writer who is formulating—in a conscious meld of the subjective and objective that is the hallmark of Romantic writing—his own distinctive and highly original Biographia Spiritualis.”—Victoria Nelson, author of The Secret Life of Puppets
(Victoria Nelson )"This is another in a series of outstanding and almost certainly controversial contributions to the academic study of religion by Kripal. . . . Kripal has one of the most distinctive, interesting voices in the humanities today and has promise to revitalize and extend the reach of religious studies."—Choice
(Choice )
About the Author
Jeffrey J. Kripal is the J. Newton Rayzor Chair in Philosophy and Religious Thought at Rice University. He is the author of several books, including Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion and The Serpent’s Gift: Gnostic Reflections on the Study of Religion.
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28 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A breath of fresh air,
By Religious Studies Prof (Te Herenga Waka, Aotearoa) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Authors of the Impossible: The Paranormal and the Sacred (Hardcover)
If there is one common human responsibility, it is to evolve beyond our parents. Jeff Kripal has moved this responsibility to another level. He is one of the few academics in religious studies who has evolved out of dogma of scientific-materialist and absolute cultural relativisms. This is no mean accomplishment considering that one first has to conform and perform excellently to get into a top graduate institution. Once there, the orthodoxy is more deeply inculcated and conformity is closely supervised. Then, just to make sure no heretics slip through, there is a seven-year probation period with peer review at every corner before one has the possibility of achieving academic tenure. No wonder the world passes academia by. Congratulations to Dr. Jeff and to his editor at the University of Chicago Press. How often is an author allowed judicially to use the f*** word in academic discourse?
Dr. Jeff has written a book about a variety of unexplained phenomena (e.g., paranormal and psi) from a 21st-century perspective. This means that he has moved beyond dualistic either/or thinking and beyond the taboo of subjectivity (see B. Alan Wallace's great book with the same name). Indeed, at his best Dr. Jeff has demonstrated cases of a nondual confluence of subject-object (for Schroedinger fans, it can be expressed metaphorically but not literally as the collapse of the wave function) as he delves into what has heretofore been "forbidden knowledge." It has been forbidden because any inquiry with any degree of openness into these realms reveals the (appalling IMO) explanatory poverty of science or religious studies paradigms. This book, in a very polite, erudite, entertaining, and direct way shows just how "the King has no clothes." What does this mean? A lot. The monotheistic Abrahamic religions - and their modern shadow counterpart, modern materialist science, operate on the principle of dogma. They must exclude data to survive as stable systems. This is the old paradigm. Just as many Asian cultures have typically embraced the simultaneous plurality of gods and religions, the paradigm for the 21st century, by increasing necessity, works on inclusionism. This is an open-ended framework that preserves itself by including as much of the contradictory data as possible. I could go on and on praising this book. On page 26 Dr. Jeff says, "The simple truth is that we simply don't know what is going on here. I would go further. With our present rules of engagement, that is, with our present reigning materialistic methodologies, faith commitments, objective scientisms, and absolute cultural relativisms, we cannot know. . . I want a new game with new rules of engagement." Me too!
14 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Balanced and Inspiring,
By
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This review is from: Authors of the Impossible: The Paranormal and the Sacred (Hardcover)
I have had the privilege of meeting Jeff and listening to his perspectives and insights at a 2 day conference on human transformation and potential - I have been thrilled by his approach, authenticity, inspiration, and willingness to explore the evolutionary edge. We need more balanced explorers like him to bring these powerful perspectives forward on who we are as human beings! This book is brilliantly composed and chock full of life changing moments! From my perspective, Jeff is building a wonderful foundation that allows those of us that sense and experience these emerging human capacities to take them further in our own lives and out into the world. This is truly evolutionary work. Thank you Jeff for creating a huge window and opportunity for people who are courageous enough to enter into this new world and begin to co-create it! Namaste, Roger Kenneth Marsh
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Where timid minds fear to tread,
This review is from: Authors of the Impossible: The Paranormal and the Sacred (Hardcover)
"Authors" relays historically that there are a select few who are not timid to face, to embrace reality. Everyone knows that answers provided by conventional culture are lacking, but despite this realization, few have the courage to explore their own intuition. To succumb to traditional answers is the easy way, but as in Plato's cave allegory, they are illusionary and offer only temporary relief.
Jeff Kripal provides an historical summary of phenenomal events. He chronicles the work of four remarkable authors dating from the time of Mark Twain to the present who undertook research on the paranormal and were unafraid to publish their findings. "Authors" is about a group of courageous pioneers. Kripal is clearly the present day leader. The book is riveting. It goes beyond the mental filter of orthodoxy into the realm of the impossible.
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