Jeffrey J. Kripal

A mind-bending invitation to experience the impossible as fundamentally human. From precognitive dreams and telepathic visions to near-death experiences, UFO encounters, and beyond, so-called impossible phenomena are not supposed to happen. But they do happen—all the time. Jeffrey J. Kripal asserts that the impossible is a function not of reality but of our everchanging assumptions about what is real. How...

A bold challenge to rethink the humanities as intimately connected to the superhuman and to “decolonize reality itself.” What would happen if we reimagined the humanities as the superhumanities? If we acknowledged and celebrated the undercurrent of the fantastic within our humanistic disciplines, entirely new cultural worlds and meanings would become possible. That is Jeffrey J. Kripal’s vision for the...

A bold challenge to rethink the humanities as intimately connected to the superhuman and to “decolonize reality itself.” What would happen if we reimagined the humanities as the superhumanities? If we acknowledged and celebrated the undercurrent of the fantastic within our humanistic disciplines, entirely new cultural worlds and meanings would become possible. That is Jeffrey J. Kripal’s vision for the...

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. However, the history of psychical phenomena, Jeffrey J. Kripal contends, is an untapped source of insight into the sacred. By...

Teaches students the art and practice of comparison in the globalising world, fully updated to reflect recent scholarship and major developments in the field. Comparing Religions: The Study of Us that Changes Us is a wholly original, absorbing, and provocative reimagining of the comparative study of religion in the 21st century. The first textbook of its kind to foreground the...

In many ways, twentieth-century America was the land of superheroes and science fiction. From Superman and Batman to the Fantastic Four and the X-Men, these pop-culture juggernauts, with their "powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men," thrilled readers and audiences—and simultaneously embodied a host of our dreams and fears about modern life and the onrushing future. But that's...

"One of the most provocative new books of the year, and, for me, mindblowing." - Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma and How to Change Your Mind "Kripal makes many sympathetic points about the present spiritual state of America. . . . [He] continues to believe that spirituality and science should not contradict each other." - New York Times...

Jeffrey Kripal here recounts the spectacular history of Esalen, the institute that has long been a world leader in alternative and experiential education and stands today at the centre of the human potential movement. Forged in the literary and mythical leanings of the Beat Generation, inspired in the lecture halls of Stanford by radical scholars of comparative religion, the institute...