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

(Recorded on November 1, 2025)

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Published on November 19, 2024