Paranormal America: An Interview with Jeffrey Kripal

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Paranormal America: An Interview with Jeffrey Kripal
November 2, 2011
Patheos

In his new book, Mutants & Mystics: Science Fiction, Superhero Comics, and the Paranormal, Jeffrey Kripal delves into the wildly creative world of superheroes and sci-fi creatures, and finds that their creators and fans express paranormal experiences ignored by mainstream science. Kripal, the Professor of Philosophy and Religious Thought at Rice University, is no stranger to comingling with the mystical and mysterious. His teaching in gnosticism, esotericism and mysticism, along with his work on books such as Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion and Authors of the Impossible: The Paranormal and the Sacred, find him regularly probing the outer limits of consciousness.

We invited Kripal to answer a few questions about Mutants & Mystics and the conversations he hopes it inspires. For more discussion on the book, and to read an excerpt, visit Patheos Book Club.

What possessed you to write this book at this time?

Mid-life regression. It was either this or a Harley.

No, seriously, it all started with my 2007 history of the human potential movement (Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion) and my growing astonishment that the evolutionary mystical theology of this West Coast movement—whose central premise is that mystical, psychical, and paranormal openings are "evolutionary buds" of our evolving supernature—is basically identical to the East Coast mythology of the X-Men, which appeared just a few months later on the opposite coast. I became fascinated with this West/East Coast historical and cultural "resonance" and wanted to see if it played out in any way in the mystical lives of the authors and artists who helped create the modern mythologies (since I had already written about the human potential figures). It did.

What conversations do you want this book to inspire?

I want the book to challenge the common assumptions people make about profound, life-changing, mind-blowing mystical experiences—that the really good stuff lies safely in the past, preferably in another language; that these events are always coded in religious or theological terms; that these have nothing to do with psychical phenomena; that UFO or alien frames automatically translate into "fraudulent" or "crazy," etc. More positively, I want to suggest that anomalous religious experiences are often closely linked to artistic and literary genius, and that paranormal events often act and look like living narratives or stories. Most simply put, I want to revisit the notion that writing and reading are essentially magical activities.

Who is your ideal reader?

Someone who (a) has undergone a profound paranormal event and (b) is obsessed with science fiction or superhero comics and does not know why.

What do you see as the relationship between traditional religion and the paranormal? Do you think religion restricts "access" to the paranormal, and to what effect?

I see paranormal events as "little miracles in the making." They are not quite "miraculous," for religious miracles act as "signs" of some greater truth that the tradition holds. Miracles act to "prove" a particular revelation. But what do paranormal experiences prove? Well, nothing yet, as their mythical and ritual frames, their revelations, are still developing. I think we should be looking very, very closely at these sorts of wild, untamed experiences, as what I think we are looking at is religion in the making before it becomes religion.

In terms of the religious resistance and the gross demonization of the paranormal, even this makes sense, since if paranormal events are basically pre-religious revelations, then they also likely challenge the existing revelations. They are, if you will, the future of revelation. One can well understand, then, why they would be resisted. That too needs to be queried, needs to be understood. We also need to take very seriously that individuals often experience a paranormal event in profoundly negative terms, as "demonic." The sacred is not the good. The sacred can be positive or negative, or both at the same time.

Do you expect this book to change anyone's mind? About what?

Oh, I have written too many books and read too many stupid reviews to be naïve about changing anyone's mind. I'm not sure people change their deep views so easily. I think worldviews and metaphysical assumptions—which is what I am really going after here—are held largely on an unexamined and inaccessible level, "unconsciously," as we say. What I do think a book like this can do is provide a truly open mind with better frameworks to take seriously something the person wanted to take seriously anyway, but couldn't. I think this book, if read in conjunction with my earlier book Authors of the Impossible (which is essentially an intellectual history of the paranormal and the psychical), can do that. I hope so anyway.

You've said that one of your concerns is that the book will be read and presented as a historical reflection on religion and pop culture, when it is really about deep metaphysical issues and religious questions as these are addressed through pop culture. Can you say more about the claims that your authors and artists (and you through them) are making about the nature of consciousness, the imagination, the paranormal and the nature of time?

Sure. I sum these up in the book in two phrases: the Human as Two and Time as Two. By the Human as Two, I refer to the common experience of my authors and artists that they are two: a finite, socially constructed, temporal social ego; and an infinite, spaceless, timeless Mind. This claim in turn implies the other, namely, that Time is Two. There is the tick-tock, linear flow of ordinary time; and there is the Presence or Now of eternity, of a form of consciousness that is not in space-time and so is not born, does not die, and is—to use the traditional theological expressions—immortal and divine. My authors return again and again to this doctrine not as a piece of speculation, but as a living, direct experience. They do not "think" this. They know this.

In terms of my approach to the imagination, I am very much in line with my colleague Jess Hollenback on this one. Usually, the human imagination is a producer of fantasies, a dreamer, a daydreamer. But sometimes, sometimes, it is infused or "empowered" by weird metaphysical energies. In these moments of influx, the human imagination is no longer a projector but a kind of "translator" or "mediator" of Mind, which communicates, which probably can only communicate, to the social ego through symbol and myth. Here the fantasy is also the fact. The trick is the truth.

Let's rewrite the subtitle. What other pithy phrases sum up this book?

The original subtitle was "The Secret Life of a Superpower." I was trying to get at the idea here that American culture possesses a kind of hidden life, a secret story, and that this secret life revolves around the category of the paranormal. Let's just face it: America is a paranormal culture.

From a pop culture perspective, what do you think of a show like Fringe, whose central themes are parallel universes, paranormal experiences, and psychic powers?

I don't watch Fringe, I'm afraid, but I've seen plenty of similar material on television and in film. I mean, how does one watch all of these things? There are literally dozens of such series at any point in time. But this in itself is significant. My suspicion here is that these tropes are so successful and so omnipresent because people are tired of being told that they are just biological robots, that they are nothing but matter, that there is no meaning anywhere. They know this is a half-truth, and they turn to science fiction because it looks like science, but it is really religion in disguise. It is not really about science. It is really about the soul. Which is what people are most hungry to hear about.

Do you think there is a relationship between psychedelic drug use and religious experience? Could we ever consider that kind of drug use to be a "religious" or "spiritual" practice?

It's a definite pattern in this history, for sure. You know, I write about this very question at length in Esalen via Aldous Huxley, who thought about this question deeply and concluded that psychedelic substances do not "cause" mystical experiences but rather catalyze them by suppressing brain function. The brain for Huxley is primarily a filter of reality and what he called Mind at Large. The brain does not "produce" consciousness. It filters, reduces, mediates, or translates Mind at Large into social, cultural, linguistic, and neurological frameworks. Mess with or suppress or traumatize that filter and a whole lot of reality, a whole lot of Mind at Large pours in, translated, of course, by the human imagination and all that conditioned, socially determined brain matter. I agree with Huxley. In some cases, not all of course, profound religious experiences can be catalyzed by drugs, just as they can also be catalyzed by other forms of trauma: car wrecks, illness, death, life crisis, sexual experience, you name it. There are many ways to traumatize the brain-filter and get beyond the ego. There are many ways to crack the cosmic egg and allow Mind at Large to pour in.

Name one person you hope reads this book. Why?

Jack Kirby. Kirby was the artist who co-created with Stan Lee so much of the Marvel Universe. He's one of my heroes. He would get this book. He would love this book. But Jack is dead.

Maybe Steven Spielberg, then. Why? My secret hope is that authors, artists, and filmmakers of all types will do something with these ideas, create new culture, create new visions of what we can be. Our contemporary stories of who we are are so pathetically small and parochial. We need new stories, soul-sized stories, as I put it in the Conclusion of the book.

I think filmmakers have a special "in" here. Most people will not read a book, but they will watch a movie. This is one reason I have been working so closely with a Houston filmmaker named Scott Hulan Jones. Scott has optioned both Esalen and Authors of the Impossible. We are now working full steam on the former book for a documentary called "Supernature: Esalen and the Human Potential." Take a look at http://www.scotthulanjones.com/.

What was the hardest thing about writing this book?

Knowing when to stop. Deciding what not to write about. My editors at Chicago were so patient with me, but they also had to tell me when to stop, when to cut. You want me to do what? That was so hard. There was blood on the cutting room floor. Blood everywhere.

Which chapter was the easiest to write?

The chapter on the mytheme of Mutation, which is really about Esalen and my dear friend and spiritual mentor, my Professor X, Michael Murphy, who co-founded Esalen. I could have written that chapter in my sleep. Maybe I did.

What other books are you reading at the moment, and what is inspiring you currently?

I've been reading a good deal about neuroscience and the two hemispheres of the brain: David Eagleman, my colleague across the street over at Baylor Medical School, on Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain; now Leonard Shlain on The Alphabet and the Goddess; soon Iain McGilchrist on The Master and His Emissary. I just think so many of our philosophical assumptions in the academy boil down to the left hemisphere making fun of and rejecting the right hemisphere. This is clearly a mistake. It's so pointless, and so dangerous. I don't want to make fun of the left hemisphere now. I admire all that reason, language, and math. I just want to get the right hemisphere back into the conversation, with all that imagination, art, intuition, and, frankly, mystical experience. The Human as Two again.

Often, the best book ideas come while you're writing a book. Have you started the next one?

Embarrassingly, there are a number of books in the works. I'm working with Wiley-Blackwell on a next-generation textbook on how to compare religious phenomena, for example. Also, my editors at Chicago want me to write a history of sexuality and religion in America. This has been a constant theme in my work. I need to return to that base. Lots to say there, to put it mildly. But I am also realizing that I have said a great deal over the last two decades, maybe too much, and that I need to synthesize and organize all of this in some accessible fashion for the next generation. What is it that I have said, really? What are these books truly about? I actually feel this need quite intensely, to be frank and honest about the matter. I thus want to work on a major theoretical statement about the mystical roots of the study of religion and why comparison remains, and must remain, our primary method.

I also want to go after the materialism and scientism that I think has pretty much shackled and silenced the humanities in contemporary culture. I want to help regenerate and revision the humanities as a fundamentally hopeful practice. This major theoretical statement will be titled something like The Human as Two: Comparativism Unbound. My sci-fi and comic book artists and authors are definitely part of the inspiration here. They already know this.