Jeffrey Kripal, the religious studies scholar behind How to Think Impossibly and Authors of the Impossible, talks with Pinchbeck about writing on the paranormal from inside the university. Kripal traces his route through his memoir Secret Body, early work on ecstatic religious experience and sexuality, and research at the Esalen Institute and on the human potential movement, where he met people whose experiences had no accepted vocabulary. He describes his aim as mainstreaming and authorizing that conversation, and notes that Authors of the Impossible uses literary theory to treat figures such as Frederic Myers and Charles Fort. Pinchbeck raises the academy's materialist bias and his own exclusion from it. The closing turns to anomalous communication as a symptom of stories breaking down.
Guest: Jeffrey Kripal
In brief
- Kripal says he arrived at the paranormal through people rather than theory, after years of talking with individuals at Esalen whose experiences he concluded had actually happened to them.
- Kripal argues that intellectuals are largely comfortable with anomalous experience but stay in the closet about it because they lack a way to talk about it, not because they deny it.
- Kripal contends the tools of the humanities and social sciences, including literary theory, are well suited to paranormal material, which is the method of Authors of the Impossible.
- Pinchbeck says he has never been invited to give a talk at a university, and offers this as evidence of how hard the material is for institutions to handle.
- Kripal describes materialism as a horizontal ideology still governing the sciences, social sciences and humanities, so that any appeal to a vertical dimension collides with a listener's reality assumptions.
- Kripal reads anomalous communications as arising because the shared stories are breaking down, and treats listening to them as humans listening to a greater aspect of themselves.
Full text
I got I got into the paranormal really through people is the short answer to that and and their own experiences of the same. And I you know I do work from within the academy, but that just happens to be where I'm at, Daniel. I mean I just you know you work from where you're at and and I come in and I talk about everything from UFOs to near-death experiences to religious beliefs in a way that anthropologists and literary critics and historians can recognize. And and so that that's really the goal is to sort of mainstream that conversation and and authorize it in a in an academic or research setting. Hey everybody.
Uh today I'm here with Jeffrey Krypal, an extraordinary thinker, an author who is one of the rare people kind of like myself is explores the the psychic, the paranormal, the sort of other dimensional realities. Uh but he does it from within kind of the uh academy within the university system. His most recent book is how to think impossibly uh where he looks at UFOs, souls, time, belief and everything else. He also wrote authors of the impossible which is a fantastic book talking about sort of pioneers in paranormal thought like Frederick Meyer and Charles Fort and so on. Um and yeah, I'm really delighted. We had we had a we had our first meet up when when I did my future of consciousness course and so I thought we could just hone in on a few other topics and and just explore some stuff today.
And yeah, if you're watching this, if you like this kind of content, why not like, subscribe? It costs you nothing. It makes the the the everything blossom apparently in the You Tube uh uh tree. Uh so um yeah, Jeffrey, thanks thanks for joining us. Would you want to give us a little bit about your your background and how you got sort of interested in this? How you Yeah. how you how you sort of arrived on the on the the these topics, the paranormal and so on, you know, as as your kind of life focus of life mission in a way. Yeah. Well, thank you. Thanks for having me, Daniel.
I'm I'm looking forward to this. Um, you know, a few years ago, I wrote a memoir uh called Secret Body, and it's the subtitle is erotic and esoteric currents in the history of religions. And that kind of sums up my sort of the life path as it were. I started out looking at ecstatic religious experiences and the relationship to human sexuality um which was a pretty traditional I don't say traditional but pretty mainline concern in the humanities in the in the '9s and um I ended up writing about uh the Institute in Big California and and what was known as the human potential movement and it put me in touch with a lot of people who had extraordinary stories and I realized talking to them over many years that these things essentially did happen to them and that we didn't really have any way of talking about them adequately and certainly in the academy and so I got I got into the paranormal um really through people is is is the short is the short answer to that and and their own their own experiences of the same and I you know I do work from within the academy, but that just happens to be where I'm at, Daniel. I mean, I just, you know, you work from where you're at.
And and I come in and I talk about everything from UFOs to near-death experiences to religious beliefs in a way that anthropologists and literary critics and historians can recognize. and and so that that's really the goal is to sort of mainstream that conversation and and authorize it in a in an academic or a research setting. Yeah, for sure. I mean, um somehow you found a rhetorical framing or or way of of you know speaking about this stuff as you say that allows the academy to kind of like you know kind of integrate it or process it you know to some extent. I mean, well, yeah. I mean, one one of my s sensibilities or my strong conclusions over the years is that actually intellectuals are very comfortable with this.
They just they tend to be in the closet and they don't it's not that they don't recognize it. They don't know how to talk about it. And so and yet the tools of the humanities and the social sciences are are really uh wide open to these kinds of experiences and are very useful in talking. Hence, you know, the book you mentioned, authors of the impossible, it it's essentially uses literary theory to talk about the paranormal. And it's a fairly easy thing to do because because I think these these experiences are woven into into the academy in a really dramatic way. But wouldn't you say though there has been a strong bias towards kind of like reductive materialism um in you know I mean uh because I mean as somebody who tried to you know bring this type of material into the public discourse I I found that um uh yeah people really had no were not able to to to handle it there.
I've never I' I've never been invited to give a talk at a university basically. I think that's a I think that's fair. I mean, I think that that that materialist, you know, or what I call this horizontal ideology is still in place and it it it it reigns not only in the sciences but in the social sciences and the humanities as well. And so in any time you talk about the vertical or something intervening into this material landscape, uh you're pushing against the reality assumptions of of whatever your your listener is. I think that's true still, but I think there's a lot of there's a lot of opening.
There's a lot of capacity there for that kind of conversation even though we haven't had it in the last 50 or 60 years. Yeah, we really have not had it, which is kind of astonishing. I mean, um, uh, University of Virginia, the department of perceptual studies, that seems to be like one of the only places where there's a kind of, um, capacity to investigate this type of material. Um well you know I mean yeah I mean my my joke is this the the whole study of rel you can't even talk about religion without thinking about something extraordinary or paranormal happening. I mean I don't I don't see how you get around it although people do get around it constantly.
I mean I the religion gets reduced to this horizontal social or or political plane and the the the vertical or the the revelation dimension gets gets ignored. I understand how that happens but I I don't think that that's that's adequate. Yeah. Well, I mean I think it you know it comes from the big shots of the late 19th century for in early 20s Freud and Marx, right? Markx was like you know religion is the opium of the people you know where it's actually materialist reality and Freud was also a materialist and he was like you know religion is a sublimation or you know a way to avoid the you know the fear of death and so on.
Um so you know nichi I mean yeah so you know all the big shots of the late 19th century kind of uh you know in a way ignored or downplayed the supernatural and the psychic. Um and for you know for you know for a long time it was really something that could not really be allowed into serious discourse you know like you know the society for the psychic research um you know they were they were serious academics and Cambridge scholars and so on and I think once um they were kind of embarrassed because they were studying like you probably know more about this than I do. were studying certain mediums and channels and they discovered they were fakes and um that was kind of the last time I think um at that at that point there was like a schism between you know the materialism uh which became the academic you know mode of kind of understanding and then anything like psychic and paranormal was more in the sort of occult squishy new age like weird Hindu or you know evangelical Christian Scientology or whatever or Christian science sort of uh I don't know is that how you see it or or um No, I don't I don't see it that way. I mean, I think that's the standard narrative. I mean, I think that's the assumption, but in fact, the um intellectual history is just riven with paranormal currents.
It's just it's just everywhere. Um and you know, I so I I write a lot about what I call the superhumanities. And the superhumanities are basically the humanities with a focus on altered states and and psychical experiences and they're they're everywhere. I mean including niche by the way you mentioned niche. I mean niche is filled with ecstatic altered states that just get ellighted in the sort of standard reception history of Nietze and and Freud. Even Freud was, you know, he was a he was a good friend of Roman Roland who was essentially a French mystic and and somebody who was really committed to a a kind of spiritual but not religious worldview before there was even a name for it.
So there are these they're they're not just moments Daniel. They're like major components of our intellectual history that we've simply forgotten um or shoved aside because of because of these materialist ideologies that you're speaking uh about. I mean I think that's absolutely true that that that has become an ideology or or or the norm the the the normal story but it's not actually what happened. Yeah. I mean, you know, I I would still kind of stick to my guns and say like, you know, I mean, you know, Nichi definitely, you know, was not talking about like a, you know, kind of a supernatural cosmos, you know, like Rudolph Steiner went and visited him on his deathbed and, you know, you know, sort of saw the forces of materialism and and, you know, also Nichi's evolutionary ports, but and then you had like Freud, he wrote that essay on the uncanny, uh, uh, but essentially there was this rift between Freud Young because I mean for young the world of archetypes you know in a way is a kind of um spiritual world and young has even even said at some point that the archetypes you know could be called spirits you know.
Yeah. So um there was there was a certain way that you know from you know Vidkinstein from you know Bertrren Russell who said that you know the universe is just you know um built on despair and there's there's no there's no possibility of like transcendence. who used to accept that as their as our burden you know that you know and also growing up to the culture that I grew up in in New York you know in the 70s um you know I didn't meet one person who believed in God who believed in anything spiritual who believed in the psyche or the supernatural I mean you know anything paranormal was assumed to be um a kind of like self-d delusion like you just there was like too many there was like a pattern and you mistake mistook the pattern for some kind of evidence or something so there I mean to me there was like a huge force of societal and cultural repression on anything related to the psychic from the paranormal. Um and that you know that has also that has started to lift although it's lifting in different ways now not all of them great um you know as for instance we see with you know sort of QAnon you know right-wing conspiracy world and the sort of um you know Christian yearning for an apocalypse and so on um that uh yeah kind of like the the yearning for transcendence or for some encounter with something transcendent seem to be taking some very um dangerous forms right I would say. Yeah.
And I think those two things are related. I mean, I think that that ideological cultural narrative that you're speaking of in the the Northeast in particular actually produces its opposite or helps or at least confirms its opposite, which is this this conspiracy thinking, you know, and and so the the the denial of of any kind of transcendence creates a a kind of rigid horizontalism or localism or or or social political norm that that I think produces its opposite. it. And what I'm trying to what I'm trying to say is that if you actually look at the intellect particularly intellectual history, it's actually much more complicated than than um than you grew up with in New York in the 1970s. I mean, I grew up in in the 1970s as well.
I grew up in Nebraska and it was it was a different kind of culture um than that but but not still it's still this this materialist kind of physicalist assumption that that uh I think is um the norm but it's just again the culture is just riven with these moments where it's not that and so what I'm trying to do is just say let's look at let's let's let's try to pay attention to those moments when it's not you know that that something else is coming through. And and you find it in the darnest places, including in these people that appar apparently or assumingly are are are bastions of materialism and and secularism. like who are some of those people or you me like the ones you mentioned like Freud and Nichi and so well Mich and Freud are perfect examples but I mean you could go through the 19th century um it certainly produced this this sort of industrial materialism that you're you're speaking about that then that then comes to reign in the 20th century but it also produces anthropology and this and the comparative study religion and psychical research and all of these things that you know I mean Frederick Meyers was was a 19th century intellectual figure, you know, that you mentioned. Charles Fort was uh an American writer in the 19 really writing in the 1920s and early 1930s. Um, and science fiction is is the way that this gets framed in in some ways in the 20th century.
So it's okay to to receive it as entertainment or as fiction but it it becomes not okay to talk about it you know as as some part of our reality which is what what you were speaking to I think. Yeah, exactly. They found different ways to to sort of channel it out or suppress it and um you know, one being storytelling, you know, fiction, you know, um um yeah, you know, I you know, I could to go back just to kind of go to the book how to think it possibly. I mean, one of my one of the things I often say is that the idea that these experiences are rare is a function of the censorship. It's actually not true.
Um, but we think they're rare and we think they're extraordinary because the social pressure is so strong to not tell the not tell these stories, you know. Um, and so I I think that's the case with intellectual history as well. We just assume that these experiences are not in these figures. And so we tell these stories or we think about we remember the the lives or the works of these people in a particular way. But it's just not true. If you just read the books and you read the lives, it it's just again it's riven with this stuff as it is today. and and as you said, it gets it gets channeled into disturbing u moral and political ways, but but it also comes out in other ways as well in in in film and television and you know in the the popular culture as it were.
Yeah. I'm kind of curious. Was there some experiences that you had as a young person that somehow particularly opened you to this or was there just a Well, yeah. I mean, what I often say is that I I had a major out-of- body um experience in Kolkata actually in 1989 that really opened me up and made me sympathetic, but I wasn't interested in writing about these things. It was really these people that I met in the 2000s that opened me up intellectually and historically to the importance of this. So, but yeah, there was a kind of there was a kind of existential or personal grounding or opening sympathy that that required a certain kind of experience.
I said yes. So, absolutely. Yes. But not it wasn't immediate and it wasn't it wasn't this intellectual conversion experience that I think we think about. It wasn't like you had a paranormal. It wasn't like an ET jumped out at you from a UFO or anything like that. It was more of an intellectual I'll just tell you the experience. I mean I'm laughing because it kind of is that. I mean it's like I mean um an ET did not jump out at me by the way but um I was living in Kolkata. I was writing about actually shakta tantra is what I was working on for my dissertation and I had one of the one of these experiences you I think a medical professional would call it a sleep paralysis event.
Um, but it involved some kind of energy, some kind of energy in the room or out of my in my body or something, some kind of presence that overwhelmed um certainly my my awareness or my consciousness and did things to me. Did it wasn't me. It was something else. was doing this to me and at some point it imploded into my chest area and then I had this out-of- body experience and I floated to the top of the ceiling like people talk about and had a kind of classic near-death experience and then came back into my body eventually and just felt like something had been transmitted into me or as they would say later downloaded. So it it was dramatic, Daniel.
Um, I framed it entirely in chakata tantric terms. It made a lot of sense in terms of the the religious language or the philosophies I was studying, but you could just as easily see it as a as an abduction experience or, you know, as some other kind of experience that that people talk about. So, I think that's what gave me the yeah the the really existential because I you know what I said to myself inside was oh yeah that can happen. Oh yeah, that can happen. Yeah, you know, because it happened. I mean, come on. You're not going to tell me it didn't happen. Of course, it happened, right?
There's something about the, you know, direct phenomenological experience that changed everything. Yeah. I mean it's just and then later because I was trained to study religion and people's religious experiences I mean I was open to this other kind of dimension or or I I understood religious experience in ways that were not just uh historical or social or political or neurological. When you were studying um Shakti Kali was it also was it mainly an intellectual pursuit or were you also doing embodied practices like tantrums and so on? Yeah, it was it was both. I mean, come on. It was I mean, this this was sort of one of my early entry points into the study of religion and and the the weirdness of scholars of religion.
They don't study these things for the hell of it, Daniel. I mean, it's, you know, my my joke is is it's it's a weird it's a weird kid who wants to grow up and be a scholar of religion, you know. No, nobody says that. I mean, you you back into it because of some set of experiences or some conflict or some deep burning question you have. And and so that that was really my my entry point into the inner lives of of other historians and scholars of religion was my own life. Yeah. Uh let's skip ahead and talk about this new this most recent book for a minute.
kind of I you know I understand that you also had kind of a yeah a bit of a psychic experience around the title and so on. Um did didn't the um the the title come to you in a dream or something like that? No. No, it actually came to me from my editor. It's it's it it's um Yeah. No, it didn't. I'm sorry. I mean I we can say it did, but it didn't. What What was the genesis of this book and what what did you feel was really important to get out? Well, you know, I wrote this earlier book that you mentioned called Authors of the Impossible.
I love that book. Fantastic. Yeah. And how to think impossibly is really a kind of how do we do that? You know, how do we think impossibly? And and thinking impossibly by the impossible, of course, I don't mean it's it's physically or literally impossible. I mean it's impossible because of one's worldview. We we say it's not possible because of our assumptions about reality when in fact these things happen all the time. And so authors of the impossible is really about authorizing these these these experiences. Thinking impossibly is not reducing these experiences to one's religious system or to one's secular scientific system. It's it's it's really um letting these experiences speak because I that's what I think they're trying to do.
I think they're trying to communicate to us. Um and listening to these experiences in ways that can that can produce a new worldview that that's neither religious nor nor scientific in in the in the conventional senses. Yeah. Um yeah. I'm curious a bit more about Yeah. how you conceptualize that the impossible and which thinkers have kind of um added kind of richness uh to your exploration of that idea. Well, again, there's there's so many people in in the history of of the study of religion and philosophy that I don't even know where to begin. I mean, I I think so many people are pushing on this this envelope.
what that book does, the people that I'm most interested in engaging, I call it thinking with, and I use a hyphen, and it's it's the experiencers. It's the people who have um the experience of the insectoid or or of the the AI uh alien or of the out-of- body exp the near-death experience or the pre-cognitive dream or whatever it is. I'm most interested in those people who have those spontaneous out ofthe- blue experiences that just rock them. Um, you know, ontological shock was was a phrase made famous in the 90s by John Mack, but it actually again goes back to a scholar of religion by the way, a theologian named Paul Tillik who coined it in the 1950s. So I I really am interested in that onlogical shock and that that wrenching of reality and what those experience experiencers have to say.
Um I think those experiencers want writers and intellectuals to think with them and and and to think about their experience. But I think intellectuals and writers need those experiencers desperately to have you know to have something to think about. Do you see a way to, yeah, I guess kind of construct a sort of expanded, you know, ontology or scientific worldview that um allows for these types of um ontological shock experiences to have coherence or make sense or do you think we're not really there yet? Well, of course we're not there yet, but again, we have resources. Yeah. You know, um, my general feeling about it, Daniel, is that a number of years ago, I invited a bunch of people to the Elon Institute and I asked them to come with two two things.
One was the most extraordinary thing that ever happened to them and the other was a theory of the imagination that would make that extraordinary thing possible or or sensible. Every single person came with some drop your jaw, you know, what the uh experience. Nobody came with a theory of the imagination. Not a single person. And so I realized and I and that's not to critique them or criticize them. I realized at that moment that well we have these experiences that that knock us out of our our worldviews but we actually don't have a theory of the imagination to make sense of these things or to make the impossible possible as they say and so that's what I set out to do.
We have like you know William Blake talked about the imagination is not a state it's the human existence in itself in a way I mean again you know if you're a Blakeian you know if you how do how do we how do we socialize or integrate your reason and you know Blake into into American culture. I mean we we do do it to a certain extent. We have done it in the counterculture. You know Blake became really popular in the American counterculture. Um, so we have these resources like Blake. Blake is one of them. Um, but we tend not to to integrate those folks or to think about we don't think of we think of the imagination as just the imaginary as something we we made up.
It's it's schllock. We don't think of the imagination as a medium or as a translator of some greater truth which is which is more along the lines of what Blake thought. Although, you know, one of the things I struggle with in that book is I think if if someone wants to be generous, they'll say, "Oh, well, a vision is about some kind of mediation or some kind of translation." But what if it's not? What if it is what it is? What if what if the vision is the vision? And what if it says in the Talma, the dream is its own interpretation? Really? Yeah. that and that leads to a particular kind of quandry and you know one of the things I do in the book I do a lot in the book is I talk about precognition and I basically say well what does the universe have to look like to make pre precognitions possible at all and that it it then leads to a particular kind of cosmology or worldview and and a particular view of time that um is shocking to people uh and and calls into question, you know, ba basic assumptions of linearity and causality and and a kind of one-way temporality that I think I think is mistaken, you know, and I think our experiences show that, but we don't we ignore those experiences and we dismiss them so that we can preserve these these simplistic uh models of what what's um I guess I guess in the book you discuss Henri Corbin a uh the imaginal.
Yeah. What what what what's helpful there. But I've really enjoyed reading his thoughts about the sort of 11th century Sufis and uh it's a very uh yeah he's a very deep thinker and writer. The books are really quite quite wonderful to read. Uh I feel like he searched a little bit more more known. But yeah, what what for you from that from Corbin was was really helpful or Well, so Corbin's one of the one of my own ancestors. I mean, he's in he's in the lineage of the study religion. That's that's what that's what Enri Corban was. And he was a he was a French intellectual who died I want to say he died in 79.
I'm going to just guess. Um he died during the the is the Islamic Revolution as it was just getting going in Iran by the way. And he was an expert on Iranian um uh Islam, Shia Shia Islam and Sufism. and he developed this category that he called the imaginal. And he invoked this French coinage um because he wanted to get away from the imaginary again that that that there was this he felt so he he knew strongly from his Sufi sources that there was this middle realm that mediates between the transcendent and the imminent and and it was called he called it the imaginal realm. And so it it functions as a way in his work to break down this this idea that that that religious visions and and mystical experiences are imaginary or they're hallucinations as as they say today.
He wanted to challenge that deeply. um you know he was also really active at a place called Oranos uh and was very much a part of that community. Where he's where I want to call him into question is first of all he didn't invent the category of the imaginal uh even though he might have coined that particular term. It actually goes back to Frederick Meyers again and and to entomology where it referred to um where the insect the laral form was headed i. e to the imaginal. The imaginal was a was a was a term in in entomology about the mature form of the insect essentially.
Uh and Meyers then picked it up and talked about the imaginal as um psychical capacities are where where evolution is headed. So when we have a pre-cognitive experience or a telepathic experience, these are evolutionary buds. These are imagininal characteristics for uh Meyers that speak to our future evolution that of course we're not at. And so we have these sort of wild or spontaneous moments that we think are are anomalous, but they're actually not. Uh the image he gave or the story he told was, you know, it's like the caterpillar meeting the butterfly. Yeah. You just the the caterpillar has no idea that he will someday be a butterfly and then and and and yet and yet he will be because there are these imaginal uh um places in his his body that that become the the winged butterfly.
And so this was the image that Meyers used is that we have a essentially we have a butterfly in us and that we're we're more laral now. We're we're the wormy caterpillar now, but but but we'll we'll evolve into something into something greater. Yeah, that's an interesting uh um perspective. Uh do you do you still hold to that or you just hold it lightly as as a as a as a possibility? So I think I think something like evolution does happen clearly. Um, I think that beliefs like that or systems like that produce themselves. I think they're they're invocative. So, if you have a depressing uh um uh uh dystopian worldview, you're going to help produce a dystopian depressed future.
And if you the the Buddha as perceived so appears. Yeah. Yeah. If you have a a much more positive or ecstatic or or in this case in Meyer's case, a kind of evolutionary esotericism, I think it's going to tend to produce itself. I think you're going to tend to get what whatever it is you you imagine is the case. Um certainly that idea that there's some kind of esoteric evolution was was prominent throughout the 20th and now 21st century. And I think I think we're looking at the in the western tradition. Yeah. Yeah. The eastern tradition. Yeah. I mean you could c you can find it as well actually in Asia.
Of course it's not Darwinian. It's not evolutionary in any kind of literal sense. But there is a sense certainly in a lot of Asian cultures that human life is is is developmental. you know that that we're moving towards some kind of greater and greater wisdom or nosis or or or enlightenment or whatever the model is. Uh reincarnation and and transmigration do have a kind of developmental sensibility to them. It's not evolutionary in in the Darwinian or the the 20th century sense, but I think that conversation is really is really useful to have. I I started studying Frederick Meyers uh when I was preparing a course on the history of the western uh hermetic tradition and um I discovered that um the whole story about his death.
I mean I guess he uh you know he had a group of friends and they were all fascinated with like mediumship and communicating with spirits and so on. And apparently they made kind of like an internal wager that whoever died first in the group was going to try to like communicate back from the other world. and and Meyer was writing this magnum opus the survival of the human personality after bodily death which is like I don't know 1500 pages I it never got finished during his life was released after he died and then apparently a few years after he died different mediums got these messages from this guy Frederick Meyer and Meyer was like tell my friends you know get them together I want to talk to them I got stuff to say and then they actually published a whole series of books where Meyer goes into great depth around his experience of the afterlife as this kind of he talked about it as like this um other reality that was made up of a slightly different particle. I believe like um there were like schools, people had families, they went to work, but that was also somehow a very like you know imaginal construction. And if you sort of began to realize that you were just in this kind of like um transparent you know realm of this you know kind of other particle you could then move into more kind of heightened states.
Um I don't know if you know much about that and you know I mean we call those the cross correspondences. I mean there there is there there is this kind of post-life of Meyers through these cross correspondences and and they're they're designed to establish the survival hypothesis you know the idea that the soul lives on in some form. Um again I think we should have that conversation Daniel and by we I mean you know over many generations. I think that should be part of the um that should be in the cultural water is is exactly that conversation. Whether the the human personality survives bodily death and for how long, I don't know.
And I and I don't say that I don't say that skeptically or reductively. I just don't know. Um what I do know is that we die into our imaginations. And I know how do you know that? Well, well, of course I don't know a death. I mean, well, okay, how do I know that? So, experiencers again. If you listen to people who have had near-death experiences, they're very different and yet they're also similar. So there's something that's translating those experiences that is cultural or religious often but they also if you look at those experiences a whole you do get a sense of of a death process or some kind of greater life that that is that is that is outside the body or or after death and I don't I also think the whole history of religions is very much about death and very much about near-death experiences And it's also about what happens to us when we die.
And different religions have different models of that. It's it's not it's not one it's not one model or one one certainty. I think it's it's a whole bunch of certainties. And this is what I mean by we die into our imaginations is is I think um children for example or people who remember previous lives are are working with a a many life model and and people who have um you know experienced some kind of transcendent god or or or single life model have a very different set of experiences. So, I want to take those all what I'm trying to say is I want to take those put those all on the table and I want to think about all of those together and not just assume a one life model or assume a reincarnation model.
And maybe they're both maybe they're both true, Daniel. Well, maybe it depends on what you think. Sure. I mean, um I'm sure you've read like Patrick Harper's work, right? idea that um you know the sort of western concept that we're you know in this literal physical reality uh he sort of he sort of questions that from an indigenous perspective how um the body is as much you know allegorical as it is literal and and can be kind of like pulled in you know taken into this other realms you know like for them there wasn't as such the hard and fast distinctions that we have um but I'm wondering so I guess when I think about this stuff in my own mind I've put together kind of like a uh construct uh which involves kind of like you know analytic or monistic idealism uh you know Berto Castro but I was already writing about it you know before I knew about Castro but EMwami or even Steiner was a ministic idealist this idea that actually you know everything is consciousness um um and consciousness is a foundational reality and everything you know material and physical a universe a planet a bookshelf is actually sort of you know temporary concretion of that of that underlying field of consciousness that has to create you know these explorations and investigations otherwise you know it can't even know itself or or or create anything it's just sort of in the in the in the potentiality state you know and so there's that idea which also I think really frees us to allow you know for all sorts of possibilities as you're saying that these different imaginal visions of the you know afterlife you know other dimensions and so on all of them could have some kind of validity in some sense and then there's kind of Rupert Sheldrake and his idea of kind of like morphinogenic fields and and and morphic resonance you know that um yeah that there might be kind of like patterns you know if you have if if the universe is made of consciousness and as we've grown into consciousness as a species we've had all these little local cultures around the planet so you go to an indigenous culture and I visited a bunch of them like you go to the Kogi and they have a a magic, you know, they have a divination system.
They have a way of understanding what it means if like a hummingbird comes into your room at night or what it means if they, you know, take this cotton and they they put their thought thought reflections into it and then, you know, bury it in in in a certain place or something and it actually works quite well within their context. Then you go to the Shapibo in Peru or the Hopi in Arizona, they have a different magic and and a different set of practices that also seem to work, you know, at least until they come into contact with like a western, you know, materialist kind of kind of psyche in a way. Um but the idea is that you know they've you know my idea is they've lived in these places for you know thousands tens of thousands of years and they've kind of woven a morphogetic field that includes the field of like language and myth and and the particular plants and the stones and the elements and that has taken them you know in a direction far enough away from the from you know the sort of median or the norm of humanity that yeah they they have these the these these forms of magic or these forms of divination. or even these you know you know veils of like future soul making or something that are just you know their own thing cuz consciousness is kind of like defining that kind of dimensional reality in some sense. Does that resonate with your kind of like thinking about it in a way?
Well, yeah, of course. I mean, the the question I I have just I always have is, well, what do what do what is the the people in Peru have to do with the people in in Arizona or the people in in North Africa? I mean there is there a broader or more global reality that that the species you know shares or inhabits and how can we talk about the species as a whole or eventually how can we talk about the cosmos as a whole um and and not a particular culture you know um which I think we're always this is what I mean by thinking impossibly um I don't think we can inhabit that that Peruvian worldview anymore. I I maybe maybe they can, but I don't think we can. Um, and so the question is what kind of worldview do we inhabit today?
And and to me, something that's that's global and takes it all in and keeps it all on the table is more adequate and hopeful than something that um returns everything back to a particular religious or or scientific system. I guess I guess that's what I'm I'm I'm I'm meaning to kind of say the the the the sort of opposite, you know, in a way. It's like you know if there's this underlying field of consciousness and these sort of morphanogenic fields of particularity where you know cultures or you know kind of um you know religions form you know like um um then it's kind of both and right I mean it's um you know so so like um you know when I had my experiences you know writing breaking open the head I had an experience where I took um synthetic psychedelic deep dropppal trip to me in my in in my apartment with a friend and we had like it was very like Alistister Crowley-esque. It was very like western occult. Like we had these like beings.
They were in these like velvet dresses and suits. They were sneering at us like you know like in this very hot you know they were very hotty and then one of them kind of like you know seemed to kind of like stay with me and was haunting my dreams and causing like psychic phenomena and that went on for like a few months. Um, but I had no conscious connection at that point to the western occult tradition. And I was just talking to another friend of mine who's a who's a fantastic thinker and writer and he had a very very similar thing happen where he had different mushroom experiences and different you know transcending experience where they all fit in with kind of like Alistister Crowley's uh path and you know he wasn't a Crowleyite or anything. He only learned about it like after the fact.
So it feels like, you know, if you're a western person and you go on some kind of initiatory journey into like the occult or the paranormal, you're likely to experience it within this kind of like a western occult um kind of um uh cultural millu or something or it's like that that's like the morphogenetic field that we're in from our like ancestors, from our cultural conditioning, from our language, from our poetry and our religion and so on. uh whereas it's not the case for somebody you know in you know Gaban or in um you know Colombia or something like that you know from an indigenous culture I mean that so that's a model of the imagination I mean an your your analytic idealism is in fact an answer to what what the imagination is and it but it empowers the human subject in an extraordinary way right I mean you're you're offering a model or a worldview that can somehow explain all of these different cultures But you're offering this meta view which which I which I I think is great. I mean that's I think that is the the conversation Daniel and I don't um I mean I understand how someone who lives in the morphagenetic field of of of western culture can recreate Alistister Crowley. I get that. But I I I guess I don't live in that world.
you know, I I I want to take the the South Asian Hindu as seriously as the Mahayana Buddhist Chinese practitioner or the Dowist or or the um the Hopi. I mean, it it's all it's all part of the the human experience or the the experience that I that I want to develop. I want us not me. I want us to develop some kind of model or worldview that can that can affirm all of these different different um cultural approximations as it was or maybe they're not approximations. Again, maybe they're cultural instantiations like you're you're you're saying. Yeah. I mean, I'm I'm exactly in the same place.
I cons, you know, consider myself an idealist, you know, an esoteric Christian and like Rudolfph Steiner's cosmology and animist and a you know I completely am a you know huge fan of Mahayhana Buddhism and and and Tibetan Buddhism particularly Zogchen as soon as I read that stuff I I like click right into that. So what so one of the things that I I say say a lot you know just to kind of um encourage you you know I talk a lot uh to to people in in the human potential movement and you know one of the one of my jokes is it's called the human potential movement it's not called the human accomplishment movement you know and and there is this forwardlooking um kind of orientation to the future that we don't yet have the answers, but we're working toward them. As opposed to what I call believing back, where we're affirming someone else's, you know, some ancestors altered state, but we're not really listening to our own or listening to the people around us. And I I'm much more in that latter camp. I I obviously I in terms of just my language I I do think I do think like you that there's there's some there's something that's being spoken that is more comparative or global or speciesoriented than that than that it has to do with a particular culture or particular set of ancestors.
But that that's a that's a normative claim, Daniel. And but I want to I want I want to I want to own that and I want other people to own that and I want us to to push forward there. Yeah. Uh so many wonderful topics that I want to keep diving in with you maybe in you know this event maybe subsequent uh hangouts also but I wanted to sort of ask you well I mean I hope you find this funny. Who who do you think is the uh most successful occult practitioner of our time? I know what you're thinking. Um, yeah, it depends on, of course, how we I what I would say back is how we measure success.
I I think um caused the biggest pertabations in the field, let's say. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, clearly clearly we know we know the answer to that. Um, so I I think where where we're going with this is sort of this this question about what is the relationship between magic and occultism and politics or what is the relationship between oultism and conspiracy theory is another way of putting it. And you know my response to that is complicated. Um, which we can get into. I'm happy to talk about that. I I love complicated responses. I I don't even you know one-word answers. effort. It it's it is complicated.
Um, you know, one of one again I I like to tell jokes and one of my jokes is that the greatest conspiracy theory of all time is called the humanities. If if you if you want to be suspicious of everything for the rest of your life, just study the humanities. Just you will never believe anything ever again. That that's why they're trying to dismantle it right now. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think but but my point is is that suspicion and this idea that reality ain't what it looks like is integral to the whole history of human culture and certainly integral to the history of religions and the western academy if we want to speak about the academy it literally begins with a conspiracy theory called Plato's cave it literally begins with this idea that what the senses are picking up is not actually what is there and that there's this greater truth to be had that that is not what what the people think.
Um and we can we can name all kinds of con conspiracies or or ideas like that in in history and we would recognize them as Gnostic or or Sufi or mystical or I mean we would we can go on and on like this. So I think the the relationship between conspiracy or suspicion about a particular worldview and and the religious life is a very complicated one. I think the basic difference is uh you know to to kind of speak to the conspiracy theor people talk about conspiracy theory today is there's no there's no conversation there. There's no um there's no uncertainty. the the the the the conspiracy theories are too damn too damn certain.
There's there's not there's not a reflection back that that okay well where is the data? How do we establish this? You know, how do you know that? Why do you say that? Those kinds of conversations, Daniel, are not had at least in the public forum. There's just this these narratives that come out that are are simplistic that there's some kind of deep state, you know, there's some kind of uh reality isn't what it what it looks like, but there isn't this, okay, well, where are your sources? Give me some give me some hard give me some hard examples of this. That kind of conversation doesn't happen.
And I think that's what that's what we need to have is that that harder conversation that's that's much broader and deeper than just pulling out some kind of conspiracy idea. Yeah. I mean um so you you you mentioned that one of your big interests was kind of like aeros and esotericism or eroticism. I'm curious probably a lot to kind of like uh you know kind of condense but I'm curious if there's like um uh how you understand the relationship between uh you know eroticism and esotericism let's say you know again I think it's really complicated I think this is what gets this is what gets taken off the table is I mean for example let's take take abduction experiences you know which I think are in some ways the most interesting because they're the most outrageous and and absurd from a a literal kind of uh a secular sensibility, but they're really patently obvious to the experiencer. These things actually appear and and and and and are very real.
But these experiences often involve sexuality in really complicated ways. Uh it's not always straight sexuality. Um there's often um reproduction involved. There are hybrids. There there are tingling tinglings at the base of the spine. There's condundalini like phenomena. I mean, there's all kinds of um sexual uh and gendered themes that come up in the abduction experience, but they don't tend to get focused on because they're embarrassing and they're they're um confusing, I think, to to to people, which I understand. I I I'm I'm confused as well. But I think again, we need to we need to focus on those things. So, one of the just to kind of take it back, one of the things I often say is that the history of mystical experience is a very queer history and and by queer I mean it in the positive um critical theoretical sense that gender and sexuality are very fluid and it's not at all clear um what the the gender identity or what what the sexuality is sometimes of these ex ecstatic mystical states.
Um, and I think this then flows into modern uh near-death experiences and abduction experiences and sexuality comes up big time. Um, if you talk to the experiencers and if you if you really get them to trust you, they will often talk about this element of the experience. Um, but they'll do it in a way that doesn't make a whole lot of sense culturally because the culture, I think, is wrong about this one. Yeah. I guess what I'm sort of trying to wind my way around to a little bit is kind of like, you know, we're in a very particular, you know, moment in um, you know, the United States's trajectory.
You know, we're approaching 250 years. We're in like the the Pluto return, so they say. And uh you know we have this kind of like second American revolution happening uh where the sort of constitutional system you know one could say is being kind of like dismantled uh by the Supreme Court and the executive branch and so on. Uh and meanwhile there's this you know what what's what's explosively powering this you know are a number of things you know white Christian nationalism you know frustration working class frustration um Christian you know apocalypticism and so on it feels like a very occult situation to me uh in that it feels very or psychedelic like you know feels like we've all collectively chosen to go like very bad, dark psychedelic initiation together. Um, but and it feels like the quality of our of our time is shifting uh in in ways that are hard to fully uh articulate.
Um but it it it's interesting you know at this very moment in which we're speaking you know this whole Jeffrey Epstein thing and the sort of you know the the connection between like aeros uh the forces you know maybe the cathonic forces of the occult um the uh you know the the elite power as a kind of um ceremonial or ritual uh kind of like expression like I'm just curious if you have any thoughts on all of I know I'm throwing a bunch of stuff at you there from from your own study of the the paranormal, this the supernormal and and and the occult. I mean, um, and Aeros, too. Um, what do you think is happening right now? Well, so I I I don't know about the Epstein case. Let's put that aside because I just don't know, Daniel.
I haven't I haven't read enough and I don't know enough about that. But I do I do think this moment this larger moment you're speaking to is very obvious. Um and the the sense the sense I feel a lot is I told you so. Yeah. It's like no You know, it's like we've been saying this for decades if not hundreds of years. We we've known that that that the truth is constructed for a long time in the humanities and we have developed ways to talk about this and think about this that I think are quite responsible and and fascinating and yes it's true that the the public has not listened to to people uh who have developed these models but like take the comparative study of religion it's been around for 150 years, Daniel.
We've we've known that there are many religions for a long long time and we've gone through different stages and different models for this and we we're struggling with we've been struggling with this for a long for a century and a half now and suddenly it's an issue or a problem for um for a particular um group of of the society. Well, okay. But we've been doing that for a long time and we do have the tools to to to handle that and to think through that. Um that that that those very tools or that those very institutions are being dismantled, I think is a is a part of me is like, well, they finally understand that we're serious and that we actually are are saying something that's very real and that's very important here. Uh so any kind of attention is in some even negative attention like I think I think u a lot of people are getting now is is good attention because it's it's at least an acknowledgment that that the critique is important whether that's a critique around class or gender or sexuality or race or the ecology or you know this occultism I think is also a um a critique of sort you know this was kind of one of the the points of authors of the impossible is if you look at actually people's actual occult experiences, they're often communicating some desire to get out of a particular story and to tell a new one.
Um, and so I think kind of that's where we're at in the culture is we're trying to get out of this these previous set of stories that have hurt people and and are simply not working anymore and we're trying to tell new stories. Um and and but some of the old stories are good too, you know. So I think we're we're kind of in this we're in this this mixing and and matching kind of place this transitional place that's very difficult to be in. And um in terms of the trajectory of like the work that you're doing around you know the the superhuman and the impossible the super super humanities and the impossible. Yeah.
I mean, do you feel that um the sort of like um deconstruction of the academy, the sort of establishment of knowledge? Uh is there a connection there to maybe like the the you know, kind of um repression of of certain ideas and so on? Well, I call it the superhumanities for a reason. I mean, I I I think that that the humanities have coded into them the superhuman. I think I think the human is too as I say and that human beings are constantly experiencing themselves as much greater much more cosmic than than their social selves. Um so I think this this criticism certainly of the academy is is partly our fault is partly the academyy's fault because it has suppressed this superhuman aspect.
you know, it's turned the humanities into this just this horizontal uh kind of secular uh uh exercise. And I think that's a terrible mistake. Um so what I mean by the superhuman, I don't mean I don't mean some glorified social ego or or some glorified nationalism. I mean I mean the near-death experience. I mean the psychedelic trip. I mean I mean this experience that we're more than we think we are. You know that's what I mean by the super. The super is simply that which is is beyond or over or or after. Um and I think the way we've conceived of the human um is is really bad.
Daniel I think we have to completely reconceive ourselves and reimagine what a human being is and and the place in the cosmos. And I think that's extremely painful. a little exciting, a little titillating too. Um, for Yeah, I mean certainly for I mean for an intellectual we love things that um take apart and and deconstruct a previous worldview and and and and sort of have some hope of some future worldview. So yeah, it it is but see this is what the history of religions is. It's one story telling another story that it's inadequate and mistaken and it's replacing that old story with a new story and then that new story becomes an old story and it gets replaced and then so on and so on and so on.
That's been going on for as far as we can see back. And so I don't see that stopping, Daniel. But I think again we're in a moment where we're recognizing that the the stories that we're in are are broken and that they're they don't work and we're trying to get out of those stories and tell tell different ones and and again I don't know what those different ones are but you but your analytic idealism and your invocation of Bernardo Castro that's a new story that's a but it's it's a new story with roots in the superhumanities by the You know, if you if you read Bernardo, what you actually read is books on Jung and Schopenhau and I mean, you know, you read you he goes back to to these classical figures and he re rereads them as as as pointing towards this idealism. I think he's absolutely correct to do that, by the way. But that's what I mean by the superhumanities.
Uh, another vector that I'm fascinated with, actually, I was going to interview him. and I think I'm going to talk to him next week for my podcast. There's a Toltech shaman Sergio Magana. Uh, and I hadn't I didn't know about him when I wrote my 2012 book. I wrote a book about the Mayan and the Hopey Prophecies and so on. Yeah. Mana came out later and he wrote a book called The Dawn of the Sixth Son and that from his elders and the sort of Toltech and Aztec tradition, they had a slightly different I mean related but slightly different cosmology to the Maya. uh that for them um we were you know shifting over to the uh the sixth sun from the fifth sun.
Uh and the period of like 2012 2022 was the sort of transition and um the fifth sun was a son of light uh and the sixth sun was a son of darkness. So we were moving into this polarity uh shift and uh you know as he explained it this was probably back in like 2010 or something but like the um the time of a sun of light it for them is kind of like means a time when the predominant kind of like tonality or frequency of human consciousness is focused on the daylight world. you know, on the the the waking clarity of the sunlight and empiricism and, you know, you know, connection to material things and and and and rational thought and quantification as it toggles back over to the son of darkness, which sounds a little bit threatening, um, according to Mata writing years ago, uh, what was going to happen is that reality was going to become more dreamlike, uh, more psychically available or psychically malible and reality has become more and more like a dream. And um I sort of feel that that's like one of the best descriptions of what seems to be happening as we have like AI and fake news and um you know we don't even know what's real from the from you know our authority structures are are contaminated now like the White House is garbage the New York Times all these other media outlets seem kind of contaminated by you know this corruption that's taken place in our whole information system or we're losing our scientific uh knowledge base and um yeah it feels like we're plunging into this um son of darkness in a way. I I don't know how that resonates with you as an idea.
Well, it reminds me a lot of I migr and and this you know this idea that that western culture is dominated by the left hemisphere and this sort of rational uh linguistic kind of mathematical approach to reality and that that what what needs to happen is we we need balance. We don't need to go to the right hemisphere and just start to affirm symbol and and myth and intuition and art and so but we need to somehow bring those things back and create a more more more integral balance between between the two. Um I also think you know this is where the h the humanities come in. I think this idea that darkness is scary is is frankly a racist uh uh um uh thing. I think it's I think white people say that, you know, but but my f my colleagues in black critical studies, they're like, "Well, what's what's scary about darkness or blackness?" I mean, it's like this is like this is good.
This is beneficent. And and so I I think that kind of language or that kind of uh sensitive we just and I'm agreeing with you here, Daniel, we should not be afraid of darkness or blackness. We should we should embrace it as as um part of part of part of the human experience and part of who we are. Um, but I think we need to listen to black critical theory is what I'm trying to say, which would critique that kind of language and critique that kind of binary which of course is riven throughout throughout the whole history of of the planet. I understand that. I mean because of the day and night cycle likely.
Yeah. I mean I mean to be clear he he was actually saying that while darkness as an idea could seem scary uh Yeah. No, I get it. No, I get it. It does seem scary. I mean, we it's it's it's it's been scary to to us, but but not to everyone is what I'm trying to say. Yeah. But but, you know, going into a period of of sort of a you know, high-tech surveillance, high-tech weaponry, uh, and sort of Christian faticism, um, and, um, chaos. It's, it is a bit scary right now, you know, climate chaos, ecological breakdown, and so on. I mean um it is easy to get overwhelmed uh in all of that and again absolutely yes and and you know I you know I I guess kind of where I'm trying to come from is look we've been saying these things for a long time and and absolutely this has gotten out of control and absolutely this is bad.
Um, but it's been bad for a long time, Daniel. And and it's we're more aware of the badness now or we're more aware of the breakdown now, but it's been breaking down for a long time. Um, certainly in my life, it's always it's it's been breaking down. I mean, I grew up like you in the 70s. I grew up in the midst of uh nuclear armament, and I really didn't think I would live to see 40. I thought I thought the entire planet would would be decimated by a a nuclear exchange and the the whole climate and and and all of the speed everything would be gone and that could still happen, you know, but again that's been going on at least since the 1970s, you know, or the 1960s or 1950, however far you want to go back that that that people have been saying these and a lot of the things in in philosophy, by the way, are are, you know, the result of the world world wars and and the holocaust and and I mean things were really really awful in the 20 early 20 first half of the 20th century.
Um so again I I think that kind of memory is really useful here because it puts our present um our present dysfunction and our present um um mistakes in in a in a in a bigger context. And that's not to forgive them. I'm not forgiving them or dismissing them. I'm saying let's look at this in this this broader context which which I think does um change change how we think of things. Uh yeah, thank you. Listen, thank you for your time. I'm going to ask you maybe just one more question and then we'll we'll we'll roll it up for 10 other other agendas. Uh but kind of curious about yeah like what kind of you know based on this sense that um you know there's kind of this um world of the impossible that we you know need to kind of like integrate into our anttology and philosophy metaphysics and yeah the the the sort of trajectory of current events and and the sort of um u maybe the sense of the the esoteric and the occult coming back but maybe not in the most healthy way right now.
What kind of advice do you give to would you give to people I mean young people who are sort of like trying to make sense of the situation or um you know thinkers who are trying to write into it or reflect on it uh you know what what what do you think is a useful kind of uh toolkit for people? I mean, one of the things I I again, I'm st I mean, I work with young people every day. I walk into a classroom, so I'm very aware of of what 18 and 19 year olds think and don't think. Um, one of the things that I think is helpful about the occult or the impossible is what I call the traumatic secret. And the basic idea is that extraordinary things happen because they're trying to communicate with people and they're happening in context of suffering and and breakdown and they're trying to heal that breakdown or that suffering.
And maybe they're not doing it very well. Maybe they're maybe it's a cry of the heart or it's a cry of of just the breakdown. But I think us listening to those experiences is really important because it it's us listening to us. I think I think we are listening to another aspect of who we are that's greater. This is what I call the superhuman or the humanist too. Um but I also think these stories are breaking down and that's precisely why these voices or why these communications are coming is because something is not working right and something's trying to take its place. And so that's what I what I keep saying.
This is about communication. This is about language. This is about um text. This is about some kind of move push forward. So there's suffering here. Yes. But there's also healing or there's a potential healing. I guess that's that's the that's the more uh positive message which is very genuine. Yeah. I'm not just saying that. Well, Jeffrey, thank you so much. I love your work. of talking to you and look forward to tomorrow. Let's um maybe sometime we'll do something with a third uh uh person doing a little triangle and triangle. Yeah. What what I'll what I'll remember is it's complex there aren't simple answers and that you that you personally like the complexity.
I mean I like the complexity too. I think things are really complicated and that's if we can just leave the the viewer with that. I mean, um, there aren't simple answers to to these questions, but that's why they're great questions. All right, listen. Uh, have a great day. I see Val on your shelf. I see Timothy Larry staring back. Yeah. Sorry. There. Wait, I guess there there there's Tim. And there's that up very carefully there. It looks like there's also right here. Right here is Aldis Huxley, by the way. Doors of perception. All right. Cool. Cool. Cool. Interesting. Cool. Yeah. I like the show. All right, have a great night and we'll speak soon.
Automatic transcript, lightly edited for readability. Originally published on the Liminal News channel.