Biography
Jeffrey J. Kripal is the J. Newton Rayzor Chair in Philosophy and Religious Thought at Rice University. He also helps direct the Center for Theory and Research at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California, and sits on numerous advisory boards in the U.S. and Europe involving the nature of consciousness and the human, social and natural sciences. Most recently, Kripal is the author of “The Superhumanities: Historical Precedents, Moral Objections, New Realities” (University of Chicago Press, 2022), where he intuits an emerging order of knowledge that can engage in robust moral criticism but also affirm the superhuman or nonhuman dimensions of our histories and futures. His forthcoming book is “How to Think Impossibly: About Souls, UFOs, Time, Belief, and Everything Else” (University of Chicago Press, 2024). He is presently working on a three-volume study of paranormal currents in the sciences, modern esoteric literature and the hidden history of science fiction collectively entitled “The Super Story: Science (Fiction) and Some Emergent Mythologies.” His full body of work can be seen at https://jeffreyjkripal.com. He thinks he may be Spider-Man.