For a decade and a half, Dr. Jeffrey J. Kripal has been advocating for the field of religious studies to not only take reports of alien abductions and visits from the dead as seriously as accounts of miracles, but to ask very different questions about “impossible” experiences and phenomena. His research suggests that these questions have actually haunted the humanities since the beginning, and they may be essential to saving the future of the humanities from obscurity and defunding.
Reading Kripal’s work—and especially looking at the footnotes—I’m struck by how thoughtfully he listens to his fellow humans, whether it’s alien abductees and other “experiencers” who are ridiculed by nearly everyone, or his graduate students (many of whom Kripal thanks for exposing him to new theorists and emerging fields of study). It also includes closely reading the canon of the humanities—from Nietzsche to Zora Neale Hurston—to rediscover what these figures really said about the hidden dimensions of reality. Yet after synthesizing all this data, Kripal told me, “I am not well enough read.” If Kripal is a crank, he’s an erudite and humble one.
Despite this singular body of work, How to Think Impossibly may be Kripal’s strangest book yet. It describes encounters with mantis-like aliens and other things that serious scholars aren’t supposed to take seriously. But Kripal clearly believes that religion scholars have no right to analyze the experiences of saints and mystics while scoffing at reports of ghosts and UFOs. It’s what prompted him to launch Rice University’s “Archives of the Impossible,” which collects documentation on “historical events and common human experiences that are not supposed to happen but clearly do.” Perhaps these impossible things aren’t quite so impossible if we’re willing to question our assumptions about time, the universe, and ourselves. For Kripal, such a reassessment doesn’t involve being uncritical, but rather doubly critical: It entails taking the hermeneutics of suspicion that has saturated the humanities and turning it back on scholars, challenging them to question their assumptions and take stock of their exclusions.
In our recent interview, an edited and condensed version of which appears below, Kripal shares his theory on why impossible things happen, suggests that altered states may help us understand certain texts, and addresses some of the criticisms he’s likely to receive.
Hellbound and Down 