Episode 45: Jeffrey J. Kripal on 'Flipping' Out of Materialism

"May the present 'you' not survive this little book," Jeffrey Kripal writes in the prologue to The Flip. "May you be flipped in dramatic or quiet ways." Indeed, Kripal's latest is a kind of manifesto, a call to embrace the metaphysical expanses that reveal themselves to many who dare dip a toe outside the materialist lifeboat we've been rowing away in for a couple of centuries now. In this conversation, Phil and JF talk to the eminent scholar of religion about the life-changing epiphanies that have convinced many a hardboiled materialist that bouncing billiard balls is probably not the best metaphor for what is actually going on in the universe. In essence, this is a conversation about stories, about the fictions we tell ourselves to make sense -- or nonsense -- of our world.

REFERENCES

Jeffrey J. Kripal, The Flip: Epiphanies of Mind and the Future of Knowledge
Henri Bergson, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion
Sigmund Freud, Civilization and its Discontents
Weird Studies, Episode 37: Entities, with Stuart Davis

Special Guest: Jeffrey J. Kripal.