The New School at Commonweal The Secret Body - Jeffrey Kripal and Host Michael Lerner
Oct 3, 2025
In this engaging conversation, Jeffrey J. Kripal, an esteemed professor at Rice University and co-director at Esalen Institute, dives into his intriguing book, *The Secret Body*. He reveals how his personal experiences connect to larger themes in mystical traditions, including heretical heterosexuality and the concept of erotic mysticism. Kripal shares tales of out-of-body encounters and critiques academia's disengagement from the erotic-mystical link. He pushes boundaries by proposing a new evolutionary humanism that intertwines consciousness and paranormal phenomena.
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Paranormals Speak Through Story
- Kripal treats paranormal reports as narrative, goal-oriented phenomena with agency and meaning.
- He suggests storytelling may be as relevant as mechanistic explanations in understanding them.
Paranormal Events Collapse Dualism
- Kripal frames paranormal events as non-dual signals where subjective and material correlate, collapsing subject-object dualism.
- He cites Jung's unus mundus and the psychoid as parallels to this collapse.
Science Shapes A New Superstory
- Kripal sees modern science as co-creating a 'superstory' that integrates anomalous experiences into an empirical cosmic humanism.
- He envisions a new narrative where science and paranormal currents mutually inform meaning and evolution.
