How to Think Impossibly: About Souls, UFOs, Time, Belief, and Everything Else

by Jeffrey J. Kripal

In short, I am suggesting a shared but largely unconscious experience-source hypothesis, what DeConick might call a “gnostic spirituality.” The different sets of cultural materials resonate so strongly because they are all based on the same kinds of human experiences, which themselves correlate very strongly with a shared neurobiology or human mind, which I understand in transmissive or filter terms, not in productive or epiphenomenal ones. In short, what we have here is a type of alien gnosis. Still, I am challenged by Stuart Davis, Jeremy Vaeni, and Karin Austin. I worry that the above hypothesis is too mushy, not physical enough, too “spiritual,” to use a much-abused word. To cite Davis, there is not enough WTF in my thought. I also worry, with Austin now, that it is much too “male” and not surrendering or receiving enough. I have not let go. I suppose that is what I am trying to say with Vaeni’s nonduality material—that we need to be abolished in some profound way, because “we” are the problem itself. I stand challenged, then, and I am most open to be put into question, to be overcome.