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

by Jeffrey J. Kripal

The same paradoxical comparative method quickly reveals another uncomfortable truth: beliefs limit what is possible. Beliefs shut down. Beliefs decide. If specific beliefs can be thought of as fishhooks that sometimes catch real fish, it can also be said that beliefs generally only catch fish, and particular kinds of fish that the hook is designed to catch, no less. But, if we extend the metaphor, we can also say that the waters are filled with other sorts of beings, most of which couldn’t care less about these particular belief-hooks. Which is another way of saying beliefs can miss a great deal, really almost everything. Of what would we be capable if we did not limit ourselves through what we believe? This, I take it, was what Nietzsche meant by his most famous declaration that “God is dead.” God (or at least the idea of God being believed) must die so that superhumans might live. Past belief shuts down future possibility.