The Superhuman Is Here

UFOs, souls, psychic powers, & the future of the humanities — with Jeffrey Kripal

What if academia had room for the paranormal? What if the humanities were reimagined—not as a dry, secular tradition—but as a living archive of altered states, mystical contact, and ontological shock?

This week on Liminal News, I speak with Jeffrey J. Kripal, professor of religion at Rice University and one of the few thinkers working from within the university system who dares to take the impossible seriously. Kripal’s work charts a path of coherence through UFO encounters, near-death experiences, erotic mysticism, and visionary literature — all in an effort to transform how we think, write, and live.

His new book, How to Think Impossibly, is a manifesto for what he calls the “superhumanities”— a way of seeing the academic enterprise as seeded with the extraordinary and paranormal. We talk about Frederick Myers (the 19th Century founder of The Society for Psychical Research in the UK) and the imaginal realm, William Blake and ontological rupture, and whether the human species is evolving toward a new psychic architecture — or simply waking up to what’s always been latent within us.

It’s one of my favorite conversations so far.

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