8: Jeffrey Kripal- Mysticism, Sex, and the Impossible

Is Reality Stranger Than We’re Willing to Admit? Religious scholar and author Jeffrey J. Kripal joins Joanna Ebenstein for an engrossing conversation exploring mysticism, sexuality, death, and the edges of what we call “real.”Kripal reflects on his early years in a Catholic seminary, where fasting, faith, anorexia, and psychoanalysis shaped his understanding of religion as far stranger and more psychologically complex than it first appears.He discusses his argument that mystical traditions often encode forms of queerness and fluidity that resist fixed identity, and suggests that paranormal phenomena—UFOs, abductions, synchronicities—belong to the same instability in reality.He also recounts an unexplainable experience in Calcutta during Kali Puja, which reshaped his intellectual life and thinking about death as an opening onto “larger reality.”Together, Joanna and Jeff explore what it means to take the impossible seriously—not as metaphor, but as part of reality itself.📢Listeners! You are invited to share your own offerings: voice notes on death, dying, ritual and the beauty of finitude. Include your first name and location if you want them shared- you might be featured in an upcoming episode. Send your offering via WhatsApp to +44 2921 690468.💀 Memento Morbid is produced by Overcoat Media in partnership with Morbid Anatomy.Host: Joanna EbensteinSeries Producer: Jess GunasekaraStudio Engineer: Fernando Velazco VargasAdditional Production and Sound Design: Katie HillExecutive Producer: Steven RajamArtwork: Lauren Seeleysubstack.com/@mementomorbid