Jeff Kripal

A X-men comic book might start out something like this: Script: Our world is fragmented and on the brink of one crisis after another. We believe we are alone but there are more of us than we know. “Heed this warning: the gods only ask one thing- that we don’t forget them.” Frame: The hero/ine (unbeknownst to the soul) waits to be transformed…through mutation. (The hero/ine enters the comic shop) Jeff Kripal is a professor of religion at Rice University and the associate director of the Center for Theory and Research at Esalen. He is the author of such books as Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion, Mutants and Mystics and the Flip. Celebrator of the humanities and chronicler of the human potential movement, Jeff’s work champions some of my favorite subjects: the metanormal and explorations of consciousness. In my dreams, comic book shops always symbolize something like Tatooine’s Cantina scene: launching points for magical adventures. For me, the comic shop is a symbol that releases the psychic energy of magic, as Kripal might say. I wanted to be a comic book artist/writer when I was a tween. I set out to write my own comics but I became conscious of the fact I had no stories to tell at that age. Maybe, this is when I set out to live my own adventures. Jeff tells us that there is no place for the modern ordinary mystic in our culture with our present worldview. Luckily, comics can still act as a place of refuge for the extraordinary. Take the X-Men, for example. The X-men are mutants: humans with superhuman abilities. Like the X-men’s School for Gifted Youngsters, Esalen has served as a home for some of the greatest psychonauts of the last 60 years. Esalen Jeff’s book on Esalen chronicles the lineage of the human potential movement. For fans like myself, many of these folks are superheroes (my superhero mutants): Maslow, Campbell, Tarnas, Leonard, Murphy, etc. Uncanny indeed! Kripal follows in their ginormous footsteps. How many of us are conscious that we are conscious at this very moment? And if you are with me this far: how many of us are there out there? Authorization is a metatheme Kripal writes about in Mutants and Mystics. It is when we realize we are co-authors of this super-story and “involves the act of writing the paranormal writing us”. The human race is in trouble. Let’s hope there are Mutants out there to help us. It was an honor and joy to discuss this subject matter with one of the leading scholars in the field. Please enjoy my conversation with Jeff Kripal.