Here Anthony has a fascinating and completely informal chat with Professor Jeffrey J. Kripal where they discuss, among other things, the life and work of Philip K. Dick, materialism and why a new way of thinking is needed if we are ever to understand the true nature of consciousness.
Jeffrey J. Kripal is the Associate Dean of the School of Humanities and holds the J. Newton Rayzor Chair in Philosophy and Religious Thought at Rice University, where he chaired the Department of Religion for eight years and helped create the GEM Program, a doctoral concentration in the study of Gnosticism, Esotericism, and Mysticism that is the largest program of its kind in the world. He is the Associate Director of the Center for Theory and Research at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California, where he also serves as Chair of the Board.
Jeff is the author or co-author of eleven books, seven of which are with The University of Chicago Press, including, most recently a memoir-manifesto entitled Secret Body: Erotic and Esoteric Currents in the History of Religions (Chicago, 2017). He has also served as the Editor in Chief of the Macmillan Handbook Series on Religion (ten volumes, 2015-2016). He specializes in the study of extreme religious states and the re-visioning of a New Comparativism, particularly as both involve putting “the impossible” back on the academic table again.
He is presently working on a three-volume study of paranormal currents in the history of religions and the sciences for The University of Chicago Press, collectively entitled The Super Story.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICviV4Vvsyk
