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Summary
Summary
Whitley Strieber ( Communion ) and Jeffrey J. Kripal (J. Newton Rayzor professor of religion at Rice University) team up on this unprecedented and intellectually vibrant new framing of inexplicable events and experiences.
Rather than merely document the anomalous, these authors-one the man who popularized alien abduction and the other a renowned scholar and 'renegade advocate for including the paranormal in religious studies' ( The New York Times )-deliver a fast-paced and exhilarating study of why the supernatural is neither fantasy nor fiction but a vital and authentic aspect of life.
Their suggestion? That all kinds of 'impossible' things, from extra-dimensional beings to bilocation to bumps in the night, are not impossible at all- rather, they are a part of our natural world. But this natural world is immeasurably more weird, more wonderful, and probably more populated than we have so far imagined with our current categories and cultures, which are what really make these things seem 'impossible.'
The Super Natural considers that the natural world is actually a 'super natural world'-and all we have to do to see this is to change the lenses through which we are looking at it and the languages through which we are presently limiting it. In short- The extraordinary exists if we know how to look at and think about it.
'A cohesive reframing of the 'pantheon of the unknown' . . . A thought-provoking, intelligent reconceptualization of supernatural events.' Kirkus Reviews
'This book is a dream come true. It has taken thirty years for the most articulate of abductees to be taken seriously by a senior academic. This dialogue between the famous abductee and the historian of religions is the first major step in ufology since Jacques Vallee's writings of the 1990s. Whitley Strieber's intelligence and honesty compel one to take his experiences seriously, though they may sweep the philosophical ground from under our feet. In taking up the challenge, Jeffrey Kripal avoids the simplistic reactions of both skeptic and true believer. Instead of pretending to have the answers, he asks mind-bending questions, whose very asking is an act of self-transformation. Their conversation sets off sparks that should rekindle the search after 'rejected knowledge,' and integrate it with the great paradigm change of our time- the end of materialism.' Joscelyn Godwin, Colgate University
'If reading The Super Natural doesn't make your hair stand straight up, you need to read it again. This book is at once disturbing and disorienting, fascinating and lucid. Its 'new vision of the unexplained' dives headfirst into all sorts of strange but true encounters, from ravishing alien goddesses to loathsome blue gremlins. While this domain of human experience remains strictly taboo, it doesn't stop hundreds of thousands of ordinary people from continuing to report bizarre encounters with we know not what. This remarkable book does not attempt to explain what is going on. But it does crack open your head long enough to provide a new perspective.' Dean Radin, Chief Scientist, Institute of Noetic Sciences and author of Supernormal ; Entangled Minds ; and The Conscious Universe
'Something is happening here, and we're not sure what it is, but Kripal and Strieber have a clue- if there are aliens among us, they are ourselves, and we seem eager to make contact. This is a brilliant, provocative, and gripping new inquiry into the mysteries of time, space, and the human - and not so human - mind. Absolutely captivating; one could even say I was abducted . . . ' Gary Lachman, author of The Secret Teachers of the Western World
Author Notes
Whitley Strieber was born on June 13, 1945 in San Antonio, Texas. He received a B.A. from the University of Texas in 1968 and a certificate from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Before becoming an author, he worked at an advertising agency from 1970 to 1977, going from account supervisor to vice president.
He is the author of several novels including The Wolfen, The Hunger, Superstorm, The Last Vampire, Lilith's Dream, 2012: The War for Souls, The Omega Point, Critical Mass, Melody Burning, and the Alien Hunter series. In 1987, he published Communion: A True Story, which described his personal encounters with extraterrestrials. His other non-fiction works include Transformation, Breakthrough: The Next Step, The Secret School, Solving the Communion Enigma: What Is to Come, and Miraculous Journey. He founded the Communion Foundation in 1989 to assist in establishing a productive relationship with alien beings. He is the host of the paranormal and fringe science-themed internet podcast, Dreamland, available on a weekly basis from his website, Unknown Country.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (2)
Kirkus Review
A religious historian and a popular fiction writer and mystic collaborate to adopt unexplained phenomena into the realm of natural occurrences. Best known for his graphic depictions of alien abductions and otherworldly encounters (his own included), Strieber (Solving the Communion Enigma: What Is to Come, 2012, etc.) pairs up with Kripal (Religion/Rice Univ.; Comparing Religions, 2014, etc.) to produce a cohesive reframing of the "pantheon of the unknown" through the lens of the natural world. To accomplish their "apocalypse of thought," both authors worked in tandem, intertwining their unique perspectives, experiences, and educational backgrounds. They explore Strieber's legacy, the development of alien folklore, and the logical debate on how the American government's skepticism and secrecy surrounding UFOs only propagates their mythological potential. Kripal's broad religious comparisons and his intellectualization of unknown phenomena from a spiritual perspective complement Strieber's menacing laundry list of what haunts him most, from his many sinister encounters with nonhuman entities to a medically mystifying, nonremovable ear implant, a beautiful ghostly temptress, and gargantuan pulsating spiders hovering above his bed. Appealing to his already established readership, these unsettling anecdotes indeed make this a Strieber book, but Kripal's religious assessment of sex and gender is similarly provocative. Lucid and convincing, the writers' volleying hypothetical interpretations of how "to embrace science in a new way" implore that it's not necessary to believe in the supernatural in order to study it and to comprehend its validity or its possibilities or impossibilities, yet much work remains to elevate it beyond perpetual public mockery. Though Kripal implores that "we are all embedded in a much larger, fiercely alive and richly conscious reality," perhaps the best counsel for dogmatic debunkers can be found in the book's appendix, which kindly suggests that everyone patiently "learn to live with paradox, to sit with the question." A thought-provoking, intelligent reconceptualization of supernatural events. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
UFO proponent and horror novelist Strieber (The Wolfen) and Kripal (J. Newton Rayzor Professor of Philosophy and Religious Thought, Rice Univ.; Mutants and Mystics) alternate the writing of chapters here, together presenting a unified front regarding their theory that the modern supernatural world now consists of aliens and UFOs, the soul is just energy, and other supernatural events are in fact rarely encountered natural phenomena. Not yet having a scientific explanation for things like UFOs, they state, doesn't mean that such things don't exist; instead they are part of a nature that we don't yet understand. VERDICT This book is for die-hard believers in UFOs and the supernatural who are looking for a new belief system. It's not an easy read but has some sections that will appeal to Strieber's fans. For large systems, or libraries where the exploration of supernatural phenomenon is very popular.-Mary E. Jones, Los Angeles P.L. © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
The Already World They took a little hair off my head and cut my nails. I asked questions in my mind, but before I could verbalize them, they answered back very softly but directly, "We are making a new you." I asked him, "Are you like angels?" and he replied, "Not as you have been taught." An Anonymous Letter Writer in The Communion Letters I am afraid of this book. There is something about it, something explosive and new. It is not a neutral book. It is an apocalypse of thought waiting for you, the reader, to actualize. The world will not really end as you turn these pages, of course. Not the real one anyway. Much might well be lost--we hope. You should know that. But more, much more--really everything--might well be gained. In a few words, this is a book about a new world, the next world that has already arrived, that has always been here, whether we have recognized its presence or not. In the pages that follow, Whitley and I explore the proposal that we are all embedded in a much larger, fiercely alive and richly conscious reality that is only, at best, indirectly addressed by everything that the human species has ever thought or believed. The religions, for example, have been attempts to look at and engage this conscious reality as if it were primarily concerned with us, but we don't really know that, and in fact we cannot know that. Not at least yet. Our proposal? To venture outside the present houses of faith without forgetting those family homes or leaving the spirit behind. To embrace science in a new way, by promoting a more generous vision of the full human experience of reality that can embrace and ponder "more stuff," especially the wild, fantastic stuff that shouts, glows, and zaps in these pages. And, above all, to understand, to really understand that we are already and always have been living in a super natural world, that we ourselves are highly evolved prisms or mediums of this super nature coming into consciousness, and that many of the things that we are constantly told are impossible are in fact not only possible but also the whispered secrets of what we are, where we are, and why we are here. This is a book about that Already World. To my knowledge, nothing like it has ever been attempted. Here, one of the most widely read figures in UFO and abduction literature and a seasoned (take that either way) professor of comparative religion sit down to encounter each other's thought--seriously and respectfully. As the author of the twentieth century's most influential and intimate description of an abduction event, Communion (1987), Whitley sets on our shared table his visions of alien spectral figures that seemed at once physical and not physical, at once a thing and a thought, at once sexual and spiritual, at once traumatic and ecstatic. I bring the practices of the professional study of religion to the table in order to explain what historians of religion have written about these paradoxical things (it turns out, a lot ) and how we might make sense of them without surrendering our critical faculties and understandable skepticism. We work in tandem. We read each other. We rewrite our chapters in the light of what the other has written. In the process, we rewrite ourselves. 01 The text is at once intimate and professional, both in content and form. Whitley, far from being what he has been portrayed in the media--that is, an advocate for belief in alien abduction--reveals himself in his chapters as a questioning and self-critical nonreligious but spiritual man, telling his story as he has lived it, as a journey through unexplained but extremely powerful perceptions. I take the role of the trained comparativist, framing my responses to Whitley's narrative through the tools of my trade. I introduce technical terms. I use footnotes. I talk history. I play the professor. I demonstrate how the modern experience of the alien coming down from the sky can be compared to the ancient experience of the god descending from the heavens, but not in the ways that are commonly accepted today: "Not as you have been taught," as the letter writer (and now you, as the reader of that letter) is telepathically told in our opening epigraph. Most of all, I engage Whitley's thought as an intuitive set of comparative and interpretive practices. I demonstrate how Whitley has, all along, been offering us a most radical theory of religion and the human spirit. I make explicit the principles that are implicit in his writing and give these the names and nuances that have been developed in the study of religion over the last two hundred years. Whitley in turn challenges me and, by extension, my field with experienced realities that few intellectuals are prepared to admit exist, much less are willing to study and try to understand: things like the imagination's ability to materialize its content in the physical environment, a home invasion and an implant, the human soul as a real form of energy that is not dependent on the body-brain for its existence, and an emergent mythology that is not entirely imaginary. As my initial invocation of an apocalypse of thought makes clear, neither of us takes this conversation lightly. Both of us have known professional rejection, religious hate campaigns, censorship, and outright character slander for what we have sincerely thought out loud in the public square. We know perfectly well that what we think cannot be slotted into the present order of scientific knowledge and religious belief. We will not pretend otherwise. Nevertheless, we want to speak clearly and respectfully to both the open-minded skeptic and the open-minded believer, as we think both have something important to bring to the table. And are we not all believers and skeptics at different moments? The final hope and intended result of this book is not yet another set of pat answers or clear conclusions about strange things. We have no such easy or settled answers. Our intentions for this book are more humble. We want to model a different sort of conversation about the importance of experienced anomalies, one that is more evenhanded, more careful, more intellectually generous, and so more useful. We want to shift the conversation. Excerpted from The Super Natural: A New Vision of the Unexplained by Whitley Strieber, Jeffrey J. Kripal All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
Table of Contents
1 The Already World | p. 1 |
2 Into the Woods | p. 21 |
3 Making the Cut | p. 39 |
4 The Blue Man Group-the Other One | p. 57 |
5 A Context in the Sky | p. 79 |
6 Lying in the Lap of the Goddess | p. 96 |
7 What Evolution Looks Like | p. 111 |
8 Pain | p. 130 |
9 Super Sexualities | p. 150 |
10 Physical Traces and the Feral Boy | p. 174 |
11 The Magical Object | p. 189 |
12 Cracking the Cosmic Egg | p. 206 |
13 Trauma, Trance, and Transcendence | p. 218 |
14 Haunted | p. 234 |
15 The Soul Is a UFO | p. 262 |
16 Mythmaking | p. 282 |
17 The Mythical Object | p. 303 |
18 Shifting the Conversation | p. 320 |
Appendix: "An Approximation to Realness or Final Awakening": Or How to Make the Supernatural Super Natural in Nine Steps | p. 339 |
Entirely Natural Notes | p. 343 |
Index | p. 357 |
About the Authors | p. 367 |