Authors of the Impossible: The Paranormal and the Sacred

This book is for those who feel yearn for a view of nature and reality that embraces "the fantastic." The Fantastic are those events that occur in the world which are deeply meaningful - or sometimes just absurd to the rational mind - and are also not explicable or reducible to the materialistic paradigm of science. Kripal argues however, that the Fantastic is also not strictly reducible to a religious account. Kripal sees the Fantastic as being more explicable to art, writing and creativity in general, since the Fantastic occurs when the objective world reflects or resonates with our own cultural creations and our own creative ways of seeing or imagining the world. Kripal focuses on four "authors of the impossible" to make his argument - Frederick Myers, one the early pioneers of psychical research; Charles Fort, another pioneer, who liked to investigate recordings of strange, unusual, sometimes seemingly impossible events; Jaques Vallee, a French polymath who has written extensively on UFOs and describes UFO events as a phenomenon that is neither purely subjective - they are not fake accounts or mere hallucinations - nor are they purely objective in the sense that UFOs are not simply alien astronauts from outer space in flying machines. Kripal's final "author of the impossible" is Bertrand Meheust, a contemporary associate of Vallee's who argues that the actual world - both psychological and physical - is determined by the social and cultural practices and paradigms within which we try to understand it. Kripal contends that all four men understand humanity to be dualistic in that we are connected to the world in both an everyday, mundane, physical level and also on a higher, spiritual level where we are connected to a greater cosmic mind or minds. Through this cosmic connection we can not only manifest amazing abilities such as psychic powers but even alter the nature of our own reality. Many may be sceptical about Kripal's picture of consciousness and the world, but no one could blame him for making it boring.

I feel deep gratitude to Kripal for this book, for his unique ability to introduce me to people and concepts I might otherwise have never encountered. In this instance, to the irrepressible Charles Fort. I’d heard occasional references to something being “Fortean” over the years but now I finally get it, I am intrigued enough to explore Fort’s books and that’s exciting! On the flip side, I took off one star due to the final chapter on Meheust that was often too far removed from my lay perspective, going over my head so many times (unlike the earlier majority of the writing) that it was annoying in its overwhelm. I realize it is my own limitation that resulted in my frustration and yet the earlier portions had led me to feel adequate to the task. Still, overall a marvelous book!

I have to say this was one of the most exciting books I've ever read. As a French literature scholar, the references to French theorists and writers was certainly a draw. For instance, I'd never heard of the 19th-century psychic Alexis Didier and his influence on Balzac, Dumas and Baudelaire. My own writing on the atypical wiring, early life experiences, and paranormal activities of poetic geniuses [In Their Right Minds: The Lives and Shared Practices of Poetic Geniuses] shares many common findings with Kripal's.While I've always been a skeptic about UFO sightings, the historic connection to religious visions was particularly interesting and made sense. Plus, who am I to say we are the only sentient beings in this big wide Universe, where the time / space continuum also affords interesting possibilities for paranormal encounters. Speaking of encounters, I had no idea that the French scientist in Spielberg’s movie, “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” was based on Jacques Vallée, one of the “authors of the impossible” that Kripal studies.I see how many people either loved or loathed Authors of the Impossible. Personally, I found Kripal’s style to be as engaging, even friendly and often funny, as it was scholarly and thoughtful. I was so enthralled that I read through the whole thing in a week.

I absolutely love this scholar/writer and love this book. After Joseph Campbell, Kripal is my go-to for mind expanding ideas. And I can't get enough of the sci/fi-super hero angle. Mutants and Mystics is another great favorite of mine. I've read almost everything he's written and look forward to his next work! The Force Is With Him.

What damages an otherwise interesting, even compelling, read is the imposition of post-structural specialized terminology and unnecessary complex sentence structures that obfuscate rather than enlighten.Authors of the Impossible, by Jeffrey J. Kripal of Rice University [Dept. of Religion], has been written for a specialized audience [read academic] in what appears to be an attempt to bring the paranormal/fantastic elements of popular culture, as it takes over the role of the sacred/religious in our lives, into the fold of acceptable, even laudable, academic studies.However, the overlay of post-structural language, with lots of name dropping [Freud, Derrida, Lacan, Foucault], and inelegant sentences and sentence structures does not make this book any better. Not to say this is a poor piece of scholarship, it is a very interesting hypothesis, but the language and the sentence structures make the work unnecessarily opaque.Recommended for academic readers with a thorough grounding in post-structural theory and an interest in the manner in which the sacred has moved/is moving from the scared 'register' to the imagined 'register'. Other readers may find getting at the author's argument and intentions more trouble than it is worth.Prof. Kripal might do well read Steven Pinker's The Sense of Style.Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

There’s no need to agree with Kirpal, but I recommend reading his work and reaching your own conclusions. He makes a strong argument for the relevance of the humanities, not in opposing materialistic science or twiddling meaninglessly on its peripheries, but in functioning in a complementary manner with it to help understand the aspects of reality and consciousness that are beyond materialism alone. If this sounds ridiculous to you, all the more reason to read the book.

I always suspected there was something about the act of reading and writing that was at times mystical, or paranormal. This book discusses this possibility. It's brilliant piece of thinking, reasoning and theorising - expertly written and a real page turner.

Now and then I come across a book that strikes me as a must read. This is such a book. But who should read it? For whom is a must read? In an age of DIY spirituality it is tempting to start with the interior design, the décor and the fittings and trimmings. Those things look good and offer fast promises of comfort. That’s fine for those with famously short attention spans in urgent need of sentiment and sensation – and hence opinion.Reading Authors of the Impossible is an inquiry into the modern foundation of spiritual inquiry in Western European culture. This is for somebody who is settling into an apprenticeship for self-awareness – a patient person who cares to build an understanding in a loving and patient way. This kind of inquiry is about more than the personal concerns of inquiry. You read Authors of the Impossible for more than just yourself. It is history – a history you did know existed.What you will learn is that there were thinkers at the dawn of our modernity – rational folk who cherished science – who were way ahead of us in so many ways in asking the how, what and why questions. And not only that [using whatever terms we use to express our yearning for a deep existential sense of who and what we are] the business of inquiry is considerably more interesting than we have imagined it to be.But that clever, sophisticated and nuanced examination of who and what we are has been rudely shoved a side by the flagrant and crass passions of our age [political, intellectual, economic and religious] that favour management of, and control over, our sense of human reality.We occupy the shoreline of a vast potential. The strange, and sad, thing about our culture is that we induced to treat those who go beyond ankle depth as dangerous. That culture creates shark nets of denial. Shark nets are Australian things intended to make the shallow waters at beaches safe for innocent pleasures. But the cultural net is flawed - sharks still get in and the explorers still go out. Reality penetrates the illusions and conceits, and explorers go beyond the boundaries. What our culture has succeeded in doing is only to create an anaesthetic illusion that the timid (but culturally potent) minds in religion and science can hold up as the boundary of the real. And the obedient take this testimony as truth.Meanwhile the rest of us struggle to find a way out of the state of unconfidence and confusion that has become our legacy. And we turn to alien heroes from other cultures and other times, as if we have none of our own. In Authors of the Impossible Jeffrey Kripal introduces us to 4 thinkers as real heroes of our questing.Here is a legacy we would own, if we knew about it. Here are people we would celebrate as heroes, if we knew about them. Authors of the Impossible is a must read for anybody who wants to discover, and reclaim, the heritage of the real spiritual DIY pioneers of our culture. These are members of the community of giants on whose shoulders we now stand. We owe it to ourselves, and to them, to rediscover their works – and to build on them.