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readingtrying82's review against another edition
5.0
[this review was written on amazon initially]
This book is about a shamanic postmodern tantra of alien communion.
I loved this book and I was a little disappointed toward the end as well. Basically this book alternates chapters by Whitley Strieber and Jeffery Kripal riffing/reflecting on each other’s thoughts. The subject is primarily Alien contact experiences.
Strieber talks mostly of his own experiences, the development of his though on the experiences and how he relates this to Kripal’s concerns.
Kripal brings different frames that he thinks will enhance the conversation. Many of these frames are implicitly used by Whitley and other writers of anomalous experiences but often implicitly, by making them explicit we gain greater control over the kind of story we make, the kind of study we undertake.
Of the multiple frames Kripal introduced I found the following six most useful:
Comparison "if we collect enough seemingly anecdotal or anomalous experiences from different times and places and place them together on a fair comparative table, we can quickly see that these reports are neither anecdotal nor anomalous. We can see that they are actually common occurrences in the species. They are part of our world. They are ‘natural,’ as we say, even if each of them is also rare with respect to any particular individual, and all of them are ‘super,’ that is, beyond how we presently understand how this natural world works.”
This is basically the first step anyone takes when getting interested in any anomalous/rare experiences, search through history and see how common it is, what variations there are.
Phenomenology: Though this is a complex philosophical movement, in this context it is simply the practice of engaging/inquiring with experience as it “appears” and temporarily putting aside how it might relate to the “objective world.” As Whitney says: “I am reporting a perception, not making a claim, and there is a world of difference between those two approaches.”
“This practice will enable us to be faithful to what actually appeared and is being reported without immediately believing or dismissing it. Making the cut [using phenomenology] will free us to talk about the impossible without it sounding impossible. [Kripal]”
Historical contextualization: Kripal argues for the usefulness of contextualizing anomalous experiences while arguing against a prevalent tendency in the academy to using historical contextualization to explain away the possible universal significance of all meanings/truths.
Kripal makes a glib and amusing reflection: “I do not think it is too much of a simplification to suggest that the entire history of religions can be summed up this way: strange super beings from the sky come down to interact with human beings, provide them with cultural, technological, legal, and ethical knowledge, guide them, scare the crap out of them, demand their submission and obedience, have sex with them(often forcefully), and generally terrorize, awe, baffle, inspire, and use them.”
He further argues against reducing myths to misunderstood science or apparently advanced science [UFO] to simply older myths. Instead we should keep the tension between these two reductive tendencies and allow each poll to inform, enrich and challenge our stories.
Hermeneutics (interpretation): He focuses mostly of two aspects of hermeneutics, its suspicious enactments which look for hidden meanings and the feedback loop of understanding between subject who understands and the objects of understanding. This loop is not stable but endlessly influencing and changing each poll.
“I am thinking of films like The Never ending Story(1984), Stranger than Fiction(2006), and the Adjustment Bureau (2011)…the story revolves around a protagonist engaging his own life as a fictional story being written either in this world or in another, seemingly by someone else. As he reads and interprets the text of his life, however, he discovers that its story or plot changes. He discovers the circle or loop of hermeneutics. He discovers that as he engages his cultural script as text creatively and critically he his rereading and rewriting himself. He is changing the story”
He also spends a lot of time talking about the origin of the idea of the imaginal [both as symbolic and empirical forms). This is very interesting but a little too complex to talk/quote about in a review.
Erotics: Kripal argues for the centrality of the erotic in this study, the erotic from Plato’s Eros, to Freud’s Libido to Tantra’s energies and transformations. Here he recounts his own interesting experiences in India with the “goddess Kali”. This also lays a bridge for his sympathetic reading of
Whitley Strieber.
“ What was Whitley Strieber’s crime? What did he do that was so wrong…..Not only did he speak secrets in public, but he spoke reverently and fearfully of a divine presence that was feminine, that broke and rode him like a horse…by doing so, he spoke of a presence at the very heart of the unconscious of the religious West, a presence that has been repressed and denied for three millennia. He spoke of Her.”
Traumatic secret: Here he writes about how trauma can often be a breaking open into both madness or/and transcendence. Near death experiences, traumatic abuse, violent accidents and alien encounters are often described by people as moments of breakage from a social/egoic trace into greater numinous[awe full reality] space.
“It is only a thought. I do not know. I want to be very humble here and stress the complexities…Still, here is the thought. If the ego is ready to let go, then it will be more likely to experience an encounter wit the sacred Alien or Other as extremely positive, as redemptive, as ecstatic. If, on the other hand, the ego is not ready to let go of itself, then it will be more likely to experience an encounter with the sacred as extremely negative, as terrifying, as destructive.”
My only criticisms of the book are some of its looseness with terms toward the end.
There is a lot of imprecision in the use of the word mystical. All anomalous experiences get packed into the tent of mystical experiences at times which is not helpful. Whitley’s experiences are not the same as Meister Eckhart’s of the Godhead. I understand how interpretively they may be using similar devices [Hermeneutics] but the phenomena they talk about is vastly different in my opinion. Also mystical practices are concerned with stable changes of states and character, while altered states are not necessarily so concerned. There is some overlap but I think it has to be spelled out much more clearly to be knowledge enhancing and not just mudding the water.
Also some of the riffs on the physical sciences and quantum physics are cringe worthy. I think the perspective is important but just like Kripal brought a sophisticated humanities perspective, you need a sympathetic scientist [there are a few] to really get any substantive insights from the scientific viewpoint.
Anyway, I only talked about some of the frames that are explored much more in depth in the book.
For anyone with an interest in Ufo’s, paranormal studies, or religious studies this is highly recommended. If you don’t have an interest in any of these three why did you read this review?
This book is about a shamanic postmodern tantra of alien communion.
I loved this book and I was a little disappointed toward the end as well. Basically this book alternates chapters by Whitley Strieber and Jeffery Kripal riffing/reflecting on each other’s thoughts. The subject is primarily Alien contact experiences.
Strieber talks mostly of his own experiences, the development of his though on the experiences and how he relates this to Kripal’s concerns.
Kripal brings different frames that he thinks will enhance the conversation. Many of these frames are implicitly used by Whitley and other writers of anomalous experiences but often implicitly, by making them explicit we gain greater control over the kind of story we make, the kind of study we undertake.
Of the multiple frames Kripal introduced I found the following six most useful:
Comparison "if we collect enough seemingly anecdotal or anomalous experiences from different times and places and place them together on a fair comparative table, we can quickly see that these reports are neither anecdotal nor anomalous. We can see that they are actually common occurrences in the species. They are part of our world. They are ‘natural,’ as we say, even if each of them is also rare with respect to any particular individual, and all of them are ‘super,’ that is, beyond how we presently understand how this natural world works.”
This is basically the first step anyone takes when getting interested in any anomalous/rare experiences, search through history and see how common it is, what variations there are.
Phenomenology: Though this is a complex philosophical movement, in this context it is simply the practice of engaging/inquiring with experience as it “appears” and temporarily putting aside how it might relate to the “objective world.” As Whitney says: “I am reporting a perception, not making a claim, and there is a world of difference between those two approaches.”
“This practice will enable us to be faithful to what actually appeared and is being reported without immediately believing or dismissing it. Making the cut [using phenomenology] will free us to talk about the impossible without it sounding impossible. [Kripal]”
Historical contextualization: Kripal argues for the usefulness of contextualizing anomalous experiences while arguing against a prevalent tendency in the academy to using historical contextualization to explain away the possible universal significance of all meanings/truths.
Kripal makes a glib and amusing reflection: “I do not think it is too much of a simplification to suggest that the entire history of religions can be summed up this way: strange super beings from the sky come down to interact with human beings, provide them with cultural, technological, legal, and ethical knowledge, guide them, scare the crap out of them, demand their submission and obedience, have sex with them(often forcefully), and generally terrorize, awe, baffle, inspire, and use them.”
He further argues against reducing myths to misunderstood science or apparently advanced science [UFO] to simply older myths. Instead we should keep the tension between these two reductive tendencies and allow each poll to inform, enrich and challenge our stories.
Hermeneutics (interpretation): He focuses mostly of two aspects of hermeneutics, its suspicious enactments which look for hidden meanings and the feedback loop of understanding between subject who understands and the objects of understanding. This loop is not stable but endlessly influencing and changing each poll.
“I am thinking of films like The Never ending Story(1984), Stranger than Fiction(2006), and the Adjustment Bureau (2011)…the story revolves around a protagonist engaging his own life as a fictional story being written either in this world or in another, seemingly by someone else. As he reads and interprets the text of his life, however, he discovers that its story or plot changes. He discovers the circle or loop of hermeneutics. He discovers that as he engages his cultural script as text creatively and critically he his rereading and rewriting himself. He is changing the story”
He also spends a lot of time talking about the origin of the idea of the imaginal [both as symbolic and empirical forms). This is very interesting but a little too complex to talk/quote about in a review.
Erotics: Kripal argues for the centrality of the erotic in this study, the erotic from Plato’s Eros, to Freud’s Libido to Tantra’s energies and transformations. Here he recounts his own interesting experiences in India with the “goddess Kali”. This also lays a bridge for his sympathetic reading of
Whitley Strieber.
“ What was Whitley Strieber’s crime? What did he do that was so wrong…..Not only did he speak secrets in public, but he spoke reverently and fearfully of a divine presence that was feminine, that broke and rode him like a horse…by doing so, he spoke of a presence at the very heart of the unconscious of the religious West, a presence that has been repressed and denied for three millennia. He spoke of Her.”
Traumatic secret: Here he writes about how trauma can often be a breaking open into both madness or/and transcendence. Near death experiences, traumatic abuse, violent accidents and alien encounters are often described by people as moments of breakage from a social/egoic trace into greater numinous[awe full reality] space.
“It is only a thought. I do not know. I want to be very humble here and stress the complexities…Still, here is the thought. If the ego is ready to let go, then it will be more likely to experience an encounter wit the sacred Alien or Other as extremely positive, as redemptive, as ecstatic. If, on the other hand, the ego is not ready to let go of itself, then it will be more likely to experience an encounter with the sacred as extremely negative, as terrifying, as destructive.”
My only criticisms of the book are some of its looseness with terms toward the end.
There is a lot of imprecision in the use of the word mystical. All anomalous experiences get packed into the tent of mystical experiences at times which is not helpful. Whitley’s experiences are not the same as Meister Eckhart’s of the Godhead. I understand how interpretively they may be using similar devices [Hermeneutics] but the phenomena they talk about is vastly different in my opinion. Also mystical practices are concerned with stable changes of states and character, while altered states are not necessarily so concerned. There is some overlap but I think it has to be spelled out much more clearly to be knowledge enhancing and not just mudding the water.
Also some of the riffs on the physical sciences and quantum physics are cringe worthy. I think the perspective is important but just like Kripal brought a sophisticated humanities perspective, you need a sympathetic scientist [there are a few] to really get any substantive insights from the scientific viewpoint.
Anyway, I only talked about some of the frames that are explored much more in depth in the book.
For anyone with an interest in Ufo’s, paranormal studies, or religious studies this is highly recommended. If you don’t have an interest in any of these three why did you read this review?
stanwj's review against another edition
3.0
This one is kind of bonkers if you think the world and the universe around it are pretty much known things. If you're less certain (just what is dark matter, anyway, and why is there so much of it?) then the you may find the ideas presented to be intriguing, even as the authors make no absolute claims on any of the evidence they bring forward.
The premise of The Super Natural is that the various unknown phenomena reported around the world--everything from UFOs to alien abductions, apparitions, implants, strange lights and more--are real and explainable, and point to a larger reality that most people lack the perception and skill to interact with in a meaningful way, or even at all. Further, they suggest the possibility of parallel universes that may intersect with ours at times. On top of that, there's a lot of theory on what happens after you die and whether or not the soul exists. Finally, there is a common belief between the authors that some kind of intelligent plasma energy may be behind most of this.
Pretty bonkers, right?
Whitley Strieber is well-known for his books about what he calls the visitors, starting with Communion. His experiences have been largely ignored by mainstream media or openly mocked (he expresses regret for coming up with the phrase "rectal probe", two words that have launched a thousand jokes over the past thirty years). His chapters largely consist of him recalling and expanding on experiences he has previously described, as well as bringing in some new ones. He offers theories but is very careful to commit to none of them, keeping his mind open to other possibilities. He doesn't think the visitors are aliens from another planet, a common misconception people have with his experiences.
Jeff Kripal is a historian of religions and his chapters focus more specifically on the theories behind what may be going on, with different techniques offered as part of a "toolbox" for examining and cataloguing the unknown.
In a few instances the authors disagree on specifics but overall they present a united front in believing the likeliest explanations of all this weird stuff lies in intelligent plasma energy that exists perhaps in a dimension outside of ours and may be trying to teach those who are receptive what lies beyond our physical form and physical dimension. There are suggestions that these other beings live outside of normal space and time and to them we seem pretty primitive with our living and dying and not being able to fly around as spooky balls of energy. But the good news is they consider us teachable.
There are no good explanations on why these more advanced forms of life want to teach us or why they are being relatively coy about it (I say relatively because there are thousands of UFO sightings, for example, and even well-documented cases rarely get reported by conventional media, so while these various phenomena may be unknown, they are not exactly rare). Perhaps we're just really slow learners. Maybe our nukes scare them. They still kind of scare me.
Kripal in particular also goes into detail about what is real versus fictional or imagined and how we may essentially make our own reality. One example he recounts is about an academic colleague who was making blueberry muffins (mmm). He finished mixing the wet ingredients then rinsed out and set the empty honey jar on the sink counter to dry. He went to get a tin of flour off a shelf and, surprised by how unusually heavy it felt, dropped it on the floor. He sifted through the spilled flour and found the honey jar, caked in the flour. He looked at the counter. The jar was no longer there. It had moved on its own. Neat! And weird.
Kripal explains:
He goes on to say these odd events happen to "mess with us" (that is a direct quote), to shake up our view of the world as one in which the mental and physical are separate things. It's all very trippy, like trying to count to infinity.
In the end a skeptic is unlikely to be convinced by the evidence presented by Strieber and Kripal, but their ideas are interesting and entertainingly presented. The way they both hold back from making absolute claims seems less a dodge and more a genuine admission that they--and us--really don't know for sure what it happening out there. But something certainly seems to be.
Meanwhile, I can't even get the TV remote to teleport into my hand. If the mental and physical are really one, I wouldn't mind at least a few perks before evolving into a super-intelligent ball of light.
The premise of The Super Natural is that the various unknown phenomena reported around the world--everything from UFOs to alien abductions, apparitions, implants, strange lights and more--are real and explainable, and point to a larger reality that most people lack the perception and skill to interact with in a meaningful way, or even at all. Further, they suggest the possibility of parallel universes that may intersect with ours at times. On top of that, there's a lot of theory on what happens after you die and whether or not the soul exists. Finally, there is a common belief between the authors that some kind of intelligent plasma energy may be behind most of this.
Pretty bonkers, right?
Whitley Strieber is well-known for his books about what he calls the visitors, starting with Communion. His experiences have been largely ignored by mainstream media or openly mocked (he expresses regret for coming up with the phrase "rectal probe", two words that have launched a thousand jokes over the past thirty years). His chapters largely consist of him recalling and expanding on experiences he has previously described, as well as bringing in some new ones. He offers theories but is very careful to commit to none of them, keeping his mind open to other possibilities. He doesn't think the visitors are aliens from another planet, a common misconception people have with his experiences.
Jeff Kripal is a historian of religions and his chapters focus more specifically on the theories behind what may be going on, with different techniques offered as part of a "toolbox" for examining and cataloguing the unknown.
In a few instances the authors disagree on specifics but overall they present a united front in believing the likeliest explanations of all this weird stuff lies in intelligent plasma energy that exists perhaps in a dimension outside of ours and may be trying to teach those who are receptive what lies beyond our physical form and physical dimension. There are suggestions that these other beings live outside of normal space and time and to them we seem pretty primitive with our living and dying and not being able to fly around as spooky balls of energy. But the good news is they consider us teachable.
There are no good explanations on why these more advanced forms of life want to teach us or why they are being relatively coy about it (I say relatively because there are thousands of UFO sightings, for example, and even well-documented cases rarely get reported by conventional media, so while these various phenomena may be unknown, they are not exactly rare). Perhaps we're just really slow learners. Maybe our nukes scare them. They still kind of scare me.
Kripal in particular also goes into detail about what is real versus fictional or imagined and how we may essentially make our own reality. One example he recounts is about an academic colleague who was making blueberry muffins (mmm). He finished mixing the wet ingredients then rinsed out and set the empty honey jar on the sink counter to dry. He went to get a tin of flour off a shelf and, surprised by how unusually heavy it felt, dropped it on the floor. He sifted through the spilled flour and found the honey jar, caked in the flour. He looked at the counter. The jar was no longer there. It had moved on its own. Neat! And weird.
Kripal explains:
Apparently, that is what the human mind-brain does when it is participating in a dimension of reality that is quite beyond our primitive “mental” and “material” categories of thinking (and our primitive science, which assumes the same division to work at all). It tells itself a story that involves otherwise impossible things and then acts out that story with physical objects. If those objects are available in the immediate environment, it uses them as props, like Dan’s honey jar. If they are not, it creates them “out of nowhere.”
He goes on to say these odd events happen to "mess with us" (that is a direct quote), to shake up our view of the world as one in which the mental and physical are separate things. It's all very trippy, like trying to count to infinity.
In the end a skeptic is unlikely to be convinced by the evidence presented by Strieber and Kripal, but their ideas are interesting and entertainingly presented. The way they both hold back from making absolute claims seems less a dodge and more a genuine admission that they--and us--really don't know for sure what it happening out there. But something certainly seems to be.
Meanwhile, I can't even get the TV remote to teleport into my hand. If the mental and physical are really one, I wouldn't mind at least a few perks before evolving into a super-intelligent ball of light.
bigs2021's review against another edition
4.0
Odd but good
Two interesting authors playing off each other certainly made for a thought-provoking read. Some good ideas here but a bit long winded at times.
Not Kripal's best work, but I'm glad I read it!
Two interesting authors playing off each other certainly made for a thought-provoking read. Some good ideas here but a bit long winded at times.
Not Kripal's best work, but I'm glad I read it!
destiel74's review
medium-paced
3.0
I don't know what to make of this book. I'm tempted to dismiss it but at the same time, I'm not sure.
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