Includes bibliographical references (p. [283]-287) and index.
Contents:
The book as séance: Frederic Myers and the London Society for Psychical Research After Life -- Myers and the founding of the S.P.R -- The subliminal gothic: the human as two -- The supernormal and evolution: the world as two -- Telepathy: the communications technology of the spirit -- The perfect insect of the imaginal -- The telepathic and the erotic: Myers's platonic speech -- Seeds of a super-story: Charles Fort and the fantastic narrative of western occulture -- The parable of the peaches: Fort's mischievous monistic life -- Collecting and classifying the data of the damned: Fort's comparative method -- The three eras or dominants: Fort's philosophy of history -- The philosophy of the hyphen: Fort's dialectical monism -- Galactic colonialism: Fort's science mysticism and dark mythology -- Evolution, wild talents, and the poltergeist girls: Fort's magical anthropology -- The future technology of folklore: Jacques Vallee and the UFO phenomenon -- Forbidden science (1957-69) -- Passport to Magonia: from folklore to flying saucers -- The invisible college -- The present technology of folklore: computer technology and remote viewing -- In the psychic underground -- The alien contact trilogy and the mature multiverse gnosis -- Sub rosa: the three secrets -- The hermeneutics of light -- Returning the human sciences to consciousness: Bertrand Méheust and the sociology of the impossible -- A double premise -- Méheust and the master -- Science fiction and flying saucers -- The challenge of the magnetic and the shock of the psychical -- "if only one of these facts . . .": the impossible case of Alexis Didier -- The collective mind: Bateson, De Martino, Vallee, and Jung -- Agent X: projection theory turned back on itself.
Summary:
""This is a quietly earth-shattering project that constitutes a logical next step in the development of Jeffrey Kripal's thinking over the course of his career and grows directly out of Esalen. In Kripal we have a classic Romantic thinker/writer who is formulating---in a conscious meld of the subjective and objective that is the hallmark of Romantic writing---his own distinctive and highly original Biographia Spiritualis." Victoria Nelsoh, author of the Secret Life of Puppets" ""This is an excellent book. As well as being carefully researched and theoretically interesting, it is also engaging, witty, and thoughtful. Writing in an easy, contemplative style, Jeffrey Kripal is never less than rigorous and wideranging; he doesn't get mired in statistics or parapsychological analysis, but instead, drawing on religious studies and cultural analysis, he explores key ideas and thinkers in their respective contexts. In the process, the reader is introduced to the largely rejected knowledge of the psychical, the sacred is resurrected in the paranormal, and lazy skepticism is challenged. Authors of the Impossible will contribute significantly to the intelligent, open-minded study of the sacred, while Kripal will, I suspect, become a key figure in the development of new trajectories in the study of religion." Christopher Partridge, Lancaster University". ""Jeffrey Kripal's new book represents a serious intellectual challenge to the epistemological assumptions that govern the work of scientists and religion scholars alike. He demands nothing short of a paradigm shift in order to make sense of the odd, the anomalous, and the inexplicable. All of this he calls the impossible---the paranormal situations in which thought forms are said to become physical realities and the future to morph into the present and past. Kripal is no fluffy believer; he argues incisively and in detail in ways that seek to shake our materialist and rational foundations at their base, so that our defensive walls come tumbling down." Catherine L. Albanese, University of California, Santa Barbara"--BOOK JACKET.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.