How to Think Impossibly: About Souls, UFOs, Time, Belief, and Everything Else
Source entries are currently shown in Spanish; English-first entries arrive with the next cataloguing pass.
Se presenta como un libro sobre lo que la cultura declara imposible y sobre lo que cambiaría si no lo fuera. La apuesta la abre la precognición: «If taken as real (by which I simply mean, “they happen”), such experiences and events (and they are both) would transform the» «Kripal — How to Think Impossibly (2024) · p. 7» —la frase cierra en la página siguiente— «entire order of knowledge upon which our present culture depends, the sciences included» «Kripal — How to Think Impossibly (2024) · p. 8».
Su consigna gremial es explícita: «This is a book about why the humanities must stop ceding reality to the sciences.» «Kripal — How to Think Impossibly (2024) · p. 30». Y su ontología viene con nombre, autor y fecha de caducidad declarada: el monismo de doble aspecto de Harald Atmanspacher, adoptado como armazón de trabajo «Kripal — How to Think Impossibly (2024) · p. 25» y declarado dispuesto a ser abolido «Kripal — How to Think Impossibly (2024) · p. 261».
Cierra en dos axiomas: «The Human may be Two, but the World is One. That is the final gnosis of impossible thinking.» «Kripal — How to Think Impossibly (2024) · p. 260».
78 claims · 1 source · 1 attribution
Attribution
recorded, never asserted«Kripal — How to Think Impossibly (2024) · p. 4»
The chain of the work
the processed witness, in emeraldClaims
78 entries — the work's own voice, with its locator«If taken as real (by which I simply mean, “they happen”), such experiences and events (and they are both) would transform the» — la frase cruza el corte y termina en la p. 8; es la apuesta del prólogo sobre la precognición.
«entire order of knowledge upon which our present culture depends, the sciences included» — cierre de esa misma frase, ya en la página siguiente.
«time goes both ways» — primera de las cuatro consecuencias que enumera, esta para la práctica de la historia.
«because it is based on an actual, if unreliable, human ability» — con eso explica que la adivinación esté distribuida por todo el globo.
«agency can act from the future» — cuarta consecuencia, sobre la causalidad misma.
«Secrecy here is no social stratagem or political gambit. It is a necessary function of the nature of the impossible itself.» — su lectura del secreto en el caso de Hurston.
«if we are going to think impossibly, we should not assume that this thought will be widely accepted. In fact, it will not be. It cannot be.» — la consecuencia social que saca de ahí.
«Reality only appears to be divided into mind and matter, into consciousness and cosmos, or into a past, present, and future because you experience it as such. You are the splitter of the real and the creator of linear time.» — el secreto del libro, enunciado en segunda persona.
«the impossible is a function not of reality but of our own present social constructions and subsequent perceptions and cognitions» — traslada lo imposible del mundo a la construcción social.
«the deconstruction of deconstruction. That is the snake biting its own tail.» — así nombra esa maniobra.
«there is a kind of global renaissance going on around the impossible» — su diagnóstico de época; adjudica a Hussein Ali Agrama la «anthropology of the impossible».
«mystical experiences of cosmic unity, clairvoyant visions, near-death experiences, and UFO encounters that are not supposed to happen but do all the time» — así enumera el objeto del libro, tras los sueños precognitivos.
«not because I understand them, nor because I believe them in the terms in which they appear, but because they show every sign of issuing from another order of knowledge and reality outside what we currently think of as “the human.”» — por qué le importan, con la creencia expresamente descartada.
«the adjective mystical works especially well here, as it literally translates from the Greek as secret» — Sigue: indecible, indescriptible, incognoscible.
«if quantum physics and comparative mystical literature are really pointing to or emerging from the same deeper reality, they must correspond. And that is why they do.» — su tesis de correspondencia.
«all turned to comparative mystical literature to make human sense of what the quantum mechanics implied» — lo adjudica a Heisenberg, Bohr, Schrödinger y Pauli.
«the Swiss-German quantum theorist Harald Atmanspacher, whose dual-aspect monism I adopted some time ago as my own working ontology» — declara de quién toma su ontología y que es de trabajo.
«I am not doing quantum physics here. I am thinking-with quantum physicists» — el límite que se pone a sí mismo.
«we have evolved to win the game of life not to perceive reality as it really is» — adjudica el argumento a Donald Hoffman («fitness beats truth»).
«In some sense, we “caused” the big bang.» — así resume la retrocausalidad cosmológica de John Wheeler.
«Wheeler himself would have adamantly opposed much that follows.» — consigna que su fuente se habría opuesto a lo que construye sobre ella.
«at least since Authors of the Impossible (2010), I have insisted that myth or story sometimes results in very real and otherwise completely anomalous physical effects» — reclama continuidad con su obra de 2010, no giro.
«and insist that these models are relative to a particular form of consciousness» — así sostiene a la vez las lecturas reductivas del mito y los efectos físicos del mito: aquellas valen para «the atomized rational academic ego».
«This is a book about why the humanities must stop ceding reality to the sciences.» — la consigna del libro.
«I am long experienced in intellectuals confidently expressing utter certainties concerning matters they know nothing about.» — su queja gremial, en primera persona.
«Anything to not think impossibly» — cierra ahí su objeción a los humanistas que vuelven a los tropos posmoderno, poscolonial, feminista y sociohistórico; en la misma página aclara «it is not that I disagree, at all, with these models».
«Suddenly, I feel like a ghost, a spectral presence haunting the academic certainties» — la escena con que describe su posición en la academia.
«prophetic social spirit and a heavy accent on the altered states of consciousness and knowledge that produced so many of the central ideas of the humanities» — así define las superhumanidades; la frase arranca al pie de la p. 31 y cierra aquí.
«the modern abduction visions replicate, in precise detail, the imaginal of Myers» — enlaza el imaginal victoriano con la morfología insectoide actual.
«The paranormal is insectoid.» — la formulación breve de esa tesis.
«it is well known among seasoned researchers that the UFO is very much connected to the near-death experience (NDE)—the heavenly saucer and the transcendent soul» — adjudica a Joshua Cutchin (*Ecology of Souls*) el estudio más completo del vínculo.
«now sit in our Archives of the Impossible at Rice University» — sobre las «Communion Letters» reunidas por Anne Strieber; en la p. 93 consigna que fueron cerca de 250 000 cartas y que ella depuró una cuarta parte.
«only one of the 144 events» — del informe del ODNI del 25 de junio de 2021, nueve páginas, 144 eventos entre 2004 y 2021, de los que solo uno pudo explicarse.
«Politicians and military officials (and the media) continued to focus almost exclusively on the physical aspects of the phenomenon and continued to ignore their paranormal or impossible effects.» — su objeción a las audiencias del Congreso de mayo de 2022.
«there is definitely something being covered up or lied about» — Sigue: «no one knows what that something is or what it means».
«our culture has grown incredibly stupid around the nature of the soul, or what we would today call “consciousness”» — su diagnóstico cultural, junto al multinaturalismo.
«my own position is very close to that of the astronomer, computer scientist, and medical research investor Jacques Vallee and his “forbidden science,”» — declara alineación, con la mezcla de astronomía, informática, teoría de la información, práctica esotérica y escepticismo ante todo sistema de creencia ovni.
«I am extremely dubious of any and all talk of the “extraterrestrial.” I don’t believe in gods, deities, demons, or aliens. It’s my job.» — su negativa doctrinal más nítida.
«we need to flip from a spatial register (it is not where they are from) to a temporal register (it is when they are from)» — el giro de espacio a tiempo.
«I would say that the UFO often appears to be a time machine and that the so-called aliens look more than a little like human beings from the future» — Añade: o una forma sofisticada de inteligencia artificial futura.
«If I were from the future studying the violent hairless monkeys of the past, I certainly would not go into their troop either. I would send a very smart but very expendable machine.» — su ilustración del argumento anterior.
«we should be approaching the total UFO phenomenon much more like Arrival and much less like The War of the Worlds» — la analogía cinematográfica con que orienta el marco.
«what we finally have in the UFO phenomenon is a physical-spiritual phenomenon that is being grossly misinterpreted as a conventional military threat or potential corporate technology» — su tesis sobre el malentendido de fondo.
«we are trying to shoot down souls. Good luck with that.» — la frase-emblema, que él mismo presenta como paradójica y deliberadamente chocante.
«I am who I am, I think how I think, because of that Night.» — sobre su propia experiencia de Calcuta, noviembre de 1989; y consigna la reserva de que no vio entidad insectoide ni contenido visual alguno.
«that physiological condition is what “let it in,” but it says little, or nothing at all, about what came in» — sobre la parálisis del sueño: acepta el mecanismo y niega que agote el contenido.
«we speak and imagine the aliens into existence. We let them in» — lo adjudica a Jeremy Vaeni, «originally inspired by Whitley Strieber, who has argued much the same».
«whatever produced the astonishing and multiple Sanskrit and vernacular literatures of the medieval and early modern South Asian Tantric traditions are now producing the equally astonishing and multiplex global literatures of the modern UFO encounter and abduction experience» — su gran comparación tántrica.
«I also wish to exempt Michael Rabe and David Gordon White of my sins.» — exime a los dos indólogos de cuyos trabajos toma el *vimana* y los templos circulares de yoginis.
«not because people make up the same stories everywhere, or because of any material transmission» — así descarta difusión e invención, para dejar la fuente experiencial.
«extraterrestrial mythemes are ancient and stable patterns, not modern, much less American, inventions» — la tesis que saca de ahí, con el *Motif-Index of Folk-Literature* de Stith Thompson como sistematización académica.
«the present intellectual focus on “difference” is productive of a particular kind of scholarship and moral concern but is finally not adequate to our actual histories and shared human nature» — su objeción al paradigma de la diferencia.
«probably the best-known and certainly the best-written abduction case of the twentieth century» — así califica *Communion*, de Whitley Strieber.
«I never made such an observation, much less such a diagnosis, until he offered it to me.» — cautela metodológica sobre el diagnóstico de Asperger de «Kevin», hecho en 2001 por «a gentle Quaker psychiatrist».
«By the phrase “Platonic surrealism,” Kevin means to theorize what I would call a fantastic idealism» — su glosa de la fórmula de Kevin, traducida a su propio vocabulario.
«The right side mediates Mind. It is literally “para-normal,” to the left hemisphere» — su neuroanatomía del pensamiento imposible: los hemisferios están «al lado» (*para-*) uno del otro.
«It has to do with what the kabbalistic tradition calls Ein Sof, or the Infinite» — así conecta su cosmos autopoiético con el vocabulario cabalístico, vía Wolfson.
«If I were Jewish, Elliot Wolfson would be my rebbe, my rabbi, my teacher.» — Añade que Wolfson lo negaría, «and that is how he teaches».
«I have been struck over the years how Elliot Wolfson’s corpus reflects, in an almost occult manner, my own thought and writing» — lo dice del espejo especular que recorre esa obra.
«It continuously bends back on itself, very much like the ancient ouroboros biting its own tail.» — describe así la gnosis dialéctica que le atribuye a Wolfson.
«There is something uncanny about this man’s words, something that finally escapes and overflows reason, something that makes me believe in a kabbalah» — Precisa: no una sabiduría puramente judía, sino una gnosis comparativa moderna incrustada en el estudio de las religiones.
«It is thus very important to Corbin, and Wolfson after him, that this place of the Imagination is the same place in Islamic Sufism, Jewish kabbalah, and Christian esotericism» — el imaginal como lugar común de las tres, más las asiáticas que añade Wolfson.
«for an embodied human being, it is the imagination that mediates between the two dimensions of the real» — su simplificación declarada de la paradoja de la imagen en Wolfson.
«a direct state of knowledge that enacts a reversal of orthodoxy» — así define lo gnóstico, siguiendo a Henry Corbin.
«it is perfectly possible to be a gnostic intellectual (by which I mean someone whose thought emerges from extraordinary experience or direct gnosis) and to care deeply about politics, ethics, and this world» — contra el reproche político habitual al gnosticismo.
«From four decades now of studying gnostic, esoteric, mystical, and psychedelic literatures, which are some of the most sophisticated religious materials on the planet» — su balance de cuatro décadas de lectura.
«The supernatural was fashioned to determine traditionally acceptable sanctity» — lee lo sobrenatural como categoría histórica de control doctrinal, no como descripción del mundo.
«Thinking impossibly is not possible for everyone—and not for superficial or accidental reasons but for neurodiverse or spiritual reasons» — la reserva declaradamente no igualitaria de la conclusión.
«Impossible thought is a rather obvious form of intellectual esotericism or academic Gnosticism.» — nombra así su propio programa.
«the humanities themselves are defined by textual deposits that are riven with esoteric traces of the gnostic experiences and subsequent mystical thoughts of their authors» — la tesis que sostiene esa lectura esotérica de las humanidades.
«Further back still, the humanities can be esoterically traced to the still astonishing Friedrich Nietzsche, a godless mystic» — la genealogía de las superhumanidades, tras el humanismo renacentista, el romanticismo, el idealismo alemán, el psicoanálisis y la teoría crítica.
«esoteric trace of German idealism and, behind that, German mystical thought going back to figures like Jakob Böhme and Meister Eckhart» — lo que lee en *geistig*, *Geist* y *Geisteswissenschaften*.
«The Human may be Two, but the World is One. That is the final gnosis of impossible thinking.» — el cierre en dos axiomas.
«any sustainable future ontology will need to be a monistic one» — desarrollo del primer principio, «The World Is One».
«it is the human being that “splits” reality in Two and makes it appear as such. It is not so before or beyond the human knower.» — desarrollo del segundo, «The Human Is Two».
«It is ultimately unspeakable, indescribable, and unnameable» — sobre el Fondo; añade que la matemática solo puede señalarlo, de un modo distante e indirecto.
«As a committed comparativist who takes ontological diversity seriously, I hardly have a final answer, nor would I want one.» — su abstención declarada.
«I bet Grusch had read John Mack. It sure sounds like it.» — apostilla con que cierra la genealogía del «choque ontológico»: Paul Tillich (*Systematic Theology*, 1951), luego John E. Mack para la abducción, luego Don Davis como título de pista de *The Matrix* (1999), y en 2023 David Grusch.
About the work
11 entries — what the apparatus and scholarship say about it«How to think impossibly : about souls, UFOs, time, belief, and everything else» — título completo según el asiento catalográfico, con autoría única de «Kripal, Jeffrey J. (Jeffrey John), 1962- author» y sello The University of Chicago Press, 2024.
«That systematization of pseudo-data is approximation to realness or final awakening.» — primer epígrafe del libro, de Charles Fort, *The Book of the Damned*. Los otros dos son de Barbara Newman (*The Permeable Self*) y de Carlos Eire (*They Flew: A History of the Impossible*).
«I saw twelve scenes flash before me» — Zora Neale Hurston en *Dust Tracks on a Road*, citada en bloque como caso inaugural; sigue «I knew that they were all true, a preview of things to come» y «I had knowledge before its time». Voz de Hurston.
«This has something to do with what we call death.» — frase de Anne Strieber, que llega a esta obra por vía de Whitley Strieber. No es formulación de Kripal.
«Remember who you work for.» — de lo que Stuart Davis relata haber oído de una mantis de dos metros y medio con túnica púrpura, la nochevieja de 2010; caso tomado de su pódcast *Aliens & Artists*. Voz de Davis.
«It seems certain to me that shamans and mystics throughout the ages probably had Asperger’s syndrome or something of that nature» — «Kevin», seudónimo, como epígrafe del capítulo 3. Voz de Kevin, no posición de Kripal.
«Most people are digital computers, haunted by flashes of analog Mind.» — Kevin, citado; y en la misma página «Humans are analog/digital processing units for the Cosmic Unconscious of Platonic Surrealism.»
«Eros, Gnosis, Hermes» — rótulo de sección sobre Elliot Wolfson; es la única aparición de «Hermes» en toda la obra.
«absolute reality, intrinsic rightness, and ultimate perfection» — el neurólogo James Austin sobre lo que experimentó en el metro de Londres, citado en bloque; sigue «There was no viewer… there is absolutely nothing whatsoever to fear.» Voz de Austin.
«I hope this revelation serves as an ontological shock sociologically» — David Grusch, verano de 2023, citado como último eslabón de la genealogía del término. Voz de Grusch.
El aparato editorial son los agradecimientos, titulados *A Sociology of the Impossible* (EPUB pp. 290–292), las notas (EPUB pp. 293–345) y el índice (EPUB pp. 346–362): 70 de las 360 páginas indexadas.
Concepts treated
Gnosis (conocimiento salvífico) — Categoría operativa del libro, no ornamento: lo gnóstico es «a direct state of knowledge that enacts a reversal of orthodoxy» (siguiendo a Corbin), el pensamiento imposible es «academic Gnosticism», y el cierre del libro es «the final gnosis of impossible thinking».
Ein Sof (el Infinito) — El cosmos autopoiético se dice con el vocabulario cabalístico del Infinito, por lectura de Elliot Wolfson.
Imaginación (phantasia) — El imaginal de Frederic Myers reaparece como morfología insectoide; y el lugar de la Imaginación es el mismo en el sufismo islámico, la cábala judía y el esoterismo cristiano, según Corbin y Wolfson.
Ocultismo (occultisme) — El corpus de Wolfson refleja el pensamiento propio del autor «in an almost occult manner».