Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Flip: Epiphanies of Mind and the Future of Knowledge
    The Flip: Epiphanies of Mind and the Future of Knowledge
    The Flip: Epiphanies of Mind and the Future of Knowledge
    Audiobook6 hours

    The Flip: Epiphanies of Mind and the Future of Knowledge

    Written by Jeffrey J. Kripal

    Narrated by James Lurie

    4.5/5

    ()

    Switch to ebook

    About this audiobook

    “One of the most provocative new books of the year, and, for me, mindblowing.” ―Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma and How to Change Your Mind

    “Kripal makes many sympathetic points about the present spiritual state of America. . . . [He] continues to believe that spirituality and science should not contradict each other.” ―New York Times Book Review

    “Kripal prompts us to reflect on our personal assumptions, as well as the shared assumptions that create and maintain our institutions. . . . [His] work will likely become more and more relevant to more and more areas of inquiry as the century unfolds. It may even open up a new space for Americans to reevaluate the personal and cultural narratives they have inherited, and to imagine alternative futures.” ―Los Angeles Review of Books

    A “flip,” writes Jeffrey J. Kripal, is “a reversal of perspective,” “a new real,” often born of an extreme, life-changing experience. The Flip is Kripal’s ambitious, visionary program for unifying the sciences and the humanities to expand our minds, open our hearts, and negotiate a peaceful resolution to the culture wars. Combining accounts of rationalists’ spiritual awakenings and consciousness explorations by philosophers, neuroscientists, and mystics within a framework of the history of science and religion, Kripal compellingly signals a path to mending our fractured world.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateNov 18, 2020
    ISBN9781713526872
    Author

    Jeffrey J. Kripal

    Prof. Jeffrey J. Kripal is the associate dean of the Faculty and Graduate Programs in the School of the Humanities and the J. Newton Rayzor chair in philosophy and religious thought at Rice University. He is also the associate director of the Center for Theory and Research and the chair of the Board at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California. Jeff is the author of eight books, including, most recently, The Flip: Who You Really Are and Why It Matters (2020), where he envisions the future centrality and urgency of the humanities in conversation with the history of science, the philosophy of mind, and our shared ethical, political, and ecological challenges. He is presently working on a three-volume study of paranormal currents in the sciences, modern esoteric literature, and the hidden history of science fiction for the University of Chicago Press collectively entitled The Super Story: Science (Fiction) and Some Emergent Mythologies. There he intuits and writes out a new emerging spectrum of superhumanities (in both senses of that expression). The website jeffreyjkripal.com contains his full body of work.

    Related to The Flip

    Related audiobooks

    Religion & Science For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The Self Is Other People

      Apr 3, 2018

      The Self Is Other People
      3 min read

    • Article

      This Essentially Meaningless Conflict

      Sep 22, 2017

      MARILYNNE ROBINSON’S accomplishments are impressive by any standard: she has won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and the National Humanities Medal, among other honors. But perhaps a better measure o

      8 min read

    • Article

      A Perception Of Something

      Nov 7, 2020

      A Perception Of Something
      9 min read

    • Article

      Scientists Have No Defense Against Awe

      Jun 12, 2016

      Eileen Pollack, author of The Only Woman in the Room: Why Science Is Still a Boys’ Club, hinted at the complexity of the relationship between science and the soul in a recent essay: “We need scientists who recognize the reality of this illusion we st

      5 min read

    • Article

      Is Knowledge Power?

      Jul 30, 2018

      Is Knowledge Power?
      4 min read

    • Article

      Change

      Oct 28, 2019

      Why should a change of paradigm be called a revolution? In the face of the vast and essential differences between political and scientific development, what parallelism can justify the metaphor that finds revolutions in both? One aspect of the parall

      3 min read

    • Article

      How ISIS Broke My Questionnaire: I felt the impact of an attack by the terrorist group. So why didn’t my research data?

      Feb 5, 2015

      I walk into Starbucks in Achrafieh, Beirut and feel all eyes on me. I tug at my top self-consciously, probably making things worse, and wonder a) do I look like an easy Westerner; b) do I look like a ragamuffin (in comparison to the groomed Lebanese)

      13 min read

    • Article

      How ISIS Broke My Questionnaire

      Mar 29, 2018

      I walk into Starbucks in Achrafieh, Beirut and feel all eyes on me. I tug at my top self-consciously, probably making things worse, and wonder a) do I look like an easy Westerner; b) do I look like a ragamuffin (in comparison to the groomed Lebanese)

      13 min read

    • Article

      Reassessing The Miraculous

      Nov 5, 2020

      Miracles in an Age of Disbelief Michael Grosso Anomalist Books 2020 Pb, £12, 228pp, ISBN 9781949501131 A new book about miracles might seem a throwback, conjuring up a boringly predictable debate about why God is willing to annoy rationalist material

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Self In Time

      Apr 22, 2019

      The Self In Time
      6 min read

    • Article

      Yes, Determinists, There Is Free Will

      May 16, 2019

      It’s not just in politics where otherwise smart people consistently talk past one another. People debating whether humans have free will also have this tendency. Neuroscientist and free-will skeptic Sam Harris has dueled philosopher and free-will def

      10 min read

    • Article

      10 Brilliant Insights from Daniel Dennett

      May 1, 2024

      Daniel Dennett, who died in April at the age of 82, was a towering figure in the philosophy of mind. Known for his staunch physicalist stance, he argued that minds, like bodies, are the product of evolution. He believed that we are, in a sense, machi

      7 min read

    • Article

      Devil In The Detail

      Jun 20, 2021

      Devil In The Detail
      3 min read

    • Article

      Deep Dives Into The Unknown

      Apr 20, 2023

      Jack Hunter, ed. August Night Press 2023 Pb, 409pp, £17.99, ISBN 9781786772244 August Night Press is an imprint of White Crow Books, the publisher of a substantial catalogue of titles arguing, generally, that we are more than “animated meat”. These i

      3 min read

    • Article

      Varieties of Experience

      Sep 1, 2020

      THERE IS A PUZZLE at the heart of my academic work. I am an anthropologist, and among other things, I study the voices (or auditory hallucinations) of people in different countries who have schizophrenia. Their voices are clearly shaped by local cult

      4 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Flip

    4.5/5

    40 ratings9 reviews

    What our readers think

    Readers find this title to be a fascinating discussion of topics that they knew almost nothing about. It is worth a listen and worth sharing with peers who tend to be more skeptical. Although there are some assumptions and misinterpretations of physics, and the understanding of philosophy is shallow, overall it is a great listen."

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      Fascinating discussion of topics that I knew almost nothing about. This is worth a listen.
    • 3/5
      Full of assumptions and misinterpretations of physics. His understanding of philosophy is shallow. There is not history of science, but a historicity trying to prove Christian idealism right.
    • 5/5
      Great listen! Worth sharing with peers who tend to be more skeptical.
    • 5/5
      I have read books like this, but have to say that this is the best I have read on the subject. I think the title fits the first part of the book. I can see with the wonderful stories the author, Jeffrey J. Kripal, is helping the reader gain insight on life experiences that can’t be explained by modern science that has “Flipped” those with “Abnormal” experiences to look at what seems beyond normal. Those things that science seems to fail to explain and have been written off. I think the rest of the book is a good argument for the duality of science or matter and consciousness. Instead of flipping, it was more helping people like me understand principles that are needed to argue his point that we need to look at what science can’t explain yet and may never explain based on its current focus. I was a little disappointed with Kripal’s neutrality between the secular and religious. I understand why he kept a neutral position when it came to discussing the abnormal. He wished to engage all possible options to conciseness. He did not side with religion and he used many respected philosophers who fathered the field of science. People who did not embrace religion yet did experience something that brought their attention to something more. Again, I understand this is because the author wants to keep this experience of something more open to any possibility not ruling out something as to avoid what science is currently doing, which is rule out anything it can’t explain. I only wished it would have a least shown more of the parallels in religion as the author is an expert in the field of religion. If only to say that some of the observers of consciences of religious nature at the very least have observed and recorded in religion these paranormal experiences and in turn has captured things such as a “God” who may be omnipresent. A concept which quantum physics has proven possible through entanglement. I am not saying he should commit to religion, but at least recognize or give credit to the observers outside the scientific window.This book has helped me understand more about quantum physics and the implications of these discoveries that I could have thought possible. He clearly has a great understanding of the material. I think he has a great understanding of the future of exploration of matter and consciences. I think he has taken the theories of the past great minds and have updated there thinking through the most current studies and observations of science. He has shown the benefits of science as well as the short comings of science and makes a great argument of how we need to move forward with our observation and not ignore what hasn’t been explained by current means of exploration. I am not sure this review gives justice to the amount of information that the author has condensed into a reasonable read. Kripal has proven to be extremely intelligent and well researched. He seems to have a great understanding of where we are and where we are going. If science can heed the words of this book, the future of exploration can get very exciting.
    • 5/5
      Aside from its flippant title, Jeffrey Kripal's book The Flip ; Epiphanies of Mind and the Future of Knowledge, essays a new world view now forming around the idea of consciousness as a dimension of the natural world or cosmos, wherein "the cosmos is not just human [but] the human is also cosmic."Professor Kripal, J. Newton Rayzor Chair of Philosophy and Religious Thought at Rice University, Houston, Texas, and an Associate at the Esalen Institute at Big Sur, California, argues for a new outlook, pre-and post- scientific, that is in a long tradition of enlightened skepticism going back to the pre-Socratics and perhaps most recently articulated by the thought of Thomas S. Kuhn in his The Structure of Scientific Revolutions and its discussion of paradigm shifts in thought that include social and political background as well as development of "pure" scientific hypotheses.Following the Prologue: The Human CosmosChapter 1, Visions of the ImpossibleChapter 2, Flipped ScientistsChapter 3, Consciousness and CosmosChapter 4, Symbols in betweenChapter 5, The Future (Politics) of KnowledgeEpilogue: The Cosmic Human= = = .
    • 4/5
      When reviewing a book like this which is outside my comfort zone, I keep reminding myself that it should not come across as a peer review. I am not a peer of Kripal and have no standing to criticize his theses or challenge his conclusions. I can, however, give my takeaways from reading the book, as painful as it was.The book can be divided into three parts although the chapters are not grouped that way. The first part consists of a collection of anecdotes (a word the author resents) of para-normal experiences by both lay persons and scientist, mostly neuroscientists. The concept of ‘flipping’ is introduced although the crispness of Kripal’s definition is not there and continues to be eroded throughout the rest of the book. Flipping is either (a) the flash of consciousness that comes when an event is experienced or recollected that cannot be explained other than as the work of an unknown force or intelligence—the ‘pre-membrance’ of an event that had not yet happened, for example or (b) the realization that such experiences are valid expressions of an alternate reality. The flip occurs when it is suddenly realized that consciousness is not confined ‘in here’ but is ‘out there’ as well. Building a construct on these anecdotes is akin to a statistician ignoring good data and concentrating on the outliers. There is nothing intrinsically wrong—outliers may be indicative of something else going on, but by doing so an added burden is placed on the proponent to make sense of it.The second part takes on a different tenor; Kripal introduces the concept of cosmic consciousness. The idea of a cosmic consciousness is not new. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a Jesuit paleontologist, wrote of it around 1925. Kripal puts a quantum gloss on Teilhard’s noosphere and bends it more toward the humanities and away from the confines of science. Another difference is that Teilhard contends that we are evolving toward cosmic consciousness and Kripal says that we, or some people, are already tapped into it. My problem with Kripal and Teilhard’s discussions of cosmic consciousness is that consciousness is never satisfactorily defined. I expected to hear Kripal’s definition but it never came. I finally realized that his definition was entwined in his text. When a word like ‘consciousness’ is defined, a border is built around it. Kripal’s concept of consciousness is unbounded—especially by science; appending ‘cosmic’ removes boundaries. In this section, he also discusses the roles of the two hemisphere of the brain in expressions of consciousness. That topic was the subject of “The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind” by Julian Jaynes published in 1976.The third ‘theme’ of the book is an attempt by Kripal to apply the concepts developed in the earlier parts to the present day political world. He would have been better off to have omitted this part. (I caught a typo when rereading that last sentence—I typed a ‘v’ in front of ‘omitted’.) He insinuates that ‘conservatives’ are the world’s great “unflipped”. The massive leap from his earlier arguments caught me off-guard. ‘Fuzzy’ (his word) liberal ideas detract from the intellectual tenor of the work.My impression is that the three parts of the book were derived independently and the author attempted to stitch them together using ‘flipped’ as a common thread. It did not work; it is still disjointed.An undercurrent flowing throughout the book that periodically rose to the surface is a rift between the schools of humanities and of the science and technologies in today’s universities mainly over the competition for resources. Real or unreal, airing the issue in a work of this nature is unbecoming. It detracts from its main thrust and places it in the context of academia. Is Kripal’s intent to present a meaningful discourse on consciousness or to present his case in a debate between two ivory towers? Cloaking his argument with terms like ‘quantum’ and ‘cosmic’ may seem erudite but is not persuasive. Lincoln once remarked that calling a dog’s tail a leg doesn’t mean it has five legs. Calling a tail a leg does not make it so.Putting negativity aside, I believe Kripal has contributed to a fuller understanding of consciousness and who we are in a cosmic sense. I am unqualified to judge the effectiveness of his presentation.
    • 5/5
      When a formally trained scientist, schooled in dispelling misinformation and drawing back the curtain or fog of ignorance, is suddenly exposed to something that they absolutely cannot understand, comprehend, or rationalize, and their mind altered so utterly that their former paradigms of thinking are shattered, they have been "flipped".
    • 4/5
      Jeffrey Kripal, a professor of religion and philosophy, discusses his belief that we need more connection between science and spirituality. This book is very interesting, lots to think about and discuss with others. Quite a large section of end notes showing the details of his research.
    • 5/5
      This book needs to be approached with an open mind. If done so, the rewards will be great. Kripal’s goal is to renew an appreciation of the humanities in providing an understanding of human consciousness. Kripal argues for the necessity of a deep conversation between the humanities and science if we are to understand human consciousness. Kripal counters the prevailing materialist worldview that dominates modern society. A “flip” in perspective is needed if we are to bridge the perceived gaps between mind and matter, the spiritual and scientific. Kripal draws upon the work of scholars from across disciplines and across history. Some may consider Kripal’s propositions fantastical, but they become more believable as one gets deeper into the book. This book is for readers willing to have their fundamental assumptions about reality challenged.