5 Week Class Taught Online Via Zoom
Wednesdays, August 12 - September 9, 2026
7 - 9pm ET (NYC Time)
$195 Paid Patreon Members / $210 General Admission
PLEASE NOTE: Classes will be recorded and archived for students who cannot make that time
What is the modern history and meaning of spiritual evolution, and how is it related to earlier discourses around possession, altered states, and human deification? This course—led by religious studies professor Dr. Jeffrey J. Kripal, author of Mutants and Mystics—will go through the history of the idea and experience through a close look at Charles Darwin, Alfred Russel Wallace, Friedrich Nietzsche, Theosophy, Teilhard de Chardin, the psychedelic and abduction phenomena (together), and some modern evolutionaries the instructor has known quite personally.
Jeffrey J. Kripal is the J. Newton Rayzor Chair in Philosophy and Religious Thought at Rice University, where he convenes the Archives of the Impossible conference series and helps host the Center for the Impossible, the physical collections professionally curated and stored by Woodson Research Center. He also co-directs the Center for Theory and Research at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California. Jeff is the author of numerous books, most recently How to Think Impossibly: About Souls, UFOs, Time, Belief, and Everything Else (Chicago, 2024). 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 collectively entitled The Super Story: Science (Fiction) and Some Emergent Mythologies. His full body of work can be seen at http://jeffreyjkripal.com. He thinks he may be Spider-Man.
Images: Europe a Prophecy, c. 1794, William Blake, The Transfiguration, c. 1800, William Blake, Atlas, Typhoëus, Prometheus, c. 560 BC
5 Week Class Taught Online Via Zoom
Wednesdays, August 12 - September 9, 2026
7 - 9pm ET (NYC Time)
$195 Paid Patreon Members / $210 General Admission
PLEASE NOTE: Classes will be recorded and archived for students who cannot make that time
What is the modern history and meaning of spiritual evolution, and how is it related to earlier discourses around possession, altered states, and human deification? This course—led by religious studies professor Dr. Jeffrey J. Kripal, author of Mutants and Mystics—will go through the history of the idea and experience through a close look at Charles Darwin, Alfred Russel Wallace, Friedrich Nietzsche, Theosophy, Teilhard de Chardin, the psychedelic and abduction phenomena (together), and some modern evolutionaries the instructor has known quite personally.
Jeffrey J. Kripal is the J. Newton Rayzor Chair in Philosophy and Religious Thought at Rice University, where he convenes the Archives of the Impossible conference series and helps host the Center for the Impossible, the physical collections professionally curated and stored by Woodson Research Center. He also co-directs the Center for Theory and Research at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California. Jeff is the author of numerous books, most recently How to Think Impossibly: About Souls, UFOs, Time, Belief, and Everything Else (Chicago, 2024). 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 collectively entitled The Super Story: Science (Fiction) and Some Emergent Mythologies. His full body of work can be seen at http://jeffreyjkripal.com. He thinks he may be Spider-Man.
Images: Europe a Prophecy, c. 1794, William Blake, The Transfiguration, c. 1800, William Blake, Atlas, Typhoëus, Prometheus, c. 560 BC
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