the flip
The Flip: Epiphanies of Mind and the Future of Knowledge Paperback – March 12, 2019 by Jeffrey J. Kripal [https://www.amazon.com/Flip-Epiphanies-Mind-Future-Knowledge/dp/1942658524]:
jeffrey j kripal.. jeffrey on flip
[disclaimer: adding this note after reading book – appears kripal thinks the flip will come thru ed/humanities.. which to me is a form of people telling other people what to do.. so either (to me) not a legit flip.. or .. his flip is just a tweak in sea world.. dang]
“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
michael pollan.. how to change
“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.
Jeffrey J. Kripal holds the J. Newton Rayzor Chair in Philosophy and Religious Thought at Rice University and is the associate director of the Center for Theory and Research at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California. He has previously taught at Harvard Divinity School and Westminster College and is the author of eight books, including The Flip. He lives in Houston, Texas.
“[Kripal] make[s] the case that excluded, silenced, lost perspectives need to be heard in twenty-first century academe and also in our spiritual quests.” ―Harvard Divinity Bulletin
ie: need means (nonjudgmental expo labeling) to undo hierarchical listening (so we can hear what’s already on each heart) as global detox so we can org around legit needs (aka: facil the seeming chaos of the unconditional part of left to own devices ness)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_J._Kripal: Jeffrey John Kripal (born 1962) is an American college professor. He is the J. Newton Rayzor Chair in Philosophy and Religious Thought at Rice University in Houston, Texas. While chairman of the Religion Department at Rice, he helped found their “GEM” program, with a doctoral concentration in “Gnosticism, Esotericism, and Mysticism”. His work includes the study of comparative erotics and ethics in mystical literature, American countercultural translations of Asian religions, and the history of Western esotericism from gnosticism to New Age religions.. As a result of criticisms like Malhotra’s, Kripal was among a group of scholars receiving death threats and physical attacks from Hindus offended by his portrayals. He shifted his research focus away from Hinduism afterward, claiming, “I stuck with it and responded as best as I could for about six or seven years. It just wore me down after a while. At some point I felt like it wasn’t worth it anymore, that it was starting to affect my health. I couldn’t go anywhere, any conference or anything, without having to deal with the thought police, as it were.
via michel bauwens tweet [https://x.com/mbauwens/status/1799328076339527822]:
Anybody here has read this ? Comments and reviews welcome: * Book: The Flip Epiphanies of Mind and the Future of Knowledge, https://blpress.org/books/the-flip/ “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.”
ie: a nother way
on hold at library – thanks library (longest hold.. like 4 mos+)
notes/quotes from book:
12
prologue – the human cosmos
*a radically new real can appear w the simplest of ‘flips’ or reversals of perspective, roughly from ‘the outside’ of things to ‘the inside’ of things..t and this can occur w/o surrendering an iota of our remarkable scientific and medical knowledge about the material world and the human body.. **the general materialistic framework of the sciences at the moment is not wrong.. it is simply half right..
*need 1st/most: means to undo our hierarchical listening so we can hear what is on the ‘inside’ as global detox/re\set.. then we can org around legit needs
**not even 1/2 right because based on sea world and sea world issues.. so rather.. cancerous distraction
black science of people/whales law et al
takes a deeply personal and direct encounter.. that moment of realization beyond all linear thought,, language, belief.. is what i call ‘the flip’.. unbidden, beautifully, elegantly simple t
the unconditional part of left to own devices ness
15
we move from what the flip looks like in lives of *professional intellectuals to how it might work, or, to put it more technically, we move into a discussion of the **ontological conditions (that is, the nature of the real itself) that would render the flip both possible and plausible, and.. and this is a big one.. ***that makes mathematical discovery and scientific knowledge possible at all
*oi and ***oi – intellectness as cancerous distraction.. of math and men
**hari rat park law via ie: a sabbatical ish transition
here i make the jarring but *perfectly accurate observation that mind or consciousness is the subject and locus of all scientific practice and knowledge; that science, at end of day ..is a function of human subjectivity and consciousness and not, as it often assumed, a simple photographic record of the world of things and objects ‘out there’.. the **astonishing successes of science and the unreasonable ability of abstract maths to model and mirror the furthest reaches and cosmic history of matter, i suggest, are the best ***evidence for our own secret nature.. human science works because human nature is cosmic
*oi and **oi
***am guessing that if legit free.. evidences and knowing ness and science scientifically ness and meaning ness.. et al.. would all be irrelevant cancerous distractions
to me this is all whalespeak – which helps it seem like ‘flip’ing.. but actually staying with same song.. because not letting go enough to see/be/hear the unconditional part of left to own devices ness
need more unjustifiable strategy ness and carhart-harris entropy law and embracing uncertainty ness et al
16
the single big idea here is that once one makes the flip and begins to understand that consciousness is fundamental,..t is a primitive of the physics and maths of the universe.. it becomes more than apparent that every local religious ego or political id, every story.. is relative… one can still affirm and nurture all those relative id’s after the flip (and continue to act from w/in particular story/script if one so chooses).. but one will no longer make the dangerous mistake of privileging one’s own inherited story and script over every other.. t
this non judgment ness is what tech can do.. ie: tech w/o judgment (and at least to date.. we can’t seem to let go of control enough to do).. so..
there’s a legit use of tech (nonjudgmental exponential labeling) to facil the seeming chaos of a global detox leap/dance.. the unconditional part of left-to-own-devices ness.. for (blank)’s sake.. and we’re missing it ie: a sabbatical ish transition
18
the flip suggests a new philosophical, really cosmic, foundation of the future ethics and politics.. obviously, this is not a minor project. nor is it a humble or cautious one.. this is a manifesto. short, irreverent. punch. blunt.. and why not.. do we really have that much time for self censoring politeness and endless qualifications which are too often also obfuscations?..
warning ness.. for (blank)’s sake
19
1 – visions of the impossible
‘but as always, the key to making sense of our lives lies in those details that seem most nonsensical. the small strangenesses surrounding us are our best possible clues to reality’ peter kingsley,..t reality
and/or.. again.. if legit free.. making sense becomes irrelevant cancerous distraction
21
from impossible but true stories: twain suspected that whatever processes this mental telegraphy named had some profound relationship to the deeper sources of his own literary success.. twain’s conviction that such precog dreams and instant communications were connected to the acts of reading/writing..
rather.. lit & num as colonialism
22
we have no idea what to do w such poignant, powerful stories.. so we disempower them w words like anecdote and coincidence.. t however.. w every story we so decapitate, 3 or 3000 more appear.. we are in fact swimming in a sea of such stories.. if only we could recognize our situation and its strange signs.. we cannot recognize our situation because we have shamed every category and every word that might help us.. ie: paranormal.. t
23
the paranormal.. literally ‘to the side of’ or ‘beyond’ the normal.. both supernormal/natural .. coined to describe our own almost total ignorance of all those fantastic phenom that are a part of our human nature and the natural world but that we cannot yet model or explain w/in any adequate scientific framework.. t
graeber can’t know law et al
these new words, then, were not *naive expressions of credulity.. nor were they a mark of some **willful ignorance of science,. they were coined and used ***by some of the most educated minds of europe ****to explore anomalous phenom that appeared to signal some richer reality than the present science could explain but that , it was hoped, some future science would.. both words were humble and honest placeholders, markers of a deep intellectual humility and radical empiricism that *****refused to look away from things it could not explain and saw anomalies not as idiocies but as meaningful signs pointing toward ******some future form of knowledge, some new real.. t
*though nothing wrong with that.. and why we need tech w/o judgment – we can’t seem to let go of assuming and then judging.. et al
**rather.. need to let go of the hubris osity of science scientifically ness.. of thinking we can and need to know things
***ie of phraseology that keeps us assuming and judging.. et al,
****if legit free.. not sure we’d be looking/hoping for future science ness..
*****need the unconditional part of left to own devices ness via ie: idiosyncratic jargon as self-talk as data for nonjudgmental expo labeling
******rather .. some future/present connections.. some legit diff/real et al
48
pretty much hinges on whether we can integrate these two models now.. that is, whether we can resist an either/or solution.. so far we have not been able to.. the humanities read and admire the sciences.. but the sciences generally completely ignore the humanities.. or worse.
consider the musings of contemp neuroscientist.. david eagleman
eagleman observes it is more likely that both mind/matter will get stranger the more we learn about each..t and so also will our models of their assumed relationship..
graeber can’t know law et al.. carhart-harris entropy law et al
51
our reality is a pragmatic one, not an exhaustive or even a particularly accurate one
to date.. it’s been in sea world.. black science of people/whales law
52
the mind can know things distant in space and time because it is not finally limited to space or time.. mind is not ‘in’ the radio.. the impossible suddenly becomes possible.. indeed.. *it becomes predictable.. and our range of understanding becomes immense.. so too our sciences and humanities..
*?.. crazy/cancerous that we talk of a not knowing ness.. but still insist on predictability and understanding..
what we have been doing for the last few centuries is studying the construction and workings of the physical radio.. but the radio was built for the radio signal *and vice versa).. how can we possibly understand the one w/o the other?.. it is time to come to terms w both.. it is time to restore the humanities to consciousness..
it is also time to recognize that every metaphor is an inadequate one, and that all such radio (or now computer) metaphors will need to be replaced by others, which we have not yet even imagined.. no doubt because we have not yet created the techs or discovered the sciences that will produce these new ways of imagining the world and ourselves.. these future metaphors, of course, will also be inadequate.. the super natural world will remain just that.. super to us
naming the colour ness et al
54
2 – flipped scientists
55
science is a method, however, not a set of dogmas w which one can conflict, and it has progressed so spectacularly over the last few centuries by demonstrating, over and over again, that what was previously thought to be nonsense is, in fact, almost certainly the case..t science makes the impossible possible..
this is not ridiculous ness.. but ‘almost certainly the case’..? not by science scientifically
but unfortunately (?) it is a set of dogmas.. any naming the colour.. any form of m\a\p.. is that
what quantum physicists or cosmologists are saying aobut the nature of matter and structure of the universe..?.. to any ordinary moral it is all pure craziness.. and yet, we are told, this is precisely what the empirical evidence and maths point toward.. indeed, we are repeatedly told by the physicists themselves that if quantum mechanics makes sense to you, you clearly do not understand what is being said.. literal nonsense (as in ‘you cannot understand this w your sense based imagination and reasons’) is the very mark of the quantum truth
ie of not letting go of control.. insisting that evidence/maths point toward it.. et al.. gray research law et al
56
a scientist might hesitate to report anomalous experiences because of his/her social/professional context and the sociology of this particular mode of knowledge.. there are subtle and explicit forms of censorship that effectively suppress such reports to protect the present reigning interpretation of the world.. classical or conventional materialism.. we do not call these ‘disciplines’ for nothing.. they discipline us, and the discipline the world.. t
57
and so it goes.. the materialist interpretation of the world and of science itself is protected not by the facts or by the data of our honest experiences, but by what is essentially social and professional peer pressure, something more akin to the grade school playground or high school prom.. the world is preserved thru eyes rolling back, snide remarks, arrogant smirks and subtle, or not so subtle, social cues, and a kind of professional (or conjugal) shaming.. t
bully\ing et al.. david on bullying.. david on rape.. a raised eyebrow et al..
58
it is precisely because of their scientific and medical training that these professionals make such convincing visionaries and authors.. this is also why their stories are so compelling
just more feeding of the whales.. need 1st/most: means to undo our hierarchical listening to self/others/nature ie: tech as it could be
our modern scientific mystics are so important because they can speak authoritatively to the conventional materialistic worldview that directs how most of us live, think and feel.. they can also tell us why this worldview is limited and incomplete.. they know perfectly well how and why their experiences conflict w their earlier outlooks and they say so
63
the point of all of this for us is not that reincarnation is true, or that there is an afterlife, or that we survive our physical deaths, or that times’ arrow can be reversed.. the point is that aj ayer, one of the most rigorous philosophical thinkers of the 20th cent was willing and able to think entirely outside his familiar boxes about these subjects after his near death experience, but not before..t
graeber rethink law et al
67
alexander communicated with the beings he met in that other world directly, w/o language.. this is an extremely common trope w/in anomalous events, a feature for which most experiencers us the traditional word telepathy..
lanier beyond words law et al.. mikey siegel et al
significantly, alexander also notes that he understood things directly and instantly in the other world, things that would have taken him years ‘here’ in the ordinary world, to process and understand
not yet scrambled ness
70
alexander’s final takeaway? that ‘conscious awareness can exist entirely independent of the brain’ and that only a fraction of what consciousness is can be captured in language and communicated to those who have not ‘been there’.. the extraordinary experience, in other words, is necessary.. one cannot think/reason/experiment one’s way there..
71
‘at its core’ he writes, this materialism ‘intentionally ignores what i believe is the fundament of all existence.. the nature of consciousness’..
in my own language: as the rules of the game change and new orders of knowledge appear, tje imossible will become possible (since it was never really impossible to begin with).. t
89
3 – consciousness and cosmos
99
bohr’s position that uncertainty is not a function of an incomplete theory whose loopholes we will eventually close, which was contrary to einstein’s positions.. rather, uncertainty and indeterminacy are woven into the very nature of things..t to invoke the lovely paradoxical phrase of abner shimony, quantum reality is ‘objectively indefinite’
graeber can’t know law.. graeber unpredictability/surprise law.. carhart-harris entropy law.. et al
the bohr-einstein debate was later taken up by john bell in 1964 and expressed mathematically in what came to be called ‘bell’s theorem’ which appeared to show that quantum mechanics, whether complete or not, must indeed violate either ‘localism’ or ‘realism’.. localism, or the principle of locality, is the notion that there can be no causal influence that propagates faster than the speed of light.. realism is the notion that the physical world is constituted by objects that exist independently of observation.. these were the base assumptions of newtonian physics and really.. the modern sci worldview.. one of them now had to go, or so it seemed.
100
bell’s theorem was later repeatedly tested.. california, paris, geneva.. the eventual results were unequivocal but also bizarre in the extreme.. put simply, the demo’d conclusively that bohr was right and einstein was wrong.. put less personally and more complexly, they provided empirical confirmation of the phenom of ‘entanglement’ .. the very phenom einstein considered absurd and impossible.. in lay terms, there empirical test demo’d that particles that have once interacted become ‘entangled’ and thereafter correlate w one another’s internal states instantly, regardless of spacial/temporal distances .. entangled particles cannot be treated as if were separate.. t
entanglement et al
most physicists preferred to keep realism and let go of localism.. now began referring to apparent irrelevance of space/time on the quantum level as ‘nonlocality’
101
nonlocality was a very serious blow or a world changing discovery, depending on one’s worldview
henry stapp: nonlocality the ‘most profound discovery in all of science’.. profound and really really weird..
still.. never really processed by or integrated into our intellectual culture, much less our public culture and worldview.. this is partially due to the reigning positivism of modern science and the academy, which disallows, even demeans, any form of knowledge that is not mathematical or properly ‘scientific’.. .. it’s not about knowledge.. it’s about the politics of knowledge.. about which kind of knowledge can be known, about who gets to know..t
of math and men.. science scientifically.. et al
103
questioning the rules of the game
much of this crisis is driven by the rules of the game.. in which attempt to shut down or deny fundamental humane experiences and forms of knowledge that cannot be slotted into the austere rules of sci positives and its fetishization of quantity.. t
graeber violence/quantification law et al
104
in other words, all the rebuttals come down to an unexamined commitment to newtonian physicalism and a rejection of any form of fundamental subjectivity or first person direct knowledge
on the ground ness as unorthodox.. and this is not ridiculous
i will frame materialism as the conviction that there is only matter, which is fundamentally devoid of mind or intelligence, and that this mindless matter is arranged and behaves according to the mathematical laws of physics (hence the alt term physicalism)
what we need is the unconditional part of left to own devices ness .. of the dance
105
truth is materialism is only one possible *interp of the sci data and the math models used to make sense of this data.. materialism is not a fact. moreover, a materialist interp works so well only in as much as it rigorously leaves out everything it cannot explain, including individual, subjective experiences.. materialism only ‘wins’ as long as it gets to declare the rules of the game
*need to let go of data.. all non legit to date.. all on whales in sea world.. try self-talk as data
106
such rules: nothing is real that cannot be established by *sci method; use **stats and wash out every anomaly or outlier; extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.. when those rules are challenged and described as what they in fact are (assumptions, beliefs).. typical materialist responses might be: that is pseudoscience; magical thinking; anecdotal (unreliable.. based on hearsay).. at it s worst.. such materialism can function like a dogmatic religious belief.. ***w elite specialists disciplining or shaming those who dare stray from the faithful fold.. t
**graeber violence/quantification law et al
***no yelling et al.. at all the unorthodox ness
why is it that we in the modern west seem to know so much about the cosmos but almost nothing about consciousness.. material cosmos studied as collection of observed objects ‘out there’.. *these objects in space can be measured, and their behaviors can often be controlled and predicted w math models.. not so w consciousness.. a fundamental paradox that will never be resolved by studying more objects..t at some point.. we will have to **’turn around’ and look back into the mirror itself.. we will have to move from 3rd person observation to first person awareness.. what we need is ***a new way of knowing.. a new metaphysical imagination that does not confuse what we can observe in the 3rd person w all there is..t
*graeber unpredictability/surprise law et al.. intellectness as cancerous distraction
**bachelard oikos law et al
***so rather.. a way of letting go of knowing.. graeber can’t know law et al.. intellectness as cancerous distraction et al
107
(after para on why undergrads migrateing to stem and out of humanities w parental support) the flip i am imagining here would radically, if also admitedly, gradually, change these academic and social patterns..t it is all about ontology.. that is it is all about what we consider to be real and unreal.. the status of the humanities is direcly tied to status of state of mind in consensus of world view
oh my.. not flip enough if still talking academic/social patterns.. (graeber unpredictability/surprise law et al) ..ed/undergrad/humanities/stem/academia/disciplines (aka: people telling other people what to do et al).. and flip today.. has to be a leap (as in not gradual).. has to because 1\ otherwise keep perpetuating whac-a-mole-ing ness of sea world 2\ today we have the means for a leap.. for (blank)’s sake.. part\ial ness is killing us.. keeping us from us
just skimmed rest of chapter
133
4 – symbols in between
135
if we are ever going to accept, much less understand, the reality and messages of these events, we are going to have to come to terms w the imagination and its power to shape both the mental and material. .t
it all comes down to the in between.. we all assume that there is a mental world ‘in here’ and material ‘out there’.. and only way knowledge about material can get to mental .. thru senses.. in modern secular world, we also generally assume that any form of knowledge.. say in a big dream a sudden precog intuition, or a near death experience.. is not real knowledge, since it is only ‘in the head’ of the visionary.. it is a hallucination.. it is imagined and thus ‘imaginary’..t
this is precisely how the life altering aha moments become nothing more than ‘anecdotes/coincidences.. to those who stand outside them.. this is exactly how we dismiss and so miss, the future forms of knowledge.. t
ie: unorthodox tech and we’re missing it
more skimming
266
5 – the future (politics) of knowledge
167
if we really have been flipped would we live differently (after more ‘based on this/that thinking’)
depends on what flip means .. didn’t realize i had it wrong
i think one of ways we’d live diff is we wouldn’t be spending out days rambling on and on about knowing stuff.. and about not knowing stuff.. but still acting/talking like we know.. so many irrelevant s.. so many cancerous distractions.. even in this book called the flip.. that’s keeping us from legit flipping
168
historically speaking the flip does not automatically translate into simple ecological lifestyles and compassionate behavior, much less to a collapse of all difference in a global community or cosmic spirituality
if basing the flip on history ness.. most definitely not a flip.. rather.. same song.. oi
169
individuals who have been flipped can be sexually abusive, physically violent, racist, discriminatory, and just plain mean
ok.. so to flip is just to change..
ie: if legit flip.. would have to be all of us .. because for one.. none of us are free if one of us is chained.. (not flipped) et al
the conclusion is unavoidable.. the flip does not equal moral/political enlightenment in our present liberal senses..
i don’t want to argue that a personal experience of he flip is necessary at all.. i want to make a different, more practical, an more humble case..i want to argue that, even in their present distant secularized forms, the humanities carry something of their original spiritual impulse.. an engagement with the humanities in systematically careful and rational ways, that is thru public and private ed – remains the best way to translate the flip into sustainable social political, moral and econ forms
oh my.. not humble.. totally perpetuating same song.. holy cow.. push that ed/humanities (aka: people telling other people what to do) all the while making it sound like something diff
our primary function of the humanities .. involves exposing analyzing and criticizing the unjust structure of human society.. the humanities as a whole serve a prophetic function in society and this is precisely why they are often resisted so, even presently hated under the banner of the ‘liberal professor’..
supposed to’s of school/work man..unjust structure
i guess i should have seen it earlier.. title of this chapter even: future (politics) of knowledge
graeber can’t know law (didn’t you even say that earlier?)
intellectness as cancerous distraction.. let go
198
epilogue: the cosmi human
199
i think the future form of knowledge will be, like the human brain itself, doubled but equal.. that is .. reciprocal.. plato will have as much to say as aristotle..
i think it (in all the forms we see/claim/talk it today) will be irrelevant
we can turn things around.. *social and cultural evolution.. have dramatically quickened evolutionary processes.. so too have intellectual, moral, and spiritual disciplines quickened the pace: practices like ed, reflexivity, and the flip as contemplation.. that is , the practice of **stepping away from one’s thoughts, emotions, and beliefs, even ones’ sense of a social self, and becoming more and more conscious of consciousness itself.
*makes no diff how fast we spin the wheels in sea world.. same song as long as we’re still in sea world..
**not happening as long as ie: ed, any form of people telling other people what to do .. the dance can’t dance with all that noise
we need the unconditional part of left to own devices ness.. which is what i’d hoped was meant by the flip..
oh well
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be you. 