Jeffrey Kripal

American scholar of religion at Rice University who writes on paranormal phenomena, consciousness, and the history of alternative spirituality in America — The Superhumanities, Authors of the Impossible, Mutants and Mystics, Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion — advocating for the academic study of anomalous experiences.

Argues that paranormal and mystical experiences represent a genuine category of human experience that demands serious academic study — and that consciousness itself may extend beyond the skull in ways that challenge materialist assumptions — making him the most intellectually rigorous academic advocate for taking anomalous consciousness seriously.