The Flip: Epiphanies of Mind and the Future of Knowledge

Very interesting book making you rethink religion and consciousness. Not everyone will “get” it at first due to Dr.Kripal using several scholarly terminology but well thought out.

The Flip is an important book, a lucid and persuasive call for a re-marriage of long-divorced lovers: the humanities and the sciences. (Recall that these two originally were inseparable partners, as in the Golden Age of Greece.) Kripal relates the stories of scientists and intellectuals for whom a life-changing anomalous experience has “flipped” them from their materialist worldview (where everything is made of dead atoms that accidentally produce conscious life, which evolves without direction or meaning) to a cosmic view compatible with the mystical insights of the great teachers in all the world’s religions. Kripal analyzes the history of the breakup of science and the humanities, and offers suggestions of how to heal the rift with a living spirituality that is not shackled to the dogma of any religion, including the dogmas of science. Over the past 50 years, I have read scores of books in this field, and The Flip is among the best. More than once, I set down the book and mused on what I had just read, letting its meaning sink into me. I highly recommend the book if you are interested in the current state of knowledge about consciousness and its relationship to the material universe.

I was primed to love this book. I had read the author's previous book on Esalen, and I am very familiar with the literature on consciousness, from Plotinus to quantum mind. This book is a brief plea for the importance of bringing consciousness back into the humanities and then the humanities back into science (moving beyond materialism). I agree with pretty much everything he says, but didn't find much new being said. So, for someone already immersed in this topic, it might be a bit too basic. For someone just beginning to grapple with the limits of the materialist worldview, I think this would be a very good read.

This is a great book which outlines experiences that have led scientists and scholars to change their mind about the existence of something beyond the standard picture of the physical world. It's very well written, buy a scholar for a lay audience, and I think is a great book for anyone who tends not to believe but is curious and would like to see what others especially scientists in the like have experienced. Another book for the same purpose which I would recommend is spiritual awakenings edited by woollacott and Lorimer, published by AAPS press.

It takes much courage to allow—or dare I say prod—the filtered brain to delve into answers of where consciousness is going, or even more courageously—explicating where it needs to go. In The Flip, Jeffrey Kripal gives us a Newtonian Principia meets Philip K. Dick’s Exegesis answer to consciousness in the age of quantum understanding/misunderstanding. As reductionists attempt to reduce everything down to nothingness, Jeff shows us that we have discovered in our anxieties and wonderments, the fountain of eternal potentialities. Kripal is our link to the greatest American philosophical movements/heritage thus far. In a sense, he’s even found a way to flip American Pragmatism to allow us to fuse dichotomies of belief into a quantum mind of its own. Instead of saying that the pendulum is swinging from materialism back to idealism as he alluded to in his landmark book Authors of the Impossible; here, Jeff explains what the pendulum is and how we can gain control over it. His legacy is intact in this, his greatest work to date.

Although educationally inept at reading this text containing words past my understanding, as an educated dentist and great reader of philosophy, this was a most moving and provoking book for a 79 year old. Much of the thesis is the for new motivation and learning which will, hopefully, help my mind remain young. Thank you for your gifted efforts. My first flip was at age five as American settled after WWII.

Jeffrey Kripal makes an impassioned and well-reasoned case for the expansion of scientific inquiry into the non-physical realms – from consciousness and mind to para- and super-normal phenomena – typically shunned by mainstream science. I believe Kripal is correct in predicting this new openness to non-materialist/non-physicalist views and experiences – often prompted by the real-life experiences of many scientists and intellectuals reported in this book – to be an ascending wave in science, if still a minority view. The Flip is a fast read. Well-written and entertaining, too.

Kripal's central thesis is that physics, paranormal and religious experience, and the philosophy of mind all point toward consciousness being a fundamental element of reality -- in other words, pure materialistic reductionism is almost certainly false, while some kind of idealism, panpsychism, or dual-aspect monism is closer to the truth. In addition to this main line of argument, Kripal advances a number of concerns regarding the health of the humanities (too mired in deconstruction and particularity) and their current and proper place in the academy and in society (under-appreciated, marginal).I think these are worthy threads to pull on, and Kripal is a fine writer, but the book is unfocused and its arguments under-developed. The book reads more like a collection of loosely connected musings of a new agey humanist academic than a robust, extended argument for anything in particular. There are the germs of many good or intriguing arguments, but the focus to sustain the argument is lacking.Particularly in the last 1/3 or so, Kripal starts flagging and seems to deviate from any clear train of thought and simply starts riffing about this or that. That is a shame, because I think Kripal has genuine wisdom to offer, and great nuggets can be found throughout the book, even in the increasingly meandering and diluted last 1/3. In the end, he can't seem to make up his mind about whether he is writing an academic monograph or workshopping ideas for his own eclectic, neo-pagan new age religious movement.Worth reading but ultimately a bit disappointing.

I have to admit I am a huge fan of Jeff Kripal. I like the way he cracks open our lazy conceits about how things are. It’s not often you can say that you find a Professor of Philosophy and Religious Thought exciting, but the title belies the wonderfully subversive mind that fuels the good professor.The Flip is a little gem of a book. It’s an acrobatic coaching manual that moves one from being a non-committed materialist to something different. This isn’t a book intended to ‘flip’ the reader into religious belief. Despite Jeff’s title, and anybody’s fears, inducing belief is not his goal.This is not about evidence that flips you from believing A to believing B. It’s about how you go from definitely A to “I have no idea, really. There’s a bunch of stuff I need to think through carefully.”I am a flagrant and passionate anti-materialist. My life experiences leave me with no doubt that our human reality does not comport with the materialistic propositions. But I am not going to sell you a proposition based on what I have experienced and you have not.The Flip seems to be aimed at well-educated intellectual peers – maybe fellow academics. Jeff lays out an intellectual landscape and proposes arguments that seek to persuade a movement to frame of mind that is not obedient to the materialistic world view that is so pervasive.If you are not prepared to be persuaded, buying this book is a waste of money – unless your objective is to trash it with no regard to its argument.I am supporting this book because it’s the neatest, most persuasive and most coherent argument for not thinking as a materialist. The alternative is, surprisingly, very fluid and engaging. Once you jump the fence there’s not another constrained set of beliefs on the other side. Rather there is a wild world of opportunity – intellectual, scientific, cultural, personal.If you have a genuine personal commitment to responding to the full scope of human reality, but you are afraid to fully cast off from the familiar and safe shores of the comfortable way of knowing we were brought up in, The Flip is a must read.It may not do the trick, but it will loosen you grip.

This is an interesting and engaging book. The author is attempting to connect materialistic scientific thinking to what is usually called the 'paranormal', by way of taking the journey from Newton to quantum physics, along with considering some of the many instances of recorded and often verified 'paranormal' experiences of scientists, doctors and other well-known individuals. He has made a good attempt at constructing an acceptable sales pitch for the materialists, to encourage them to open their minds and take a wider look at the evidence and the science that backs it up. I found it very interesting. Of course there is vastly more evidence than he has presented, but it is a step in the right direction.

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

Well researched, well written and practical in that it offers advice you can reasonably and practicably follow and it should be of some genuine help. Definitely worth a read.