Jeffrey Kripal
J. Newton Rayzor Professor of Religion at Rice University; historian of religion specializing in mystical and “impossible” experience. Co-author with whitley-strieber of The Super Natural (2016), which advances a phenomenological framework for treating experiencer accounts (UFO encounters, abductions, mystical states) as data about consciousness rather than claims about external physics. Founder of Rice’s Archives of the Impossible, which houses Vallée’s papers and Strieber correspondence among other experiencer-account collections. His program is institutionally adjacent to Rice’s Center For The Impossible, the home (with Harvard) of the John Mack archives.
Vault appearances
- src-swarajya-disclosure-distraction-2026-05 — Neelakandan invokes Kripal as the rigorous follow-on to Vallée’s framework.
- src-breaking-the-taboo-uap-contact-symposium-2026-05 — Kripal delivers the welcome address at the July 2026 experiencer-research symposium.