The Super Natural: A New Vision of the Unexplained by Whitley Strieber and Jeffrey J. Kripal

2016 publication

This book addresses a topic that neither author can quite explain and don't claim to understand. If you're looking for sure answers or reassurance, this book won't provide it for you. If you're looking for debunkers, this book won't please you. But if you're looking for an honest and diligent inquiry into events that seem just too damned weird by two men who seem--at least on the written page--quite rational and sensible (some really weird stuff notwithstanding), then you might enjoy this book. I did.

This book consists of alternating chapters that create a virtual dialogue between Streiber, who has experienced some really weird stuff, and Kripal, a scholar of comparative religion. Streiber was a fiction writer who lived in the Hudson Valley with his wife Anne in the late 1980s when "beings" (for lack of a more exact term) began to appear in his presence and do things to him and around him. As I said, some really weird stuff. Strieber, in collaboration with his wife, began to write about these experiences. Once published (and he was an established writer already), Streiber and his wife learned  that they were not alone in having experienced visitations from beings that defy any normal classification or description. The most value-neutral term that seems to apply is that Strieber experienced the "paranormal." And I repeat: in this book (I've not read his others), Strieber does not seem "crazy," although he reports crazy stuff happening to him.

Now there are various hypothesizes that one could generate to explain the "true nature" of Whitley's claims: a simple hoax (he sells a lot of books with his fantastic tales); a brain lesion that causes hallucinations (he checked for that--negative); something in the local water; disturbed "spirits;" and so on. And here is where Kripal comes in. Kripal, a scholar of comparative religion at Rice University, now concentrates his focus on the paranormal. (For a more thorough consideration of Kripal's back story, read my review of his book Flip.) Kripal has known Streiber for several years before writing this book and finds Strieber (in my words) a credible witness. But a witness to what? And by the way, what has this to do with religion?

Stop and consider what religions around the world share. The Scriptures of the Jews and Christians, the Quaran, tales of Greek and Norse gods, American Indian stories, tales of Hindu gods and avatars, Tibetan Buddhism, or Taoist tales. All religions have fantastic accounts that defy our current ideas about how "reality" works. No doubt much of this is the religious equivalent of sales puffery or the size of the fish that got away. And these accounts draw upon ancient ideas about science and reality that no longer receive credence in contemporary popular culture. Probably the most charitable and persuasive interpretation of religious narratives is that they serve as myths and metaphors from which we can draw guidance for our lives, as in Joseph Campbell's description of the Hero's Journey or Jungian archetypes that transcend our individual minds, in addition to the accounts of established religions. And in my lifetime, we have the phenomena of UFO sightings and accounts of visitors from "outer space." A version of mass hysteria? An uptick in UFO mania coincided with the Cold War. (And since the end of the Cold War and a change in focus in our primal fears, we've seen an uptick in zombie lore and tales that seem to capture the popular imagination.) All of these possibilities undoubtedly have some merit and truth in them, but do they (or like theories) exhaust the possibilities? Can any single theory account for Streiber's bizarre tales? Is this all about Streiber and his individual brain and mind? Or is there some other reality that has impinged upon Streiber's mind? If so, is this reality governed by contemporary popular ideas about physics and reality? If these experiences are all "in his head," where do they come from? His personal, fevered imagination? He's a writer--an artist!--after all, and he's written horror and speculative fiction. Is this an elaborate guise? Or is he subject to some mass psychosis?

Kripal doesn't believe that any of the possibilities set forth above provide an adequate account of what's going on with Strieber. Like a lawyer building a case, Kripal takes his readers one (alternating) chapter at a time through his attempt to provide a coherent, rational way thinking about Strieber's experiences. This writing duette with its alternating chapters allows both authors to riff upon one another's way of approaching the issues. Also, it provides us with Strieber's accounts in small, tolerable doses; otherwise, I might have cast Strieber's account aside as so much gobbledygook early on. Kripal's methodical, rational investigation of the stories and how to we might understand them provided a needed imprimatur for me.

So where does this book come out? In fact, neither Strieber nor Kripal pretends to provide a definitive account of these (and other) bizarre events. While both men believe in the "reality" of the events that Strieber recounts, neither man conveys any sense of certainty about any conclusions. The only conclusion that I took away is that neither man believes these events "supernatural." Instead, as the title suggests, they believe these events are "super natural." That is, these events are uncommon and not easily understood, but neither are they manifestations of something from "another realm," at least not a realm of the "supernatural" as understood in popular religion. These (in some sense) miraculous events are not the result of divine intervention, but a part of the fabric of reality. And if you think that reality is only what we experience in our daily, hum-drum lives, go read a (reputable) book about quantum physics.

So what do I conclude? I'm not sure at all, but I intend to follow Kripal further down the rabbit hole. What we're perceiving in these accounts is a challenge to accept as credible, but even more so, how we understand these tales that we've been told is the challenging puzzle that intrigues me.

Finally, I must say that the words of a man who saw a ghost kept repeating in my head as I read this book:

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy

Perhaps Hamlet was right.