Philosophy professor Jeffrey J Kripal: ‘Thinking about a UFO as some kind of extraterrestrial spaceship is naive’

The academic and author draws on quantum mechanics, English romantic philosophy and mysticism to explore a new theory of mind that embraces the paranormal

Jeffrey J Kripal is a professor of philosophy and religious thought at Rice University in Houston, Texas. He is the author of 10 books on the history of mysticism, psychology and the paranormal. His latest, How to Think Impossibly, draws on a range of sources including gnosticism, quantum physics and English romantic philosophy, to attempt a new theory of mind and the imagination.

At the root of some of your understanding of imagination, and your argument that current theories of mind leave too much off the table", seems to be an experience that happened to you in Kolkata in November 1989. Can you describe what that involved?
I was working on my first book, Kali's Child, and I was very sick; I had some kind of flu or food poisoning. I went to bed and I woke up, but my body didn't wake up. And some kind of strange energy came out of the room or more probably came out of my body. I thought that the electrical circuits in the walls had somehow malfunctioned and I was being electrocuted. I had a classic out-of-body experience, and when I eventually got back into my body and woke up it felt like something had been downloaded into me. Massive amounts of information, and I had no context for any of it.

How to Think Impossibly: About Souls, UFOs, Time, Belief and Everything Else by Jeffrey J Kripal is published by the University of Chicago Press (28). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply