Lecture: “Changed in a Flash: How One Woman Was Struck by Lightning, Talked to God, and Came Back to Dream the Future”

Date/Time: Thursday, Oct. 4, at 7 p.m.

Location: Sussman Theater, Olmsted Center

Speaker: Jeffrey J. Kripal, J. Newton Rayzor Professor of Religion, Rice University

Jeffrey J. Kripal holds the J. Newton Rayzor Chair in Philosophy and Religious Thought at Rice University and the Associate Director of the Center for Theory and Research at the Esalen Institute. He is the author of numerous books, including his most recent Secret Body: Erotic and Esoteric Currents in the History of Religions (Chicago, 2017). He specializes in the comparative study and analysis of extreme religious states from the ancient world to today.

In this lecture, Prof. Kripal will describe the near-death experience of Elizabeth Krohn, with whom he has co-written a recent book. He will then use Elizabeth’s visionary narrative and precognitive dreams to rethink how such anomalous events are treated, or not treated, in the study of religion and what they might still mean for rethinking the limits of the human.

Monique Rodriguez, College of Arts and Sciences