Here’s what Meta.AI says about this concept:
“Jeffrey J. Kripal’s concept of “The Flip” refers to a sudden, profound, and often life-changing transformation of consciousness or perspective. This concept is central to Kripal’s work on the intersection of psychology, philosophy, and spirituality.
Characteristics of “The Flip”
- Sudden and unexpected: “The Flip” occurs suddenly, often without warning or preparation.
- Profound shift in perspective: It involves a fundamental transformation of one’s worldview, identity, or understanding of reality.
- Reversal of previous beliefs or values: “The Flip” often entails a reversal or rejection of previously held beliefs, values, or assumptions.
- Emotional intensity: This experience can be emotionally intense, ranging from feelings of awe, wonder, or euphoria to anxiety, fear, or disorientation.
Examples and Triggers
- Mystical or spiritual experiences: “The Flip” can be triggered by mystical or spiritual experiences, such as near-death experiences, visions, or encounters with the divine.
- Traumatic events: Traumatic events, like a serious illness, accident, or loss of a loved one, can also trigger “The Flip.”
- Encounters with the unknown: Experiences that challenge one’s understanding of reality, such as UFO sightings or paranormal events, can lead to “The Flip.”
Aftermath and Integration
- Integration and meaning-making: After “The Flip,” individuals often struggle to integrate their new perspective into their daily lives and existing belief systems.
- Personal growth and transformation: This experience can lead to significant personal growth, transformation, and a deeper understanding of oneself and the world.
- New sense of purpose or meaning: “The Flip” can also result in a new sense of purpose or meaning, as individuals seek to align their lives with their newfound perspective.
Kripal’s concept of “The Flip” highlights the complex and multifaceted nature of human consciousness and the potential for sudden, profound transformations that can alter the course of one’s life.”
Commentary
That’s all accurate.
Jeff often talks about how powerful this is when it happens to a materialist scientist. And it is.
But it’s also powerful for the rest of it too.
And when I first read his book, “The Flip: Epiphanies of Mind and the Future of Knowledge” by
Jeffrey J. Kripal, Bellevue Literary Press [2019], I certainly appreciated the scholarship and felt a bond with Jeff, ONLY I had never felt ‘non-flipped’. I’ve been pretty much ‘flipped’ since before birth. I guess I’m ‘flipped out’ 😉
Now, it’s becoming more fashionable these days, for authors such as Donald Hoffman, Bernardo Kastrup and other very credible people to write that, say, ‘mind is fundamental’ and in fact matter, energy and the laws of physics are EMERGENT FROM ‘Mind at Large’.
Is this crazy? No. In fact from this perspective materialism makes less sense than ‘mind first’, as materialism has the ‘hard problem of consciousness’, while for Mind first approaches there is no hard problem of consciousness, and certainly not a ‘hard problem of objectivity’ or ‘materialism’, although some such as Bernardo Kastrup says that this would be a weakness for analytical idealism, mystical idealism (what Bernardo calls his philosophy).
Now Platonic Surrealism doesn’t have this weakness, as there is no true objectivity whatsoever, anywhere whatsoever. Even if ‘god’ should exist (not a part of Platonic Surrealism), that entity would be ontologically equivalent to anything else emergent from POTENTIALITY and AWARENESS.
In short, there is no ‘base reality’. No base ‘physical world’ (Eastern Religion calls this world ‘maya’ (or illusion, based upon ‘to measure’ in Sanskrit, but they might talk about the reality of Brahman (Hinduism) or ‘Emptiness’ (Buddhism), but these too are ’emergent’ properties in Platonic Surrealism. (though to be fair, the Buddhist ’emptiness’ comes close to the concept of POTENTIALITY (the set of all potentials for properties, property sets, potential interactions and interaction sets).
But in any case, In Platonic Surrealism there is just POTENTIALITY and AWARENESS (the ability to perceive and form associational connections), POTENTIALITY being considered timeless, and AWARENESS in its purest form, NEARLY timeless. Once you start keeping track of associational chains, that is the very definition of time, as it’s emergent.
Now springing from AWARENESS as it organizes POTENTIALITY for itself, there comes to be consciousness.
In Platonic Surrealism, POTENTIALITY is the first tier, AWARENESS the second tier, and ‘consciousness’ comes in at the third tier.
It is seen in Platonic Surrealism (PS from here on), that consciously is innately ‘broken’ as it’s a subset of properties being experience by AWARENESS, and thus ‘consciousness cannot be trusted’.
That’s why PS says, “Consciousness is the Trickster”.
It’s like in the study of the paranormal and mystical UFOs — the researchers try to ‘catch this foreign/alien thing’ — ‘the Phenomenon’.
Well, the ‘Phenomenon’ is just part of CONSCIOUSNESS. It’s part of us.
Now one more major point about PS, and that is ‘The Gentleman’s Agreement’.
Since there is only one unary consciousness, though granted as Bernardo Kastrup says, “it disassociates itself’ into ‘alters’ — ‘us’, this CONSCIOUSNESS follows the ‘Gentleman’s Agreement’ from the most fundamental level.
In other words, all that CONSCIOUSNESS has to do, is to ‘promise itself’ to consider any fantasy it has to be real, including matter, energy, universes, etc., This is why there is no matter/mind split in PS, no ‘weakness’ of any kind.
Of course you must accept these three premises:
- POTENTIALITY (nobody argues that things potentially exist)
- AWARENESS (nobody argues that awareness exists.
- And that leaves us the “Gentleman’s Agreement” which people could certainly argue about, but if someone successful ‘broke the agreement’, then all of reality would vaporize instantly, and there would be nobody to have such an argument. Everything works, only if we all ‘play along’, and since there is only (ultimately) ‘one of us’, that’s not hard to do.
*** A note about the three premises and modern science.
One might say that it’s unreasonable that item three above be considered as a premise, as it
seems ‘wild’.
Well, what seems ‘wild’ to me, is that 95% of ‘matter is missing’ (only 5% of the matter/energy
budget of the Universe is known, and the rest of it is ‘missing’).
That’s one hell of a premise there. We take that 5% on ‘blind faith’ basically… I mean, as a former
almost scientists (nuclear engineer), I wholeheartedly agree that science is the most internally consistent and successful human construct EVER.
But let’s be honest here; most of it is unaccounted for, and on top of that, there are 25 hand-coded
constants of nature in the standard model of physic. In Platonic surrealism there are 2 mind-numbingly simple/inarguable premises, and 1 premise that in a sense says that the previous 2
premises are consistent with each other. (they agree to ‘work together’).
That’s it.
Epilogue
The ‘flip works’ because everything is already ‘flipped’. Basically ‘everything. Some of the stories of CONSCIOUSNESS involve people realizing this state of things, and for others, they don’t realize it.
Now, there are many ways that one could come to realize the nature of things, including the Traumatic Secret is one of the main ways, the The Egoic Secret of Catholic Saints and Super Psychics, or Yoga or other spiritual practice (which ultimately causes trauma), Autism (which causes trauma), Religions (they all cause much trauma), or just pure biological things from birth or certain circumstances that can happen in the world.
There is another way, that doesn’t involve much trauma, that the ‘flip’ can be realized, and that is possible if done carefully (being documented at this time).
Kevin Cann
12/11/2024