Today I finished reading The Flip: Epiphanies of Mind and the Future of Knowledge by Jeffrey J. Kripal. The Flip is an exploration of how we must bridge the divide between the sciences and the humanities in order to take our understanding of human beings and the human experience to the next level. It is also about how personal transcendent experiences can cause people to flip their perspective. Experiences of the divine, bizarre, uncanny, and paranormal can take someone who is a hardcore materialist and shift their perspective. As a hardcore rational materialist who has experienced a slow, then accelerating flip over the last few years, I believe this book to be incredible insightful and important. If you are even remotely interested in the humanities or the hard sciences, this is a book for you. ¹

Kripal describes the flip as being a shift in mindset following some sort of epiphany or experience. The Flip is a moment where one comes to realize that the nature of reality is much more complicated and much different than we’ve been led to believe. As an American, I would say that we Americans live in a very materialistic culture. People are obsessed with material trinkets, status symbols, consumer goods. We can talk about new cars and gizmos and TV shows all day long. But I can tell you firsthand that the second you start talking about anything too immaterial, people get uncomfortable. Bring up consciousness or dreams and things will get a little uncomfortable. Talk about spiritual experiences, UFOs, or anything in the paranormal and you’ll be quietly shunned until you’re ready to talk about trucks or iPhones again. This is also true in the academic and professional world: we value hard sciences and STEM much more than the humanities.

Part of The Flip is changing one’s perspective on the value of hard science and the value of the humanities. This is not to say that we should devalue hard science at the expense of the humanities, or vice-versa, but rather that we should develop an understanding that reality isn’t either-or, but both-and. Molecules and atoms exist. The laptop I am writing this on is real. But so are my dreams. So is my consciousness, and yours. So is our culture, our society, and the well of consciousness from which we all spring. There is room for all of these things at the table. These ideas can complement each other.

When we exclude massive chunks of the human experience from polite society, we all suffer for it. Often, it takes an experience that involving the divine, the mysterious, or the just plain weird for one to realize that the world of hardcore materialist rationalism is not the whole world. Such experiences are drivers of The Flip, and once we can begin to share those experiences with one another without being mocked or shunned, we can begin to Flip the world in a more human-friendly direction and build a world where human beings can grow and develop, not just exist.

There are many wonderful examples of people experiencing The Flip in the book. Perhaps the most powerful is that of neuroscientist Jill Bolte Taylor. Dr. Taylor suffered a stroke in 1996 that flipped her perspective (see her famous TED talk here). As a neuroscientist, she had a very unique vantage point from which to observe and experience this life-changing stroke. As a scientist who spent her life working in the rational world of evidence and statistics, Dr. Taylor’s stroke opened her up to a whole new kind of mystical experience.

The Flip spoke to me on a personal level. I have experienced a Flip of my own. I grew up outside of organized religion. My early-adulthood dabblings in organized religion made me respect organized religion less. Believing religion to be largely useless, I studied science in school and read science books on my time off. I developed a hardcore rationalist-materialist view of the world.

That view is foreign to me now. Several years ago, after escaping from an incredibly traumatic and unpleasant career as a respiratory therapist², I found my viewpoint softening. I began trying to reconnect with the spiritual, esoteric, and weird. I developed a meditation habit and began exploring my consciousness. I began consuming content that challenged my materialist paradigm in a fun and engaging way, and gradually began to realize that my hardcore materialism was robbing my life of meaning.

In the context of The Flip, my big awakening came this year. In February of 2025, I traveled to Montreal and visited the Basilique de Notre Dame de Montreal. I have been in church and in churches before, and always felt the experience to be empty and unsatisfying. The Basilique, however, spoke to me. Standing in the center of the Basilica, absorbing the energy from the building, experiencing the immersion in the endless detail and love put into the building, unlocked something inside me. I could feel something whispering to me from the dark recesses of my mind.

In June of 2025, I was again traveling, this time in my ancestral homeland of France. Our travels brought us to the city of Lyon, where we found not only the incredible Basilique de Notre Dame de Fourviere but also the Cathedrale Saint-John Baptiste. We entered the Cathedral and explored, reverently and quietly, absorbing the energy of the space. My wife and daughters walked the center aisle toward the altar, but I hung back. I found an alcove with a prayer altar full of votive candles. Impulsively, following some instinct or another, I bought a votive and lit it in honor of my recently deceased Grandmother, whispering a prayer over the candle and setting it upon the altar with the others. I felt the same stirring I had felt in Montreal, a deep connection, a whisper from somewhere else that chilled me and moved me to tears.

These experiences of deep emotional connection were startling and frightening to me. They were nothing compared to the dream.

Before I describe this dream, remember: I am not Catholic. I am descended from a long line of French Catholics, but I am not Catholic – I was not brought up in or confirmed in the church.

After returning from our trip to France, I had a dream. In the dream, I was back in Lyon, in the cathedral, seated in an alcove before a statue of Mary. The alcove darkened and I fell to my knees as the statue opened her eyes and looked directly into mine. Her arms were extended in front of her, holding out a book of inscrutable writing. I dropped my gaze as the statue grew larger and floated above me, and saw three bold statements written on the pedestal. I awoke, startled. The Dream stayed with me.

I couldn’t stop thinking about the dream. Months later, I think about it every day. It is seared into my mind. Her face; her eyes; the experience of being humbled and approached by something Divine, something Other, that I could not understand or comprehend.

I have told very few people about this. The ones I did tell had the classic American reaction of becoming uncomfortable and changing the subject. Undeterred, I began exploring religious forums. Several people suggested to me that this was not just a dream, but a visitation.

That dream, that experience, finally Flipped me. I’ve abandoned hardcore materialism and embraced a more complex understanding of reality. I’ve begun to explore new ideas and new concepts. I’ve begun to look for people with whom I can share this strange experience and have a dialogue, not just a one-way uncomfortable conversation. And I know I am not alone. Reading The Flip helped me understand that things like what happened to me happen to a lot of people. This book helped me understand that there is a way to work with The Flip once it happens. It helped me put my experience into a larger and more actionable perspective.

I thoroughly enjoyed The Flip, and I hope you’ll enjoy it someday too.

1. Please note, this is not a sponsored post. I actually read this book and wanted to share my thoughts here without the choking noose of capitalism around my neck. ↩︎
2. I think there’s a lot to unpack about how my work as a respiratory therapist also didn’t do any favors for my belief in the supernatural, but that’s a whole other book. ↩︎