Welcome to Making the Invisible Visible
OVERVIEWMaking the Invisible Visible: The Life and Work of Dr. Stanley Krippner is a feature-length documentary directed and produced by Tamara Gurbis. The film’s central character is, as most refer to him, Stanley, a seemingly mild-mannered, 73-year-old professor of psychology at Saybrook Graduate School in California. An erudite, bookworm, and scientist par excellence. Even in his high school yearbook, the prediction is made: “Stanley Krippner wills his brain to science.” Yet like the archaeologist-adventurer Dr. Indiana Jones of Raiders of the Lost Ark, Stanley has also traveled far and wide to dig out treasures, except these are of a more elusive and invisible sort, “the mysteries of the mind.”
He has globetrotted for decades from Siberia to the Amazon in search of knowledge on unconventional healing and shamanism. His groundbreaking and widely published and publicized dream telepathy experiments at Brooklyn’s Maimonides Dream Laboratory in the mid-sixties and seventies also gave rise to colorful collaborations in telepathy with the musical group Grateful Dead and its audiences. His challenging alliances with Soviet scientists during the Cold War era on such subjects as psychokinesis (mind-over-matter) and psychic photography helped align the two superpowers’ scientists and their goals. Ever the fascinating storyteller, Stanley’s innumerable tales also include his encounters with renowned figures in the study of consciousness such as the wayward LSD guru Timothy Leary, health expert and psychiatrist Andrew Weil, the legendary and cunning Carlos Castaneda, spiritual teachers Alan Watts and Ram Dass, the famous trance-medium Eileen Garrett and many more.
Today, Stanley is recognized as a world expert and leading pioneer in the study of consciousness, dreams, shamanism, and unconventional healing, often from a cross-cultural perspective. His endeavors helped to open an entire field in the exploration of consciousness, one of science’s last frontiers. Emerging from the controversial field of parapsychology of the 1950s, his work emphasizes anomalous or “unexplained” experiences that seem to question conventional paradigms. Statistically, the majority of Americans report having at least one type of anomalous experience during their lifetime, thus meriting their investigation.
His research is also progressive because radical empiricism and a participant-observer model influence it. In addition to the usual method of scientific discovery, this translates into Stanley ‘trying things out for himself’ as a way of knowing. He shrewdly combines and embodies this unique combination: consciousness and science, “the observer” and “the observed,” from within and without. Stanley’s seemingly paradoxical comment exemplifies his approach: “I am open-minded to everything and skeptical to all.”
For nearly half a century, this has meant a risky and devoted struggle for Stanley in convincing the mainstream psychological community to pay attention to and further investigate these phenomena. Much like the shamans he studies, a “shapeshifter” himself, Stanley has assumed many roles and identities to achieve this goal.
In 2002, the largest and most influential psychological association in the United States, the American Psychological Association (APA) honored Stanley with the Award for Distinguished Contributions to the Development of International Psychology. Long-time colleague and human potentials researcher, Dr. Robert Masters, telephoned to congratulate him. In characteristic humor, Stanley replied: “Well, I guess there goes the neighborhood.” Making the Invisible Visible: The Life and Work of Dr. Stanley Krippner is the story of his maverick journey and an encompassing trip down memory lane in the exploration of consciousness.
He has globetrotted for decades from Siberia to the Amazon in search of knowledge on unconventional healing and shamanism. His groundbreaking and widely published and publicized dream telepathy experiments at Brooklyn’s Maimonides Dream Laboratory in the mid-sixties and seventies also gave rise to colorful collaborations in telepathy with the musical group Grateful Dead and its audiences. His challenging alliances with Soviet scientists during the Cold War era on such subjects as psychokinesis (mind-over-matter) and psychic photography helped align the two superpowers’ scientists and their goals. Ever the fascinating storyteller, Stanley’s innumerable tales also include his encounters with renowned figures in the study of consciousness such as the wayward LSD guru Timothy Leary, health expert and psychiatrist Andrew Weil, the legendary and cunning Carlos Castaneda, spiritual teachers Alan Watts and Ram Dass, the famous trance-medium Eileen Garrett and many more.
Today, Stanley is recognized as a world expert and leading pioneer in the study of consciousness, dreams, shamanism, and unconventional healing, often from a cross-cultural perspective. His endeavors helped to open an entire field in the exploration of consciousness, one of science’s last frontiers. Emerging from the controversial field of parapsychology of the 1950s, his work emphasizes anomalous or “unexplained” experiences that seem to question conventional paradigms. Statistically, the majority of Americans report having at least one type of anomalous experience during their lifetime, thus meriting their investigation.
His research is also progressive because radical empiricism and a participant-observer model influence it. In addition to the usual method of scientific discovery, this translates into Stanley ‘trying things out for himself’ as a way of knowing. He shrewdly combines and embodies this unique combination: consciousness and science, “the observer” and “the observed,” from within and without. Stanley’s seemingly paradoxical comment exemplifies his approach: “I am open-minded to everything and skeptical to all.”
For nearly half a century, this has meant a risky and devoted struggle for Stanley in convincing the mainstream psychological community to pay attention to and further investigate these phenomena. Much like the shamans he studies, a “shapeshifter” himself, Stanley has assumed many roles and identities to achieve this goal.
In 2002, the largest and most influential psychological association in the United States, the American Psychological Association (APA) honored Stanley with the Award for Distinguished Contributions to the Development of International Psychology. Long-time colleague and human potentials researcher, Dr. Robert Masters, telephoned to congratulate him. In characteristic humor, Stanley replied: “Well, I guess there goes the neighborhood.” Making the Invisible Visible: The Life and Work of Dr. Stanley Krippner is the story of his maverick journey and an encompassing trip down memory lane in the exploration of consciousness.
posted by Tamara Gurbis at 8:37 PM
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