Some featured presenters include near death researcher PMH Atwater, author Robert Moss, ex-government Psi researcher Dale Graff, and dream researcher Kelly Bulkeley. Also, Beverly D”Urso, who is one of Stephen LaBerge’s first lab subjects, is presenting on how to increase lucid dreams.

My presentation is on October 2 – the title is The Construction of Self from the Void of Imageless Lucid Dreaming. This is the first time I have presented material from my MA thesis on lucid dreaming since my defense, and it includes a radical method for uncovering the spontaneous (and sometimes deeply weird) dimensions of lucid dreaming.

Check out the full schedule here.

This is a great dream studies even hosted online by the International Association for the Study of Dreams. September 21 through October 5, 2008. Two weeks of online presentations about some of the more fringe aspects of dream research, including psi research, lucid dreaming, ancestor dreams, dreaming & archaeology, and dreaming & the afterlife.

This not a stuffy, abstract conference but a dynamic and welcoming discussion for everyone who is passionate about dreams. This is Dreaming 2.0. And it’s only $25 (US) for students.

I don’t do a lot of “hawking” on this blog but I really stand behind this group of dreamers. Join us if you can! I”m going to be presenting some of my experiences of lucid dreaming from my MA thesis.

Moss writes:

Here’s an open secret: Dreaming isn’t really about sleeping; it’s about waking up. Dreams wake us up to the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead. They can tell us what we need to know and alert us to actions we need to take.

What I like about this article is that Moss does not stray into the sweet, sticky morasse that most pop-psychology pieces indulge in: that dreams are “messages from our subconscious mind” to our waking ego. Nay, instead Moss briefly discusses recent neurobiological research that suggests that dreams are inherently tied to our desires, concerns, and motivations. In other words, yes, there is meaning in dreams but it’s not necessarily a deeper source than our waking ego, but instead characterized by more flexible kinds of thinking.

Moss goes further, suggesting that dreams have a biological function. This is actually contrary to many researchers” beliefs in the field, most charismatically led by Bill Domhoff. Others will agree that dreams can have a psychological function, but it’s a post-hoc slapped-together social prop that has nothing to do with how dreams arose biologically, sort of like how your average scapulamancy reading has nothing to do with the biomechanics of pig locomotion.

But Moss’s rendering of human evolution is also much more flexible than most dream researchers as he considers psi phenomena to be evidence for dreams” evolutionary function. That’s pretty bold, and definitely an area of research that needs some more heavy investigating (as well as investing). Sadly, evidence for this possibility will remain anecdotal (because we all have stories, don’t we?) until a change in the dominant paradigm for Western science allows the Academy to look at the research that has already been done….

Perhaps Moss’s piece in Parade Magazine is an indication of this shifting worldview?

For more of Moss’s views on the possibilities of dreams, I recommend his Conscious Dreaming.

From the horse’s mouth:

Throughout recent history, many famous artists, scientists, politicians and others have recorded dreams which led them to life-changing discoveries and creative work. This list includes (but is not limited to): Mark Twain, Buckminster Fuller, Albert Einstein, Mary Shelly, Alice Walker, Isabel Allende, Sting, John Lennon and Carl Jung. Most of these dreams contained an element of psi: telepathy, precognition, psychopompic dreaming.

This year’s PsiberDreaming Conference will present papers and workshops, special events and discussions focusing on how some of these creative dreams might have come about–and how any of us might use dreaming for creative endeavors.

Creativity, science and dreams… that’s what I”m talking about.