DreamStudies is 3 Years Old

I realized yesterday that DreamStudies is now 3 years old! This blog has stayed with me as I’ve moved all over the U.S.: from California, to Florida, back to California and now onwards to Pennsylvania later this summer. Also, in that time, I finished my thesis on lucid dreaming, got married, became a freelance writer and Internet consultant, and ate a vast amount of peanut butter and pickle sandwiches. Three years is middle-aged for the blogosphere, but still a toddler in terms of covering the worlds of consciousness and dream studies.

Just now, I did a little google-mancy, and typed “three year old toddler” into the box, and up came this quote from Disney’s WonderTime:

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Allan Hobson and the Neuroscience of Dreams

The neuroscience of dreaming is a relatively new enterprise but has quickly become the major paradigm of experimental dream research today.  J. Allan Hobson, Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus at Harvard University, is the undisputed celebrity of this scientific outlook, and the author of several popular books on the topic.  Hobson, in his 30 years of tireless work, is also perhaps the greatest provocateur in the field of dream studies, stirring up old philosophical conflicts such as the value of objective science over experience, and mechanism over meaning.

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Towards an Integral Science of Consciousness

I received this gracious email a few days ago:

Hi Ryan, Here is a quote I read from your bio: “Principally, I am interested in pursuing a more radical materialism for both the sciences and the arts.” Would you say more about what you mean by this? I’ve studied material religion & theology, but I”m not sure if it’s anything like this.

I have to admit that “radical materialism” does sound like goobledy goop. The ideas behind it are too critical to be ill-defined, though, because this is the way science and the wisdom traditions of the world are beginning to merge.

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