If you are interested in hearing about the secret history of lucid dreaming, as well as how ancient lucid dreaming wisdom is cross-pollinating with the latest findings in cognitive psychology, then please join us!

Here’s the press release:

Lucid dreaming, religion, and cognitive science

A meeting of the GTU/UCB Working Group on Religion and Cognitive Science

May 7, 2009 – Thursday, 10 am-12 noon

Institute of Buddhist Studies

2140 Durant Avenue, Berkeley

This event will explore the phenomenon of lucid dreaming (being conscious within the dream state) from both scientific and comparative religious perspectives. People have reported lucid dreams throughout history, often in religious contexts, and yet modern science is just beginning to investigate this unusual aspect of mind-brain activity.

Ryan Hurd, a graduate of John F. Kennedy’s program in Dream Studies, will provide an overview of the history of lucid dreaming, including spiritual dimensions and contemporary controversies. Eleanor Rosch, professor of psychology at UC Berkeley, will share thoughts about how qualities of lucid dreaming (and lucid sleep) relate to Buddhism and, potentially, Western religions. Kelly Bulkeley, visiting scholar at the Graduate Theological Union, will talk about the various roles of lucid dreaming in the world’s religious traditions and their significance for current scientific models of brain-based consciousness.

The event is free and open to the public. For questions, please contact kellybulkeley@earthlink.net

Image CC: Lotus Flower by ForestMind

Bulkeley is an unique scholar who is trained in religion studies but often integrates modern neuroscientific findings and anthropological evidence to anchor his findings. Bulkeley’s interviewer is Jonah Lehrer, the author of Proust Was a Neuroscientist.

Here’s a taste:

LEHRER: You argue that modern science can learn about dreaming from religion. Do you have a favorite example that you use when talking to scientists?

BULKELEY: Well, consider this particular kind of nightmare dream that recurs again and again in religious texts. In the Christian tradition they talk about the incubus, or the demons of the night. In Newfoundland, it’s the old hag and so on. But what all these various religions agree on is that there’s a type of nightmare that’s very intense and involves the constriction of breathing or paralysis. Now we know, thanks to modern science, that this is a real class of dream called night terrors and they”re very different from ordinary nightmares. So all these texts that talk about night terrors, they”re actually describing a real element of human experience.

I”m fascinated by this, and all the other ancient documents we have laying around that are filled with real, first-hand experiences of verifiable altered states of consciousness. Often these experiences are considered to be hyperbole, or simply made up stories. But as cognitive anthropologist David Lewis-Williams is fond of saying, humans can’t refrain from dreaming.

Dreams and vision states are simply part of our collective story.

Here’s the link for the whole interview.