Followers

Thursday, April 26, 2007

Freud's Dream of Irma: Collegium at LSU

I just gave a talk in the LSU's Collegium on Science and Religion, an ongoing series organized by LSU faculty and Baton Rouge community members. About the talk and the Collegium, there's information here.
The talk was called Freud's Dream of Irma: Science, Scientism and Gnosis. It was based on several chapers of The History of Last Night's Dream.
One point I made is that the last fifty years of research on the dreaming brain underlines the incredible opportunity dreams prsent for transformation. We are basiclly given a different brain to work with every night. In the dream space, we feel and sense more intensely, we are somewhat disconnected from parts of the brain that orient us towards waking concerns and from our old memories of who we are. This frees up the dream to allow us to rehearse new ways of responding to situations, and new ways of feeling and being. The I in the dream is not the I when awake and that's a great opportunity for change.

Thursday, April 12, 2007

ON FAITH: Guest voices

In the "On Faith" section of WashingtonPost.com I do a guest appearance about the question of whether Buddhism is compatible with Judaism or Christianity. You can find it here.