http://www.tbyte.com/people/joe/dreams/welcome.htm

RCW: Joe, how did the idea for the site come about?

JT: I evolved a fairly intense sense of intrigue and awe with respect to dreams in college at the University of California, San Diego where I studied Psychology. I helped start a group of artists called Z(sub zero) or Z-not which was primarily concerned with creating art of a surreal nature. We got into Steve LaBerge and his lucid dream work at Stanford (one of us left to work with him). We also got into sensory deprivation (there were three available tanks in San Diego) and the safer entheogenic compounds.

After graduation, many of us kept in contact via e-mail and shared some dreams occasionally. I saved them all and then got the idea for The Dream Archive when I became the webmaster at Trilobyte. I began getting dreams from all over the place and I've included as many as I could.

RCW: What's your own relationship with dreams?

JT: I have a tremendous amount of respect for the amount of data contained in the body which usually lies outside the perception of consciousness. Most of what we do happens regardless of our "thinking" about it. I've played with meditation and biofeedback to alter some "easy" biological mechanisms like pulse rate and digestion and it's really very difficult -- it's probably impossible for most of us to alter very basic human functions like the ability to stay awake, clot our blood when we're scratched, or withstand a great degree of pain without reaction, but this probably for good reason!

Besides this lack of control over our body by our conscious mind, and the vast number of mechanisms that interact with our environment outside the influence or attention of our minds, it also true that our conscious minds may also deceive us, especially in time of crisis, either by active cognitive error or passively by providing too confused or overactive an environment for us to perceive our environment accurately.

I think dreams provide a way of more accurately perceiving things about ourselves and our environment by providing a portal to these methods of knowing contained in our body outside the realm of consciousness. This to me is of prime importance. I respect oneiromancy (divination by dreaming), especially in times of crisis when our conscious minds are often compromised, because of this.

I'm less interested in fantastic voyages, visiting past lives, or Jungian interpretations if they don't first serve the purpose of helping people to understand themselves and the more salient aspects of their enviroments, like coping with the death of a loved one, how to solve familial financial troubles, etc. Returning to the source, or listening to the wisdom of what is both internal (a part of the self) and external (outside waking consciousness) and bringing those together is a very human and rewarding benefit of dream observation. I try to remain as sensitively human about them as possible.

RCW: What do you think about dreaming in general?

JT: I guess you're asking about Dreaming with a capital "D"? I think there's alot of positive work going in this area. I believe Dreaming may be a place where science will evolve a more complex form which is able to incorporate and quantify the benefits of listening to dreams.

As always with dreams, there is also a great number of "shamanic" practitioners. Generally, I can respect these complex methods for doing this same kind of very human listening. I'm into people improving their perception of themselves and their environment regardless of method.

It does bother me, however, that a few of these shamans can also be charlatans and perhaps hurt people. Then again, there are scientists that might be misleading people as well... ha ha!

RCW: How do you see the site evolving in the future?

JT: The design as it exists is only suitable for a couple dozen dreams or so. I started it it when I was very new to the web back in late 1994.

I'm thinking about improving indexing and my ability to add new dreams by creating an index that works by using a search engine. I'd be able to just plop new dreams in and the engine would do the hard part.

I've got Excite!'s engine running our company's site and it seems to work really well.

RCW: Is there an interactive aspect to the site - are contributions accepted - if so, what considerations should dream artists take into account?

JT: Yes! Please, send your dreams! I encourage quantity because I think that the greater diversity of experience people experience in reading about others' interpretation of their dreams, the better they can take an approach in interpreting their dreams which may at first seem unorthodox, albeit more true to how their whole self in perceiving reality.

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