Jennifer Dumpert

Jennifer Dumpert is a San Francisco-based writer, lecturer, and consciousness hacker. She is the author of Liminal Dreaming: Exploring Consciousness at the Edges of Sleep, published in May 2019. She is the founder of the Oneironauticum, an international organization that explores the phenomenological experience of dreams as a means of experimenting with mind. She also teaches the practice of Liminal Dreaming – surfing the edges of consciousness using hypnagogic and hypnopompic dream states.

Presentation: “Dreamhacking: Consciousness Exploration and Dream Experimentation”

For this special WVC event, dreamers from around the world joined for an exploration of consciousness using liminal dream practices and the oneirogen calea zacatechichi. Participants were invited to join the Oneironauticum, a worldwide dream event. On Saturday evening, liminal dream expert and Oneironauticum founder Jennifer Dumpert introduced hypnagogia and hypnopompia – together called liminal dreams – the unique dream states that lie between waking and sleep. Participants were led into hypnagogia, the swirling, psychedelic, free associative dream space you experience as you fall asleep. Jennifer provided several easy exercises to allow one to experience hypnagogia and hypnopompia on their own. She explained various uses for liminal dreams, such as sparking creativity, assisting with both mental and physical healing, and consciousness exploration.

Jennifer also discussed the use of oneirogens, any substance, practice, or experience that promotes or enhances dreaming. Along with other endogenous highs – those naturally produced by the body – and subtle allies – substances that require your active participation – oneirogens provide gentle but profound psychoactive experiences. As part of the event, the Full Circle Teahouse served tea made from Calea zacatechichi, a dream herb traditionally used by the Chontal, a Maya people of southern Mexico. Sunday morning, participants gathered for dream sharing, either in person or remotely, as part of the Oneironauticum.

Founded in 2008, the Oneironauticum gathers dreamers world wide on a given night to work with the same oneirogen. At least one group sleeps in the same location, while dreamers from disparate locations join remotely, all using the same oneirogen.