Bio

Fariba Bogzaran, artist, scientist, and visionary, founded the first dream studies graduate certificate program at John F. Kennedy University in Berkeley, California. She taught at JFK University in both the Departments of Consciousness Studies and Arts and Consciousness for over two decades and was adjunct professor at California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco for twenty years. She has given lectures and retreats internationally since 1984.

She was part of a team at Lucidity Institute conducting scientific studies on lucid dreaming at the Stanford Sleep Laboratory (1986–1989). She conducted three pioneering scientific research projects: 1) A quantitative research on lucid dream incubation and spiritual experiences, Experiencing the Divine in Lucid Dream State (1989); 2) An art-based qualitative research, Images of the Lucid Mind: A Phenomenological Study of Lucid Dreaming and Modern Painting (1996), examining the parallels between transpersonal lucid dream experiences and the visual art of influential artists such as Roberto Matta, Lee Mullican, and Gordon Onslow Ford. 3) An art-based qualitative research program, Through the Light: An Exploration of Consciousness (1997). Among her many publications are two coauthored books: Extraordinary Dreams (2002) and Integral Dreaming (2012) both published by the State University of New York Press. 

Fariba’s artwork is informed and inspired by both her deep connection with nature and her collaboration with the hypnagogic and lucid dreaming states of consciousness. Among her solo exhibitions are The Third Script (2008), based on her work on energy and light, held at the Institute of Noetic Sciences; a retrospective exhibition, Lucidity (2013), curated by Peter Selz and Anne Brodzky at the Meridian Gallery in San Francisco, and The Art of the Lucid Mind at the Bolinas Museum, California (2022). 

Fariba was in dialogue and collaboration with Surrealist painter Gordon Onslow Ford for thirteen years. Based on her research exploring the parallel between art and lucid dream experiences, she coined the term Lucid Art. This concept views art as an epistemology (a way of knowing), and an essential vehicle to explore consciousness. With Gordon Onslow Ford, they envisioned and created the Lucid Art Foundation in 1998 and collaborated on a book, Once Upon a Time (1999). As the Founding Director, she developed several programs for the Foundation, including exhibitions, seminars, artist residency, and publications. Among her publications for the Foundation are: Artists, Poets, and Visionaries of the S.S. Vallejo: 1949-1969 (2018); Numinous: Peter de Swart Sculptures from the Light Series (2018); the award-winning publication, Gordon Onslow Ford: A Man on a Green Island (2019), and A Place of Creation (2024), which is about 97 artists and 11 scholars in residence, all published by the Lucid Art Foundation.