Andrew Jaffe is a writer, physician, and lifelong student of consciousness whose work bridges science, philosophy, and direct experience. His fascination with the nature of awareness began not in academia, but through a deep curiosity about what it means to be. Early on in his meditative practice, he was drawn to the mystery of perception itself, how awareness seems to both witness and create the reality we live in.

Years of exploring neuroscience, quantum theory, and contemplative traditions gradually led him beyond the materialist view that the brain produces consciousness. He began to notice that awareness does not appear or disappear, rather, it is the constant background of every state, whether waking or dreaming. This insight became the seed of Cognitive Dream Interface Theory (CDIT), the foundation of his book Living the Dream.

CDIT proposes that reality functions like a dream rendered by awareness itself. Just as the mind in sleep generates worlds filled with meaning, space, and time, awareness in waking life constructs a coherent “shared dream” that feels external but arises from within the same field. Through this lens, evolution, memory, and even death take on new significance, not as mechanical processes, but as symbolic structures through which awareness explores itself.

Andrew’s approach is rational yet experiential. He believes that to truly grasp a theory like CDIT, one must look directly at awareness through meditation, lucid dreaming, or moments of spontaneous clarity. As he often notes, “Awareness is not a belief; it’s what makes belief possible.” In that sense, CDIT is not a rejection of science but an expansion of it, placing consciousness where it has always belonged, at the center.

The snowflake on the book’s cover captures this vision: nature generating perfect order and infinite variety without instruction or design, just as awareness gives rise to form. Each life, each experience, is a unique crystallization of the same silent presence that animates all things.

Andrew continues to write, speak, and explore how a deeper understanding of awareness can reshape how we see science, self, and society; not as separate pursuits, but as expressions of one dreaming mind.