From the Beginning Thru Feast or Famine

Abstract

Krisanne Gray is a housewife and mother of two who runs a day care center in Spokane, Washington. Her story, as well as the work of Deborah Armstrong-Hickey [see her talk in the symposium proceedings in this issue], is of theoretical interest to the field of lucid dreaming. Not because of the process she went through in figuring out what is real, this is a familiar one to anyone who has worked on becoming lucid in sleep, but rather because she went through it at such a young age. Due to her youth other mechanisms came into play which adults don’t normally deal with. Mrs. Gray may to be a consciousness savant in the same manner as a very young child who shows early mathematical aptitude.

Before I comment on the potential theoretical significance of this case let me say that 1 have spoken to Mrs. Gray at some length and believe that she is in fact honestly communicating her experiences as accurately as she can. As is often the cast when I stumble upon an individual who evidences unique sleep consciousness (if genuine and uninformed about the area of lucid dreaming); they are amazed to discover that everyone doesn’t dream lucidly all the time. In 13 years of working on lucid dreaming I have only found four individuals (outside of long term meditators) like this. In all cases they were ignorant of lucid dreaming work, amazed that their style wasn’t the norm, and with intensive interviewing I was convinced that they fully understood what I meant and that they were honest, sincere and perhaps humbler. In fact, in a recent chance encounter with an Alberta businessman, who is virtually always conscious in sleep and has never meditated, he became quite uncomfortable with my interest in his sleep experiences. I hope yet to be able to convince him to come into the sleep laboratory.