Robert Monroe

Robert A. Monroe
Robert A. Monroe
Born	Robert Allan Monroe October 30, 1915 Indiana, United States
Died	March 17, 1995 (aged 79)
Education	Ohio State University (B.A.)
Occupation(s)	Radio broadcaster; Researcher
Organization(s)	Monroe Products and The Monroe Institute (founder),; Jefferson Cable Corporation (founder)
Website	www.monroeinstitute.org

Robert Allan Monroe^[1] (October 30, 1915 – March 17, 1995) was an American radio broadcasting executive who became known for his ideas about altered states of consciousness and for founding The Monroe Institute which continues to promote those ideas. His 1971 book Journeys Out of the Body is credited with popularizing the term “out-of-body experience“.

Monroe developed Hemi-Sync which he claimed could facilitate enhanced brain performance.^[2]^[3]^[4]^[5]^[6]

He was one of the founders of the Jefferson Cable Corporation, the first cable company to cover central Virginia.^[7]

Biography[edit]

Robert Allan Monroe was born in 1915 in Indiana and grew up in Lexington, Kentucky, and Columbus, Ohio. His mother, Georgia Helen Jordan Monroe, was a non-practicing medical doctor, cellist, and piano player. His father, Robert Emmett Monroe, was a professor of Romance Languages who led summer tours to Europe. Monroe had two older sisters, Dorothy and Peggy, and a younger brother, Emmett, who became a medical doctor. Monroe had an early fascination with flying and music.^{[citation needed]}

According to his third book Ultimate Journey,^[8] he dropped out of Ohio State University in his sophomore year due to a hospital stay for a facial burn that caused him to fall behind in his studies. During almost a year away from college, a desire to find work led him to become a hobo who rode freight trains. He returned to Ohio State to graduate after having studied pre-med, English, engineering, and journalism.

He married Jeanette, a graduate student and daughter of a lawyer, in 1937, and divorced her in 1938 or 1939. He married Mary Ashworth, a divorcee with a daughter Maria, in 1950 or 1951. They had Bob’s only biological child together, daughter Laurie. They divorced in 1968. He then married Nancy Penn Honeycutt, a divorcee with four children. They remained married until her death from breast cancer on August 15, 1992.

Monroe developed ulcers in young adulthood and so was classified 4F (unfit for service) during World War II. He spent the war years working for a manufacturing company that designed a flight-simulator prototype. He wrote for an aviation column in Argosy magazine and was given a job with the National Aeronautic Association (NAA), for whom he produced a weekly radio show called “Scramble!”, the primary purpose of which was to interest youth in aviation.

In 1953 Monroe formed RAM Enterprises, a corporation that produced network radio programs, as many as 28 programs monthly, principally in dramatic and popular quiz shows.

In 1956 the firm created a Research and Development division to study the effects of various sound patterns on human consciousness, including the sleep state. Monroe was especially attracted to the concept of sleep-learning. This was a natural direction to take, applying to this new area the audio production methods used in the firm’s commercial activity. The purpose was to find more constructive uses for such knowledge than was ordinarily available, and the results of this research have become internationally known.

First out-of-body experiences[edit]

According to his own account, while experimenting with sleep-learning in 1958 Monroe experienced an unusual phenomenon, which he described as sensations of paralysis and vibration accompanied by a bright light that appeared to be shining on him from a shallow angle. Monroe went on to say that this occurred another nine times over the next six weeks, culminating in his first out-of-body experience (OBE). Monroe recorded his account in his 1971 book Journeys Out of the Body and went on to become a prominent researcher in the field of human consciousness.^[2]^[3]^[4]^[5] Monroe later authored two more books on his experiments with OBE, Far Journeys (1985) and Ultimate Journey (1994).

The Monroe Institute[edit]

In 1962 RAM enterprises moved to Virginia, and a few years later changed the corporate name to Monroe Industries. In this location it became active in radio station ownership, cable television, and later in the production and sale of audio cassettes. These cassettes were practical expressions of the discoveries made in the earlier and ongoing corporate research program.

In 1985 the company officially changed its name, once again, to Interstate Industries, Inc. This reflected Monroe’s analogy of how the use of Hemi-Sync serves as a ramp from the “local road” to the “interstate” in allowing people to go “full steam ahead” in the exploration of consciousness, avoiding all of the stops and starts.

The research subsidiary was divested and established as an independent non-profit organization, The Monroe Institute, later in 1985. Interstate Industries, Inc. remains a privately held company, now doing business as Monroe Products. His daughter, Laurie Monroe, continued her father’s program until her death in 2006. Under the current direction of another of Monroe’s daughters, Maria Monroe Whitehead, Monroe’s stepson, A. J. Honeycutt, and Teresa West, president of Monroe Products, the company’s objective is to continue to expand the Hemi-Sync line of products and their benefits into markets worldwide.

The Monroe Institute (TMI) is a nonprofit education and research organization devoted to the exploration of human consciousness, based in Faber, Virginia, United States.^[9] Upwards of 20,000 people are estimated to have attended TMI’s residential Gateway program during its first thirty years.^[10] TMI claims a policy of no dogma or bias with respect to belief system, religion, political or social stance. The institute is housed in several buildings on 300 acres (1.2 km²) of land south of Charlottesville, Virginia, USA.

In 1978, the U.S. military evaluated TMI and arranged to send officers there for OBE training.^[11] In 1983, it sent additional officers.^[12]^[13]

The Institute has an affiliated professional membership, and also publishes scientific papers on a subset of its own studies of altered states of consciousness.^[14]

Coverage[edit]

In 1994, a front-page article in The Wall Street Journal reported confirmation from the former director of the Intelligence and Security Command of the U.S. Army sending personnel to the institute. It also stated the opinion of the head of the Zen Buddhist temple in Vancouver British Columbia that “Gateway students can reach meditation states in a week that took [me] 30 years of sitting”.^[15]

A reporter for The Hook, weekly newspaper for Charlottesville, Virginia, who visited The Monroe Institute said, “…with a few exceptions, the only ‘normal’ people with whom I could fully identify were the trainers, who seemed remarkably well-grounded for people whose day-to-day experiences include astral projection and disembodied spirits”.^[16]

The reporter also concluded that “there is something significant being developed at the Institute. Whether it’s just a brilliant guided meditation complete with trance-inducing stereoscopic sound, or a doorway to a world of spirit entities, I cannot say”.^[16]

Hemi-Sync[edit]

In 1975, Monroe registered the first of several patents^[17]^[18]^[19] concerning audio techniques designed to stimulate brain functions until the left and right hemispheres became synchronized. Monroe held that this state, dubbed Hemi-Sync (hemispherical synchronization), could be used to promote mental well-being or to trigger an altered state of consciousness. Monroe’s concept was based on an earlier hypothesis known as binaural beats and has since been expanded upon a commercial basis by the self-help industry.^[20]

Hemi-Sync is short for Hemispheric Synchronization, also known as brainwave synchronization. Monroe indicated that the technique synchronizes the two hemispheres of one’s brain, thereby creating a ‘frequency-following response’ designed to evoke certain effects. Hemi-Sync has been used for many purposes, including relaxation and sleep induction, learning and memory aids, helping those with physical and mental difficulties, and reaching altered states of consciousness through the use of sound.

The technique involves using sound waves to entrain brain waves. Wearing headphones, Monroe claimed that brains respond by producing a third sound (called binaural beats) that encouraged various brainwave activity changes.^[16]^[21] In 2002, a University of Virginia presentation at the Society for Psychophysiologial Research examined Monroe’s claim. The presentation demonstrated that EEG changes did not occur when the standard electromagnetic headphones of Monroe’s setup were replaced by air conduction headphones, which were connected to a remote transducer by rubber tubes. This suggests that the basis for the entrainment effects is electromagnetic rather than acoustical.^[22]

Replicated, double-blind, randomized trials on anesthetized patients have found Hemi-Sync effective as a partial replacement for fentanyl during surgery.^[23]^[24] A similar study found it ineffective at replacing propofol, however.^[25]

Bibliography[edit]

Monroe, Robert (1971). Journeys Out of the Body (1st ed.). Garden City, New York: Doubleday. p. 297. ISBN 978-0385008617. OCLC 207277.
Monroe, Robert (1985). Far Journeys (1st ed.). Garden City, New York: Doubleday. p. 290. ISBN 978-0385231824. OCLC 11755227.
Monroe, Robert (1994). Ultimate Journey (1st ed.). Garden City, New York: Doubleday. p. 303. ISBN 978-0385472081. OCLC 28721578.

Background

Robert Allen Monroe was born 30 October 1915 in Lexington, Kentucky, USA1 His father was a college professor and travel entrepreneur, his mother a doctor. His parents freely allowed him to pursue his interests, which included music, drama, trains, cars and aircraft. Later he expressed gratitude that his parents had not given him a strict religious indoctrination which would have been an obstacle to his consciousness explorations.

Monroe took pre-med courses at Ohio State College, switched to mechanical engineering, then dropped out aged seventeen. He turned to the hobo’s life of hitching rides on trains and took odd jobs, including a short stint as a newspaper reporter. After a year he returned to Lexington and re-entered college, where he worked on the college newspaper and radio station, then partnered with his first wife in a brief venture running a theatre company.

Monroe’s university radio experience landed him a job as a radio writer in Cleveland, Ohio, then another in Cincinnati, Ohio, where he learned all aspects of radio production. After a spell as a freelance writer, he got a break when NBC began broadcasting his show Rocky Gordon five days a week, enabling him at age 25 to purchase an airplane. He was then hired by the National Aeronautic Association to produce a weekly radio show on aviation.

Monroe became a major figure in radio in the 1940s and 50s; he produced shows such as Take a Number and Name That Tune, and acquired ownership of numerous radio stations. He was an innovator in sound technology, being one of the first to use magnetic tape.

Out-of-Body-Experiences

Monroe describes the start of his experiences in the first of three books on out-of-body experiences (OBEs), Journeys Out of the Body.2 This occurred the spring of 1958, after he been trying to increase mental retention by listening to a tape while other sensory inputs were minimized: he suffered a severe cramp in the solar plexus which lasted for ten and a half hours. About three weeks later, following a brief sleep, he felt a sensation of being struck by an invisible beam of warm light, which paralyzed him and made his body vibrate violently. He was able to force himself to move after a few seconds.

This happened nine more times over the following six weeks. He then decided not to fight the phenomenon, whatever it was. On one occasion several months later, as the vibration started he pushed his fingers into the rug beneath his bed, and felt them touch the floor, then the ceiling beneath, then water below. The next time the phenomenon occurred, he found himself floating against the ceiling of his bedroom; looking down, he saw himself sleeping in his bed next to his wife.

As Monroe became more able to control this movement, he travelled further and was able to verify events he had seen while in the out-of-body state. Many such accounts are described in his three books.

A few months after the onset of the phenomenon, Monroe suffered a heart attack and spent three weeks in hospital. During this time, his wife made copies of his notes and gave them to parapsychologist Andrija Puharich, who mentioned them in a book. However, Puharich had misunderstood the experiences to be the result of an addiction to glue-sniffing, and though a pseudonym had been used, Monroe’s reputation was damaged.

In the early 1960s, Monroe lost two close friends to death, and experimented to see if he might contact them in an out-of-body state. He reported that he visited and communicated with the spirit of one and also saw the other.

In the mid-1960s, Puharich introduced Monroe to parapsychologist Charles Tart, who had just received his PhD and had developed an interest in altered states of consciousness. Monroe participated in a series of tests supervised by Tart in which subjects who were able to move out of body at will were challenged to read numbers that were not visible from the bed where they lay. He did not succeed at this, although he had an experience that included veridical elements, as described by Tart.3

After the publication of Monroe’s first book in 1971, he and his third wife Nancy (née Penn) moved to an upscale property in Whistlefield, Virginia, where he built a small research laboratory. Having experimented with ‘sleep-learning’ through aural stimulus during sleep, Monroe now sought a sound technology that would stimulate OBEs. He had little success until one of his scientists came across a magazine article about binaural beats, the sound fluctuations that result when two slightly-different tones are heard in the ears. Monroe’s research team created audiotapes with binaural beats at the low frequencies that correspond to brainwave frequency at altered states of consciousness. At certain frequencies the right and left hemispheres synchronized, and experiment showed this did indeed produce OBEs.

Interest in this technique burgeoned, and Monroe decided to abandon his career in radio and TV, selling off the last of his interests. In 1975, he received the first of several patents for what would come to be called Hemi-Sync technology.4 The first Gateway program for personal consciousness exploration was held in 1977 with forty participants.

As interest grew, in 1977 he renamed his organization The Monroe Institute and moved it to a larger property, offering programs on an variety of specialized topics.

Joe McMoneagle, a leading remote viewer in the US Army’s Star Gate program, participated in a Gateway course in 1982, finding that it improved his preparation time for viewing and made his results more reliable. He later married Monroe’s stepdaughter Nancy ‘Scooter’ Lea, who became a key figure in the growth of TMI, serving as director from 1983 until 1991, when she fell out with Monroe.

Monroe’s wife Nancy died in 1992. He described having twice to visit her in the afterlife, but was so upset by the experience that he quit OBEs altogether. His physical and mental health deteriorated, a cause of his estrangement from Lea. He died on 17 March 1995, aged 79, having reconciled with her and with his stepdaughter Laurie.

Biographer Bayard Stockton identified three three important strands in Monroe’s life:

a search for his identity, which Stockton wrote was ‘incredibly expensive, exhausting, frightening, lonely, selfish – and beneficial’
a pragmatic approach by which ‘he helped to de-mystify what others refer to as the occult, the supernatural or supernormal, even the metaphysical, for many other people’
the introduction of ‘a potent new technology in some branches of medicine, in education … and, conceivably, in business … his tools-of-the-mind may be far more useful than has heretofore been suspected.’5

Monroe’s Cosmology

Monroe’s descriptions of what he witnessed during OBEs are so prolific, complex and various that they defy summarization. The best sources are his books, which distill the notes of hundreds of experiences that occurred over a period of 35 years.

In Journeys Out of the Body, Monroe categorized his destinations into three ‘locales’, and calculated the percentage of his visits spent in each:

Locale I (31%): the material world, the world represented to us by our physical senses, containing no strange beings, events or places. All veridical information is gathered here as it can be confirmed by others in the material world.
Locale II (59.5%): a non-material environment with unknown bounds, which contains all aspects of what are known as heaven and hell, apparent physical spaces and objects, and entities with whom communication is possible. Measurement of time or space is irrelevant, and thought, however much influenced by unrepressed emotion, instantly creates one’s reality. In OBEs, one tends to be drawn to this locale.
Locale III (8.9%): an apparently parallel material world, different from ours in technology and social customs.

Monroe later simplified this schema to two categories: ‘local traffic’ or places nearby (that is, in the material world), and ‘interstate’ or highway,6 meaning places more distant and immaterial.

Monroe did not refer either to an immortal soul or to reincarnation, but was certain of survival beyond physical death: in the OBE state he met deceased persons and revisited apparent previous lives of his own. His cosmology includes heaven or hell only as part of what he called ‘the belief system territories’,7 in which strong believers receive rewards or penalties according to their beliefs. He felt that it was possible for human minds to refuse to see or accept that they have left a body, and therefore be ‘unable to free themselves from the ties of the earth life system,’8 remaining stuck in limbo until they realize their situation.

Hemi-Sync Technology

Hemi-Sync is fully explained by TMI researcher F Holmes Atwater in a paper published by the Journal for Scientific Exploration,9 and in more accessible terms in a 2007 biography of Monroe by Ronald Russell.10 Atwater writes: ‘individuals in an environment of restricted stimulation willfully focus attention on a combination of multiplexed audio binaural beats that are mixed with music, pink sound,11 and/or assorted natural sounds. In most cases the process also includes breathing exercises, guided relaxation, affirmation, and visualization’.12

The binaural beats cause the brainwaves to match their frequency, Atwater writes, and this can be measured by electroencephalography, regulating neuronal impulses to produce a desired state of consciousness, as attested by thousands of TMI clients. He cites scientific studies that show it promotes sensory integration, relaxation, meditation, stress reduction, pain management, improved sleep, health care, enriched learning and enhanced memory, creativity, remote viewing, telepathy and OBEs.13

How the binaural beats create altered states remains unknown. One study showed that the usual EEG alterations do not appear when the sound is conveyed by air-conduction headphones rather than the usual electromagnetic headphones, suggesting an electromagnetic rather than acoustic causation.14

Legacy

Numerous readers of Monroe’s books have expressed gratitude to him for giving voice and context to their own experiences and for providing reassurance that OBEs are normal and not indicative of mental illness.

The Monroe Institute continues under current president and executive director Nancy McMoneagle, offering residential and online programs created by Monroe and others that use the Hemi-Sync technology. These are now available in the USA, Canada, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Greece, Belgium and Romania. From the initiatory program Gateway Voyage, they diverge into various topics including healing, psychokinesis, remote viewing, lucid dreaming, near-death experiences and facing death. See www.monroeinstitute.org for information including articles, ebooks, audio and video. Hemi-Sync meditations for applications such as improving sleep and weight loss can be purchased either in MP3 or CD format at the website www.hemi-sync.com .

Video

Robert Monroe’s Out of Body Experiences (Monroe in 1992 recounts events leading to the foundation of The Monroe Institute -1 hour).

Monroe explains his first OOBE on WPIX 5 (San Francisco) c 1979.

Monroe’s welcome talk to a Gateway Voyage group, filmed in the 1970s.

Monroe Institute YouTube Channel.

Hemi-Sync Meditation Videos.

Monroe’s Wednesday talk for Gateway Voyage participants (after they had first experienced other realities), filmed in 1990.

Literature

Atwater, F.H. (1997) Accessing anomalous states of consciousness with a binaural beat technology. Journal of Scientific Exploration 1/3, 263-274.

Atwater, F.H. (2007). The Hemi-Sync Process. Appendix in Russell (2007), 357-68.

Monroe, R. (1971). Journeys Out of the Body. New York: Doubleday.

Russell, Ronald (2007). The Journey of Robert Monroe: From Out-of-Body Explorer to Consciousness Pioneer. Newburyport, Massachusetts, USA: Hampton Roads Publishing Company.

Stockton, B. (1989). Catapult: The Biography of Robert A. Monroe. Marceline, Missouri, USA: Walsworth Publishing Co.

Stone, C., Thomas, P., McClain-Furmanski, D., and Horton, J.E. (2002). EEG oscillations and binaural beat as compared with electromagnetic headphones and air-conduction headphone. Presented at 42nd Society for Psychophysiological Research Conference, 2-6 October 2002, Washington, D.C. [Published informally in the comment section of a post in The Daily Grail.]

Tart, C.T. (1998). Six Studies of Out-of-Body Experiences. Journal of Near-Death Studies 17/2, 73-99.

Endnotes

1.Russell (2007), from which all details in this entry are drawn except where otherwise noted.
2.Monroe (1971), from which all details in this and the following two paragraphs are drawn unless otherwise noted.
3.Tart (1998), 82-7 (Third Study).
4.For patent details see here.
5.Stockton (1989), cited in Russell (2007).
6.In this metaphor, ‘interstate’ refers to the American Interstate system, a nationwide network of divided highways designed for fast automotive travel.
7.Russell (2007), 312.
8.Russell (2007), 312.
9.Atwater (1997).
10.Atwater (2007).
11.Pink sound is defined by Atwater (1997) thus: ‘ “white noise” (like the hiss sound from a television after a station has stopped transmitting) which has been equalized for human hearing’. 263.
12.Atwater (1997), 263.
13.Atwater (1997), 264.
14.Stone, Thomas, McClain-Furmanski, & Horton (2002).

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Out-of-Body Experiences; Virtus, a truly Aryan religion which does not insult your intelligence

And the religion Virtus is based on actual experiences, not some holy book written 2,000 years ago by jews, and even if they had been Aryans, the writers still were people we have never met, and they were telling us all about a man whom we never met and who, apparently, wrote nothing down.

…..A down-to-earth pioneer in OBE research

Robert Monroe

Biography[edit]

First out-of-body experiences[edit]

The Monroe Institute[edit]

Coverage[edit]

Hemi-Sync[edit]

Bibliography[edit]

See also[edit]

Robert Monroe

Background

Out-of-Body-Experiences

Monroe’s Cosmology

Hemi-Sync Technology

Legacy

Video

Archive

Literature

Endnotes

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Robert A. Monroe
Born	Robert Allan Monroe October 30, 1915 Indiana, United States
Died	March 17, 1995 (aged 79)
Education	Ohio State University (B.A.)
Occupation(s)	Radio broadcaster Researcher
Organization(s)	Monroe Products and The Monroe Institute (founder), Jefferson Cable Corporation (founder)
Website	www.monroeinstitute.org