Review of Journeys Out of the Body by Robert Monroe

Book a Flight Outside Yourself

Journeys Out of the Body by Robert Monroe is a book that came at the perfect time for me. Readers of the Ship’s Log know that last year some serious health problems came along and turned my life upside down. I was in a black depression long before cancer came along to make things even blacker. Fortunately, thanks to some really great doctors and some truly unexplained events, I was given another shot at this thing we call life. It had become clear that I could either continue to ride my broken life down or throw it all away and start over. So that’s what I did. Sold my share of a successful business that had eaten my life and fed my self-destructive impulses. Completely changed my diet, lost weight, dusted off the pile of Japanese shred guitars that had been sitting in the closet for too long, embraced synchronicity and the path of the shaman, and threw myself to the winds of the universe.

The Gateway Experience from The Monroe Institute was one of those things that I had always wanted to try and had never gotten to. A bucket list item if you will. I’m still in a lot of pain and sleep doesn’t come easily most nights. I’ve got a serious back problem on top of what has already happened to me and the idea of falling down another anesthesia-related black hole is not very appealing at this point. So Hemi-Sync seemed like the perfect answer for me. A way to get some sleep….and maybe something more. The fact that The Gateway Experience was product 122 on The Monroe Institute website certainly helped confirm my suspicions.

Shortly after I had started working my way through The Gateway Experience I sent an email to Crossroad Press about the bibliography for my review of Ingo Swann’s book Penetration. During that conversation, the topic of Robert Monroe’s books came up, and it reminded me that Journeys Out of the Body had been sitting in my Audible library for a long time and all I had to do was press play. At this point, my brain still hadn’t made the remote viewing OOBE connection. As Robert Anton Wilson would say, Coincidence Control was working overtime, it even had a pink light on the cover. I am glad I was aware enough to follow along because this particular avenue of exploration proved quite fruitful. It gave me some powerful tools to put myself back together again.

Modest Beginnings

In the foreword of the book, Robert Monroe described himself as a reasonably orthodox business executive. From what I can tell, he was a rather remarkable man before he ever became interested in the power of sound to affect consciousness. You can read his official bio on the Monroe Institute website. He certainly was a successful man before 1956 but nothing to suggest that he was going to profoundly change the world we live in. Because that’s what he did. He gave us the keys to something extraordinary.

In 1956 his firm began researching the effects of sound patterns on consciousness and sleep learning. This would eventually lead to the enhanced binaural beat guidance technology we know as Hemi-Sync. Robert Monroe often used himself as a test subject. Two years later he would find himself embroiled in the out of body experiences detailed in his first book Journeys Out of the Body. I’m still trying to process this book and its profound implications. There is so much information to be had and so many big questions that at times it can be difficult to grok. Here is a good primer video to help the unfamiliar reader to better understand Robert Monroe.

As he says in the video, during his early sound research he “evidently absorbed something” that led to his experiences which were terrifying at first. He met those experiences head-on. Determined to learn more, he began to methodically document his experiences and develop the technology. He seemed to me to be a very precise and analytical man and at points, this slowed down the book a little bit for me. But at the same time, his thorough approach is exactly what is needed when we are dealing with something that is difficult to measure. He left no stone unturned in his quest to understand what was happening to him and he wasn’t afraid to approach the subject matter scientifically.

From Man or Beyond?

The monitored lab experiments provided some remarkable results. He is able to see people he shouldn’t be able to see. During one test doctors visually observe a heat wave-like distortion over his body when he leaves it. And the pinching episodes provide some disturbing questions about the world we think we live in. If a mark can be left on a human body by another human in astral form then we aren’t in Kansas anymore, Toto. The sexual interactions he mentions reminds me very much of the sexual encounters mentioned in The Super Natural: A New Vision of the Unexplained by Whitley Strieber and Jeffery J. Kripal.

One of the focuses of this website is trying to figure out what is happening with all the people that encounter these types of energies. Some of the noteworthy ones: Robert Monroe, Philip K. Dick, Robert Anton Wilson, Whitley Strieber, Alan Watts, Timothy Leary, John C. Lilly, Aliester Crowley, Jack Parsons, L. Ron Hubbard, William S. Burroughs, and John Keel. I call them Pink Lighters because many report being struck by or being in the vicinity of strange lights along with complex information exchanges and bizarre synchronicities. The people listed above have had dramatic and powerful experiences that fundamentally changed our concepts of human consciousness and the world we live in. And it doesn’t seem to me to be happening by accident. It seems like a force or forces is driving it. Remember when he said he “absorbed” something? Here is a quote from the foreword of the book:

It has been stated that JOURNEYS was a book ahead of its time, that serious interest in the type of material it contains is only now reaching significant levels. This may have been true, yet what was it that precipitated such changes in a mere fouryears? I like to think a chicken-or-the-egg question is appropriate, that this book was and is part of a trigger or catalytic process that is now in chain reaction. This process states simply; it’s O.K. to have strange experiences, to consider seriously as natural those events and activities beyond the presentability of our physical sciences to replicate or measure. Existence beyond death is one of these.

Much like OOBE experiences, this idea is also difficult to measure. In a way, I’m doing the same thing Robert Monroe was doing when he turned himself into the research subject. Trying to figure out what is going on by immersing myself in as much of the information that appears to be coming from these energies as possible. If you watched the video above you’ll know that Robert Monroe decided his goal was to become one of those energies himself. What an amazing man. His breakthroughs all those years ago are improving my life and the lives of many others still today.

Who Put the Resonance in my Synchronicity?

There were a few things in this book that stopped me in my tracks. A good friend of mine once told me about their significant other waking up to see a hole under their bed. Monroe talks in the book about his investigations of a hole he found when he turned around inside his body 180 degrees. He details at length what he found reaching into that hole. He found a whole other world in there, much like our own:

Locale III, in summary, proved to be a physical-matter world almost identical to our own. The natural environment is the same. There are trees, houses, cities, people, artifacts, and all the appurtenances of a reasonably civilized society. There are homes, families, businesses, and people work for a living. There are roads on which vehicles travel. There are railroads and trains.

Now for the ‘almost.’ At first, the thought was that Locale III was no more than some part of our world unknown to me and those others concerned. It had all the appearances of being so. However, more careful study showed that it can be neither the present nor the past of our physical-matter world.

I have traveled many times in my sleep to a place like this. I know others whose experience mirror my own. We call it The Other Place. It has a post-apocalyptic feel to it, there is the sense that something bad has happened there, much of the locations are the same but things are much different. There are fewer people wandering around and vehicles are a rarity. I’ve spent a fair amount of time wandering around old abandoned shopping centers and other similar locations. But I never really knew what to make of it and the last thing I expected was to stumble into it in Journeys Out of the Body.

One evening I woke up in what appeared to be my workplace but the interior was far different. There were a couple of people there but when I tried to talk to them they didn’t seem to hear me. I remember panicking at this point and then wandering over to the window. To my surprise, there was huge highway east of the building that isn’t there in our world. A giant bus that was two of our lanes wide was driving up the hill that exists in both places. The bus looked a lot like an old paddle steamboat with railings and banners on the back. It was an amazing sight. It blew my mind to learn that Robert Monroe had been visiting this place long before I was born.

The streets and roads are different, again principally in size. The ‘lane’ on which vehicles travel is nearly twice as wide as ours. Their version of our automobile is much larger. Even the smallest has a single bench seat that will hold five to six people abreast. The standard unit has only one fixed seat, that of the driver. Others are much like living-room chairs, placed around a compartment that measures some fifteen by twenty feet. Wheels are used, but without inflated tires.

This visit also involved a curious synchronicity a few days later when I picked up the local newspaper. The answer just drifts out of the sky and lands perfectly in my lap. There was a story about a Native American burial ground that is about a mile away from my workplace. If that burial ground hadn’t been there they would have run the expressway next to the building exactly as it was in The Other Place. I don’t know what it all means but there must be a resonance between the two places somehow. Speaking of synchronicity, I found this today while finishing off this section of the book review, which has left me with some furious head scratching trying to understand how all of this happens the way that it does.

Strange Fruit is Delicious

Reading this book while simultaneously working through The Gateway Experience has been extremely helpful. I plan to read the rest of the books in the near future because the first book has already provided an excellent roadmap to understanding the experience. Hearing him explain what is happening in his own words helped me understand the process. The results so far, for me, have been extremely powerful. After all that I have been through, I cannot begin to explain to you how liberating it was to take all my problems, put them in the energy conversion box, and then take them back out to examine and release. I had to let go of who I was to save myself if that makes senses, and Robert Monroe was the hand on the rudder of my rebirth.

Learning to remote view was another thing on my bucket list. I had never put OOBE and remote viewing together in my mind despite the fact that Project Stargate alumnus Joe McMoneagle’s wife Nancy helped Robert Monroe start the Institute and was its director for a number of years. What started happening pretty quickly was I began dropping into the right mental state for images, impressions, and messages to start coming. I was able to ask questions, shut my self off if you will, and then get the answer. Psychic information was received. I’m not sure what else to call it.

What I can tell you is that I’m sleeping much better and the regular meditation is helping me be in the now. Meditation doesn’t even seem like a big enough word to describe the experience. Right before writing this section of the book review I dropped into focus 10 for a few minutes and the vibration he describes came on very strong this time. My mind was flooded with images and an overwhelming feeling of joy. It’s hard to even put into words. Thank you, Robert Monroe, for helping me fix my life. I hope to find you out there somewhere in the sea of the great beyond.

Journeys Out of the Body by Robert Monroe is another fantastic audiobook from Crossroad Press. Narrator Kevin Pierce did an excellent job capturing the author and making it feel like Robert Monroe is right there reading to you. If you want to support this website can be purchased directly from Amazon here. I hope this book review helped you somehow. I’ll leave you with the affirmation you need to memorize for The Gateway Experience. It will serve you well.