Robert Monroe was an American businessman who conducted a systematic investigation of out-of-body travel1, later founding The Monroe Institute2. He wrote the book Journeys Out of the Body3, which argues that a person is more than their physical self4. By the time of writing, his research spanned hundreds of experiments carried out over twelve years and was still continuing5.
Monroe found no physiological cause for the condition6 and began experimenting with it, keeping notes of each event7 — what the record frames as the beginning stage of his out-of-body research. Wary that discussing the phenomenon with his psychologist and psychiatrist friends would see him classified as their patient8, his only outlet, through occasional meetings, was Foster Bradshaw9, who lived with Mrs. Bradshaw about eight kilometres from Monroe’s office10 and who suggested that what Monroe was experiencing was astral projection11; Monroe’s wife, for her part, accepted his condition reluctantly, having no other real choice12. Monroe said he preferred the terms Second Body and Second State to “astral”, because he did not know what the word meant13. Within the Second State he distinguished Locale I — people and places that actually exist in the material world at the moment of the experiment14 — from Locale II, which he held was the natural environment of the Second Body15. He held that The Barrier was the same mechanism that blots out the memory of a dream, or of a Locale II visit, on waking16.
In what the record frames as the middle stage of his research, Monroe pursued experiments intended to produce evidence verifiable by ordinary means. In an early instance, the 1959-05-05 three-way device experience, he floated up, rolled in the air, and dove through the floor to find himself standing in an unfinished house overlooking a valley17. He considered the only results provable by standard confirmation to come from travel via the Second Body in Locale I18, and found that a theory that he was merely fantasising these visits, drawing on knowledge he already held of the person concerned, was undermined when several of his reported conversations produced information known only to the other party19. During an out-of-body visit to Agnew Bahnson on 1959-03-05, he reported seeing a boy tossing a baseball, a man loading an awkward device into a car, and people at a table dealing large white cards20. Monroe recorded that Bahnson’s son later confirmed he had been tossing a baseball on his way to school at that time21, that Bahnson confirmed he had been loading a Van de Graaff generator into his car22, and that Mrs. Bahnson confirmed that, for the first time in two years, she had handed out large white envelopes with the morning mail23. During the out-of-body visit to R.W. dated 1960-10-10, Monroe pinched her side to test whether she would recall the contact24; she cried out at the time25, and when questioned days later showed bruises at exactly the spot he had pinched26, prompting Monroe to apologise for pinching so hard27. Monroe himself assessed six details of the episode — the indoor location, the number of people present, their description, their actions, the acknowledgement of the pinch, and the physical marks — as matching between his impression and the confirmed facts28, though he categorised the episode overall as an indeterminate case involving precognition or autosuggestion, noting that some prior knowledge of R.W.’s general whereabouts had been present29.
Jacques Vallée, describing Monroe as a psychic experimenter, wrote that he reported a beam-of-light phenomenon during his investigations of out-of-body consciousness30. Monroe recorded that on 1960-09-09, while lying on his bed, he felt bathed in and transfixed by a powerful beam seeming to come from the north, about 30 degrees above the horizon31, leaving him feeling completely powerless, as though in the personal presence of a very strong force32, and perceiving that the force carried an intelligence beyond his comprehension that searched every memory in his mind33. He reported the same probing beam recurring from the same angle on 1960-09-1634, and on 1960-09-30 experienced the same pattern again, this time perceiving beings that seemed to soar up into the sky as he pleaded after them35. Monroe concluded that the intelligence behind the beam was impersonal and cold, and speculated that such visits could be the basis for humanity’s religious beliefs36; he wrote that he cried afterwards and concluded that the God of his childhood and of organised religion was not as he had been taught to worship37.
In what the record frames as the later stage of his research, Monroe undertook a psycho-physiological experiment at Topeka VA Hospital, driving approximately 110 kilometres from Richmond, Virginia, to arrive at an electroencephalography laboratory at 9:00 p.m. on 1966-07-19, for the session logged as EEG Experiment #EEG-538. A technician attached electrodes while he reclined on a cot in a semi-darkened room39; after roughly forty-five minutes, a fractional relaxation technique had failed to bring full relaxation, so he broke to smoke a cigarette before trying again40, then attempted a “roll-out” separation, felt himself rolling off the cot, and braced for a fall to the floor that never came41, before floating down and feeling himself pass through the EEG wires42. During the experience he reported seeing the technician together with an unidentified curly-haired man; afterwards she confirmed the man was her husband43, whose presence Monroe had not known about beforehand and which he considered the only supporting evidence beyond whatever might appear on the EEG recording itself44. According to Journeys Out of the Body, the technician confirmed that Monroe had not known her husband was present and had not met him previously45.
Monroe also corresponded directly with others seeking the technique, writing to Richard Gordon to describe his out-of-body experiences and his method for leaving the physical body — a letter Mrs. Gordon read to Gordon repeatedly, at his own request, while he was in hospital46. His influence extended into US government-linked remote-viewing research: the remote viewer Joseph McMoneagle came to regard Monroe as the one person he trusted who could control out-of-body experiences47, and after attending a Gateway Voyage seminar at The Monroe Institute in Virginia in the autumn of 198348, worked in Monroe’s laboratory for close to fourteen months, eventually gaining a measure of control over his own experiences, though not as well as Monroe himself49, which he found brought a substantial increase in control over his separate remote-viewing ability50. Ed Dames later used Monroe’s programme on altered states and out-of-body experiences to evaluate potential recruits for Project Stargate51. The author Whitley Strieber never met Monroe himself but attended a Gateway programme at the institute52.