The Journey of Robert Monroe

Books by Ronald Russell

Focusing the Whole Brain (ed.) The Vast Enquiring Soul Using the Whole Brain (ed.) Swimming for Life: The Therapy of Swimming (and twelve other titles)

FROM OUT-OF-BODY EXPLORER TO CONSCIOUSNESS PIONEER

Ronald Russell

The Journey of Robert Monroe From Out-of-Body Explorer to Consciousness Pioneer

Ronald Russell Foreword by Charles Tart

Cover design by Jane Hagaman

Hampton Roads Publishing Company, Inc. 1125 Stoney Ridge Road • Charlottesville, VA 22902 434-296-2772 • fax: 434-296-5096 e-mail: [email protected] • www.hrpub.com

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Russell, Ronald, 1924- The journey of Robert Monroe: from out-of-body explorer to consciousness pioneer / Ronald Russell; foreword by Charles Tart. p. cm. Summary: “The phrase ‘out-of-body experience’ is

widely used today because of Robert Monroe's courage to publicly recount his own experiences back in the 1970s. This compelling biography delves into the private world of Robert Monroe, the pioneer of consciousness research, tracing his journey from a New York radio engineer to the founding of The Monroe Institute”--Provided by publisher. Includes index. ISBN 978-1-57174-533-0 (alk. paper) 1. Monroe, Robert A. 2. Parapsychology--Biography. 3. Psychics-- Biography. 4. Consciousness. 5. Astral projection. I. Title. BF1027.M65R87 2007 133.9092--dc22 [B] 2007009146

ISBN 978-1-57174-533-0 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed on acid-free paper in the United States

In memoriam

Robert A. Monroe October 30, 1915-March 17, 1995

Laurie A. Monroe April 3, 1951-December 18, 2006

CONTENTS

Foreword, by Charles T. Tart, PhD

Acknowledgments

INTRODUCTION Flying Free

CHAPTER 1 Young Bob

CHAPTER 2 Fame and Fortune

CHAPTER 3 Out of the Body!

CHAPTER 4 The Whistlefield Years

CHAPTER 5 Exploring Within and Without

CHAPTER 6 On Roberts Mountain

CHAPTER 7 Far Journeys

CHAPTER 8 The Supernatural Fisherman

CHAPTER 9 Ultimate Journey and Lifeline

CHAPTER 10 End Game (1)

CHAPTER 11 End Game (2)

CHAPTER 12 Legacy

CHAPTER 13 Robert Monroe and the Exploration of Consciousness

APPENDIX The Hemi-Sync Process, by F. Holmes “Skip” Atwater

Index

FOREWORD

Ron Russell has written the definitive biography of Robert A. Monroe.

But why would anyone want to read a book about Monroe? Who was he, anyway, and what did he do that we should care about?

For untold thousands of people, the answer is obvious: his work and writings have confirmed their sanity and opened their lives to some marvelous adventures and learnings. But if you're not among the readers of his books (you will be after you read this book) or a graduate of his training programs, why should you care about Monroe's life and work?

I will answer as a basic human being, someone who puzzles over life, wonders what its purpose is, tries to live in a sensible way, and faces my own and my loved ones’ inevitable death. This will bother almost all of my scientist colleagues, but it gets right down to essentials.

1. You have a soul.

2. The highest scientific authorities have repeatedly told you there is no such thing as a soul.

3. In fact, they think you are stupid or crazy to even think about such a nonsensical idea as a soul.

4. Most of us have suffered and continue to suffer from having our soul, our spiritual nature, denied.

5. Bob Monroe was a sane, down-to-earth, solid, and successful American who discovered his soul and found ways to work with it that benefit all of us wounded people. He was not some arcane, distant historical figure, but someone who speaks our language.

6. A better understanding of Monroe's life, both his talents and his shortcomings, can stimulate and inspire our own personal understandings of our souls and our goals.

At the end of this foreword I will say it again in more scientifically nuanced language, but that's the gist of why you would want to read a book about Monroe's life.

Robert A. Monroe. Those of us who knew him as a friendly and informal person called him Bob. You'll learn who he was in fascinating detail in this book, but basically Bob embodied a quintessential rags-to-riches American success story, going from young man bumming around as a hobo during the Depression, to successful New York producer of radio shows

(remember The Shadow? That was one of Bob's productions!), to businessman. (He owned the cable TV business for a moderate-size city, Charlottesville, Virginia, when I first met him.)

In spite of his no-nonsense, practical, indeed irreligious attitudes (he was repelled by the hypocrisy of so many “religious” people), Bob was “drafted” by what he realized, many years later, was a “Higher Power.” At the height of his successful career, he started having what we technically call out-of-body experiences (OBEs, an abbreviation I had the honor of coining). In ordinary language, he experienced leaving his physical body behind and traveling places as a disembodied mind or soul. He worried, as any “normal” American would do, that he was going crazy. When his doctor couldn't “cure” him, he gave in to reality and started exploring his OBEs rather than rejecting them.

Bob was obsessed for years with the question of whether his experiences were real, as you or I would be if OBEs happened to us. Was his mind really traveling away from his body, or was this just some vivid, crazy kind of imagination or dream? As his experiences accumulated, he found that “real” was a tricky idea. His OBEs were sometimes partly “real”—in the sense of accurately giving him information about what was happening at a distance in the ordinary world—but there were a lot more places he visited, often more interesting places, than the ordinary world. What kind of reality did they have? Why was it happening to him? What, if anything, was he supposed to do with OBEs and the knowledge he was gaining from them?

My wife, Judy, and I met Bob in the fall of 1965, shortly after we had moved to Charlottesville so that I could take up a research position at the University of Virginia. I had looked forward to this meeting for several years, having heard about Bob's OBEs through parapsychologist Andrija Puharich (who wrote about him while protecting his identity by calling him Bob Rame). As you'll learn in this book, Puharich's writing was actually rather inaccurate from Bob's perspective and angered him, as it took some isolated instances where exposure to glue fumes preceded an OBE and made it sound like Bob was a habitual glue-sniffer. This was not a socially desirable role to be portrayed in, given the antidrug hysteria of the times—to put it mildly! Bob said nothing about this anger at the time I met him, though.

OBEs had long fascinated me and I had already done some research on them. I expected to meet an unusual person that I would be professionally interested in. Little did I know that this professional interest aspect would be a small part of a deep friendship that would span the next thirty years.

My interest in unusual areas like parapsychology, altered states of consciousness, and the nature of the mind was by choice, having been fascinated by them since I was a teenager. Bob's interest in these areas had been forced on him by his OBEs. Because our culture was ignorant, pig-headedly ignorant, prejudiced (“they must be crazy!”), and suppressive about these areas of life, Bob had been struggling to answer his questions

pretty much in lonely isolation. But by 1965, cultural changes were occurring, the blossoming of what was later called New Age culture. Bob and I had many exciting conversations as we saw the world starting to open up to spiritual realities.

We discussed questions such as how we could learn more about OBEs, both scientifically and spiritually. What did they mean? Was there a soul? What did a word like soul mean? What parts of religion were about great truths, what parts were misleading? How could you teach other people to experience OBEs for themselves, and thus see for themselves what was real? How could the insights of spiritual experiences lead to a better world?

Since I'm a scientist, specifically a psychologist, by training, it's natural for me to ask “How do Bob's experiences, observations, and ideas fit into our official knowledge systems of religion and science?” In a formal sense, Bob was neither “religious” nor a “scientist,” yet in the highest sense, he was, deeply.

If “religious” is taken to mean dogmatic and narrow aspects of religion that are, unfortunately, all too common in our world—then “religious” certainly didn't describe Bob. But insofar as “religious” means trying to fathom the meaning of life and act with integrity and kindness along the way, Bob was deeply religious. Indeed, Bob had many experiences that would traditionally be classified as mystical, the kind of deeply moving revelations that people easily get overly attached to and inflated by, and which can lead the less

mature to an attitude of “I know the truth and you don't, so just believe me and do what I say!” Not Bob. He always kept a light touch about his experiences, valuing them, trying to share them, trying to help others experience them too, yet staying open to learning from life and not getting carried away by them. People tried to place him on a pedestal and make a guru out of him, but he strongly resisted this.

And if “scientist” is taken to mean an establishment authority figure who explains away all the spiritual aspects of life, and insists on rightness because of formal credentials—and there are all too many dogmatic people like that—Bob wasn't a scientist. But in the best sense of “scientist”—someone who is always curious about reality and is willing to keep testing ideas and beliefs, to experiment—Bob was a scientist. I have always thought of him as a colleague in my investigations of OBEs, of the nature of the mind, and of the meaning of life.

Bob's first attempt to share what he'd learned from his OBEs was his 1971 book Journeys Out of the Body. He had mixed feelings about publishing it. On the one hand, he knew that a lot of people had also experienced OBEs and were worried that this was a sign of insanity or something, and his book could reassure such people. On the other hand, Charlottesville was a conservative Southern community. Would he be shunned as some kind of crazy or heretic? When we first met, this possible rejection wasn't a real problem yet (and indeed, fortunately, never became a major problem), for while he'd

hired an agent to find a publisher for his book, the agent hadn't had a single response from a publisher (I wondered, had he even tried?) in the year he'd had the manuscript.

I was incensed at this, both for realistic reasons and from the impatience of youth: the manuscript was fascinating and important! So I got a copy from Bob and sent if off to Bill Whitehead, my editor at Doubleday. I don't think Bill was particularly interested in OBEs, but Doubleday had done well with the paperback edition of my Altered States of Consciousness book, so, as a favor to me, he took Bob's manuscript home to glance at after dinner.

Bill found he was still reading, fascinated, at three in the morning! At this point he forced himself to put the manuscript down, for, as he told me, he had reached the chapter on how to have an OBE and he was afraid it might work if he read it! He'd absorbed quite enough mind-expanding ideas for one night.

I wrote an introduction and Doubleday published Journeys Out of the Body. It's still in print today and has been a major source of relief to people who have had OBEs and worried about their sanity, as well as a contribution to the scientific literature on OBEs.

Bob devoted the last thirty years of his life to sharing what he had learned with others, while he kept experimenting and learning himself. The Monroe Institute and its training programs are as great a testament to his competence and kindness as could be

given. Many people who have taken courses at the Institute have had deep experiences that have markedly enhanced the spiritual aspects of their lives. His three books have had, and continue to have, an even wider reach.

I began this foreword with some provocative statements. For those who prefer more nuanced scientific language, I will rephrase my points. You can say

1. You have a soul. Or, to sound more scientific, you can say

Human beings, both spontaneously in everyday life and under rigorous laboratory test conditions, have sometimes shown abilities to gather information, communicate, and affect physical reality in ways that go beyond anything that can be reasonably attributed to the physical functioning of the brain or body. While “soul” carries too many untestable metaphysical connotations for scientists, we need to call this “something else” something, and soul is the best word we've got to date.

2. The highest scientific authorities have repeatedly told you there is no such thing as a soul. Or

Almost all prestigious scientists, who carry enormous social authority in our culture, personally subscribe to a philosophy (not a science, a philosophy) of materialism. Nothing is real but physical matter and physical

energies. The concept of a nonmaterial soul is inherently nonsensical to a materialist. (I think it's a serious mistake to confuse philosophy with essential science, but it's very widespread.)

3. In fact, they think you are stupid or crazy to even think about such a nonsensical idea as a soul. Or

Materialistic scientists have a tendency to become arrogant, like successful people in all areas of life, and look down on those who take the idea of souls seriously. At best they see belief in souls as a sign of ignorance or stupidity, at worst as a sign of insanity or a deliberate manipulation of the ignorant by schemers cloaking themselves in the garb of religion.

4. Most of us have suffered and continue to suffer from having our soul, our spiritual nature, denied. Or

From my perspective as a psychologist, people have experiences that are real to them, involving spiritual and psychic concepts like souls or the Divine or the psychic. While a small number of these people may be stupid, ignorant, or crazy (as in any area of life), most of these experiencers are normal or above-normal people. Aside from the scientific, parapsychological evidence that at least some of these experiences are real, it's harmful to anyone to arrogantly and ignorantly invalidate their experience. This needlessly increases the suffering in the world.

There are many ways to understand ourselves better, to learn from our own and others’ experiences rather than invalidating them, and one of the more successful is to hear about things from people like ourselves, people we can identify with, rather than distant authorities who are not like us. When the ideas come with practical methods to check them out—like Monroe's suggestions on how to experience OBEs for yourself—they are even more powerful than just ideas.

6. A better understanding of Monroe's life, both his talents and his shortcomings, can stimulate and inspire our own personal understandings of our souls and our goals. Or

You can learn a lot from Monroe's books, where he does his best to make sense of his OBEs and other spiritual experiences, but all of us have our filters and biases that color our view of reality. Knowing about Monroe's life both enriches and refines our understanding of what he learned from his OBEs.

It's the same thing, either way.

And, as I mentioned at the beginning, Monroe's was a fascinating life, and Ron Russell has done us a great service in relating it in such a detailed and fascinating way.

Charles T. Tart, PhD Berkeley, California December 2006

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This story of the journey of Robert Monroe would have been impossible without the assistance and cooperation of members of his family. I am happy to acknowledge the more than generous help of Laurie Monroe, Nancy (Scooter) McMoneagle and Joe McMoneagle, Penny Holmes, A. J. (Terry) Honeycutt, Lucinda Honeycutt, Emmett and Alice Monroe, Robert Monroe, and Maria Whitehead.

Others who gave most freely of their time and memories were Skip Atwater, Mark Certo, George Durrette, Leslie France, Melissa Jager, Stefano Siciliano, and Rita Warren. I am indebted to Tom Campbell and Rosie McKnight for permission to quote from their published works, and to Jim Beal, Gail Blanchette, Shirley Bliley, Marie Coble, Dr. Al Dahlberg, Ria Erickson, Mike George, Helene Guttman, Ron Harris, Dr. Fowler Jones, Franceen King, Paul King, David Lambert, Chris Lenz, Karen Malik, Darlene Miller, Dr. Suzanne Morris, Justine Owens, PhD, Joseph Chilton Pearce, Ed Pearson, Dr. Rupert Sheldrake, Rev. Shay St. John, Ray Waldkoetter, and Teresa West for their help and information.

I am grateful to Skip Atwater for permission to reprint his authoritative paper on the Hemi-Sync technology, and to Dave Mulvey for his simplified version of the process, to Alan Alger, the Munro/Monroe clan genealogist in the United States, and to Nancy Dorman (and cats) for wonderful hospitality. Professor Joe Felser sharpened my insight into Bob Monroe's philosophy. Three dear friends who in their time contributed in different ways so much to the success of the work of the Institute, Dave Wallis, Martin Warren, and Ruth Domin, are remembered with much affection. I am also greatly indebted to the late Bayard Stockton, who kindly gave me permission to make use of Catapult, his biography of Robert Monroe, published by Donning in 1989.

I have been very fortunate in my editor, Frank DeMarco, and my agent, Barbara Bowen, and am happy to acknowledge their help. My thanks also to Tania Seymour and her colleagues at Hampton Roads Publishing.

Professor Charles Tart was a friend of Bob Monroe for thirty years. This book would not have been complete without his perceptive and informative—and very generous—foreword, for which I am most grateful.

It is to Jill that I owe my greatest debt. Had it not been for her insistence I would never have been to the Institute, never have taken the Gateway or any other program, and never have met Bob and Nancy Monroe. Her patience and perception have guided this book

from the very beginning. And her memory is a lot sharper than mine!

INTRODUCTION

Flying Free

Well, there are two types of deed. One is the physical deed, in which the hero performs a courageous act in battle or saves a life. The other kind is the spiritual deed, in which the hero learns to experience the supernormal range of human spiritual life and then comes back with a message.

—Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth

Bob Monroe was, on the face of it, an unlikely hero. When he set out on his hero's journey he was, as he said of himself, a fairly conventional person: a wealthy businessman with a beautiful wife and an impressive record of achievement in the highly competitive world of radio broadcasting, listed in Who's Who in America, president of this, vice president of that, with a host of opportunities opening before him. Actually, he wasn't all that conventional. His parents, each of them strong characters in their own right, were both members of professions with enough money in hand to help him on his way. Bob, however, chose to take a year off riding the rails as a hobo, then to embark on a series of jobs to pay his own way through college, and after that to share one large room in New York with three would-be actors while he sent off scripts for radio shows, most of which ended up in someone's bin. His great passions, indulged whenever he could,

were flying and driving fast cars. They sound like expensive hobbies, but the aircraft he flew were mostly held together with string and tape and the fast cars he cobbled together himself. And he had one unusual distinction: when he found a girl he liked, he married her. Or so he said.

And then, at the height of his career, it all began to change. He became, of all unlikely things, and by chance rather than by choice, an explorer. The time came when the name of Robert Monroe was no longer associated with mass entertainment but with something quite different: the exploration of human consciousness. Rocky Gordon and High Adventure were long forgotten; now Robert Monroe was the “out-of-body man” or the “astral traveler.” His first book, Journeys Out of the Body, became essential reading for those interested in psychic phenomena, in postdeath survival, in the extraordinary rather than the ordinary, everyday world. Scientists from various disciplines, psychologists, psychiatrists, New Age gurus, journalists, and the merely curious came to visit him in the foothills of Virginia's Blue Ridge, where he built a research laboratory on the grounds of his country home for the furtherance of his explorations. And, as it happened, the influence of certain sound frequencies on human consciousness became the focus of his investigations. He became convinced that focused consciousness contained definitive solutions to the questions arising from human experience.

What began as one man's desire to understand what had happened to himself developed into a research project,

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