Chilluminati Podcast - Episode 287: The Monroe Institute Part 2 - Astral-naut

Episode Date: February 23, 2025

MERCH - http://www.theyetee.com/collections/chilluminati All you lovely people at Patreon! HTTP://PATREON.COM/CHILLUMINATIPOD HelloFresh - http://www.hellofresh.com/hellofreshpodcast Jesse Cox - http://www.youtube.com/jessecox Alex Faciane - http://www.youtube.com/user/superbeardbros Editor - DeanCutty http://www.twitter.com/deancutty Show art by - https://twitter.com/JetpackBraggin http://www.instagram.com/studio_melectro SOURCE -  https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/cia-rdp96-00788r001700210016-5.pdf https://www.monroeinstitute.org/pages/general-info https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/900681223

Yaw yaw yaw! Yaw yaw yaw yaw yaw yaw! Oh hey! Look who's back from their vacation to Scotland. Hey, Mothman. Hey, Chupacabra! Hey, Fresno Nightcrawler! My greetings, young lad. What a beautiful Polaroid camera you've got there. Such beautiful leather straps and so well-weathered. Like the pale brown skin of so many leaves, dry and brittle atop winter's first snow, in Fresno. So don't keep us waiting. How was Edinburgh? Did you meet Nessie or what, maybe a Kelpie? Actually, this is so crazy to say but I

might have met someone and you know I'm usually kind of an enigmatic loner but we honestly had a lot in common! It was nice, like the opposite of a notorious national-scale bridge disaster! Wow, that's so sweet. It's a shame they're all the way in Scotland, though. Yes, just as the California winds blow through the ash trees, There is no better feeling than weird beautiful love between two dark entities of fate. For your friend to make their way to us it would be glorious. It would be world-class. It would be Fresno.

Yeah! I hope they write me back! Three to five business days later. Dear Mothman 1, It was so great to see you the other day. Thanks for visiting my fair city. You can tell that I'm from here because of my very authentic accent. I don't really know how to say this, but it was... nice. Like, the opposite of a notorious national scale bridge disaster.

Heheheh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, I'm just right to say, I think I will take you up on the offer to visit. And anyway, the group that created me, the Chaluminati, has an office out there, and I'm sure I can make some excuse to come out. In fact, I probably shouldn't say this next part, but- Mothman 2, now with green eyes! Get your clone today! I mean, get your own today!

At theyeti.com slash Chiluminati! Yo yo yo! Yo yo yo yo yo yo yo yo! Yo- Hello everybody and welcome back to the Trueilluminati Podcast, episode 287. As always, I'm one of your hosts, Mike Martin, joined today by the Miss Cleo and Sylvia Brown of LA. Goldman, no! Oh my God. That was years of our lives, Miss Cleo dominated. Yeah, that was. Miss Cleo?

Yeah. And then Sylvia Brown as well. That psychic, that was not a psychic. Do you remember her at all? I think Miss Cleo got in trouble with the mob or something though. Something went down. She got in like, I think the FBI showed up for Miss Cleo. I'm not sure.

Something happened. Yeah. Sylvia Brown, I don't remember. Which one is that? Another scamming psychic. She was the one where the reporter did an interview with her it was like I my sister's been missing for so many years I want you to tell me where she is and she's like, oh she's she died in a Like a car accident drowning the lake. Oh, and her sister's like alive. Actually my sister's alive and I know her well

It was just like a whole set up to show that she was like not not real No, but there was another sister you didn't know about that's the thing You didn't know about your other sister who died and now you do or I just elf sister half sister go sister from another life You can't be see you have to ask your parents about the sister that they gave up for adoption Then that's your mom walked too close to a crystal in the woods and the magic went from the crystal to her womb Impregnating her immaculately with the child of the forest. And then for me, in my mind, it was the green stone and it gave birth to shadow the hedgehog.

That's pretty accurate to be honest, like from what I know about the tree zone. Yeah. Or maybe like silver, the hedgehog. I don't know what the backstory is. I don't know about silver very much. Honestly, I'm a fake Sonic fan. I don't know. I, I, I don't know.

I guess the real games aren't the ones on Genesis anymore. Like those are just the baby Sonic fan I don't know I I don't know I guess the real games aren't the ones on Genesis anymore like those are just the baby ones I don't know I don't know man yeah I don't know Sonic anymore it's just it's like a chaos world but the movies apparently are great and I haven't seen a single one of them so but there is you see the Green Stone documentaries coming out what yeah the new Smurfs movie. Oh, yeah. Okay. It's the Smurfs and the Green Stone. That's so funny because I remember the actual Green Stone guy talking about maybe wanting to do a Green Stone movie and I thought you were about to tell me that I could watch it.

I was just literally ready. Dude, that would be the next rotten popcorn movie without a doubt. If you got 30 minutes, I could show you a rotten popcorn movie now about the Green Stone that you would really enjoy I'll pass the strange. I'm all right good strangely You're all right. You can just go for patrons. I'm sure they'd love it. No what I don't know they would So I think you should go do that for the patrons. I'm sure they would love it. Oh No, and I'm saying I don't think they would I think I think I think that if you the listener head over to patreon.com

I think, I think, I think that if you, the listener, head over to patreon.com slash TuneIn pod, you will enjoy yourself no matter what we decide to do, because it is the thing that keeps us going. And we give it a lot of attention and in there is a little mini-sode after the, like right now, right? We're going to record this, right? We're having it. Haha. Like, wow, look, we're going to vibrate our brains into another dimension. Whoa. And then like, we're going to finish that and then break. I'm going to take a shit because I always take a shit. And then when I come back, he's not lying. Yeah. And then when I come back,

we're going to record maybe like another 30 minutes or so, 20 to 30, something like that, where we talk about something else. And you only get that on Patreon. What about that? And that was a great sale. I'm actually going to subscribe. You only get that on Patreon. Yeah. Well, for a long time, for a long time, like there are so many more, uh, mini-sodes on Patreon than there are on Wednesdays. Yeah, that's true. It's true. There's so many, like a devastating amount more. About, yeah, five extra months worth of mini-sodes over on patreon still yeah And do we there is something that there is an announcement we want to talk about right?

It's been kind of it's time baby, and you and you actually you probably heard the The hilarious scripted ad that we're about to record at the beginning of this podcast to announce it But uh that's right right baby Mothman's here. He's back and this time he's got different. He's got a slightly different. Something's off about him. Kind of considering like the shiny version. Yeah. Something's different about Mothman this time. Something he has. He has a slightly different hue to him. Let's say uh. Can I tell

you? I don't necessarily know that this is the same, but I did just get done playing some of the new Don't Nod game Lost Records. And in that, the girl has a moth woman plushie. And I'm just saying, I'm just saying, why are we not doing that? Interesting. Maybe that'll be next. Maybe we need to give the Mothman a moth. The Mothverse?

The Mothverse. Yeah. Yeah, a moth needs to expand even further. Well, this guy, he's a little bit different color body. He's got bright green eyes. What once was red is now green. How about that? And he's darker.

He's like a more dark color for his body, too. Yeah. He looks. But does he still sound the same? He does he sounds You know exactly the same and actually You'll see you'll see you'll learn a little bit more about him if you if you watch the ad too. It's good stuff It's good stuff. Just like today's episode is gonna be some good stuff boys. Let's go into its time It's time to dive into oh happy anniversary by the way gentlemen happy seven years

Seven years doing married married for seven years. That is bullshit. Seven years. I've got always ones of conspiracy is now reality. The only way you survive is with your third eye wide open. It's illuminati by gas. The only way to be strong today is part two of the trilogy of Monroe Institute episodes.

Last episode we talked about Robert Monroe, his upbringing and his weird kind of transition from radio broadcast engineer to guy who's having out of body experiences is trying to figure it out all the way down to when he started meeting beings like the seductive lady or the weird like tentacle to horror and all these other strange things. Um, all I need now to do all of this is just go on my iPhone for like 15 minutes. Just so you guys know. That's it. Wow. That's, that's it. You guys know I already solved the gateway tapes. Okay. I just call it Reddit,

adult Reddit. Let's go. Did, did I was going to ask if you, if you already finished the game that turn you into an x-man are you officially an x-man now because i'm you know he's a g-man dude he sold out to the feds i can speak to my dog and my dog alone and he uh like takes my suggestions into account while making his judgments now does it does it change his behavior at all? I like to think that somehow in some small way it does. I like to think that somehow in some small way. It was such a powerful moment. It was such a powerful moment at the time when I was in the like, in the like zone, what do you call it? Hemisync? Yeah. When I was in Hemisync, it was so significant to

me. So like, you know, I don't know, like was induced by binaural beats, which is where we kind of left off last episode where you started to explore this idea of like, well, I mean, I can make like, do this thing. Cause brain, brains produce brain waves at different, uh, Hertz's depending on like the state it's in. Uh, and he's, he thought, maybe it's like Jello. It's like Jello vibrating, like how Jello brain waves. Our brain is very weird. It's very strange. very strange yeah uh and that's kind of where we left off at this point whoa whoa whoa whoa what what do you mean like jello

vibrating it's like brain waves jello can have you can like you can like like that you know like i don't know the exact i know that's what you're talking about mike i but i'm asking a- Oh, you can't be Mike. Because Alex is saying something that is not just shaking Jell-O and making it vibrate. Alex said brain waves through, like you and Tur, I just want to make sure we're all the same page and Alex is just saying insane things. Guys, a long time ago in a time called before, or which I will call the 70s, the New York Times used to be

a reliable place to go get some good news. And just for that, that sounds fake. What did you, I'm going to, what does it happen? Is this your episode? No, just look, I mean you guys asked, right? Yeah. Yeah. I, what does it hang on? Okay. This is article from New York times from March 6th, 1976. Jello test finds lifelike signal. An Ontario, an Ontario, an Ontario, oh my God. Ontario neurologist made a brainwave analysis

of a blob of lime Jell-O and obtained readings that he said could be mistaken as evidence of life. Quick question, was the era of Jell-O the 60s or the 70s? I feel like the 70s jello the sixties or the seventies? I feel like the seventies is like the poster child air, like late sixties into the sevens. It was like, like pro like, so this is, this is produced.

This makes sense. You know, seventies are like, you know what jello, we eat it in every meal. Why don't we do some tests with it? Yeah. For science, little process food action. Yeah.

But it has similar like vibes to a brain and it like really does. Yes. As I said, that similar electric electrical artifacts, interfering with a real EEG test could confuse doctors into believing that a person's brain was still living when in fact it might be as lifeless as the jello. What I believe it to be, what I believe it to be is that it vibrates and as it vibrates the like signals that reflect out of it, like are like, reflected in different directions. And so it just looks like brainwaves.

Right. But it's not, it's not saying they were, uh, it was a lot of Jell-O. No, no, no. Jell-O is not, doesn't have active brainwaves. Oh good. All right. I was like, what are you saying right now? Thank you for actually clarifying. Cause I was, I just accepted it was going to go on like brain waves out of jello. Sure, why not? Let's just keep moving. Just to review. I just heard what Alex said. It was like, look. That's why you're necessary in this show, Jesse. You proved your value. What do you mean jello brainwaves, you psycho? No, look, here's what's what I the reason the reason I bring this up just to review is because he was talking about my neural beats. Yes.

Just just as an example of what that means it's like four hertz you can't get there just by listening to it. Your ear can't hear that but if you put a hundred on one and a hundred and four on the other and cancel them out you'll be left with the four. Yeah. That like then is resonating in your fucking head. Yeah, exactly. Which is like how you get your brain to like, I call it in training your brain to be able to

allegedly syncing them with the different mind states. And again, the gateway tapes are very much like a different way to learn to meditate, I think, for a lot of people. But we're going to get into that in this episode, actually. So when we left off, we were in the 60s. And what we're gonna be get into that in this episode, actually. So when we left off, we were in the sixties and we're going to be picking up as in the late sixties. At this point, Monroe has gone, has kind of crossed the Rubicon from merely being curious to this being very much becoming his entire life. He has a living Cape. The eye of Agamotto has found him. He's the sorcerer Supreme. He has seen 14,000 different variations of the future. We're only one. He succeeds. I guess we're not in that future. No, I don't think we are. Uh,

you know who actually has a destiny like that by the way? Michael stop. No, how did I not know that was coming? What are you? United the galaxy. He unites the entire galaxy. He's so important. You guys just don't even know. Wait, can you, can you give me the TLDR 32nd how he united the galaxy and this is at all similar to like this? So the Kree have a super intelligence that governs their entire race and like kind of like in process reality and see the outcomes. I mean everyone knows that dude. Come on quantum AI. It makes it makes prophecies and the big prophecy is that one day

the like Cree society will fall at the hands of like their own creation, one of the inhumans. And the inhuman has like all these special things about him and Black Bolt unifies them because there's, and actually inhumans on a lot of different planets, that there are all different experiments on different races. And ours are just humans, but there were experiments on other planets too.

And they all come together and he has like a harem of like different wives from different inhuman kingdoms and he becomes the king of all inhumans and takes over the galaxy and rules the Kree. And he's a benevolent man. He's a benevolent ruler who makes hard decisions. And then that ends because it's comics. He still sounds kind of shit. I don't think so.

I feel like he's pretty good. That's like, what does he do with the tarragon mist? What happens with that? Why do you want, you want it? You really want to get into this? No, the tarragon mist. Thank you so much to today's sponsor, HelloFresh. If you're like me, who have been getting HelloFresh forever,

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Free meals applied as discount on first box. New subscribers, only varies by plan. That's up to 10 free HelloFresh meals. Just go to hellofresh.com slash HelloFresh podcast. Thank you again to HelloFresh for sponsoring today's episode. Anyway, Robert's own personal experiences with his own altered states where he was seeing his own alternate futures, not really, but his own altered states of consciousness had left him, uh, his own curiosity that truly ate at him for his entire life until he died.

It became a kind of a personal necessity. This drive to understand something that the mainstream world that he was living in the sixties, particularly wasn't really acknowledging on the scientific level. I'll tell you what, if this happened to me like this, right? Like if I had this, you were tired, you relax and I don't know where you're like, shoot, you're out of your body, like fucking Spider-Man in no way home.

Yeah. So look, my mom listens to the show and thank you for listening. She said, she, she said she was listening to last week, last week's episode. And she's been meditating a lot lately. Oh, interesting. And she had a experience where she was like, feeling herself floating, and had the feeling that she could continue floating, but like, decided not to because it was too scary to do right? Like it was like almost like, what if you can't come back? And so very conflict, know. That seems to be very, like when Robert,

in his episode was like, am I? It can be profound. Yeah, I have not experienced any sensation of floating in my meditative practices personally, but I will say- Also hi mom, I love you mom. And we'll talk about it more in the next episode, which will be the last episode. A ton of people have been leaving

their own meditative experiences on our subreddit. They've been awesome to read. Yeah, really awesome stuff. And I'd be super curious if anybody took up our homework and meditated for the first time and what those experiences are like too. So, uh, thank you for sharing and please continue to do so. Also shout outs to the guy who's been doing the gateway tapes for like a while. 10 years or something like that or whatever. Yeah. He's been, he's like, no,

I have very experienced with this stuff, which is cool. Uh, according to Monroe, quote, I had no choice but to keep going. What had started as an unsettling departure from my comfortable physical identity had become an undeniable new reality. If I did not understand it, then perhaps I could build a framework where it could be understood by others. We used that, we talked, we had that quote last week, but kind of bring you right back. Yeah. A world where man and mutants can live together in harmony. Eric, get out of my head, Charles. Well, we got

Magneto is like from South Carolina. Oh, Charles. No, that's that's that's the juggernaut bit. Oh, oh, sorry. Which poor poor Vinnie Jones Screamed into the camera with no knowledge of what the fuck he was doing in fucking Wolverine or whatever fucking x-men 3 Vinnie Jones a guy a guy a venerable actor screaming I the juggernaut bitch one of the

earliest like memes in mainstream. I can't believe they put that in the movie. They're like, trust me. Trust me, Vinny. You're going to love this. They're going to go wild for this. Your kids are going to love it. It's so good. Trust me. So we let off for real.

The Monroe Institute was being kind of built brick by brick, at least metaphorically speaking, because before the Monroe Institute was being kind of built brick by brick, at least metaphorically speaking. Because before the Monroe Institute had any formal name, it all had was a place, a secluded estate called Whistlefield right in the rolling hills of Virginia. And it was here in a converted wing of his own personal home that Robert Monroe's early forays into consciousness research evolved into something much more methodical. And no longer just a man documenting his strange experiences in the solitude of his study,

Whistlefield became the first quote-unquote laboratory for what would eventually be known as HEMISYNC and the Structured Consciousness Exploration. During these late 1960s, Monroe, having already spent years documenting his own out of body experiences, because remember his first one happened in 1958. Uh, he began to wonder essentially like three main things. Could these experiences be replicated by others? If so, was there a scientific method that he could use to induce them? And what did this suggest about the nature of human consciousness itself? These dead, those three very simple questions kind of drove him forever. And the, at first these experiments were just kind of simple haphazard

improvisational Monroe experimented with sleep cycles, relaxation techniques, and even the psychological effects of putting himself in a sensory isolation area, like devoid. And have you guys ever done a sensory isolation like water? Oh, it's terrifying. It's the worst. No, it's so annoyed the whole time. I love I love no, no, I loved it. You guys didn't you guys didn't do it, right? Like you guys didn't hit the like you guys didn't

transcend your body, right? bumping into the side and it just infuriated me and that's weak, dude. No, that sucks. That's on the, honestly, that's almost on them. That was awful. They shouldn't be close enough to the side that you're just like, diddy-didy-didy. Yeah, that's how I kept on touching.

If I had to like, it was awful. And Jesse, you just sound like you need therapy, dude. Well, but full respect, Jesse, but aren't you the water guy? You shouldn't have do that, right? He said it's he, he's on his own head. Yeah, you're just floating there. you're just floating there and it's pretty confining and then you start to think like well what if what if a shark

was in here? Yeah what if a shark was in here with me? What if he got in there? He's not hallucinating. I can't escape. Yeah I'm floating in water I can't get out of there I got him banging on the lid. Sharks in there like you're trapped in here with me now. I'm from the Hudson Bay of New York and I'm here to eat your ass. Yeah, this is terrible. He's gonna eat your ass is what I said. I didn't mean to. Yeah, I mean, that's where your brain went. And it's where, I'm gonna eat your ass. I'm a big ass shark.

I'm gonna eat that whole ass. Yeah, I'm a kinky shark. I'm gonna do some crazy shit. I'm gonna eat your whole butt. He's a kinky New York shark. I'm gonna eat your butt, I'm gonna eat your legs. And as he opens his mouth there for no reason is the Boston baked bean boy just in his mouth. He's just, it's like Gandalf when he like blows the little ship out of his mouth but instead of the ship it's like a

fucking like just like the fucking like green monster half of like Fenway Park just like kind of halfway flying out of his mouth and kind of just crumbling away Yeah, that's exactly what I was picturing he also tinkered with white noise generation rhythmic drumming and Repetitive tonal pattern searching for some way to try and induce altered states without the use of drugs or hypnosis And the entire time he documented everything meticulously, but results were wildly inconsistent. Some sessions led to deep relaxation.

Others gave him fragmented dreams, but a, but few did yield something close to what he would consider his spontaneous OBEs out of body experiences. But after messing around for a while, that's when the breakthrough came. This is the birth of the binaural beats. At the heart of Monroe's eventual success was the discovery of binaural beats. Now the principle actually wasn't new. It was actually known in scientific literature as early as the 1830s when German physicist Heinrich

Wilhelm Dove first documented that playing two slightly different frequencies into each ear caused the brain to perceive a third phantom frequency, a phantom, a phenomenon known as the binaural beat effect. But when Monroe realized was that this wasn't just an auditory illusion, it seemed to directly influence brainwave activity, at least as he understood it. Working with audio engineers other than himself and neuroscientists, Monroe hypothesized that these beats could be engineered to entrain the brain into different states of awareness. If different brainwave frequencies correlated with different states of consciousness, for example, like alpha waves are kind of conjoined with

relaxation, theta waves for deep meditation, delta waves for sleep, because our brain does produce different brain waves, depending on the state of it at the time, then maybe he could use sounds to like induce, vibrate your brain through your ears. Your brain is the lime jello. Yep. There it is. Yeah. Bing bang boom. Now everybody thinks your brain through your ears. Your brain is the lime jello. Yup. There it is. Yup. Bing bang boom. Now everybody thinks your brain's alive.

Uh, so his team, I have that problem all the time. So his team began designing custom stereo recordings, carefully layering audio signals to stimulate different hemispheric synchronization patterns. Thus the eventual name hemisync. The theory was that by aligning the activity of the brain's left and right hemispheres, one could create a state of whole brain coherence, unlocking altered states of awareness on demand. With his first audio experiments progressing, he needed subjects. His first test subjects were people he knew, his friends colleagues even family members among the earliest participants was his daughter

Laurie who had been intrigued by her father's research but skeptical of his more radical claims Which I would understand if your dad's like dude So yeah, I meditated last night and the seductive woman from the black nothingness came back again and God I really wanted to but just as I was about to the tentacle monster showed up and I got really scared I can see myself being a little skeptical of all that shit. I still am but maybe one day I will meet The seductive lady while I meditate. I think we played that on scary games squad. Oh shit this lady Then the ten tenacle monster showed up and like that's sounds like it sounds like a scary game. Yeah. Yeah But she joined so she was one of the people that still wanted to experiment with it.

She was still interested. So, uh, after undergoing a series of Hemi sync trials, she reported experiencing strange floating sensations and an intense awareness of her surroundings. She later described the experience as if she had detached quote unquote from her body, but was still connected to it by like some invisible tether. Another participant, who was a local physician, volunteered to undergo a week of trials using Monroe's evolving hemisynch protocols as he kept working on them. Initially, he reported nothing unusual, just a deep sense of relaxation. But on the fourth night, he awoke in the middle of the

night to an unmistakable vibration running through his body. Monroe immediately recognized this as what he considered the vibrational state that he had experienced prior to out-of-body experiences. And the doctor, startled but fascinated, began experimenting further and then soon reported episodes of what he described as floating awareness, which was the sensation of a detachment from his physical form while remaining fully conscious the entire time. So we're kind of like playing like descent.

Basically. Yeah, yeah, I guess so. Yeah. Yeah. We're kind of in an era here of like trial and error from Monroe at this point. The results were promising, but they weren't, you't you know definitive in any way so we pushed forward. The next step was to refine and system systematize the process. If certain frequencies could reliably induce relaxation could they also reliably induce out-of-body experiences?

Could they be tailored to guide consciousness in specific directions? And so over months of trial and error, Monroe and his team of like two dudes fine-tuned their technique. Incremental inductions was like obviously a huge part of it. So instead of playing a single binaural beat frequency, Monroe's team experimented with gradual shifts from one frequency to another,

effectively leading quote unquote, the brain into altered states, trying to guide it via sound. They introduced layered audio elements including distant echoes, whispered vocal instructions, rhythmic pulses designed to enhance the subjective sense of motion or detachment, and then Monroe had subjects keep detailed journals immediately after each session reinforcing the experiences through written recollection which is very similar to people who do dream journals,

where the more you journal your dreams, the more you tend to remember them, as long as you're journeying them right when you wake up. The results- I'll say this, the sound design on those things is actually so goddamn good. It is, they're all very, very good. Yeah.

There's so many of them too, we'll talk about them. There's like almost a hundred different tapes probably, I would guess. But the results were fast while fascinating to Robert from Monroe, they were still inconsistent. Many subjects experienced deep relaxation and vivid dreamlike states, but only a small percentage reported

what they considered true OBEs. Monroe wasn't discouraged by this. Actually in one of his future books that I skimmed through, but didn't read all the way through called Far Journeys, he does reflect on some of these early attempts saying, quote, the first step was clear to find a way to induce the vibrational state at will. Once there, a controlled departure from the physical could be explored. So slowly a pattern emerged. Subjects who practiced regularly with Monroe's tapes showed increasing success in reaching the vibrational state and

eventually experiencing full separation from their bodies. One of the more dramatic breakthroughs for him came when he experimented on himself using his newest iteration of Hemi-Sync audio at the time. And having already undergone hundreds of OBEs at this point in his life, he was pretty qualified to assess whether his technology was truly aiding the process in this. But I kind of have a caveat written here where like, again, it's all through his own bias as well. He's already knowing what to expect. So one evening when he entered the vibrational state faster than before when he was messing with this new technology.

And then something new happened. Instead of having that rollout body that we talked about in the first episode, that feeling of rocking back and forth to roll out as he had often had, he found himself quote unquote phased out. A term that he would later use to describe an even more subtle form of disconnection where he has both, he considered himself both within and without his body simultaneously saying, quote, it was like standing in a house of mirrors where I was the reflection and the observer all at once. It's like Beatles lyrics. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah. Beatles, they fuck, they did the fuck ton of psychedelics.

They literally did a song called within you without you. Oh really shit I didn't know that yeah, I mean least in the sky with diamonds is pretty obvious. Yeah, that's true Yeah, this experience to him confirmed what he had Suspected the separation process was not a binary shift physical to non-physical but more like a spectrum a sliding scale of awareness that could be controlled with practice and technique. So he began refining his tapes to train others in achieving the same level of controlled phasing that he had. By the way, just want to say for the record, I was so in my own head right then, because

I just realized I said Lisa in the sky with diamonds, I said Lucy. Oh, you did. Lisa is the Simpsons episode. The Simpsons got me anyway. So as he was doing all this and building this kind of this Hemi sync and exploring with himself, it became very noticeable to him quickly that whistlefield Virginia was too small. The room in his house was not enough for what he wanted. The machinery, the level of experimentation he was hoping.

If he wanted to take this research further, he wanted to be able to truly explore the limits of consciousness. So he needed something bigger saying, quote, it was no longer just happening to me. Others could follow. And if others could follow, then we were not dealing with an anomaly. We were dealing with something repeatable, trainable and real. And I needed to explore that further. And so the Monroe Institute of Applied Sciences was officially born.

And by 1971, Robert Monroe took a defining step. He is, that's the day he, he, uh, that's a year he formally established this and no longer just a personal project or a backyard experiment. This was an official institution, a structured organization dedicated to studying consciousness explicitly. But while the vision was ambitious, he would have a lot of obstacles right away. Obviously, financial hurdles were going to be huge. Scientific skepticism was going to be a massive challenge. And then on top of all that, just having to build credibility in a world that viewed these

altered states as fringe at best and pseudoscience at worst. So the Institute began very quietly without the kind of grand academic endorsements. It was just a dude creating this thing to just create some sort of legitimacy and instead it was built upon a foundation of personal conviction and self-funding. Monroe had already poured years of time effort and finances into this research and whistle field, and now he had to take things a step further, from private experimentation to more public programs.

And the transition wasn't easy. The first and most immediate challenging, like I said, was funding. And while Monroe's success in radio and television had left him financially secure, he wasn't like, oh, he didn't have infinite money. He wasn't rich by any stretch. What are we, what are we talking about? Like in terms of like radio and television, like success, like how, how, how was he? I didn't get a, he didn't put a dollar in the book. Millionaire?

No, not a millionaire. God, no. I would just kind of, just kind of crushing it. Yeah, he's doing well. Like he was financially secure in the seventies, whatever that meant. Like, I don't know like, how much, how much a hot house costs, you know what I mean? So my guess is probably in like, close to maybe 100,000 a year, maybe a little less, I feel like that's even pretty rich for that time. But I don't know, he didn't really mention that. But but yeah, again, he could deal with stuff at home. But being able to build this on his own is just wasn't within his pocketbook means It needed to be more than just a passion project and it also needed to be sustainable So with Monroe using whatever personal wealth he had left to purchase land and equipment He needed to start expanding research which also meant hiring technicians researchers, hiring and administrative staff. It meant investing in cutting edge sound technology to refine the HemiSync, building facilities where test subjects could undergo

extended consciousness training in controlled environments, which means building things where people could sleep and stay for an extended period of time. It's like I said this last week, it's crazy. It really feels like Disneyland, Venture Brothers. He made it happen. Like Fantastic Four, like Baxter Building, like for real, like hearing the tapes, like seriously, like go into like YouTube and listen to like a chunk and just get the sense of

it because it really does feel like a ride through the concepts of super science. That's, I think that's, you actually, without really saying it, I think pinpoint why I prefer like the gateway tapes over other guided meditation tapes, because he's very much giving you the step by step process instead of giving you flowery vague language. It's like educational. Yeah. Feel the warmth spread through your body. No, he's going like, okay, now you're going to do this and you're going to imagine this

and then bink, bink, bink. And then I'll be back in like this, in this amount of time. It's very, it's like you said, it's very like guided Disneyland tour, which gives my brain something to latch onto when those more vague guided meditation tapes just feel frustrating in a lot of, a lot. It's a fucking ride, bro. Yeah, it's such a good way to, yeah. You're a hundred percent right.

And it just clicked as to why it really made sense to me. guided meditation tapes just feel frustrating in a lot of fucking ride bro. Yeah, it's a good way to Yeah, you're 100% right. And it just clicked as to why it really made sense to me. You can almost even picture yourself like I was laying there in my bed, but like, just picture yourself like sort of like getting on a like sitting in a thing and kind of going through like an actual because you hear like, ocean, it opens it, and then you like it and it transitions to like, I'll do like cars or something and you just,

it really does feel like you're on a fucking like little track or something. It's wild. Yeah, it's cool. As far as who his investors get back into it, who his investors could be. The people that he could go to were going to be hesitant at best. Traditional scientists, the idea of out-of-body experiences and altered states of consciousness was like maybe a curiosity for them. Maybe. Corporate and private investors, his work would be considered too experimental, too intangible. What are they going to get back for the money that they put in? How are the shareholders going to make more money

off of this kind of thing? And then you're looking in this is where Monroe kind of finds himself in a unique position because even spiritually inclined groups, his approach was too scientific for them, too mechanical, too much trying to put on paper subjective experience. And that these like sound frequency, brainwave entrainment things didn't fit, like was too, like I said, structural to fit into their more esoteric view on things. He goes on to say in quote, there was no precedent, no category to fit within,

no institution to attach ourselves to. We were quite literally creating something that had no place in the established order, which yeah, I can see that being like a pain in the ass, but he did have one crucial advantage. It's kind of an interesting one. His work was entirely non chemical, which you'd think wouldn't be a big deal, but actually is like a huge liability. Compared to everything else that's out there. That's like this,

where you could do like trials and shit like that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. Like it's, it's pretty, it really does feel like going to like a super scientist, like some portal type shit and going and seeing like the scientists like measuring with like ancient instruments from like old civilizations and animal bones and shit. Like it just feels, it feels like it does.

It feels a cult it feels like hellboy it's weird and again to give you more context of this time the late 60s and the 70s were an era of like pretty I would consider like a fast radical connex consciousness exploration because of psychedelics there became very popular around that time we're looking at figures like Timothy Leary, Aldous Huxley. They made LSD, mescaline, psilocybin, almost synonymous with consciousness expansion at this point. And this new cultural wave was really kind of taking over.

And that's when the crackdowns came, like the political backlash of it all. The burgeoning interest of therapeutic potential in psychedelics between the 50s and 60s was kind of put to kibosh completely by Reagan, Nixon, that did it, the war on drugs in 1971. But there was, I found something called the Marsh Chapel experiment from 1962. And this was an experiment where they investigated the potential of psilocybin to induce mystical and religious experiences specifically. And what they did is they took it a bunch of people and split them into two groups. One actually got the drug, one got Niansin, which is a drug that gives you a bodily response. Like you start sweating and

whatnot, but nothing in the mind and it goes quickly quickly. And then the other people psilocybin, and they showed that the people on psilocybin are much more likely to see their experience as religious or spiritual in nature. And they did a 25 year followup in 1986. And I just- Let me tell you something, it feels like it, bro. Yeah, dude, even though the one that I add where it was,

I didn't see anything weird. It was very it, bro. Yeah, dude, even though the one that I add where was, I didn't see anything weird. It was very introspective. I walked away being like, oh, I can see how people, I can see how people would have this and be like, I met God. Some people don't like walk those worlds in their sober life at all. Some people don't ever think about reality that hard,

but this kind of like forces you to, and it can be kind of jarring, I bet. Yeah, yeah, exactly. The the the 25 year follow up experiment. I just found funny because they she failed to mention a couple of things and how she felt about how it went down. One of which was that few of the people had some acute anxiety during their experience. And one dude in particular had to be restrained and injected with Thorazine after he fled the chapel that they were doing the experiment in Convinced that he was chosen to announce the return of the Messiah You know definitely gives you some bizarre religious experiences which it's fucking weird

But yeah, so that's a type like this time period is very psychedelic up until 1971 when the war on drugs escalated in research into altered states was becoming increasingly politically charged. And by 1971, President Nixon had declared drug abuse, quote, public enemy number one, leading to the criminalization of psychedelic research. And that put a gabosh on all the stuff.

And while that's, you know, it's an overall, I think, bad for humanity that that happened, it did have the benefit effect for Monroe that there wasn't that baggage of drug involved study. This wasn't anything that was going to involve anything that is now illegal or could get him into any trouble. These were more about trying to reproduce these experiences in a lab setting without that chemical influence. And despite maybe some skepticism that persisted, Monroe still needed something that would force

the scientific community to take notice, because no matter what he did as he was building it, they still didn't care. But that opportunity actually came from the most unexpected place he could have imagined. Who else but the good old US government. Knocking on that door. Hey, what are you doing? Exactly. The door opens and a top hat and cane that's in their legs. Yeah, as Monroe struggled to gain credibility in the academic and private sectors, the new powerful player of the US government entered his see entered into his show in the military

industrial complex was here during the Cold War. Both the US and the Soviet Union were deeply invested in a pair of psychological research. This is well known by now, particularly they were both invested in parapsychological research, particularly in remote viewing, ESP, and other conscious enhancing techniques. The US in particular was concerned with reports that the KGB was funding experiments in psychic spying, telekinesis, and other unexplained phenomena. By the early 70s, multiple government agencies, including the CIA, DIA, and Army Intelligence had begun exploring their own programs in non-ordinary perception.

This led to projects like MKUltra, which we covered in depth a long time ago, the Stargate Project, which we talked about in different episodes scattered about, which was the US Army's remote viewing program, which tried to train operatives in perceiving distant locations without actually having to travel and advanced cognitive research, classified studies into how the brain processes

consciousness and perception beyond standard sensory input. So within this context, Monroe's work in HemiSync and altered states was a huge interest to the military around this time. And in declassified CIA documents, Monroe's gateway process was described as, quote, a system designed to bring enhanced strength, focus, and coherence to the amplitude and frequency of brainwave output between the left and right hemispheres so as to alter consciousness, moving it outside the physical sphere and ultimately escaping even the restrictions of time and space.

I'm going to give you a link to this, but I'm gonna read a small piece off of this actual, the paper breaking all this down. But this is the actual PDF. It's fucking interesting as shit that this is just real. So there's a lot in this, there's a lot to read here. It's almost 30 pages or so. Yeah, wow. Oh, this is just the one, right?

Yeah, yeah, this is the one you probably know about. I read this. Yeah, you've likely read it. I just wanna get down to the conclusion. But it's interesting as you get to the end of the one, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This is the one you probably know about and I read this. Yeah. You've you've likely read it. I just want to get down to the conclusion. But it's interesting as you get to the end of the paper, they talk about like, and it's the complete opposite of like what Monroe's trying to do.

They're like, okay, but how can we speed this up so we can use this more readily? How can we like, there's something here we want to make to use it. How do we make people get to the point where they can remote view quickly, basically? But I'm going to read their conclusion at the end of the paper here. Quote, there's a sound, rational basis in terms of physical science parameters for considering Gateway, the Gateway tapes, to be plausible in terms of its essential objectives. Intuitional insights of not only personal, but of a practical and professional nature would seem to be within bounds of reasonable expectations.

However, a phased approach for entering the Gateway experience in an accelerated mode would seem to be required if the time needed to reach advanced states of altered consciousness is to be brought within more manageable limits from the standpoint of establishing an organization-wide exploitation of Gateway's potential. That's right, that's like, that's the military line right there of like, how do we make this ours and make it happen faster? Um, he goes on to say the most promising approach suggested in the foregoing study involves the potential of the following steps. A, begin by using gateway hemisynchotypes to achieve enhanced brain focus and to induce hemisphere and synchronization. B, then add strong REM sleep frequencies to induce

left brain quesients? I don't know what the fuck that is. And deep physical relaxation. C, provide hypnotic suggestion designed to enable an individual to induce deep auto hypnotic state at will. D, use auto hypnotic suggestion to attain much enhanced focus of concentration and motivation in rapidly progressing through what is known as Focus 12 in the Gateway Tapes. Then repeat steps A and B following use of auto-hypnotic suggestion that an out-of-body movement will occur and be remembered. Repeat step E to achieve facility in gaining out-of-body state under conscious control, auto-hypnotic suggestion, distress ability to consciously control out-of-body state under conscious control all the hypnotic suggestion distress ability to

Consciously control out-of-body movement and maintain it even after I am sleep and just keeps going and going and going They give you an idea, but it's it's a fascinating read. There's a lot of cool diagrams He talks about it's a really freaking neat looking at this Yeah he very much goes into at the end the idea of like the Yeah, he very much goes into at the end, the idea of like the holographic reality and the egg, the egg, the story of like the egg being universe of what do you call that? I don't know the actual name of that full philosophical story, philosophical story of where the universe is an egg and things are just reborn over and over again. He references Alexander, David Neal

and Lama Yongden and a book entitled Se Secret Oral Teachings in Tibetan Buddhist Sex. Like there's a lot of weird like older religions and like religion might be wrong, but like spiritual kind of references within that paper too. It's cool. It's a good read. Although Monroe wasn't ever directly employed by the CIA or the military, not only was he consulted and studied extensively, they, the government even sent funded researchers to the Monroe Institute to attend his programs. So they would just send people to attend their programs and see what they could do about and evaluate the potential applications for national security intelligence gathering in terms of like, is it valuable to them?

And Monroe talked about how, yeah, this kind of like, is it valuable to them? And Monroe talked about how, yeah, this kind of like, he felt deeply conflicted about this. While he welcomed the interest as validation that his work had some sort of scientific merit, he was still uncomfortable with the idea of his discoveries being used for espionage or warfare, because that was not at all what he was trying to do here. His vision had always been more about the human, like human evolution and exploration of self, self exploration of consciousness, not surveillance or military superiority. And another one of his books, he says, quote, the real power of these experiences was not in war or conflict, but in awakening. If there was a battlefield, it was in the mind, the struggle

to know, to evolve, to become more than the sum of our limited selves. And it's what I find interesting is the more you follow Monroe through the mind, the struggle to know, to evolve, to become more than the sum of our limited selves. And it's what I find interesting is the more you follow Monroe through the years, the more his the way that he speaks kind of goes to like these more almost like meditative, like Jedi Knight-esque, you know, kind of yogi-esque, like the more he starts to explore, the more he almost understands that you can't understand it fully. And it's like really hard for him to put that into words, but he's still desperate to try and understand it. Even to the day he dies, he just lives in this kind of just loop of forever learning, which just

raises more questions for him. Can I ask a question? Yeah, absolutely. While we're doing this, what's the, what is the Monroe Institute? It, this org, right? Yeah, it's still, yeah. In Monroe, it's still like, what is it? It's there. Just what do you mean? So we're talking about it and we're talking about the stuff they're doing. But like, what is it? What scientists and yeah, you can do they, they're, they also have like meditative, like class stuff. The programs that like he originally created are still

running. You can like attend, right? Yeah. You can attend today. Does that cost money? Yeah, it costs money if you want to go, but you can also just go get the tapes online. Like they're all out there. You can do it at home. You don't have to go and sleep there, but if you go,

you're at, you're staying there for a week. You're sleeping. You're like in this program as, as it was built pretty much from, but unlike real science studies, and I use that term real science study specifically, they pay people to do them. This is your paying to be a part of it. Yes. This is the part you're paying to be a part of is like a class on meditation. Yeah. But, but, but,

so it's not like a real Institute then it's like, no, it is, it is, it just has developed its own method also. Like they do fund. It's not a real institute. It's just not. They do fund research and stuff. It's called an institute. It says Monroe Institute.

What are they funding though? Here we go. The Monroe Institute is a 501C3 nonprofit, non-sectarian organization that relies upon your gifts to expand the presence globally, create new programs, delve more deeply into research, and provide scholarships. sectarian organization that relies upon your gifts to expand the presence globally, create new programs, delve more deeply into research and provide scholarships. Yeah.

That's what they are. Okay. So you can look them up. And they have all their forms, their 990 forms on their website and their impact reports on their website as well. I can give you the link. And it was found like when Monroe's history, Robert Monroe as like a guy, right? His background is as a guy who made money doing

radio, engineering, right? Yeah. Right. Which is why he brought on researchers and scientists. That's why he wasn't doing it on his own at this point. Understand, understand completely understand completely. Um, trying to figure out like what the money situation is here because the more you like genuinely, the more you read and the more you talk about it. And I was sitting there like patiently listening. The more you do, the more it sounds like pure new age grifter.

Read. Uh, and what I mean, it just does. Like, I understand the idea of, uh, wanting to expand your mind and see new things and chest stuff, but just the way that I'm picking up on it is it sounds like a new age grift. Like, it just sounds like it. Yeah. I mean, so well, I'd say hold on to that thought because we will approach the area where other groups scientifically study and research this stuff as well. And we'll see and talk about what they found as opposed to just what Robert Monroe founded

for sure. But yeah, I mean, yeah, I don't know. I don't know how else like to yeah, I guess it's they they're a nonprofit organization that relies on people paying To do shit, right? Right, right, right, right? Yeah, I mean there's plenty of those and I mean at least at the beginning. Yeah, he's not an academic Institute He would that but like the army the army like sends personnel to work here like yeah The that's where the validation comes from is more and more outside rather than inside and like religious orgs also like sure

But yeah back it like the Buddhist we have I mean There's like a lot of information on the army people that went there like there's yeah We have names of who was there names are on the report as well The name who wrote the report. Oh, this is from 1983 Name who wrote the report? Oh, this is from 1983 Assessment of the Gateway Process commander US Army operational group for me blah blah Did you know that they censor his name off of this? No, no, that's yeah It's the fort that he was there and you say cut to commander and I think they they actually censor his name Oh, here we go. The guy who wrote it Wayne and McConnell lieutenant commander

That's the guy who wrote the report. So you can look up him. But we're gonna, yeah, we're gonna talk about him as well. They also talk about Istak Bentov, which is another scientist that we'll talk about one day. We're not gonna really dive deep into that. But yeah, you can look up the people who wrote on the report. There's, like I said, it's not that they worked with the government,

it's the government went there and started sending people there to study after he went in and like observed it, so to speak. Okay. But let's keep going. I think some of your questions are going to be at least addressed on some, on some regard here either. So yeah, by the late 1970s, Monroe's work had reached kind of a turning point. What had begun as a personal quest to understand what his own altered states of

consciousness had grown into a formalized research effort under the Monroe Institute of Applied Sciences. With early experiments at Whistlefield yielding repeatable results and interest from both the public and classified government projects to him validating the efficacy of HEMISYNC tech, the time had come to expand operations. So the next stage in the evolution of the Monroe Institute would be to transition from a small experimental lab into a fully operational consciousness training facilities for lack of a better term. One that would not only continue research but actively train individuals in controlled out-of-body experiences, lucid states, heightened awarenesses.

But as Monroe soon realized, taking this step required a new level of organization, rigorous mythology and above all, an environment designed specifically for people to come and stay longer term. Throughout the early 1970s, he operated informally out of his private estate and then the smaller area. And in 1979 is when he acquired a large tract of land in Faber, Virginia, a rural and like a more rural area of Virginia. And I don't know if it's still rural now. The site was cheaper probably. Yeah. Yeah.

But it was basically chosen to be away from any large cities for like the noise and the bright lights, because if you're going to do meditation stuff, you don't want to be right next to the god. Fair enough. Fair enough. Here, the institution had its first official facilities, a dedicated sound laboratory equipped with advanced

stereo recording equipment for refining the frequencies. Participant dormitories where guests could stay for multi-day or week-long programs. Controlled soundproof chambers designed for long duration Hemisync sessions where participants could try to experience deep meditative states over the course of a couple hours as opposed to the shorter sessions. And then obviously a main lodge learning center where him and his team of trainers would basically in a giant like lecture room is what you're looking at here. This purchase and development of the property marked basically the real beginning of the

Institute as it is known today. And this facility was not just a research center. Like I said, it was a place where people will come and also begin trying to take these classes with a new Institute now officially established Monroe and his team shifted their focus to designing a structured, repeatable system that could guide the mind into these deep states of awareness with precision and control, something that Monroe was still trying

to desperately have for himself. And the result was the creation of the Gateway Program, the week-long, pretty immersive experience according to those who've gone there, designed to systematically train individuals in deep relaxation and meditative states, lucid dreaming, hypnagogic visualization, vibrational states, consciousness separation. Basically you're going to like a retreat to try and learn how to meditate. This was not a simple meditation retreat for in Monroe's words, but for him it was like a help,

like a help meditation like seminar thing, but it really is like on the outside, just a more technologically guided version of a meditation retreat. Using Monroe's specifically crafted Hemi-Sync tapes, participants would spend hours each day in these sound induced meditative states guided by Monroe and carefully layered frequency pulses that was meant to entrain the brain into these different states.

The Gateway Program was not merely a passive listening exercise, but it was built to be highly structured, multi-phased, a process designed to progressively expand awareness beyond ordinary waking consciousness. Every element was carefully constructed from the frequency combinations in the Hemisync audio to the mental exercises that train participants to attempt to control their state of awareness. In each phase, how do they know what frequencies to use? They basically like what when the brain is sleeping and it's deep REM cycle,

it gives off a theta wave, which is 4 Hertz. So that is what they're trying. If you were trying to induce that, they fire off four hertz. They try to get the four hertz and via binaural beats is the, is the word. Yeah. Like how I was saying with the like subtraction method. Yeah. Yeah. The hundred and hundred and four, you get the four. Yeah. So yeah, every element was kind of crafted that way to get the frequency of combinations that is related to the brainwave frequencies that are given off during certain phases of deep relaxation, sleep or meditation.

Each phase built upon the previous, ensuring that there's a guided yet deliberate movement toward deeper states of non-physical perception. Monroe was adamant that no one should simply even take his word for it though. The process had to be experienced, verified personally, and explored through direct experience rather than dogma, which is something he does maintain through all of his writings. The first stage, we're gonna talk a little bit about

what the stages are of this, of the Gateway process. The first stage of the Gateway program is focused on basically just achieving a profound level of relaxation, a state in which mental clutter, body tension, external distractions kind of just dissolve away, allowing you to just exist within the moment. This is kind of how your body, when your body starts to feel heavy. He guides you through step by step. One of the steps he calls resonant tuning, which is basically doing OMM exercises, like

you are meditating. You're just saying all over and over again for a certain amount of time. You know, breathing deeply, breath exercises and breath control, focusing on the now and putting all your worries and concerns and trying to be able to allow your brain to let those thoughts and feelings come and then be able to let them go and not sit on them. The soundtracks for this are designed to produce alpha wave frequencies,

which is between eight and 13 hertz. These are introduced. These alpha waves are associated with deep relaxation, a light meditation. The early stages of sleep is when your brain produces these. And this is what Monroe identifies as the threshold before reaching what's known as focus 10. The binaural beats in this phase are subtle, just enough to nudge the brain ideally into a passive receptivity.

When you listen, after a while, they kind of fade into the background. They're there, but you're not really paying attention to them anymore. You adjust to them like you adjust to the smell of your fucking cat or whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what I was thinking. the smell of your fucking like cat or whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's yeah, that's what I was thinking. As then the idea for focus 10 is body asleep, mind awake. Reaching focus 10 is kind of the first major milestone

within these, this meditative program. It was, it's kind of considered a critical threshold you have to meet before moving anywhere else. Just like this doesn't, that doesn't ring to you like Scientology though. It rings to me like meditation. It doesn't ring to you like Scientology though. It rings to me like meditation. It doesn't ring to me like- It's just normal meditation.

It's literally just meditation. You guys don't see the logic of here's all the free stuff online so you can do it yourself, but if you really want to be able to do it, you have to sign up for the classes because the classes that we're going to have instructors who will teach you how to do it. Like you don't say you can't do it. Like you don't say you can't do it. You got to get to level 10, but really level 33 is when we tell you the truth of what's going on.

You're okay. So you're, you're, you're hearing focus 10 and I mean, assigning it a cult like meaning, which I understand when all he's trying to do, cause all he's trying to do is label certain points of your body. No, no, no, no. Like in meditation, it genuinely sounds like no episodes are us promoting this server. No, don't. It's all free online. Go get it online. It's all fucking free. But when it's free online, there's so much to learn. If you're going down the path and you can't access it, all you have to do is sign up and join the Moro Institute. The workbook is online for free. The journal is online for free. Everything. Yeah. The focused 10 isn't- Then why do they have a shop? Because they're a non-profit. That's all.

Yeah. You go there, you can do it. That's all. go. They just do it. That's all they just have nonprofits that are up to no good for sure. I'm just saying like this one isn't it's not this one is like Credentialed like I don't know what to tell you. Yeah, so I don't know Your I get you're like labeling like Scientology levels and ranks within their religion to him saying, when your body is heavy and asleep, but you're still mentally awake, we just call that focus 10. That's, we're just labeling it so you understand kind of a goal. Right. You haven't achieved focus 11. It's, but it's not a rank.

It's not a rank. No, it's not a rank. It's, it's an, it's a way for a... All right. Look, look, I'm going to, I'm going to, I I'm gonna say that the basic premise of the idea of meditation leading you to this, I already have issues with. No, no, no, this is meditation. That's what I'm saying. All of this is just a different new way to meditate. It's like when you- Okay, so there's the thing.

It's like, this is meditation. It's just a different way to meditate. Well, it's not meditation. It's a different way. It's a scientific- It's like a scientifically- Do you think there's a single way in the. Well, it's not meditation. It's a scientific. It's like a scientifically induced. Do you think there's a single way in the world one meditates and that is it?

Yeah. No, I just think that this is one of those ways where they're like meditate this way and be a part of our whole thing and give us your money. I would be surprised. Do you think there are ranks like you walk in and be like, Hey baby, I'm focused 10. I believe. I believe I believe that no, I believe that if you never had wanted to spend money, you could do everything that this has to offer as like a method of

meditation, I you know, other stuff that happened, like they were using it for other methods, but I don't like this process doesn't teach you how to like, you know, control somebody's mind or spy on someone. It just kind of like, I mean, there's no insinuation there. I'm not thinking about you to finding information online and looking into it. I'm thinking about like the person who may have one too many problems and they are lured in with the idea

of meditation being able to help them. And they end up spending money going down this path when really they should seek real help. I don't think that they would feel the need to spend money in this case. I think they, it's very clear. Like, then how it's like, I'm like, like, that's like saying, like, that's like saying it's, it's like, Hey karate, it's got belts. You have to pay to get the lessons. Like if you're going to get to black belt, you got to pay a hundred dollars. That's a scam. You know, I'm not, I look, I'm not saying that cap that like we live in a capitalist society. We literally run a podcast that has ads. I'm not saying that's the

thing here. What I'm saying is that it is, is an it is a service sure for an unverifiable thing that you cannot really uh like um quantify in any way. Yeah. Yes. That's that's basically meditation in a nutshell. You can't really quantify meditation beyond that brain scans anyway, right? Like, I don't know. It feels it feels icky. There's something about it. I don't know what it is. I'm not. There's something that's given me like a full on ick vibe here and I just don't like it. And I don't know what it is. I have no answers for you. I'm just going based off what you said. And

I'm like, something's. Yo bro, we've been meditating. How about we explore this thought a little bit on where, where's this coming from? Where's the root of this? Great question. All I've been doing is listening to you talk. I've been very quiet, just like listening and listening and I'm like, something doesn't ring true, but that's fine. I think it's hard because you have to generate this entire thing from your own brain, right? By design, it is a thing that comes only from how much you believe in it. So if you approach it skeptically, which is understandable, you know, but like is not in...

Ben Shepard But doesn't that ring like religion then? Ben Shepard No, it's just because there's no goal, like there's not like an org that like is making money here. It's a non-profit organization. Ben Shepard Yeah, but the goal of religion is the same thing. It's enlightenment, right? Ben Shepard Yeah, well... Ben Shepard The goal of religion is to be, is to like achieve high score and get to heaven essentially, whatever that heaven is.

It's a definite, it's a, I mean, it's a very complex question, what's the goal of religion? And then we, the Chaluminati, are really equipped to answer that. Yeah. No, but the basic goal of religion is to take the human experience and give it some sort of answers or give it some sort of calm nature to like think on your existence and you know, give you some guidelines, which I think is what meditation brings you that calm and bring it's just a different form of air quotes religion, I think. And I see no difference really, truly many religions use meditation, you know what I mean? So I think, and I see no difference really, truly. Many religions use meditation, you know what I mean?

Oh, for sure. So I think there's like... But there is scientific evidence to show meditation is medically like beneficial to one. It really does exist. There's also scientific evidence. We did an episode where they said meditating can also cause problems because people start to focus inward and start to like get really messed up when they have their silence and they start to, you know, like, yeah, that's when they're not. Yeah. And again, that definitely comes down to the individual of like, they're not. And that's a good reason to legitimately take a class, like to make sure you're doing it right. So

because of a real risk to your health, like if you don't feel like you can do it yourself, right? That's not why you take Scientology is because like, uh, you're really like doctors agree that the Phaetons are going to weigh you down for the rest of your life. Meditation is not a replacement for therapy. Most therapists actually recommend meditation in conjunction with go to the doctor. I get where you two rational, very well read gentlemen are coming from I'm talking about

Society at large with a sixth grade reading level that is an absolute shit show that when you're like even psychiatrists They aren't going to psychiatrists dude. They are like well. There's got to be another way They're the same people that are like I could go for a jog or wait for a pill I can't be responsible for society at this point. You know, society's- I know, agreed. I'm not saying you should be. I'm saying that my concern is that this falls in the line of like, like how does it is to

like this stay open if it's for the public and free, there has to be something to it, right? And I'm just saying, what's the tangible things happening? That's all. I have questions. I don't know that I'm going to get answers from you too, because it's not your responsibility. I'm just saying I have the questions. Yeah, I'm actually, no, no, no, you have me very curious. Uh, let's see.

I am on their pro publica nonprofit, uh, tax page. I am looking at their 2023. Let's see. 2023 revenue. They had a 5 million in expenses. They lost a million dollars. They made 4 million net assets, 2 million, about three. I'll give you the link by the way. So you don't, so I'm not just reading rambly to you cause I don't know. Projects pro public and nonprofits. There you go. That's it. They, that's taxes. I don't know how valuable that is,

but I'll try to remember to put this in the show notes actually. So they don't seem to be making money. They seem to be losing money. They lost a million dollars last year They lost 500 grand the year before they lost 1.5 million in 2021 They made so they so they stay open with with like benefactor donations from like looks like there's investors in somewhere Along the line nonprofit. Yeah. Yeah, a non-profit. So yeah, they go. There's some religious 501 C three is religious educational charity, scientific, literary testing for safety and, uh, sports. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. All right. Yeah. I mean, like, like that question drove me to find some

answers cause I'm curious. Yeah. I'm looking at, uh, I went to, and there's an addiction center where they were talking about, uh, now this is 12, 13 years ago. They're talking about using Hemi-Sync and guided meditations alongside addiction recovery. And they were like, look, it, you know, I, I can't really say what meditation does, but this has truly been helpful in helping those who can't meditate ease into the process, uh, and putting them in a more attentive state. And basically they sync their brains up and they say that it allows people that have no that that can't get it air quotes when it comes to meditation to more easily accept it.

And honestly, that's interesting to me. I did not know that. That's been my personal experience with it. That Disneyland guided, here's what you were trying to do. It doesn't have the aesthetic, it doesn't have the aesthetic, like the ancient aesthetic of most meditative practices. It feels like something,

it almost feels like an app or something. Yeah, yeah. It feels kind of fresh. It's a repackaging of a meditative, it's like, again, a step-by-step guide for those who can't meditate. Fantastic for the first steps. Yeah, exactly. So yeah, focus 10, basically the first major milestone

that you are trying to achieve when meditating is the idea of your body is asleep, but your mind is still awake. You're still like aware. You usually feel at this point kind of heavy. Some people say they feel a little like mentally distant. Uh, some people say they feel completely like they don't feel their body at all. Like they, not that they're floating or separated, but like their whole body's gone numb. Like there's no existence there.

I've never felt that I've gotten just the heavy feeling. Uh, they experience feelings that they call like sometimes floating in a vast dark space or kind of like in a cocoon. Others experience a rushing or pulsing sensation in the limb, which is often your first time paying conscious attention to the, the heart, your heartbeat, your own pulse, being able to feel that. When you get into that state, you start feeling your body. Yeah. And it's just like you being more aware of that kind of thing.

He would train up participants to become observers in the state, like trying to watch your thoughts without engaging them. Like I said, having them come in your anxieties and trying to let them go and not spin into a thought of like any other tangible thoughts. This stage of heightened perception, many said they reported like an intuition

or they would get vivid mental imagery or even spontaneous telepathic impressions. I've not got any of those. Have you ever gotten like a very vivid mental imagery while doing this, Alex? Oh, a lot. I mean, like I was literally talking to my dog, man. Like, yes, I know, but no, but like, it was like a complete, like I was doing all kinds of visual things in my brain. I knew where things were in space around me that weren't near me. Did you get like a flash of like anything?

Because like I have had one moment where I had a split second of the most detail. Like, when they talk about like movie behind your eyelids kind of visuals, I had that for like less than a second, the most vivid image. And it's probably cause I was thinking about aliens of an alien. It's all it was, was just like a typical gray. It wouldn't move. It was like a still, but it was like a flash. It was there and it like snapped me out of it. It was very, very bizarre, but I've never been able to like picture.

What I said, interesting. Yeah, I just, I think this is where my brain was. But yeah, he goes, quote, focus 10 is the first door. It's the moment you realize that you're not necessarily your body, that you could exist fully conscious beyond the physical frame. Monroe insisted on repeatable verification. So participants were trained to perform mental exercises that test their ability to function in the state. For example, they were asked to recall detailed childhood memories and many reported that their memories became clearer and more immersive

in focus 10, which to me sounds a little bit like a hypnosis. Um, this is, but this is the introduction of the gateway. Then you go to phase three, which is the vibrational out of body state where they're trying to guide you into the meditative state of you start feeling the vibrations, a buzzing or tingling, and are an electric sensation some people feel. He believed that this was the first sign

that there is a detaching happening in this out of body experience. It also feels very hyper, just like hyper awareness vibes. Yes, that's how it feels to me too. Like more you're hyper aware of your physical body. Some participants describe that as like a deep resonating hum, like, ohm is supposed to kind of mirror, like the ohm chant is supposed to mirror that in that.

In the first tape even, there's like a pretty crazy like sound thing with like breathing and kind of moaning and chanting, yeah. Yeah, exactly what you're talking about. Pretty crazy. It kind of does create a feeling like that. It's funky. It is funky. I listened with noise canceling headphones too. So like, I'm curious. It's a very weird feeling. It's at this stage that the hemisync audio shifts to theta wave frequencies,

which are between four and eight Hertz. We're dropping down in the frequencies here. These are linked to deep meditation, hypnagogia and the early stages of REM sleep. The soundscapes become a little bit more complex, including subtle rhythmic pulses that are designed to amplify the body's natural kind of rhythmic pulsing. Once the vibrational state is stabilized, participants are taught techniques to try and do the full separation,

which is the rollout method that we talked about that he tried before the rope technique Which is mentally visualizing climbing a rope out of your body or the rising method? Which is the feeling of just being gently lifted like a I like to imagine like a crane coming down and picking you up out Of the crane game, and I think that's how my mom experienced it to be honest with you. Yeah, it's that again It's really interesting that your mom's that she's experiencing these things that we're talking about. It's weird. I don't think she was doing gateway specifically, but it was like a similar meditation. No, but that's, that's if you, because this sent me just down the meditation rabbit hole. The things that people experience in the gateway process are almost one for one, what people experience in meditation.

And then there's all kinds of different meditations that you can like induce. And there's like a breathing control meditation, it's like hyper breathing or hypo breathing, which is meant to specifically induce visuals because it deprives your brain of oxygen. I'm like, that sounds not fun to do. No. Yeah, that's not like a good time. So yeah, this is one of your first OBEs happen.

They're often brief, usually disorienting. People report floating only like a few feet away before snapping back into their body. Some described looking back at their physical forms while others reported hearing non-physical sounds or voices. See, I heard the voice, but I didn't feel like I was anywhere. I felt like I was still in my body. Like I was didn't, there was no out of body feeling. I just heard that one voice one time.

Monroe encouraged participants to keep detailed records. Again, emphasizing that the more data collected, the better the process could be refined. And once participants could separate at will, the program moves into focus 12 and beyond, which is the experimentation of being able to explore in this out of body state. And I, the program goes into some stuff that even Monroe like only kind of theorized were things that might exist later in his life.

So it kind of goes into like when time is supposed to not become real and that you detach from time and you can kind of just like move freely at will in your mental state that way. It sounds very fucking weird. He also gets into like non-physical entities and what it would be like if you, you know, you see one or one approaches you.

But by the end of the program, nearly all participants usually have walked away having felt something, not like an out of body experience, but like a deep relaxation that they never felt before. The ability to just not worry about things that they were super anxious about and being able to let it go a little bit easier. But obviously they would need to continue practicing. Meditation is not something you can just do for a week at a retreat and then never do again. It's

something you're supposed to practice regularly. I feel though, you know, in though that I believe that is true. Sure. I do. I do feel like you get results pretty quick. Like, it's almost for me with meditation, like even the first or second time that I do it, I think there's flashes of immediate gratification in terms of like, Oh, I did go, I did go into another state for a second in the same way that just doing like, you know, when you do a drum circle, even or something like that, that's just a little trance, like you kind of can, the human brain is ready to do this. That's the point. But for clarity's sake, when you are saying, Alex, another state, you're not saying you

left your body. You're saying that like, the same thing the same thing, if you go to a concert and it's for a band you love and you're caught up in the crowd of everyone enjoying it. And so you kind of like let your guard down and you're in the moment and you're doing it like that's what you're referring to. Yeah. Well, I mean, let's put it this way. Alex Vassiani left his body and saw all the stars. Well, but let's put it this way, right?

Because like, I don't think there's that much difference between the two of them. Like, honestly, like if we're're gonna accept the premise of this, which is that like, our brain is like an instrument for perceiving the universe, right? And so everything that we experience is like, actually being generated by our brain, right? Then, you know, going to another state, while yeah, like one way to look at it is simply like just kind of having like a transcendent moment like, oh, like getting chills or, or just getting really happy when you look around during a concert like you're saying and seeing everybody dancing to a song you love and it's exhilarating. I don't think life actually gets better than that.

I don't think there's actually like, like much difference between that and sitting alone in a bedroom and feeling a very euphoric feeling also. And, you know, the fact that I think the thing that is more of interest to the Institute, or at least in this paper, this or whatever this is, this report, this 30 page report, which I read, like, it's interesting from the point of view that the brain has these capabilities to achieve these other ways of perceiving reality. And they're not so much trying to

explain them from their origin point so much as they are realizing they're here, we're finding ways to access this, we're finding ways to make ourselves feel this way, and the potential for this, because it makes you feel things, is large. And then, obviously, there's the sort of thing that maybe Math is gonna tell you about, like, verifiable effects of this, where people like, went and read somebody's driver's license in their pocket

or some shit like that. But, you know what I'm saying? Like, that's not really the point of this research. No, yeah, we're not going to get into that aspect of it, really. We're going to get into the scientific research on binaural beats specifically and like what people have found or what they may not have found. Try the first one. Try I encourage anyone listening.

Let's try the first one. It's 30 minutes. If yesterday, if last yesterday, if last week piqued your interest one try I encourage anyone listening like the first one is 30 minutes if yesterday if lastly yesterday if last week piqued your interest and today's sort of like debate about what is you know transcending this realm you know like what actually do you need to achieve to achieve something like transcending this realm just give it a shot just try the first one in good faith don't be a fucking little skeptical like like like you know, when you tell somebody to try food and they like touch the tip of it to their tongue and say they hate it, don't do that. Just fucking sit for 30 minutes and try it and, uh, you know, see what happens in your original points. Like,

you know, so you think like immediately something can happen like that and make you kind of want to keep going. It's interesting because like I definitely had moments early where I experienced that I had a weird feeling, whether it's feeling heavy for the first time or whatever that made me go, Oh, that's I've never had that. I've never felt that before. But it's interesting because then once you start, and this is where it gets frustrating and maybe the meditative practice actually is like really the difficulty comes is like when you first go into meditation, especially if you've never done it before,

you're really not expecting anything. You don't know what to expect. You don't really know what to feel. You start experiencing things. And then you start going into our, at least me, I started going into the meditations expecting to experience those same things at the same time, feeling the same way, which is not good because it's all my brain is thinking about. Anytime I feel a sensation, it's like, Oh, this is okay. Now I'm going to start feeling heavy.

And that impeded me for like a good month, month and a half before I literally got to the point where I frustrated myself into being like, fuck it. Let's just see what happens again. And that's it. It was just, it's, it's a self thing, you know, it's a really interesting self wall. You kind of put up, let me ask a question. You can't relax when you have that kind of expectation. Do not take this

the wrong way either of you. Okay. This is not meant to insult. Were you both high when you did this? No. Um I'm always high. I was probably high in some way but I didn't like smoke up and then. Yeah, I don't I don't rip beforehand because they like immediately beforehand because they say not to. All right, for sure. I just want to like be... I'll say this. I'll say this. I didn't traverse the realms. I didn't like dissociate from my body the first time. I didn't like... But I did have like euphoric fantasies of my own power.

I did communicate with my dog through our foreheads. I did live an experience that I did. Seems like it seems like something I do just on dry. I didn't come out. But I wasn't. But that's the whole point. And I did come out. I didn't come out and like feel good afterwards. My experience was frustrating because my brain is loud.

Every thought in the world just comes in and dominates. And for a good two months, it was fighting just my brain is loud. Every thought in the world just comes in and dominates. And for a good two months, it was fighting just that where occasionally I'd feel heavy and I got me excited, but I start thinking about it. I'm much better at being able to let go of the thoughts now, but I have not had any moments of like, I can, I can tell, telepathically speak with my cats. Uh, I could be the most powerful psychic in the world. What's interesting about this is everything you guys are saying and you're

describing. Yeah. Well, that's one edible for me. I'll have an edible. I'll go lay in my bed and I will be like floating outside my body. Love that. I will close my eyes and see shit. Like I don't usually see stuff. When I close my eyes, my eyes and be like, all you're doing is like stuff when I close my eyes. That's crazy to me. I close my eyes and be like. All you're doing is like. Teaching your brain to be able to do that on its own. No, what I'm saying is all you're doing is making a great case for psychedelics as another path to the same mindset.

That's a conversation I'm willing to have for sure. Yes, I agree. It's the very same thing. It's just how do you get your body to make the right chemicals? How do you get your body to do the, to feel the way that you need to feel? Like if, if you, you know, like how they say, like your body doesn't actually know what wet is, but your body can like tell when stuff is wet by guessing kind of, like there are things that make your body concretely feel certain ways. And like, I don't know, like in the jungles of Mexico, it's, you know, eating a bunch of leaves and jumping up and down in the middle of the night, you know, like whatever it is, like, there's all different

types of ways to actually get there. And I'm here for that. I'm here for the experimentation. I just am super interested in the idea of, yeah, you can sit there and you can try to do all this stuff. Or let me tell you about my good friend. Yeah. Gummy edible. Cause that guy. You're unique in that weed really does give you some psychedelic effects. It's wild. Some people do. Some people do.

Enjoy it tremendously. I don't get like, no, but I will just like be vibing and having a great time. Honestly, this is the idea of meditation is I'm chill with that. I love this. I love the idea of like you're just unlocking stuff in your own head. But the issue I will always have is it's like and that means something. Does that make any sense? Like the idea of taking this to the next level of like now we are experiencing the reality that was never there like that to me, it's all up here.

Like everything my, that I'm experiencing in meditation or everything I'm experiencing in, like if I'm high, it's all just my brain. And if anything, I'm like, dude, the brain's crazy. We got to look into that thing. That's wild. But like, that's what this, I believe that's basically the point of the Monroe Institute, literally right there, what you're saying. Yeah. Like if that's, if that's what this I believe that's basically the point of the Monroe Institute literally right there what you're saying. Yeah, like if that's if that's the vibe, it's just that everything we've done so far, again, we haven't completed everything. But everything does so far has the idea of like, by

doing this, you will eventually unlock kind of what the governments were looking for, like mind control powers, and the power to see alternate realities or like that kind of stuff, which to me, I'm like, nah, that's bullshit. But the idea that there's something in the brain, that's it. I love that. And because yeah, the brain's weird as hell. And if we remember from last episode two, even Monroe said, even his early experience of whatever was happening, he realized like they were still, he couldn't rely on what he was seeing that the things that he was seeing, even though they seem to mirror his house, there were still things that weren't quite right or things that were not the right color.

And like, yeah, so like, again, in my mind, when you were saying that it's like, that's not how this works. Like that's not what this is about. And yeah, I'm not even, I'm not even fully out of the camp of it isn't all in my head. There's still like, there's ample evidence that it could all just be up in here. And I think the drug argument is an interesting one because I feel like meditation is like walking a path that leads to that while taking a drug is dropping you

from the air into the end already. Like, meditating is like working your way to the point where you have these visuals where if you take mushrooms, you just kick that door down, you're like, oh fuck, and you're just, you're there. Honestly, I'd be very interested. This isn't like a meditation thing, but when people are about to die or very near death, that delirium kicks in. Yes. Yeah. And they start seeing things and talking about stuff. And that's the kind of thing like your brain is doing. It's working overtime because all your body's changing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So curi because again, that could be interpreted as they're seeing a dead relative or they are experiencing other plane of existence.

And no one would really know because it's all in your own damn head. So like, how would we know? Exactly. And that's very curious. It is because like what I've had happen in the meditation too, that is interesting is that what's not what they call clicking out, which is this, we talked a little bit about last time, which is like you, you're like ever have that time where you go to sleep and you wake up and it literally just feels like you blinked. Like a lot of time you wake up at your sleep, but sometimes you're literally like, Holy shit, what just happened? That's kind of what clicking out is where like you blinked. Like a lot of time you wake up after sleep, but sometimes you literally just feel like, holy shit, what just happened?

That's kind of what clicking out is, where like you disappear for a second, you come back and sometimes the entire like 30 minutes is done, sometimes 30 seconds has passed, but it always feels like instant. I've had that happen, which is fascinating. And I, you know, the brain can just perceive time as it would even, you know.

I had that happen in a car, dude. I was driving down the road and literally fell asleep. I think fell asleep, but I was on the other side of a hill when I opened my eyes again and was like, what? I've never been that scared. I will never do that again. Scared the shit out of me. I don't know what that means, but it was terrifying.

It's yeah. And I so yeah, I agree with you. to kind of move on from that is like, I don't necessarily think it's not all in the head, but it is interesting regardless of one or the other. Both are fascinating to me. It's like, I think it's like more the, I think like if you dug into it, I think that what they would say is something like they're both kind of true and not true, like, because what one thing is is dependent on what the other thing is, like what your head decides is one thing will affect the other thing. So it's like, it's not that it's either real or all in your head.

It's like that your head and the real are possibly the only types of reality that there ever could be. I mean, but that's just like, quantum physics. That's philosophy 101. That's like, mean, but that's just like quantum physics. That's like, but that's not as real as our brain. But that's not just philosophy. We're getting to the edge of like observation as like a physical force. Like we're getting to a point. We're getting to a point where the, the, you know, if you circumnavigate in the

globe in two directions about this and coming together again, that's like where we're at between like science and like fucking putting a laser against the wall and doing acid or whatever the fuck it was to look at it. Like, you know what I'm saying? Like, sure. It's, it's, I don't think they're that different from each other. Like, you know, people piss their pants when they

watch a scary movie all the time. Yeah. Yeah. Everything's real. If you think it is the brain tells you, it is this why I think it's why VR makes me sick so much. Cause my brain's like, it's real if you think it is the brain tells you it is this why I think it's like VR makes me Sick so much because my brain's like it's real But you don't feel any of the actual movement effects on your body while you move Yeah, if you sit down in a VR game or it's like a VR car thing just fine. Yeah. Yeah

Game it's just fine anything where you're like in the space actually no problemo Yeah, you know like if you're just walking around, good. Yep. Upside down, fuck off. No, yeah. So around this time that the CIA was interested, other people outside of the Monroe Institute were also becoming more interested.

Researchers across various disciplines like neuroscience, psychology, they were intrigued by the potential of this hemisync to influence brain function. This period kind of really marked a transition from anecdotal reports to more empirical investigations as other scientists started dipping their fingers in and saying, well, wait, what's going on over here? One of the primary areas of interest was how Hemi sync influenced brainwave

activity, particularly in achieving Hemisph- hemispheric synchronization and researchers from institutions such as the University of Virginia and Menninger Foundation conducted studies to explore this phenomenon. EEG studies were pivotal in these investigations. Obviously they can measure people's brain electrical activity.

Scientists observed that exposure to hemisync audio patterns seemed to induce a state where both hemispheres of the brain operated in greater coherence. Something that we haven't gotten to the real depth talk of is how like the different hemispheres of the brain are more active if you're awake or asleep. So the left is way more active when you're awake and the right side of the brain kind of is almost inert and like very little input is happening. And then when you're asleep, it goes the other way. And there's very little connection between the right and the left hemisphere, which is why people

think sometimes dreams are like very like, if you're dreaming and your dream comes to your mind, nothing in a dream should surprise you. And yet it does. And people, you know, some of the scientists think is because there's not a lot of connection between the right and the left. So it's a, your brain is not always operating at the same frequency on both sides, is kind of what I'm getting at here. And this synchronization was associated with heightened cognitive functions,

easier meditative states to achieve, and some people just easier to get into what people describe as the flow, which I'm sure all of us have like felt getting in the zone, you're just like, hours go by while you're either playing a game or cranking at work When I'm seven laps of Gran Turismo, come on. Yeah. Yeah, exactly Beyond the cognitive enhancement researchers also were exploring Hemisynch's potential to in medical settings

particularly in pain management Dr. Charles Tartt a psychologist who was known for his work in consciousness studies, examined how hemisynch could alter pain perception. His research indicated that specific hemisynch frequencies might significantly reduce pain and stress levels in patients. And in a pilot study reprinted from the Monroe Institute Hemisynch Journal, researchers investigated the application of the hemisynch in radiation oncology. The study combined hemisynYNC with a guided meditation to address side effects of radiation treatment

in cancer patients. And the data strongly supported the binaural beat exercises effectiveness in relieving fatigue associated with radiation treatments. And this pilot study provided encouragement for actually further studying this HEMISYNC. And I actually have the PDF link if you actually want it. It's a long study.

It's a long study. I'm going to read the conclusion for you. The data strongly support the binaural beat exercises effectiveness for relieving fatigue associated with radiation treatments. Though this was an open rather than a placebo controlled study, the effect size 14 out of 15 or 18 out of 20, is far beyond what one would expect from a placebo effect. Questions that arise.

If the study size were greater, what would the data look like? If we could compare the guided meditation without HEMISYNC and with HEMISYNC, what would we see? If EEG spectrographic information could be obtained, what would it tell us about effect size and other parameters? And if we could control usage dosage, what effect would that have? And there were one, two, three, four, five, six doctors involved in this particular study. Basically promising, but they want to do more.

But it seemed promising with, you know, guided meditation and the like. Then there's the psychological, yeah, psychological community also took great interest in this stuff and its potential to enhance learning or memory. Dr. Lester Femi, director of the Princeton Biofeedback Research Institute conducted research indicating that HEMISYNC could improve focus, memory recall, and problem solving abilities. And these findings suggested that HEMISYNC might serve as a valuable tool in educational and high performance settings. And the US Army also explored HEMISYNC's application, not just for like the super spy stuff,

but investigations were conducted and to assess whether it could optimize performance among soldiers, particularly in tasks that required sustained attention and rapid decision-making. While specific details of these military studies are classified, it was enough interest that there was quite a bunch of studies done on it, but we don't have, we just know they were done and they don't, they never gave us what the results were.

But for Robert Monroe, the scientific inquiries were both validating and exhilarating for him. Would have begun as this personal exploration into all this stuff and kind of taken on a life of its own within is now becoming the subject of actual scientific scrutiny beyond him and the people he's hired. The empirical validation of Hemisync's effects helped transform this from a curious phenomenon into a legitimate tool for cognitive and psychological improvement. And his dedication to understanding and expanding human consciousness led to the development of Hemisync and the subsequent scientific studies provided a foundation for its broader

acceptance and application that is still being looked at today. One of the studies I mentioned is actually only from, oh wow, it's actually 20 years ago. I was like 2008 and I'm like, it's not that long ago. No, it's almost 20 years. It's pretty recent. The time truly doesn't matter the older you get. It just all feels like a blur. It's like four days ago. Like it's like four to 18 days ago is about how far away 2008 feels right now. Yeah, it really does. It does. Some of the military names that went and kind of got involved for you guys, Lieutenant Frederick Skip Atwater. He was the operations and training officer for the Stargate program. Atwater was a major role in incorporating the HemiSync techniques into the remote viewing program, which they did do. There's Joseph McGonigal, one of the

more successful remote viewers who's known as remote viewer number one within the Stargate research papers. Ed Dames and Ingo Swan, both US psychic espionage program people. They explored Monroe's work for its potential enhancement of basically spies, psychic spies. Again, go read the papers. I would highly, highly suggest. But let's push on now with the rest of basically Monroe's life. Well, as Institute kind of grew and influence Monroe's own personal journeys continued to evolve in weird, increasingly weird ways. And by the mid 80s, he began reporting encounters with more nonphysical entities

that seemed vastly beyond human intelligence. Things that led him to formulate something called the I-there concept, which is a theory that suggests human consciousness is basically part of a great one giant consciousness. Like as above so below, universes look like qubits, like that kind of thing. He said he interacted things with known as intelligence collectives. Things that seem to be groups of intelligence collectives, things that seem to be groups of non-physical entities that seem to function as like a hive, higher self-structures. He saw multi-layered versions of himself that existed simultaneously across different lifetimes

and dimensions. He said he saw something called the gathering, which is a vast assembly of like non-human intelligences that seem to be observing Earth from a far distance quote, we are more than our physical bodies. We're part of a vast network, a greater existence that we are only just beginning to comprehend. And Monroe as he continued to age increasingly saw life after death, human consciousness as more of an end than more of just like an awakening, a learning process. By the end of the eighties, the Institute itself was now fully recognized as an actual research center, respected both scientific and other communities,

an active training ground for people going out to take these meditative escapes or what do you, classes rather, remote viewing, expanded awareness studies would continue to happen with the CIA. An institution now had a documented military and government interest that became public, proving more interest from other organizations around the world. And a growing body of evidence that seemed to show that HemiSync had some benefits, just what the limits of those benefits were, were still being pushed. And Monroe still wasn't finished. And by the 1990s would bring even greater insights for him, further refining the Institute's techniques and expanding our understanding

of what he deems to be human. By the time Monroe entered his final decade of his life, he had spent at this point just under 40 years venturing beyond what he believed was physical perception, systematically trying to map these things, consciousness itself. Until then, he had only existed in these areas that only existed in mythical traditions and he was trying to get grounded in science. He built an institute, trained thousands to do these meditative techniques and established a framework through which ordinary individuals could reliably access these deep meditative states. Yet despite all he'd accomplished, he was still restless.

He, his early explorations had been about movement after the body, after leaving the body and traveling and communicating with non-physical beings. But as he neared the final years of his life, the nature of his inquiries shifted, where once he was asking, how do I leave my body? Now he started asking, am I anything beyond this body? The questions were no longer about method, but now he kind of has a shift into meaning. This is where we get into that more like meditative, yogi, like kind of inward thinking stuff.

His personal journeys kind of deepened his discoveries more profound within himself. And the insights that he gained culminate into his final book from 1994 called The Ultimate Journey, which was a work that was meant to lay out his more radical conclusions, basically the more out there things that he was kind of just coming to believe as he was dying

because he was at the end of his life at this point. In Monroe's earlier explorations, he often encountered what he was dying, because he was at the end of his life at this point. In Monroe's earlier explorations, he often encountered what he considered guides, mentors, and intelligent beings who appeared to be assisting him in his travels beyond the physical world. And these interactions, while mysterious, were relatively straightforward

compared to the things that were happening later in his life. As he continued into the 90s, the pattern emerged that unsettled him. Increasingly, the entities that he met were no longer these strange different creatures. Instead, he started meeting versions of himself more and more and more. At first, the experiences he claimed were disorienting.

He would find himself in that non-physical state that he was familiar with, floating through unfamiliar environments when suddenly he would become aware of a presence like he had before. Except this presence was not of an other. It was familiar. It was a presence of himself.

Sometimes these alternate selves seemed to be living different lives in different times or places. Other times they were aware of him and communicated with a knowing familiarity as if they had been waiting for him to reach this realization. And through repeated encounters, Monroe came to a shocking conclusion. Human identity was not singular at all. The idea of the self as an isolated consciousness living one life at a time was an illusion. In reality, every person was a fragment of a larger, multi-dimensional, fractal self.

A network of interconnected consciousnesses, each existing in different realities, all feeding into a greater whole. This was what he deemed the structure of human existence, something beyond what most religious and scientific paradigms have suggested, what he called the eye there. Quote, we are not merely individuals wandering through time. We are part of something greater, something vast, beyond understanding, beyond what we can fully grasp. Each life is but a single thread in a fabric that extends beyond the limits of our perception. Monroe believed that every human was part of an overarching

Oversoul, a source, if you will, a collective self, that contained all of their past and future experiences. This is like the cosmic egg. What people perceived as reincarnation was not the journey of a single soul through time, but rather the simultaneous existence of multiple lifetimes all at once, all connected to some higher intelligence with the goal of existence. He came to believe not to simply live, but to just gather experiences. I just, I'm going to just leave this out there. We just had a conversation about how this wasn't religious and now it's sounding very real. We're shifting into the rel- definitely the- it almost feels like I was set up because it sounds really religious.

We're back to the guy. We're not talking about the institute. Yeah, this is the guy. Now this is the guy. I understand. I understand. I'm just saying. It sounds like you went off the rails a little bit. Listen, the method is still miles with Seductive lady in that in the ether in my mind. Yeah, but like I you know what? I can't fault the guy for one to see a seductive lady Yeah, that's what should be in the ether. Yeah, that's a great thing to find That's a great thing to find meditation is finding that one seductive honestly, I'd be totally fine. But no, I'm not arguing with you. Absolutely. This is where I would invite friends like you got to check out this lady

though. Yeah, so with the real time, it's time. Um, I agree with you that it does get very wooey, very religious see in some ways. Um, it's more Eastern religion than Western religion in terms of like, but it is old ideas, right? It's these, these ideas of like one existence, the old ideas, right? It's these, these ideas of like one existence, the cosmic egg, the, the thing that is experiencing itself in all ways before whatever, you know, whatever it is. I wholeheartedly agree with you. Like I, you're not going to see me argue and he calls it an over soul, a collective self that contained all their past and future experiences.

What people perceived as reincarnation was not the journey of a single soul through time. But again, the simul- I just reread the paragraph. Simultaneous existence of multiple lifetimes, all connected to the same higher intelligence. The goal of existence he came to believe was not simply to live, but to gather experiences, which would then be integrated into the greater I slash there. It is not about lessons or punishment, he explained.

It is about collecting experience. That is the purpose. That is why we return. As Monroe's understanding of identity expanded, so too did his interest in what lay after physical life. He encountered what he considered lost souls in his previous journeys, these entities, people who he thought may have died, but did not realize they were dead. Some that he seemed to be trapped in some self-imposed limbo clinging to the echoes of their past lives. But as he traveled further into the into the self or the void, he began encountering something far more structured, a vast non-physical plane where newly departed souls gathered before continuing their journey.

And now we dip into even more kind of religious religiosity kind of things. Woo! Yeah, we're getting more wooey. This was unlike anything he had encountered before. For it was not chaotic, it wasn't empty. Instead, it was organized. A place filled with structures, libraries, landscapes, meeting places, almost like it functioned as a way station, a transition point for those who have recently left their

physical existence. Some remained only briefly before moving on. Others lingered, held back by their attachments to their previous lives or fears about what came next. He would go, quote, they're waiting. Some know where they are. Others don't. Some cling to the belief system they held in life, afraid to let go.

Others simply do not understand what has happened. He realized that many of these souls and the souls are in air quotes for just better understanding of like what he's the concept is getting out here. Uh, he said they needed guidance. They seem they needed someone to help them understand that what happened to them, to reassure them that there was nothing to fear. And so Monroe developed something called the lifeline, like a system that he was able to develop where he was able to help navigate,

help these blue souls, as we'll call them navigate and accept that they're dead. It's time to just go back to source or, or disintegrate and re-ing, whatever it is that's time to just go back to source or or disintegrate and reading whatever it is that it's supposed to happen afterward And that getting to this point he realized was kind of just a surprise. He was this wasn't something he's planning to discover Many for him. He's like, okay. Well now I will maybe we can teach this to people So like before he started with people close try to teach them to see if they could do it Some people could most people could not.

Almost, and almost everybody should we say, couldn't get to this place that he was describing as like a death waiting zone. He goes quote, death is merely an awakening if you will. It is the recognition that you were never truly alone, that you were always connected to something much greater. And as he entered his last years, his attitude toward his own mortality was remarkably different from most. He had been, to him, he believed he had seen beyond the veil, mapped structures of consciousness, confronted the nature of identity itself. To him, there was nothing left to fear. He spent his remaining time just refining training programs, ensuring that the future

of the Institute could carry on after his death. And he wrote The Ultimate Journey, his most, like I said, his more philosophical out there book, which brought together the entirety of his discoveries into a single narrative. And he prepared himself for what he called his final exit, death. And on March 17th, 1995, Robert Monroe passed away at the age of 79. And those who had worked closely with him believe, believe that he had chose this moment for departure. And we know that a lot of like, deep meditative Buddhists often go into the meditative state of like, it's time for them to go

for there is a term for it. You're telling me this man disappeared like the turtle and in the panda movie, he turned into cherry blossoms and flew away is what you're telling me no he actually exploded into sound waves the FBI was there he looked like mega man lime jello yeah he exploded into coins is what you're telling me yeah yeah like sonic the hedgehog he became coins and while robin robe passed peacefully, his work didn't end. The Monroe Institute continues to thrive into this day as we kind of went through all their stuff not too long ago and learned more about their financial situation that I even knew

before. Monroe kind of leaves us with these last words. The words you hear every time that you do one of these meditations and that you're supposed to repeat to yourself at the beginning. We are more than our physical bodies and then because we are more than physical matter and there's so much more to discover. And for those who followed in his footsteps, the journey had only just begun because when Monroe passed away, he left behind far more than just a collection of books and research papers. He built a riddle and a mystery for a million

dollars gold underneath the Institute was Mutants all of them were down there the more Mutants with powers too extreme for the public. We must save them X-Men. My protege Jean Grey She is never going to mess up. Trust me. She is Yeah after his passing the leadership of the Monroe Institute went to his daughter Laurie Monroe is never going to mess up. Trust me. Yeah. After his passing, the leadership of the Monroe Institute went to his daughter, Laurie Monroe. We talked about earlier. Um, one of Laurie's first priorities was just ensuring the core of her father's work remained intact. Uh, he spent decades developing Hemi Sync Tech,

refining the experience, mapping it all out. So, but she also like, so she just made sure everything was kind of, uh, preserved and kept running at the Institute. They expanded its research collaborations with neuroscientists, psychologists, consciousness researchers and continued scientific research into the validation of HEMISYNC. Their own equipment have been modernized over the times and they keep developing new applications, trying to find new ways. Like you were mentioning the stress reduction application

and whatnot, and the potential medical therapies. And she understood that the Institute, for it to thrive, it just couldn't be tied to Robert Monroe's personal experiences. The research had to stand on its own ground, evolving with new discoveries in neuroscience and consciousness studies. But even the Institute modernized Monroe's core philosophy

seems to have remained at the heart. You are more than your physical body. And on that as the Monroe Institute continues its studies and Robert Monroe passed away in 1995, our story of the founding of the Monroe Institute and who Robert Monroe is comes to a close. And next week is going to be kind of reader's listener story-esque up slash personal experience with meditation. There's already a ton of people have left their experiences. I, if there's anybody here who has never meditated, I knew you're trying it. I please leave us your experience. I would love to do it. Yeah.

And that'll be next week as we wrap up this more esoteric topic. I think that we've ever covered lunch illuminati of this, like meditation and conscious study through the lens of a man who was desperate to try and put science behind it. You know, the Chaluminati of this like meditation and consciousness study through the lens of a man who was desperate to try and put science behind it. At least with you. You know the Chiluminati, I was trying to strike out in different mystical directions. That's what we're all about. Thank you all for listening.

We're off to patreon.com slash ChiluminatiPod to form our own religion. I mean, teach you how to meditate. But first, I'm going to take a shit. Patreon.com slash ChiluminatiPod. Thank you all so much for listening. We appreciate you, we love you. Goodbye. shit. Patreon.com slash Chiluminati Pot. Thank you all so much for listening, we appreciate you, we love you, goodbye. Bye. Yoyoyo! Yoyoyo! Yoyoyo!

Oh hey, look who's back from their vacation to Scotland. Hey Mothman. Hey Chupacabra! Hey Frisno Nightcrawler! My greetings young lad, what a beautiful Polaroid camera you've got there. Such beautiful leather straps and so well weathered. Like the pale brown skin, so many leaves. Dry and brittle atop winter's first snow. In Fresno. So don't keep us waiting. How was Edinburgh? Did you meet Nessie or what? Maybe a Kelpie? Actually, this is so crazy to say, but I might have met someone. And you know, I'm usually kind of an enigmatic loner, but we honestly had a lot in common. It was nice, like the opposite of a notorious national scale bridge disaster.

Wow, that's so sweet. It's a shame they're all the way in Scotland though. Yes, just as the California winds blow through the ash trees, there is no better feeling than weird, beautiful love between two dark entities of fate. For your friend to make their way to us, it would be glorious. It would be world class. It would be world class. It would be Fresno. Yeah! I hope they write me back!

Three to five business days later. Dear Muffman 1, It was so great to see you the other day. Thanks for visiting my fair city. You can tell that I'm from here because of my very authentic accent. I don't really know how to say this but it was nice. Like the opposite of a notorious national scale bridge disaster. Anyway I'm just right to say I think I will take you up on the offer to visit. And anyway the group that created me, the Chaluminati, has an office out there. And I'm sure I can make some excuse to come out. In fact, I probably shouldn't say this next part, but-

Mothman 2! Now with green eyes! Get your clone today! I mean, get your own today! At theyeti.com slash Chiluminati. Yo yo yo, yo yo yo yo yo yo yo yo yo. Yo. The YETI Project Hello everybody, welcome back to the Jaluminati Podcast. As always, I'm one of your hosts, Mike Marhen, joined by the... I don't know who they are! There's two...

What? Terrence Hill and Bud Spencer. No! Neo and Trinity. No! I don't understand, and I probably never will. Let me just tell you right now that there's two... Leon Kennedy and Claire Redfield.

I'm telling you, I think he literally just looked up famous duos. Cheech and Chow. And it's just been going through the list ever since. I'm trying to dig deep. Which one of you is, uh, Dick Powell? Me? Your name's Jesse Cox! Who is Dick Powell? Me?

Your name's Jesse Cox! Hahaha! Hahaha! Hahaha! Hahaha! I want your lunatic I want my my banger I want your lunatic

I want my body back I want to live with my team I want to live with my team Hello everybody, welcome back to the Jaluminati Podcast. As always I'm one of your hosts, Mike Marhen, joined by Alex and Jesse. Like a shooting star across the sky that's actually a UFO.