Markdown lines 82–138 · Part 2 of 7
[00:13:30] to you later, but first I want to sing you a song. And so he picked up his guitar and started singing and they rode off into the sunset and everybody was satisfied. So my answer finally getting down to that was it was an easy answer. Fine, I'll say to this sexual drive of mine, uh, I'll get to you later, but first I won't do this other. >> Yeah. >> And sure enough, it worked. >> So in other words, you conquered it psychologically. That's right. And that released you. >> That's right. >> Then what?
[00:14:00] >> Then became a series of experiments and and uh and I took this research team that I had and turned them loose in trying to find information about this. And uh uh we found that quite quickly that there was uh uh what was an underground as it were then we're talking back back in the 50s or 59 59 uh which uh was the area where all the uh you'd find the uh uh trans people and
[00:14:30] all type types of of mystical things and >> Sure. and uh uh call it dreamland if you wander. Well, anyway uh after a long uh period of time we found out the usual ones there and I had a uh meetings with the uh that was right at the beginnings of parasychology and uh uh I went down and met with JB Ryan for example. I don't know if you
[00:15:00] know the name or not. >> No sir. Well, he was the leading figure in parasychology in that era about 1960, I guess, 50, good night. Anyway, to make it short, uh I met with him and uh he said uh on a Saturday at Duke University and he was very he says it's very indeed very interesting, but he says it's it's not my department. And uh I said, "Well, um uh what is your department?" And he says, "Oh, we uh we work with cards."
[00:15:30] And I and I I said, "Oh, thinking that I had a poker game the night before." And uh he explained how they were have subjects testing subjects for uh psychic ability by having them read cards before they turned over and this kind of thing. >> Oh, yes. I'm familiar with that. >> Yeah. Anyway, uh so I left and uh uh as I was going out the door, this uh
[00:16:00] research assistant and Dr. Ryan uh opening the door to get me out says, "Mr. Monroe," I says, "What?" He says, "Don't worry about it." I says, "What? Why?" He says, "I do it, too." That was the first person I ever heard who had ever done anything like it. And then then following up that uh mind you now the fear had faded away and it was uh trying to do something about it. It was another question. So I had another friend a psychologist named Foster
[00:16:30] Bradshaw and I finally got the courage to talk to him about it and he says oh that's nothing new. I says well I'm glad to hear that. And he says uh uh uh there's a very easy way to handle it. And I says what do you mean? He says this, "So you go over to India that's and you live with a in a with a guru for about some time and he'll tell you all get it all fixed up in your mind." >> Uhhuh. >> And I said, "Well, thinking uh about my
[00:17:00] business and my home and my wife and two children." And uh I said, "Well, how long would this take?" He says, "Well, that's not important. How long would it take?" So I says, "How long do you think it would take?" He says, "Well, oh, maybe 10 to 15 to 20 years." And I had my usual run with him. And I said, "Well, Brad, uh, what would you do?" And knowing he has a wife who had two grand pianos, and that's why he he's
[00:17:30] industrial psychologist in New York, main theme, things like that. I says, "What would you do, Brad?" He he looked at me with this lofty all lofty smile and says, "It's not my problem, it's yours." >> Yeah, nice answer. Uh, how much experimentation had you begun to do with this? In other words, um, once you realized it wasn't going to kill you as you continued to have these experiences, what did you try to do? Well, I I tried the very simple things obviously at
[00:18:00] first and that is uh uh going uh through the walls in the house and out and around and stretching outward and going upward obviously in the uh being a pilot in airplanes but it was interesting to go up and go and play in the clouds. Mhm. >> You see, because I no longer had the fear, but I gradually began to expand it. And my main key in the in the early era was to get stuff I could verify, such as uh go to some uh person's house
[00:18:30] and and visit with them and try to make some kind of appearance or get information and bring it back. >> Were you able to do that? >> Very much so. And to my very pleasant surprise, as a matter of fact, and uh in several cases, I appeared as a people perceived not knowing that I was there. That's the point. I didn't announce it. Uh I was going to go visit them that particular evening or whatever, but I appeared as sort of a
[00:19:00] little bit of a swirling gray mist and that's why they saw me, not as a physical person, but as a great mist. Anyway, uh it's most important to recognize that it was fully a year of this type of experimentation before I myself could was convinced of the reality of it that that that it was not an elucidation or a a wild dreaming state or whatever. It took uh a full year of this before I said yes, this is
[00:19:30] real. Did you uh as time went on were you more easily able to attain the state uh where you would be able to travel out of body? >> Oh yes, very much. That's what all of this was. And uh uh uh then I got uh as as if we moved into the early 60s on it. Well, we began to do all different types of experimentation on uh going to the coast and back and everything else. >> Uh that's remarkable. Mr. Monroe, hold
[00:20:00] on just a moment. We'll be right back to you. We're interviewing Robert Monroe of the Monroe Institute. This is Dreamland. And uh Mr. Monroe, are you there? >> Oh, I think I'm here anyway. >> Oh, you you are. Although I suppose with you, one never knows for sure. >> No, they know for sure that that I've gotten past that now. >> Tell me, um there's been a lot of scientific study and some not so scientific of the neardeath experience. >> Yes. and and you mentioned that you thought it might have been uh an NDE
[00:20:30] that you were having. Um is there a relationship uh to the NDE? >> Um not not in the sense that u it's commonly been researched in recent years. Um it it's it's a different kind of thing. We were very methodical. You got to understand that simultaneously with all of this uh I in turn was operating the company and we moved out of the broadcasting uh program
[00:21:00] production and instead of going to the west coast, we moved on to where we had three radio stations down in Virginia and North Carolina. >> Mhm. >> And uh we set up a facility here and began a very serious research. The first thing that we found out was that uh conventional science did not have any means of measuring anything like this at all. >> Right? >> The closest thing uh was the biological electrical science and we got into those
[00:21:30] uh relatively early. But in going down to Virginia, then we did uh set up a research facility where we could indeed uh see if it was possible to measure other people in similar states. And in the beginning of that um uh we enlisted a uh uh PhD doctor, young friend uh who's been a friend ever since back in the back in the 60s. and we began some
[00:22:00] very serious experimentation and uh a man by the name of Charlie Tart. I don't know whether you've heard of Charlie or not. >> No sir. Were you able to actually document any biological changes that occurred during this state? uh we began to match them up and we found uh uh that generally speaking uh we also developed methods and techniques but uh we had an average of about 8 to 10 subjects we were using constantly in the 60s and 70s
[00:22:30] down in Virginia in Richmond and then in Charlottesville. Incidentally uh what brought us into Charlottesville is that we got into the cable business. >> Oh yes. >> So >> yes, I'm very familiar with it. I guess we've been down similar roads. My background is in uh cable television and broadcasting >> and you know u even even then uh in the whole idea we were microwaving signals then uh I thought aha someday that's what uh cable's going to be. It'll be
[00:23:00] satellite stuff. Anyway, uh to make it short that we there was no means of measuring other than the conventional signals and we found one of the things there were two states that uh came out biologically and by that I mean chemically and electrically. One of them was uh uh dreaming sleep and that was when one was near the physical body. The second one was stage four sleep which is
[00:23:30] deep sleep, delta sleep and that is when the major uh uh activity in what we we coined the phrase and it became generic. We didn't like to call it the old phrase of astral traveling because it had too much of a mystical flavor. >> Mhm. So we uh coined the term out of body which has now become generic as you know. But uh what we found is that that these extended distance type of of
[00:24:00] activity all had to do with stage 4 sleep. >> Uh if if I might um Mr. Monroe, how were you actually able to document that? If if a person is there sleeping, how do you correlate uh the time of the out of body experience with a particular state of sleep? >> Well, it was very simple in in the 60s. It became a lot simpler than it might seem at first. Uh uh we took various type of uh uh body measurements, uh
[00:24:30] electrical measurements and uh occasionally then we got into uh EG EEG patterns but but we did not have the equipment at that time in in to be able to do it properly. Anyway, what we found is that when a person was in one stage of sleep, uh they our subjects who in turn became proficient, I might add, in uh performing this out of body, uh they took uh we took readings on them in
[00:25:00] these activities that they were doing and matched them up with the biological signs of these two different stages of sleep. And this is where we began to get the connection that uh that led us to really where we are now. But uh through those those early periods uh the uh we did some of it. Um we did at UVA for example back in the early days in the 60s and that's where we at least got the
[00:25:30] beginnings of working on an EEG pattern. uh out of that through the uh we attracted attention uh from uh various uh scientific people uh as a result of uh just simply word spreading that we were looking at something from a different point of view as against a strictly mystical approach to it. >> How was the conventional scientific community um reacting uh to your work then? uh they uh reacted with a great
[00:26:00] deal of skepticism until uh one and more of them began to experience the thing through the system that we were slowly painfully developing. And uh we um it was kind of a thing that uh working on a means of getting past the hard rocks that I had encountered. And the first one of of course is fear. And the second one is is the reality of what it is. And it didn't take nearly so
[00:26:30] much uh work to have people determine the reality. And we're not talking about uh uh uh college students, which are often the typical subjects. These are people that uh one way or another had had heard about what we were doing and became interested in it like a physicist and psychologist at Al. And that was the beginning back in the 60s. And moving slowly through the 60s, we uh developed means of inducing these various states.
[00:27:00] And uh in inducing those states uh we got it very simple. The first one was and we gave them labels so they would be impartial in terms of states of consciousness. And the first one is very simple. We called it mind awake and body asleep. And this is what we call focus 10. And uh so we did establish these different types of uh states of consciousness that we could induce by using these various particular sound patterns. And so by the 70s we had a