Markdown lines 45–175 · Part 1 of 2
[5.3-12.9] This is an interview with Robert Monroe, author of Journeys Out of the Body, a book that has become a classic in the realm of out-of-body explorations.
[13.3-18.3] It has been translated into six languages and is now in its 11th American edition.
[18.9-20.3] Mr. Monroe,
[20.3-27.5] how did your encounter with out-of-the-body experiences begin? Well, it began in what seems to be a
[28.4-32.4] non-classic way, and the non-classic way is that
[32.9-41.3] many out-of-body experiences begin with some extreme type of trauma, such as an automobile accident or
[42.2-47.0] serious illness. Mine had nothing to do with any of those kinds of things.
[48.2-55.9] I was simply minding my own business and trying to conduct a business when suddenly I began to notice a peculiar
[56.3-62.7] sense of shaking in my physical body. I went, I then went to a
[64.2-66.1] favorite physician who
[66.1-69.1] examined me and said there was nothing wrong with me, that perhaps I was
[69.6-75.1] suffering from a little stress, tension, go home and take some aspirin and forget about it.
[76.3-81.9] Unfortunately, this particular funny kind of shaking vibrational state wouldn't be forgotten, and
[83.6-86.4] one time I tried to stop it and
[86.4-95.2] force myself out of it, and on another time, a final time, I decided, well, if it's going to kill me, it'll kill me.
[95.8-97.8] So I simply let it
[98.0-105.3] happen or exist, and after about what was say four or five minutes, this funny kind of vibrational state just faded away.
[106.3-109.1] After that, I became no longer afraid that it was a
[109.9-115.4] terrible, terrible thing that might be killing me or a nervous disease or anything like that.
[115.9-122.5] So I just simply waited till I got past this funny kind of a spasm or seizure and
[123.7-127.9] then forgot about it, and on one particular evening,
[128.6-130.7] I was
[130.7-132.7] lying in bed waiting for this
[133.5-136.2] vibrational state to end so that I could in turn
[137.6-139.9] go to sleep, and
[140.0-146.1] I was thinking that tomorrow was Saturday, and what a nice day it would be to go soaring.
[146.1-152.0] I was involved in gliding at the time, and that it was a nice cold front day, so the
[153.0-159.8] thermal currents should be very, very good, and as I lay there thinking about that, waiting for this vibrational state to end,
[159.8-163.4] I suddenly felt something bumping against my shoulder, and
[165.9-173.3] turning to look at what was bumping against my shoulder, this was funny kind of a flat surface, and I thought, well,
[173.3-177.4] that's strange, I must have fallen out of bed, and I was lying on the floor.
[178.3-185.2] However, I then remembered there was a rug on the floor, and this particular flat surface had no rug, so I
[186.3-192.5] rolled a little further, and to my great surprise, there was this flat surface, and sticking out of the flat surface,
[192.5-194.5] it was something that looked like a fountain, and
[196.0-200.3] observing it a little more closely, I suddenly realized that wasn't a fountain, that was a
[201.0-204.6] light fixture hanging down from the ceiling, and I said the ceiling, and
[205.3-209.7] with that I flopped around and looked down, and down below me
[210.7-214.6] was a bed, and there were two people in the bed, and
[216.3-222.6] lying there very closely, I looked, and I said, wait a minute, I'm dreaming, there
[222.6-228.9] I am in bed, and there's my wife in bed, but I said, wait a minute, I'm here, who is that in bed with my wife?
[230.7-234.9] But it turned out that in a little more closer look, I realized with a shock,
[235.4-240.1] very much of a shock, that the person lying in bed with my wife
[241.2-247.1] was I, I was the one in bed, and with a great scrambling fear, I said I'm dying,
[247.1-254.3] I'm bouncing against the ceiling, and I'm dying, and with that frantic panic stricken effort,
[254.3-259.0] I swam through the air, and dove at my physical body, and there was a
[259.7-263.5] clicking shock, and there I was back in my physical body, I
[264.7-270.6] sat up, looked around, everything was quiet, my wife was quietly in bed, and asleep beside me,
[270.9-274.5] the room was quiet, I looked up, there was the ceiling, and there was the
[275.6-277.1] fountain
[277.1-279.1] turned into a
[279.5-281.8] hanging fixture, and
[281.8-286.9] that was my first out-of-body experience. That must have been a rather amazing one at that.
[287.3-294.2] Can you give us one or two more vivid examples of this type of experience, and how it feels to you as the traveler?
[295.3-297.3] Well, after I
[297.6-299.4] became acclimated
[299.8-305.1] to that, and I must add that it took a number of times before I became
[305.8-311.5] halfway casual about the experience of the out-of-body, and after several more visits to the doctor, and
[312.4-314.4] totally convinced it was an hallucination,
[315.3-321.9] I began to experiment with it a little bit, and it wasn't until perhaps even a year later
[322.8-324.8] that I became
[325.1-327.1] totally convinced, and
[327.8-333.7] more than convinced, sure that it was not an hallucination, and this took place when
[334.6-337.5] on a late Saturday afternoon,
[337.5-344.0] I decided when this vibration started that I would simply roll out of my physical body, and go visit this
[344.4-347.2] psychologist friend, which I did. It was
[348.1-354.7] very easy to roll out, and I went moving out above the house and across the treetops to about, oh,
[355.5-357.9] some four or five miles distant, and
[358.7-362.1] as I did, I was searching, seeing it, and
[363.1-365.1] trying to observe from
[365.6-372.8] overhead where my friend's house was, and having, again, the aircraft experience and flying experience to
[373.7-378.0] see things from overhead, it wasn't too hard a spot, and I then made a diving
[378.9-382.6] swoop down into the back part of his yard where I
[383.6-386.0] got down just in time to find my friend
[387.2-389.2] moving out of his house,
[389.7-396.2] wearing a hat and coat, and heading for the garage, and his wife dressed in very dark clothes
[396.8-400.1] following him and holding some type of conversation, and
[400.7-403.9] I tried to attract his attention, and I could not.
[404.6-411.4] However, they got in, went to the garage, got in the car, and drove away, and I figured, well,
[411.4-416.3] no luck. I was unable to get a hold of him. I thought this would be a very interesting
[417.1-418.5] attempt at
[418.5-425.1] getting a validation of the real existence of this out-of-body state, so rather sadly I turned and
[426.6-433.5] wiggled my way back down the hill over the trees and back to my house and got back in my body.
[435.3-441.4] That evening after supper, I reached my friend, my psychologist friend, by phone, and
[442.0-445.6] I asked him what he was doing about 4.30 in the afternoon, and
[446.6-449.6] he said, well, he said, I've been sick all day, and
[449.6-455.8] about 4.30, I got real tired of being sick, and I thought I'd go down
[456.8-463.8] into the town, down to the small town, and down to the store and get something, anything, he said, just to get out of the house, and my
[464.1-470.4] wife followed me, and I said, well, were you dressed in a hat? And I remember that, a gray hat, and
[471.1-474.3] an overcoat, and was your wife dressed in black, and
[475.3-482.1] following you about five or ten feet behind you as she went across to the garage, and there was a pause on the phone, and he says,
[482.9-490.1] why yes, how did you know? And I said, well, and this was about 4.30, and he says, I try.
[490.1-494.0] I said, thanks, that's just what I felt I needed to know, and
[494.9-498.9] later on, of course, I told him about it, and he thought I should go
[499.6-505.9] study with a guru in India for about ten or fifteen years, and learn how to handle this stuff, and I said, well,
[505.9-511.2] how do I do that when I have a business to run, and when I have a mortgage on the house, and
[511.5-516.3] when I have a wife and a couple children? He says, well, that's not my problem, that's yours.
[516.4-523.7] So that's one of the typical types of things. I see. Well, do some of these journeys simply involve movement through space?
[525.8-527.8] Yes, they
[527.8-529.9] seem
[530.0-537.7] to be what we feel as movement. The more sophisticated you get in this particular
[538.4-545.0] activity, you begin to question the fact that it is really movement. It seems like movement, but
[545.5-548.9] our suspicions are growing that it is more a
[549.7-555.9] transition in phase rather than movement, and it gives you the illusion of movement when in actuality
[556.3-559.0] it's simply moving in and out of phase
[560.7-564.5] but in the early stages very much you're moving through space. I think the
[565.7-568.5] longest conscious space I took was between
[570.1-577.2] Virginia and California, I'd say, and that was you can do it in slow speed or fast speed, and I can remember one time
[578.1-583.9] on a super slow speed, I was living in a subdivision at the time, and I rolled out and
[584.5-586.5] headed across, and
[586.6-593.5] interestingly enough, I moved slowly through the walls, and I came out of our house, and there was a space
[593.5-599.6] and I went into the next house. I went through about eight or nine houses all the way through along the block. It was very interesting.
[600.0-609.1] and then I simply picked up speed. I see. So this is your earthly travel type of thing. Do you also travel in other types of dimensions?
[609.1-623.9] Well, you have to understand that this second body, as I like to call it, or energy body, its natural home is in another reality or another energy system.
[623.9-635.9] It is unnatural for it to move in and of itself and by itself, say in time, space, in and around the earth.
[635.9-649.9] It naturally moves in a quote another dimension. It belongs in this other dimension, which incidentally is the same dimension as it were, same energy system that you go to when you die.
[651.6-657.6] Oh, really? Would you care to expand on that a little bit further?
[657.6-671.1] Well, one of the things when my father died, after I don't know why I said I waited about three months and give him a chance to get settled, I suppose,
[672.3-684.3] I thought, well, I'll see whether I can locate my father. And it was relatively easy to do so. When I did find him, he was in sort of a place of recuperation.
[684.3-694.3] And he looked at me with this utter astonishment. And he looked at my father about 20 or 25 years younger than the time that he died.
[694.3-700.3] And he turned and looked at me and there was utter surprise on his face. I can remember it so much even now.
[700.3-708.3] It was if you had left a friend in New York and gotten on a plane and gone to Paris and got off in Paris and there was your friend.
[708.3-720.3] It was, what are you doing here? And he greeted me in a way that only he would have known that I would have recognized.
[721.7-728.7] This certainly raises some very interesting philosophical and theological questions, but I don't think we'll get into that right now.
[728.7-734.8] In the same line, though, can you move forward or backward in time?
[734.8-744.8] Yes. In some of our work, we have worked with a number of people in an experimental level.
[744.8-751.8] We have a system that we set up a state of consciousness where time does not exist.
[751.8-763.1] And if you think of, we symbolize it as a word, if you think of time as a center of a hub of a wheel and with time around the rim of the wheel.
[764.1-787.1] So that if you were to leave time and enter what we call 4-15 along the spoke of a wheel, say in 1983, once you have achieved the point where the center of the hub of the wheel is, you can simply rotate, as it were, and face another spoke that goes out to another point in time.