Robert A. Monroe - Lecture Series

really play in a big sandpile live. So all of this goes around to help get out of this particular box in which we are this box of beliefs that we feel so safe and secure. But we again, for one reason or another curiosity or whatever we want to get out of that box that constrains that box that is built up through human history through current cultural contexts through mommy and daddy's knee that you sat on and heard all of these things and our contemporary rules laws hold you within that box. This freedom route lets you stay within the box and without pretty curious how to do this. But to give you real significant idea of the difference between box and no box and how futile this means that communication is I will Mr. Mulvaney is going to show you a piece of thing that a picture's worth 1000 words a color picture's worth 10,000 words, a color quote talking picture or something is worth 100,000 words I've been talking here for so many minutes and in three minutes. This tells it all that I would like to have you do it Bob Monroe 39:08 deliberate in jumping that's all part of it. But more important than that is that when you in turn, make your own own no one does this you do it. You you may not even know that you've done it first of all until perhaps a year from now. And when you compare where you are and sit tonight, a year from now then you will know that you have reached out through the hole. Or the other part is which I'm not sure because of your poll is not whether you can ever see of him back up again. But I do know one thing that what a magnificent opportunity do you have By exploiting what's on the other side of the hole that's your program. Thank you so much seed morning. Bob Monroe 40:57 Well, slight changes I see huh? Yes. I'm going to start changing to couldn't wear a coat tonight that just didn't feel right. Bye bye. But I have to have something to take off and throw away. So I will use this well, this is the very easy time for me because all the things that I deal with now in tonight are knowns. And that's the nice thing I have no real unknowns to play with. So I have to invent some perhaps I don't know, we'll see. We'll see. But I think probably the key thing to understand is, and I fumble for the proper word is how lucky that's not the word How fortunate that doesn't quite do it either. But how something you are. And why do I say that? Because if you can think of humankind, living now 5 billion humans there, give or take 100 million. And of that 5 billion there is a very, very, very thin layer who has the time and energy to think that great mass of humankind symbolically struggles exhausted out of a straw palette, and gets up and goes to work at dawn struggles in some kind of labor all day long, simply to exist, meaning to provide himself or herself and family with food, warmth and shelter. At night, having had some long heavy enervating day, they fall back into the straw palette, only to begin the same thing over the following day. That is typical of humankind one way or another vast, vast majority. Now here's a very, very thin layer, very, very thin layer that has the time and energy to think. Now you are a part of that layer. But to make matters worse, you are very, very, very thin layer on top of that thin layer who are attempting to do something about it. There are many ways that you can possibly do something about that, that thinking process you can think your life away and contemplate your life way. But to do something. One way is being here, of course one of many ways. But that's where you are overtly different. There are other ways and we'll get to those as we go along. But that begins to start you in a given direction. The other part that seems very significant is that, that being fortunate, and it's very difficult to express it in words because it's something that's far deeper than that. But I wonder if you can imagine what you can't how it was 32 years ago when I encountered This thing in my life for which I was totally unprepared, and being so unprepared for it is so difficult to convey the incredible loneliness related to it. The panic, the fear and the terror, connected with something that was an unknown at that time, and a tremendous unknown. You don't have that problem these days, there are 1000s of ways you can go and, and dig out information or find people to talk to, if nothing else, who can nod their head at least and say, Aha, it was different in 1958. So very different. I think it's important to understand how that came about, in the actual way that it did. And it's interesting how you begin to get veracity. When you look and see, what are the knowns? Well, here is the known in 1956, my company, where I had been operating for about nine years in New York, in the production of network radio programs. And during that era, and at one point, we were the leading producer in perhaps the United States of network radio programs, meaning in terms of volume, I won't say a word about the quality of it. But at least in volume, gradually in, I was in a dual role of being a vice president of a network and having someone else operate my company, which is quite interesting. But in 1956, you got to be the point where enough was enough? Because I determined that my company in getting into television, and we got started in it. We were doing something we had already been doing for the last 10 years. And what was that? How was that is all we were doing was adding a picture, we were using the same actors, we are using the same master ceremonies, we are using the same theater sets or dust off Broadway. And the idea of that tremendous repetition all over again, begin to make me look in some other direction. And because it meant I had to do one of several things. And one of the key things is lift my family and my entire operation and move it out to the West Coast and Los Angeles, while having at that time been commuting to Los Angeles weekly for about three years. Again, enough was enough, I had gotten a good sample of what LA was like, and especially Hollywood. So we began to look for other alternatives. We gotten into the ownership of radio stations, and let our our program production go into what it calls syndication as a way to recoup your losses or perhaps get additional profits. And so the way you look at it, but as we did this, that two didn't seem quite enough, because that was somewhat in a store keeping classification. And I never felt myself to be a storekeeper. So we started in and where it come for a game from I have no idea in the doing some research in what it would be like and how one could learn during sleep. So we began to set up a small r&d program, testing various methods of teaching people, various data during sleep. One of the course, things that did emerge from that is that we did learn how to put people to sleep by the use of the very materials that we knew so well we knew so well when which was sound we were sound professionals, and we knew everything from composing our own music up and down the line. So here was what happened. We began to get these sound patterns that induced sleep in order to teach people about sleep and I had a very interesting recent thing. My two daughters who are now I think one is 40. And the other is 42. I remember very vividly as children as being subjects to that, and learning multiplication and learning Spanish words and things like that. In this, they were, they were forced subjects, but they apparently enjoyed it. But I also was a major subject because I was intensely curious whether this worked or it didn't work. So I must have gone through between 1956 and C 19, early 1958, maybe 150 runs, testing these various methods of, of employing sleep, to learn. And my problem, of course, is that the sleep process did not work very well on me, because I was too objective in it, analyzing it all the time. So that meant that I was, quote, fighting the Sleep Sounds that we were using. Bob Monroe 50:58 It is generally agreed by consensus these days that what created my first out of body experience was the summation of that, subjecting myself to the sound patterns and resisting them, if you can think of that. And so this is where that beginning in 1958. And as you know, those you must certainly know, getting hot, excuse me. Bob Monroe 51:40 The first thing that when this began to occur, in my own life, was that total fear of what was happening to me, and being very, very conventional, strangely enough, and being have an engineering background, my natural inclination was to move into the fundamental scientific arena, and primarily medical to say, what is causing this. And as you know, what happened. I went to my family internist physician, and he said, Well, you're just overworking that's all on and gave me some barbituates to sleep better. They. Then when I came back and said they don't work, he began to get really worried, because he saw I was that worried. And he was a very close friend, pinning it down a little more tightly. He then took the trouble to give me a very thorough physical examination. And I thought brain tumor, this is that natural thing? And I was so sure brain tumor No, no, did not show any brain tumor. Then, after all these other types of complete testing, nothing came up. And I think he was disappointed. And so was I, frankly, because that would have answered the question very easily, you see, the unknown would have been answered. So there was only one alternative after exhausting all of those. And my doctor friend did, Gordon says, Robert, he says, I have a son who's just set up residence in psychiatry. Why don't you go see him? And so having to psychiatrists, friends, socially, I thought, Well, I'll try the son first. And he heard my story. And he says, Yes, I think in a young man with a very authoritative air says, Yes, I think we could take care of you, we whose week. But I believe that we would have to have a minimum of five sessions a week. I said five a week. And I said, Well, that would be pretty costly. He says, Well, normally would be $60 an hour, but because your friend of dads, it'll only be $40. And I said, Well, how long will this take? Do you think to get rid of this thing? And he says, Oh, I would say five to eight years or to do. My in my mental calculation says, well, that's quite a bit to invest in anything. They just got to be a better way. So the next step was, I got up the courage to talk to my one of my psychiatrist friends, a man named Louis Wahlberg, who had a psychiatric clinic in New York City. And he listened to me very carefully. And he nodded. He says, Well, I think I can give you what might be the answer. And I said, Well, why why? He says, Bob, if he says, I think you're consciously dreaming. And I said, Oh, what's that? I don't know. I just made it up. He says, but I can certify one thing. He says, I know you too. Well, you're saying, so don't worry about your sanity. He says, I've known you too long. And I says, Thank you. Thank you, Louis. So that answered one question, at least to that I have someone who was in authority, thought I was saying, so I felt a little better than meanwhile, this is taking place with about every other night or whatever, any time where I became relaxed. So the next step was to get into a meeting with a man named foster Bradshaw, who is a psychologist in industrial practice in New York, who had former dean of men at the University of North Carolina. And I knew where I Brad quite well, and so I asked him to describe this nice sat there and listen to this one. Yes, you know, and there as a result, he finally said, Well, what's, what's your problem? I says, Well, I don't know what to do about it. I can't stop it. And I can't start it. I don't even know what it is. He says, well, that they do that over in India all the time. I've heard all about this over in India says that's that's they