The setting is consistent across the tapes. The Explorer lies in total darkness, usually on a temperature-controlled waterbed, in a soundproof booth shielded with copper sheet metal. A microphone sits close to the mouth, electrodes on the head, hands and feet report body states to the control room, and headphones carry Hemi-Sync tones. Monroe said he came to rely mainly on total body voltage, which needed only two or three electrodes, to read the Explorer's state. No drugs or medication were used. The monitor is half of every recording Every Explorer tape is the audio track of a conversation between the Explorer in the booth and a monitor in the control room. On the original series the monitor is Monroe; later sessions feature Rita Warren and Martin Warren. The monitor counts the Explorer through states, asks for detail, checks on comfort and relays questions to whatever the Explorer meets. Monroe compared the pair to two brains working together to draw information from the contact. Three patterns of contact
SOURCE CONTEXT
Explorer sessions
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In a 1983 Gateway Voyage talk, Monroe said contact organized itself in three ways. By far the most common was an Explorer meeting a nonphysical being and reporting the conversation while the monitor supplied questions. In a second, the information was dictated to the Explorer, who simply repeated it word for word. Far less often, with the Explorer's consent, the being used the Explorer's body and vocal cords directly, as on Explorer 1 and the Miranon tapes. The common thread, he said, was concern for the Explorer's welfare. The helpers keep appointments Monroe tells this story in the last series tape. A regular Explorer who came Wednesdays at five, helped out of the body by four helpers, canceled one week. At about five past five, a visiting psychologist resting in a booth on a lab tour asked if anyone else was supposed to be there. Four people, she said, two arguing over whether to pull her out of her body. Monroe checked the clock, remembered the missed appointment and laughed. The helpers, he concluded, must have some sense of time. What the original 24 tapes cover
Explorer 1 follows an out-of-body sequence; Explorer 2 moves from the Resonant Energy Balloon into past-life regressions. Explorers 5, 6, 13 and 14 are the Miranon sessions, and Explorer 6 lays out his levels and planes of existence. Explorer 17 reports the rescue of a soul who died over a century earlier, Explorer 18 tells a story of creation and Explorer 22 relays comments from a Council of Love. Monroe reviews ten years of work on 23 and summarizes the laboratory on 24. Most booth time was routine testing Monroe was blunt that the released tapes were a small part of the total. Most of a session was tedious testing of sound patterns while the Explorer reported how each one felt. In the last tape he plays an exchange about sweeping a tone up and down four times a second, which the Explorer says suppresses body awareness while heightening mental awareness, and says hours upon hours went into patterns like this. How the material reached listeners