The Institute's members' newsletter began a regular Explorer's Notebook feature in 1978, printing excerpts from the team's recorded reports with the monitor's questions and the responses marked. By 1980 members were writing in with reactions to the Explorer tapes. Monroe's standard introduction says the series was released at the request of many who believed such information belongs in general knowledge. Today the Internet Archive holds a compiled set of 32 tapes that the Institute says Monroe chose, and the Institute's YouTube channel posts numbered episodes. The Institute takes no stand on what it means Monroe offered the first tape without his evaluation or comment, so listeners could form their own interpretation. Rita Warren's introductions repeat the stance: the Institute takes no position on validity and urges listeners to test whatever rings true for themselves. Monroe's closing statement lists the possibilities, another part of you, a higher self, a soul, helpers, guides, angels, nonphysical friends or God, and says that choice belongs to each person. Later episodes add new ideas Later episodes, introduced by Rita Warren and Martin Warren, present ideas such as aspects, the personality and emotional energies the communicators say overlay every individual, and the friends, the Institute's name for the group energy that spoke through one Explorer across 232 recorded sessions.
SOURCE CONTEXT
Explorer sessions
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Robert Monroe: “This is Robert Monroe speaking. The following is made up of material taken directly from the voice tracks of Explorer sessions held here at our research facility. We offer them without our evaluation or comment, so that you can learn from them as we did and form your own interpretation or analysis of what took place.” (GROUNDBREAKING Session with Robert Monroe & ROMC | Communication with Non-Physical Entities #01) Rita Warren: “An Explorer is a volunteer subject who has typically attended a Gateway Voyage and has mastered our techniques for the exploration of consciousness. Such individuals are tested in our laboratory and, at our invitation, come back for Explorer sessions.” (Importance of Thought Forms #25, 2024-09-12) Robert Monroe: “The first ones were a product of typical subject selection … those who were available and willing. In other words, we used what we had. In terms of background they included a wide variety, from clinical psychologists and physicists to secretaries … Later we began to use various testing procedures to eliminate unlikely prospects, which may or may not have been valid.” (Laboratory Procedures with Robert Monroe #24, 2024-09-05)
Robert Monroe: “No drugs or medication was used during any of the sessions. The thing you need to understand now is that the Explorer tapes, as you know and heard them, are but a small part of the total. Most of the session was another kind of exploration, usually very tedious and tiresome.” (Laboratory Procedures with Robert Monroe #24, 2024-09-05) Robert Monroe: “There were these three ways that this communication pattern began to organize itself. One was, and by far the most common, where our Explorer would meet this third-party being and communicate with it and report it back in communication. So one of us [in] the monitoring and control room would communicate to this and say, “Well, ask him about gravity.”” (Robert A. Monroe GATEWAY VOYAGE Talks - Monday Nights — 1983-10-10 Monday Night GATEWAY Talk (Transcript).pdf) “Like four, four people, four just presences came on—one on each foot and one on my, my hands—and they sort of lifted my etheric body just up above my physical body. It just sort of lifted me out, and I was just sort of hanging up over my physical body. And they each were, they were working. They had like a purple energy bar. They were working on my energy body, my etheric body, and just re-energizing it.” (GROUNDBREAKING Session with Robert Monroe & ROMC | Communication with Non-Physical Entities #01)