The monitor watched the gauges as well as the conversation. Monroe describes sitting in the control room when an Explorer tried a new technique: within seconds every life-support reading dropped to nothing, and after about two and a half minutes he was on his way into the booth to try to resuscitate the body when the readings returned. Other sessions show smaller interventions: monitors add a grounding signal to help an Explorer return, and in one session the monitor told an Explorer who asked for someone to come in that staff would be right there. Bringing the Explorer back The return was as scripted as the descent. One monitor's closing instructions ask the Explorer to come back to the region of Focus 10 and take as much time as needed, then to return to ordinary waking consciousness feeling alert and full of energy, count down from 10 to one and accept a short beta signal to help. Later monitors ask whether the Explorer feels centered, offer a grounding signal and ask where the Explorer prefers the debrief. Restraint and presence
SOURCE CONTEXT
The monitor's role in an Explorer session
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A monitor's judgment included knowing when not to speak. After one session, a monitor explained that the Explorer was in a good flow and they had not wanted to interrupt it, even though other questions could have been asked. A communicator speaking through an Explorer gave monitors related advice: keep encouraging a new Explorer who feels nothing, treat silence as something to explore and suggest small movements of the arms, hands and toes. In another session a monitor said the resistance of new Explorers is projected onto the monitor. Who held the role On the original series the monitor is Monroe, and he describes the role in the first person. Rita Warren, who coordinated the Explorer work, and Martin Warren, who says he monitored many sessions, introduce later tapes and appear on them. Other staff ran the equipment and went into the booth to help Explorers out. Monroe said that attempts to monitor sessions at the Institute's center without full instrumentation were like flying an airplane blind. Robert Monroe: “She is wearing a modified set of headphones to give broad-frequency sound in each ear. Thus she can hear us and we can hear her. I or another monitor is sitting in a control room nearby, and we feed different types of audio hemispheric synchronization signals directly to the subject.” (Responsibility to Self #11)
Robert Monroe: “I waited. I watched. Not a single flicker came from the gauges. It was very, very tense for a moment, and then one minute passed, and then two minutes. In about 2 minutes and 30 seconds I got up and started to leave, thinking, well, I better get into the control—from the control room—and into the booth to see if I could do anything to resuscitate that body that should be there. I was up and on my way when suddenly all of the gauges came back to life and everything appeared normal. I sat back down again with a great sigh of relief.” (Laboratory Procedures with Robert Monroe #24, 2024-09-05) “Okay, excellent. Now take yourself farther and farther out to your highest source of information. Tell me when you're feeling yourself to be there.” (Explorer GEH Audio Files & Transcripts — GEH-5 (Raw Transcript).pdf) “In communicating about these very basic ideas, the questions have to be redirected in order to, for the answer to make sense.” (Explorer GEH Audio Files & Transcripts — GEH-5 (Raw Transcript).pdf)