The Energy Conversion Box is an imagined strong container where everyday worries are set aside for the session. The Gateway Affirmation states that you are more than your physical body and want to expand, experience and understand. Resonant Tuning pairs a breathing pattern with humming. Progressive relaxation follows, then the Resonant Energy Balloon, an image of an energy field around the body. Skip Atwater, the Institute's longtime research director, lists relaxation, breathing, a stated intent and turning on internal perception among the ingredients of a good exercise. Focus levels are places, tools are what you do there Focus 3 is the coherent, synchronized state introduced in the first exercise. Focus 10 is the working base. Focus 12 is expanded awareness, where most of the tools are used. Focus 15 is the state of no time. Focus 21 is the bridge to other energy systems, and the home series continues to Focus 23, 25 and 27. Monroe chose numbers so the labels would carry no religious or emotional baggage. The tools are separate: problem solving, patterning, color breathing, the Energy Bar Tool, the Living Body Map and more. Eight Waves, to be used in order
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Monroe's voice guides Discovery (Focus 3 and 10), Threshold (Focus 12 and the first tools), Freedom and Adventure. A.J. Honeycutt, Monroe's stepson, voices Exploring (Focus 15), Odyssey (Focus 21), Voyager (Focus 23 to 27, based on the Lifeline program) and Union (Focus 27, based on Exploration 27). Each album has a guidance manual and six exercises, eight in Union. The publisher says each album builds on the one before and the set must be used in sequence. Out-of-body experience is one thread, not the point The 1983 Army assessment says the program was not set up solely to produce out-of-body experiences, offers no guarantee, and devotes only one tape of many to the technique. Monroe told participants the same and put the rate near 15 percent of attendees during the program. Taylor recalls trainers telling him that Bob Monroe's experience was Monroe's and that he would have his own. What the program trains first is simpler: staying aware while the body rests. What participants report
Todd Masluk's dissertation research, summarized in the Institute's Hemi-Sync Journal in 1996, surveyed 160 people from eleven Gateway Voyage groups aged 24 to 72. Of 291 powerful experiences, the largest category was transpersonal: consciousness outside the usual realms of time and space, peak experiences and inner guidance. Seventy-two percent began while a tape was playing. Reported after-effects included greater self-acceptance, living more fully in the present and a stronger sense of being more than the physical body. The headphones are training wheels The audio is meant to teach a route, not to be required forever. Taylor says participants take the headphones off near the end of the course and practice without the technology: once you know what a state feels like, you close your eyes, remember the feeling and are back. Monroe made a related point in a Gateway Voyage talk, telling the group that once the fear is gone you do not have to go through any count to ten and can simply think of Focus 12 and go there. The aim is a skill that outlasts the recordings. Robert Monroe: “We have only one particular piece of dogma that you have to consider, and that is that you, the essence of you, are more than your physical body. What that means beyond that particular statement is part of the exploration of consciousness that you yourself will enter into.” (Bob Monroe on the Consciousness Enhancing Benefits of Gateway Voyage)