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
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Gateway
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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)
Robert Monroe: “Gateway does not guarantee that you will have an [out-of-body] experience. Now, of course, I know you, a lot of you perhaps came saying, “Oh, I will have an out-of-body experience.” Percentage-wise, I would say that, what, 15% of the people who attend a Gateway session have an out-of-[body] experience during the session.” (Bob Monroe on the Consciousness Enhancing Benefits of Gateway Voyage) Robert Monroe: “We got into the use of sound because we were looking for the borderland sleep state. And we needed some way, without drugs, in order to help people get to a sleep state where we could research that borderland consciousness just prior to sleep.” (Robert A. Monroe Explains... (3 Videos) — Exploring Sound (Transcript).pdf) “Moreover, a feedback system could be employed, whereby the participants themselves, in their reporting of effects, would permit the evolution and modification of methods and techniques employed with each succeeding program. … Originally named the M-5000, it is now called the Gateway Program.” ((TMI-Army Files) 1983 - MIAS Proposals — 1 1983-10-23 Proposal for Research.pdf, 1983)