CHEC stands for Controlled Holistic Environmental Chamber, and it is the private booth where you listen to the Hemi-Sync exercises and sleep. Participants describe a bed behind a blackout curtain, lighting you control, headphones or speakers, and a button or light that tells the control room you are ready. An Institute guide explains that the curtain serves privacy and total darkness. Felser notes that the units have been described as a Pullman berth. The units sit together in a shared room, so the group is close by while your experience stays private. Will I have an out-of-body experience at the Gateway Voyage? Not necessarily. Monroe told Voyage groups in his welcome talk that Gateway does not guarantee an out-of-body experience: the opportunity, the possibility and the tools are there, but no guarantee. By his own estimate, about 15 percent of participants had one during the program. The Institute's current page says the exercises lead to expanded states including the state of no time and the out-of-body state, and many reports are broader than leaving the body. Others report nothing of the kind and still value the week. How is the Gateway Voyage different from doing the Gateway Experience tapes at home?
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Gateway Voyage
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The Gateway Experience albums are a home-study program; the Voyage is the residential course. At the Institute you work inside a CHEC unit, in a group, with trainers who brief you before each exercise and discuss it afterward, and the days are organized around the exercises. The Institute's FAQ for its 2015 Gateway Experience online course makes a related point about groups: doing the exercises as part of a group is often more beneficial, because you can ask questions of the trainer and other participants and feel more supported than working alone with the Wave I album. What if nothing happens, or the week brings up strong emotions? Both happen. A speaker in an Institute video recalls a couple of people who left saying nothing had happened and that they never got out of their left brain, yet who later reported feeling calmer and happier. At the other end, Felser sobbed uncontrollably before one tape and felt cleansed afterward, and Masluk described a participant in grief who cried throughout the week, found it cathartic and said the trainers helped her work through it. The Voyage is a training program, not a treatment, and the Institute advises consulting a physician beforehand if you have a history of seizures, auditory disorders or adverse mental-health conditions. Do I need the Gateway Voyage before other Monroe Institute programs?
Usually, yes. The Institute's current page describes the Gateway Voyage as a prerequisite for many of its advanced consciousness-training programs, and attendance requires an approved application. A 2015 Institute FAQ listed the core residential programs as Gateway Voyage, Guidelines, Lifeline, Timeline, Heartline, Exploration 27 and Starlines. The Institute also states that its online edition qualifies as a prerequisite for advanced retreats. Requirements change, so check the current program pages for the specific program you want. Is Gateway Voyage Online the same as the residential program? The Institute presents it as a self-paced online version of the residential Voyage. According to its page, the course has 23 guided sessions across the same four Focus levels (10, 12, 15 and 21), about 26 hours of training suggested over 8 to 12 weeks, trainer video introductions, journaling prompts, community discussion groups and exercises voiced by Monroe himself. The residential week adds what an online format does not: the private CHEC unit, the schedule built around exercises, the in-person trainers and the group debriefs described above.