The image reached listeners beyond the residential programs. The Going Home series, created for people approaching death and their families, includes an exercise called Touring the Interstate, and a 2002 Hemi-Sync Journal article describes a therapist using it with a client to move from Focus 27 back down to 22. Explorers in Monroe's lab also used the word; a 1989 session transcript has an Explorer reporting going to the Interstate and seeing lots of traffic. Robert Monroe: “We don't know how far that spectrum of consciousness goes, that long band. It's, it's, it's endless, and we call that the Interstate. In other words, here in the United States we have, they're not autobahns, they are freeways or interstate, which are these big highways that spread all over the country, and that's where you can go very fast and go great distances.” (Robert Monroe. Interview by Guido Ferrari and Julie Mazo, 1992, 2018-11-08) Robert Monroe: “And all I do is take off down through what I call the Belief System Territories, which is, I have all sorts of allegories, and I say [going] interstate, as we in America call it. And along that interstate are exit ramps to various belief systems. So all I have to do is take this individual, and they just feel themselves moving. And all of a sudden, they disappear.” (Robert A. Monroe Talks - with Neville Drury (1989), 1989)
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The Interstate: Monroe's map of Focus levels
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Robert Monroe: “The interesting part is, is when you're moving along what I call this, and it's not this, but it's only a symbol, moving along this interstate, the exit ramps, there must be hundreds of thousands of them, but if I have no connection with them, I can't even see the exit ramps. And yet, if I have participated in this, their life cycle, but in a previous life cycle, in some belief system, that exit ramp would be pretty clear to me.” (Robert A. Monroe Talks - with Neville Drury (1989), 1989) Robert Monroe: “It looks upon human life as a, and the patterns thereof, as sort of local traffic, because this new consciousness is, goes interstate, as it were. It has the ability, growing more and more, to communicate with these other realities, because they're a natural part of this new consciousness.” (Robert A. Monroe Talks - New Frontiers of Consciousness (1978), 1978) Robert Monroe: “One of the things that we must begin to consider is that anything we humans can think about or conceive or pattern is what might be construed as local traffic. … I like to put the other pattern: once you get out on the Interstate, as it were, you can see the difference. What we believe as to be important is basically local traffic thought.” (A Rare Conversation with Bob Monroe | Exploring Expanded States of Consciousness | EOC (Ep. 3), 2023-08-02)
Robert Monroe: “To discover what the graduate human, [the] being who graduates from this human system of learning, can be. And that's what I mean by when I say, go on the Interstate: the, the goals are so spectacular, so far beyond anything that we can even consider.” (Robert A. Monroe's OBE Paranormal Transformation of Human Consciousness (7 Videos) — Bob Monroe's OBE Paranormal Transformation of Human Consciousness 7 (Transcript).pdf) Nancy McMoneagle: “But also within that we had, pardon me, Interstate Industries. Y'all can imagine why it was called the Interstate Industries. Remember the whole thing about don't get involved [in] the local traffic, take the Interstate.” (2014 Professional Seminar: TMI Past, Present and Future (Nancy McMoneagle) — 07 2014 Professional Seminar- Past, Present and Future (Nancy McMoneagle) (Transcript).pdf, 2014) “Although the subjects received no clues as to what to expect, either from the operator or from the verbiage on the tape, their experiences replicated the essence of reports by individuals who had listened to the instructions on the tape and had also read the instructions for Going Home. They described moving through different colors (representing different Focus levels), then visualizing or hearing deceased relatives or "non-earthly beings."” (Hemi-Sync® Journal 2003-1&2 (Winter/Spring) — 3 Preparing to Use Binaural Beat Sound with Deaf Clients.pdf, 2003) Monroe called it a symbol