Focus 22: outside ordinary waking awareness In Bruce Moen's description, Focus 22 is where explorers meet people perhaps still alive but unconscious, like dreamers and the comatose. Not a medical term. Focus 22 is one of the numbered signposts beyond the Gateway states. A 2012 focus-levels overview in the Monroe Institute Archives takes its entries for Focus 1 through 21 from Institute literature, then turns to what it calls the traditional view, drawn from Monroe's work and from Bruce Moen's Afterlife Knowledge website. In Moen's words, Focus 22 is where explorers often find those perhaps still physically alive who are in an unconscious state: people in comas, in drug-induced states, people who are dreaming, and people described as insane or deranged. He calls it a very chaotic level. The line it draws is the useful part. Focus 22 belongs to the living, and Focus 23, in the same overview, belongs to people who are no longer physically alive and have become stuck. On Art Bell's radio show, Monroe weighed in briefly: asked about the bright light of near-death accounts, he said that what the Institute calls Focus 22 is that tunnel. In a lecture he also compared the deep stillness of Gateway participants to a coma, though without naming Focus 22.
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Focus 22: outside ordinary waking awareness
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Unlike Focus 10 and Focus 12, Focus 22 is described mainly by who explorers say they find there, not as a state a listener is trained to enter. The Institute's Lifeline page describes exploring Focus Levels 23 through 27, and the overview presents the Gateway Experience as a platform for exploring further on your own. Everything here is a report from explorers' maps, not a medical or diagnostic category, and the overview itself cautions that the higher levels are far less easily identified than people assume. Where Focus 22 sits on the map The 2012 overview lists the levels in order. Focus 21 is the edge of time and space, where it is possible to contact other energy systems. Focus 22 follows as the level of living people in unconscious states, Focus 23 as the level of people who have died and become stuck, Focus 24 through 26 as the belief system territories, and Focus 27 as the afterlife area of greatest free will choice. The overview adds that there is no Focus 14 or Focus 16, and that the numbers are arbitrary signposts for states of consciousness. Whose description it is
The overview says its descriptions for Focus 1 through 21 are taken from Monroe Institute literature. For Focus 22 and above it turns to what it calls the traditional view, on the basis of Monroe's and Bruce Moen's work, and the entries are quoted from Moen's Afterlife Knowledge website. The Focus 22 wording is therefore Moen's. That matters because the file blends Institute descriptions, an account by a contributor credited to The Astral Pulse of moving from Focus 12 toward Focus 21, and Moen's material in one document. Who is found there Moen says explorers often find people in comas, in drug-induced states, who are dreaming, and who are insane or deranged, and he calls it a very chaotic level. He hedges the central claim: these are people perhaps still physically alive. The wording is historical and informal. It reports what an explorer says he met, not a condition anyone could confirm, diagnose or use to describe a real person. The boundary with Focus 23 Moen sorts the two levels by whether the body is alive. Focus 23 holds people no longer physically alive who have become stuck, often confused about or unaware of their death and trying to keep contact with familiar people or places. These are the ones he calls ghosts. They are typically alone and isolated from communication with other humans, with a very narrow range of free-will choices. Focus 22, by contrast, concerns the living in altered or unconscious conditions. Monroe on Art Bell: the tunnel