The Monroe Institute

Do I have to believe anything to attend a Monroe Institute program? No. Nancy McMoneagle says the Institute asks one thing: that people consider they are more than their physical bodies, and most people drawn to it already do. She says programs have included a fundamentalist Baptist, an atheist, a Catholic, an engineer, a housewife and a Buddhist, and that Bob wanted participants to find their own answers. Laurie Monroe called “the only way to know is to find out for yourself” Bob’s famous expression. The Institute’s site says participants need only an open mind and an understanding that existence extends beyond the physical realm. Is the Monroe Institute connected to the Army or the CIA? The Institute is an independent nonprofit, but it has had contact with the military. In the early 1980s Army intelligence groups attended Gateway programs, and Monroe gave them evening talks. A 1983 Army assessment of the Gateway process was later released by the CIA. Skip Atwater, who was Joe McMoneagle’s training officer in the Army’s remote-viewing effort and first visited Monroe in the 1970s, later worked at the Institute. McMoneagle, a military remote viewer, worked with Monroe in the lab and married Nancy McMoneagle, who later led the Institute. These are documented contacts and training exchanges, not evidence that the Institute was a government facility.