Monroe built the program from his own travels and from a family crisis. He told Art Bell that he had been escorted to the Park back in the 1960s, and that with his wife seriously ill he wanted to be sure he could find her if she died. From that experience and further research the Institute set up Lifeline, with the stated aim of making the route from Focus 23, which he placed right after physical death, up to Focus 27 thoroughly familiar. His stepson, A.J. Honeycutt, believes the first Lifeline took place in June 1991. In Monroe's account the Park is a way station where the newly dead rest and decide what to do next, and he said it is not a religious place. Participants describe retrievals of strangers and of lost fragments of themselves, reunions, and a growing familiarity with the Park. In 1994 one graduate wrote of forming a circle of Lifeline alumni to help people near the end of life, and Monroe unveiled plans for what became the Going Home tapes during one Lifeline week. According to its publisher, the Gateway Experience album Voyager is based on the program. All of it is first-person experience; Monroe's own advice, as Nancy McMoneagle recalls, was to go and find out for yourself. A graduate program built on Gateway Voyage
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Lifeline and helping others
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Lifeline is open only to people who have completed Gateway Voyage, in its residential, virtual or online form, and attendance requires an application and approval. A.J. Honeycutt calls it a graduate workshop: you begin with Gateway Voyage and work upward. The Institute links the Focus 23 to 27 range with the afterlife experience and with contact with people who have made the transition. The route runs from Focus 23 to the Park in Focus 27 Monroe said the aim was to help people become thoroughly familiar with moving from Focus 23, which he placed right after physical death, up to Focus 27. At the top of that range sits the Park. Skip Atwater says Monroe drew the picture of a general welcoming area from his own experiences, from conversations with other people and from the reports of near-death experiencers. Atwater adds that Lifeline lets participants visit territories purportedly experienced after death, including the Healing and Regeneration Center. Retrieval: guiding someone who is stuck
The Institute calls the central practice soul retrieval or soul rescue. Some people who have died, including those who had a real or near-death experience, may not realize it and may feel confused. Participants learn to make contact and gently guide them toward the Light. Bruce Moen, an author who teaches retrieval workshops, describes escorts who come to offer a better place, and rescues of people killed so abruptly that they never noticed: a woman struck by a car after stepping off a curb, a pilot who, since probably early 1945, was still in his mind diving on an American ship. Retrieving lost parts of yourself The Institute adds that retrievals can include reclaiming lost aspects or fragments of yourself. A Hemi-Sync Journal contributor in 2002 described Lifeline advancing to Focus 23 and 25 and culminating in the retrieval of a part of the self constrained in Focus 23, after which older limiting questions began to dissolve. Moen tells of a psychotherapist who, during an ordinary retrieval exercise, was guided by her helper to bring back the childhood innocence she had spun off. The Park: a way station, designed without dogma