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Explorer sessions
The Explorer sessions were Robert Monroe's laboratory research with experienced volunteers at the Monroe Institute. An Explorer lay in total darkness on a waterbed in a soundproof, electrically shielded booth, wearing stereo headphones that carried Hemi-Sync tones, with electrodes attached to the body and a microphone close to the mouth. In the control room, a monitor, often Monroe himself, watched the instruments and asked questions through the sound system. Everything the Explorer said was recorded. The Institute's archive dates the Explorers Project from 1974 to 1991 and counts more than 70 Explorers and over 1,000 sessions.
Explorers were typically Gateway Voyage graduates who had mastered the Institute's techniques, were tested in the lab and were invited back. From Focus 10 and Focus 12 and beyond, they described out-of-body travel, past-life scenes, the structure of the focus levels and, above all, meetings with nonphysical beings they called helpers, guides or friends. Monroe said the most common pattern was an Explorer meeting such a being and relaying the conversation while the monitor supplied questions. Less often, with the Explorer's consent, the being spoke through the Explorer's own voice. He stated flatly that no drugs or medication were used in any session.
Monroe released selections as the Explorer Series, introducing each tape in his own voice and offering the material without evaluation. The original series ran to 24 tapes, and the Institute's YouTube channel now posts the recordings as numbered episodes, with later sessions from other Explorers identified only by code. The tapes are a small part of what happened in the booth: most session time went to routine testing of sounds and states, and the released segments were chosen for general interest. They are best heard as recorded conversations to compare, not as exercises to follow.
Trained volunteers described altered states aloud in a shielded booth while a monitor, often Monroe, asked questions. The recordings became the Explorer Series.
Key points
Volunteers who trained first
Rita Warren, who coordinated the Explorer work, defined an Explorer as a volunteer who has typically attended a Gateway Voyage and mastered the Institute's techniques. Candidates were tested in the laboratory and invited back. Monroe admitted the earliest Explorers were simply people who were available and willing, and that screening came later. His conclusion was that anyone can be an Explorer if their value systems can be self-adjusted, which takes a lot of work and patience that most people lack.
A shielded booth, a waterbed, no drugs
The setting is consistent across the tapes. The Explorer lies in total darkness, usually on a temperature-controlled waterbed, in a soundproof booth shielded with copper sheet metal. A microphone sits close to the mouth, electrodes on the head, hands and feet report body states to the control room, and headphones carry Hemi-Sync tones. Monroe said he came to rely mainly on total body voltage, which needed only two or three electrodes, to read the Explorer's state. No drugs or medication were used.
The monitor is half of every recording
Every Explorer tape is the audio track of a conversation between the Explorer in the booth and a monitor in the control room. On the original series the monitor is Monroe; later sessions feature Rita Warren and Martin Warren. The monitor counts the Explorer through states, asks for detail, checks on comfort and relays questions to whatever the Explorer meets. Monroe compared the pair to two brains working together to draw information from the contact.
Three patterns of contact
In a 1983 Gateway Voyage talk, Monroe said contact organized itself in three ways. By far the most common was an Explorer meeting a nonphysical being and reporting the conversation while the monitor supplied questions. In a second, the information was dictated to the Explorer, who simply repeated it word for word. Far less often, with the Explorer's consent, the being used the Explorer's body and vocal cords directly, as on Explorer 1 and the Miranon tapes. The common thread, he said, was concern for the Explorer's welfare.
The helpers keep appointments
Monroe tells this story in the last series tape. A regular Explorer who came Wednesdays at five, helped out of the body by four helpers, canceled one week. At about five past five, a visiting psychologist resting in a booth on a lab tour asked if anyone else was supposed to be there. Four people, she said, two arguing over whether to pull her out of her body. Monroe checked the clock, remembered the missed appointment and laughed. The helpers, he concluded, must have some sense of time.
What the original 24 tapes cover
Explorer 1 follows an out-of-body sequence; Explorer 2 moves from the Resonant Energy Balloon into past-life regressions. Explorers 5, 6, 13 and 14 are the Miranon sessions, and Explorer 6 lays out his levels and planes of existence. Explorer 17 reports the rescue of a soul who died over a century earlier, Explorer 18 tells a story of creation and Explorer 22 relays comments from a Council of Love. Monroe reviews ten years of work on 23 and summarizes the laboratory on 24.
Most booth time was routine testing
Monroe was blunt that the released tapes were a small part of the total. Most of a session was tedious testing of sound patterns while the Explorer reported how each one felt. In the last tape he plays an exchange about sweeping a tone up and down four times a second, which the Explorer says suppresses body awareness while heightening mental awareness, and says hours upon hours went into patterns like this.
How the material reached listeners
The Institute's members' newsletter began a regular Explorer's Notebook feature in 1978, printing excerpts from the team's recorded reports with the monitor's questions and the responses marked. By 1980 members were writing in with reactions to the Explorer tapes. Monroe's standard introduction says the series was released at the request of many who believed such information belongs in general knowledge. Today the Internet Archive holds a compiled set of 32 tapes that the Institute says Monroe chose, and the Institute's YouTube channel posts numbered episodes.
The Institute takes no stand on what it means
Monroe offered the first tape without his evaluation or comment, so listeners could form their own interpretation. Rita Warren's introductions repeat the stance: the Institute takes no position on validity and urges listeners to test whatever rings true for themselves. Monroe's closing statement lists the possibilities, another part of you, a higher self, a soul, helpers, guides, angels, nonphysical friends or God, and says that choice belongs to each person.
Later episodes add new ideas
Later episodes, introduced by Rita Warren and Martin Warren, present ideas such as aspects, the personality and emotional energies the communicators say overlay every individual, and the friends, the Institute's name for the group energy that spoke through one Explorer across 232 recorded sessions.
In their own words
Quotes are checked word for word against the recordings and documents they come from. Bracketed words correct transcription errors; “…” marks an omission.
“This is Robert Monroe speaking. The following is made up of material taken directly from the voice tracks of Explorer sessions held here at our research facility. We offer them without our evaluation or comment, so that you can learn from them as we did and form your own interpretation or analysis of what took place.”
“An Explorer is a volunteer subject who has typically attended a Gateway Voyage and has mastered our techniques for the exploration of consciousness. Such individuals are tested in our laboratory and, at our invitation, come back for Explorer sessions.”
“The first ones were a product of typical subject selection … those who were available and willing. In other words, we used what we had. In terms of background they included a wide variety, from clinical psychologists and physicists to secretaries … Later we began to use various testing procedures to eliminate unlikely prospects, which may or may not have been valid.”
“No drugs or medication was used during any of the sessions. The thing you need to understand now is that the Explorer tapes, as you know and heard them, are but a small part of the total. Most of the session was another kind of exploration, usually very tedious and tiresome.”
“There were these three ways that this communication pattern began to organize itself. One was, and by far the most common, where our Explorer would meet this third-party being and communicate with it and report it back in communication. So one of us [in] the monitoring and control room would communicate to this and say, “Well, ask him about gravity.””
“Like four, four people, four just presences came on—one on each foot and one on my, my hands—and they sort of lifted my etheric body just up above my physical body. It just sort of lifted me out, and I was just sort of hanging up over my physical body. And they each were, they were working. They had like a purple energy bar. They were working on my energy body, my etheric body, and just re-energizing it.”
“What struck us as truly profound was the [evidence] of a technology being used, the product of a science, knowledge, training, intellect, call it what you will, so far beyond or different from any present level of our understanding that we felt inadequate and challenged at the same time.”
“To accept at the least [the] possibility that you are more than your physical body, that you can and do exist in energy systems that are not limited to time, space, physical matter, that you can reach and communicate with intelligence beyond your physical consciousness. Call it what you will: another part of you, your higher self, your soul, your helpers, guides, angels, non-physical friends and loved ones, God and intermediaries. That is for only you to determine in your own ultimate truth.”
Important things to consider
Listen to Tape 24, then Tape 1
Tape 24 is Monroe's own tour of the laboratory and the best orientation to how the sessions worked. Tape 1 gives a complete early session with his introduction. After those two, the Miranon tapes (5, 6, 13 and 14) and the numbered episodes on the Institute's channel are easier to place.
These are lab conversations, not exercises
A monitor's prompt was meant for one Explorer in one session, in a shielded booth with staff and instruments. The recordings document what happened; they are not a method. The Gateway Experience and the Gateway Voyage are the Institute's structured routes into the same states.
Codes are labels, not identities
Explorers appear under assigned codes such as ROMC, SHE or IMEC, and the tapes do not name them. A code identifies a run of recordings, not a person. Matching codes to real people from similar initials is guesswork, so treat each code simply as the label for one Explorer's sessions.
Know who is speaking
Transcripts mix three voices: the monitor, the Explorer reporting in the first person, and a communicator speaking through the Explorer's voice. Labels such as Monitor, Bob Monroe or the Explorer's code help. The communicator's words are reported statements from the contact, not the Explorer's own views.
The tapes are a selection, and evidence has limits
Monroe chose segments of general interest and called them a small part of the total. The booth produced recordings and instrument readings, but names, histories, cosmologies and forecasts cannot be verified from them. Monroe admitted he had no proof when the gauges went dead and an Explorer reported being elsewhere. His safeguard was comparison: Explorers mostly did not know one another, so he judged the chance of cross-contamination between their reports to be low.
The early forecasts are dated
Several of the earliest tapes, numbers 4, 9, 16 and 20, include warnings about coming Earth changes. Those statements were made decades ago, so they can be compared with what has happened since. They are part of the record of what the communicators said at the time.
Transcript quality varies
Transcripts for tapes 1 to 24 are scans of typed pages. Those for tapes 25 to 32 are raw machine transcripts, so names and terms are sometimes garbled. When a line looks odd, check the audio.
Health content is report, not advice
Some sessions describe helpers working on an Explorer's body or recommending breathing, food or walking. Those are reports from the booth, not medical advice, and nothing in them replaces a clinician's guidance.
Common questions
What were the Monroe Institute Explorer sessions?
They were laboratory sessions in which experienced volunteers, called Explorers, lay in an isolation booth at the Monroe Institute and described aloud what they perceived while a monitor in the control room asked questions. Sessions were recorded along with instrument readings. Explorers reported out-of-body travel, past-life scenes, descriptions of the focus levels and conversations with nonphysical beings. The Institute's archive dates the project from 1974 to 1991, with more than 70 Explorers and over 1,000 sessions. Monroe released a selection as the Explorer Series without evaluating it.
Who were the Explorers, and can anyone become one?
Explorers were volunteers, typically Gateway Voyage graduates, who showed their skill in the laboratory and were invited back. Monroe said the first ones were simply people who were available and willing, among them clinical psychologists, physicists and secretaries. In the last tape he concluded that anyone can be an Explorer if their value systems can be self-adjusted, which takes much work and patience, and that the core requirement is accepting the possibility that you are more than your physical body. The tapes identify Explorers only by code.
Where can I listen to the Explorer tapes?
The Monroe Institute's YouTube channel posts the Explorer Series as numbered episodes, many opening with an introduction by Monroe, Rita Warren or Martin Warren. The Internet Archive holds the Institute's compiled Explorer Series, a set of 32 tapes it says Monroe chose, with audio and transcripts, along with further collections of Explorer audio and transcripts. A good order is Tape 24 for the laboratory, Tape 1 for a complete early session, then the Miranon tapes 5 and 6.
Who was the monitor in an Explorer session?
The monitor sat in the control room and spoke to the Explorer through the sound system. On the original series tapes it is Monroe, who describes sitting there watching the gauges. In later sessions Rita Warren, who coordinated the Explorer work, and Martin Warren, who says he monitored many of the sessions, appear on the recordings. The monitor counted the Explorer through states, asked for detail, relayed questions to the beings the Explorer met and noticed when the Explorer needed help.
Were drugs used in Explorer sessions?
Monroe said no. He states that no drugs or medication were used during any session, and his standard introduction says the Explorers had learned to reach other states using the Institute's methods, without drugs or electrical stimulation. The tools were the darkened, shielded booth, the waterbed, headphones carrying Hemi-Sync tones, and practice that usually began with the Gateway program. Instruments recorded the body's state throughout, mainly total body voltage through two or three electrodes.
Did Monroe believe the Explorers were really contacting other beings?
His public stance was neutral: he offered the tapes without evaluation or comment so listeners could judge for themselves. His own words show serious regard. In his final tape he describes evidence of a technology far beyond present understanding, and he lists helpers, guides, a higher self and God as possible ways to understand the contacts. In a 1987 talk he said the staff were convinced of the contacts' capabilities, glad of their apparent benevolence and left asking who was really doing the driving. The Institute still takes no stand on validity.
How are Explorer sessions different from the Gateway Experience tapes?
The Gateway Experience is a structured audio program for personal use: a narrator guides you through set exercises with Hemi-Sync, and the same steps are meant to work for everyone. Explorer sessions were free-form laboratory work, with a trained volunteer, a monitor and instruments, the Explorer reporting and the monitor deciding the next question. Gateway Voyage graduates formed the pool from which Explorers were invited, and Hemi-Sync tones were played into the booth, but the recordings are records of what happened rather than lessons.
In Monroe’s books
Summarized in our own words; the books are not reproduced on this site.
Far Journeys. In its Explorer Team chapter, Monroe says the early volunteers were sent to scout the moon and planets and found only barren places. Then in 1974, within a few weeks, nearly all of them began meeting intelligent beings willing to talk. The only change he could identify was the Gateway affirmation, newly added to the start of each session.
Far Journeys. He also reports that the regular weekly group had shrunk to six professionals, including a physicist and an electronics engineer, and that the Explorer material raised far more questions than it answered.
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PODCASTS & VIDEOS
Watch and listen
Conversations and presentations connected to this topic. Each speaker brings their own experience and interpretation.
Podcast ·
Research and Out-of-Body Experiences with Robert A. Monroe
Tom Campbell
Expanding on Consciousness · Monroe Institute
A collaborator’s recollections
Campbell recalls meeting Bob Monroe, their early sound experiments and his own out-of-body experiences. Hear a collaborator’s account of the work behind the later programs.
YouTube video ·
Remembering Robert Monroe and Journeys Out of the Body
Tom Campbell
New Thinking Allowed with Jeffrey Mishlove
A collaborator’s recollections
Campbell reflects on Monroe’s life and their years working together. Follow the interview into its existing transcript to compare his recollections with the archive.
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