States of awareness · 12 MIN READ · 7 SOURCE QUOTES
The Belief System Territories
The Belief System Territories are the part of Robert Monroe's afterlife map where what a person believed decides where they land. The Institute's overview, quoting Bruce Moen, assigns them to Focus 24, 25 and 26 together, between the isolation of Focus 23 and the open reception area of Focus 27. In a Monroe Institute video, Monroe said that on moving into the nonphysical, the first thing you encounter is the belief system territories, where you are attracted automatically because the place is familiar.
Moen describes each territory as a place held together by one set of afterlife beliefs. Every set of beliefs humans have held has a specific location here. Inhabitants stay in contact with others who share their beliefs, contact with conflicting beliefs is severely limited, and free will choices are restricted to those compatible with the prevailing beliefs. Some areas look like heavens and some like hells. Beliefs need not be religious: Moen's examples include a hypothetical Lutheran heaven and a thief's hell whose inhabitants all hold the belief system of a thief.
Monroe's image is an interstate highway with exit ramps to various belief systems. In a 1989 interview he said he guided newly dead people down it by the hand until they spotted what they believed in and let go. Lifeline and Wave VII take participants to Focus 25, and Moen warns that moving anyone out of a territory is extremely difficult. The lesson many readers draw is practical: in this map the afterlife is partly made of expectations, so the beliefs you hold now are worth examining.
Focus 24 to 26 are Monroe's Belief System Territories: afterlife regions built from shared beliefs, from heavens and hells to a thief's hell.
Key points
Belief decides where you are drawn
Monroe's own description is brief. Moving into the nonphysical, he said in a Monroe Institute video, the first thing you meet is the belief system territories, where you are attracted automatically after leaving the body because the place is familiar. Moen is more specific: inhabitants are drawn to particular locations by the afterlife beliefs they held while alive, and every set of afterlife beliefs humans have held has a specific location in these levels.
Company, with limits
Moen says territory inhabitants are in a sense stuck like those in Focus 23, but not isolated: everyone in a territory is in contact with everyone who shares their beliefs. Contact with anyone holding conflicting beliefs is severely limited. In a 2010 interview he illustrated the contrast: a woman who believed death was endless sleep lay alone, caught in a reality her own belief had created, while a territory is inhabited only by people who share the beliefs that created it.
Heavens and hells built from belief
Moen illustrates with a hypothetical. His Lutheran upbringing never taught a heaven where every fruit tree that ever existed grows, but if it had, then at death he might enter a Lutheran Heaven created by all the Lutherans who believe in it, with trees you could really pick from. Catholics, he adds, have their own heaven and hell, and each group's afterlife mirrors its beliefs. Monroe described the same logic from the helper's side: some people who expected hell because they believed they had been bad found one waiting.
Belief systems need not be religious
Moen's fourth book describes a thief's hell, a territory whose inhabitants all hold the belief system of a true thief, someone always looking for a way to steal. He says it looked real and three-dimensional, much like earth, except that every other person was a thief, stealing from others and being stolen from.
The exit-ramp image
In his 1989 interview with Neville Drury, Monroe said he would take a newly dead person's hand and move down the highway until the person spotted what they believed in and let go. What happened after that, he said, was their problem and he did not get into it. He called the highway only a symbol and said there must be hundreds of thousands of ramps; he cannot even see the ones he has no connection with, though one tied to a belief system he lived in during an earlier life cycle would be clear to him.
Why Monroe kept moving
Monroe told Drury the territories are so broad that he did not want to spend his non-physical lifetime investigating all of them, since each has constraints and, as he put it, he is a freedom person. In a Gateway talk dated October 7, 1990, he added that belief systems are composed partly of unknowns, and the unknown is a source of fear, so all of them have the fear of the unknown built in. His standing advice was not to believe him but to find out for yourself.
Getting out is hard, and helpers do it
Moen says in the overview that it is extremely difficult to move people from the territories to areas of greater free will choice, and in his Sydney talk he tells of a man whose way out came from a helper. His example is Mike, a man in thief's hell who gradually chose to be less involved in thievery. A helper who had been watching offered what he called a back door out of hell; Mike was escorted to a review center in Focus 27 and then went to work in a rehabilitation center.
Human-made, and met in Lifeline at Focus 25
Moen says both the territories and Focus 27 were created by humans for humans, but the territories are more restrictive. William Buhlman, speaking at the Institute's 2014 professional seminar, calls them consensus realities, countless in number, and notes that people tend to stay with what is comfortable. A 2002 Hemi-Sync Journal essayist describes Lifeline advancing to Focus 23 and 25, and Wave VII includes an Intro to Focus 25 exercise.
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.
“When you get into this non-physical area of being, states of being, the first thing you encounter, of course, is what we call the belief system territories, where one is attracted automatically after they exit here by this phasing process, because it's something familiar to them. And these are, of course, all of the various religions [that] have a belief system that creates a state of being in this non-physical area, this non-physical part of this consciousness continuum. I know it sounds like a bunch of gobbledygook, but it's very simple.”
“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. They have them holding their hand, and then I'm no longer holding their hand, because they have spotted what they believe in to simply release themselves, move down into that area of non-physical reality that is their belief system.”
“In what might fondly be called the Belief System Territories, or BS territories, for short. And they, in turn, are composed, all of them are composed partly of unknowns; otherwise they wouldn’t be a belief system.”
“Inhabitants of The Belief System Territories are attracted to specific locations by Afterlife beliefs they held while physically alive. Every set of Afterlife beliefs held by humans at any time has a specific location with these Focus levels. In a sense, Belief System Territory inhabitants are stuck like those in Focus 23. The difference is that they are not isolated from contact with others. All inhabitants of a specific Territory are in contact with all others sharing their beliefs. Contact with anyone holding conflicting beliefs is severely limited. Free will choices here are restricted to only those compatible with the prevailing beliefs. Some of these areas look like Heavens, some look like Hells.”
“At death, if I continue to hold these Lutheran beliefs, I might … enter into a place we could describe as Lutheran Heaven, a place created by all the Lutheran who believe in it. And if all the Lutheran believed in these fruit trees, those fruit trees would actually be there, and you could actually pick the fruit and eat it, and it would seem like a physical experience.”
“Some of these belief system territories aren't just religious. It's easy to, easier to understand them talking about religious ones, but in my fourth book there's a description of exploration of a place called thief's hell, a place where all the people who inhabit that particular version of hell hold a belief system of a thief, not someone who just steals occasionally but a true thief, someone who was always looking for a way to steal something.”
“And he had been watching Mike as Mike sort of made the decision to be less and less involved with being a thief, which is kind of like remindful, like removing that magnetism he had, that thief energy he had. And the helper said, "Mike," he said, "I, you know, I got to the point where I, I thought you're ready to be offered a back door out of hell." That's what the helper called it, a back door out of hell.”
Important things to consider
A model of belief, not a ranking of religions
Moen's statement that every set of afterlife beliefs has a location describes how belief organizes experience in his and Monroe's explorations. It does not say which religions are right, and it should not be used to place real people. Accounts of hells are other people's reports, not forecasts. Monroe's own stance when guiding people to their territory was that what came next was their problem and not something he got into, and the examples given, such as the hypothetical Lutheran heaven, are illustrations, not church teachings.
Allegory, not geography
Monroe called the interstate an allegory and only a symbol, and Moen's examples come from his own books and workshops. The territories are reported by Monroe, Moen and Lifeline participants who share a vocabulary, so the consistent picture is not independent confirmation. Use the map as a way of describing how expectation shapes experience; whether the structures are real places can only be tested by personal exploration.
Group belief is not the same as isolation
A quick way to place an account in Moen's scheme is to ask who is there. Alone and cut off suggests Focus 23, where a private reality traps a person. A community that shares one outlook and has little contact with other views suggests the territories. Open contact, wide choice and helpers suggest Focus 27.
Treat 24, 25 and 26 as a group
The sources describe Focus 24, 25 and 26 together. Lifeline and Wave VII visit Focus 25, and no source here assigns separate roles to 24 and 26. Resist filling the gap with invented sublevels.
Leaving is the person's own decision
In Moen's Mike story, the helper waited until Mike had begun to withdraw from thieving before offering the back door. Monroe's approach was to tell people they did not have to go to hell and to say: try it and see. Both treat leaving as the person's own decision, which fits Moen's account of helpers who never impose their will.
Examine your own beliefs
The practical reading many take from the territories is to ask which of your assumptions about death you have actually tested. Monroe told audiences not to take his word for anything, and Moen's example of a woman whose own belief in endless sleep created her reality points the same way. Listing what you believe about dying, and why, is a useful exercise whether or not you accept the afterlife claims.
Common questions
What are the Belief System Territories in the Monroe Institute's Focus levels?
The Belief System Territories are the afterlife regions Monroe and Bruce Moen place at Focus 24, 25 and 26. People are attracted to them automatically, after they leave the physical body, because the setting matches the beliefs about the afterlife they held in life. Each territory is organized around one set of beliefs. Inhabitants stay in contact with others who share those beliefs, contact with conflicting beliefs is severely limited, and free will choices are restricted to those compatible with the prevailing beliefs. Some look like heavens and some like hells.
Are the Belief System Territories heaven and hell?
They include the heavens and hells of religious belief, but the idea is broader. Moen says some areas look like heavens and some like hells, with a Catholic heaven and hell, a Lutheran one and so on, each mirroring back what its inhabitants believe. Monroe described people who expected hell because they believed they had been bad and found one waiting. In this model the places are made from belief, not handed down as reward or punishment, and people can leave them when belief shifts or help arrives.
Do the territories apply only to religious beliefs?
No. Moen says some territories are not religious at all, and gives thief's hell as his example: its inhabitants all hold the belief system of a true thief, and he describes a world that looks like earth where everyone steals from everyone else. He also describes a private version of the principle, a woman who believed death was endless sleep and remained asleep on a bed until someone could convince her there was more. Because the belief was hers alone, her reality was isolated, whereas a territory is held together by a group's shared belief.
How does anyone get out of a Belief System Territory?
Moen's overview says it is extremely difficult to move people out of the territories to areas of greater free will choice, and in his Sydney talk he describes a helper offering one man a way out. His example is Mike, a man in thief's hell who gradually chose to be less involved in thieving. A helper who had been watching offered him a back door out of hell, and Mike was escorted to a review center in Focus 27, then went to work in a rehabilitation center with the helper as his mentor. Monroe's own method in 1989 was to tell people expecting hell that they did not have to go and to invite them to try it and see.
Why do people call them BS territories?
The nickname is Monroe's own. In a Gateway talk dated October 7, 1990, he spoke of what might fondly be called the Belief System Territories, or BS territories, for short. His point was that the unknown is a source of fear and that belief systems are composed partly of unknowns, so all of them have the fear of the unknown built in. The shorthand is a joke with an argument behind it.
Which Gateway or Lifeline exercises cover Focus 24 to 26?
Focus 25 is the territory the audio programs visit. Wave VII (Voyager) of the Gateway Experience, based on Lifeline, includes Intro to Focus 25 alongside Intro to Focus 23 and Intro to Focus 27, and a 2002 Hemi-Sync Journal essayist describes Lifeline advancing to Focus 23 and 25. The albums must be used in order, and Lifeline itself is a residential graduate program that follows the Gateway Voyage.
Do I have to believe in the Belief System Territories for this model to be useful?
No. Monroe told audiences not to believe him but to find out for themselves, and he described the territories through an allegory, an interstate with exit ramps, which he called only a symbol. What the model offers most readily is a question about your own expectations: which of your beliefs about death are assumptions, and which have you tested. Moen's example of a woman whose own belief in endless sleep shaped her reality points the same way.
In Monroe’s books
Summarized in our own words; the books are not reproduced on this site.
Ultimate Journey. Monroe defines Focus 24 through 26 as the belief system territories, home to nonphysical humans of all eras who accepted some religious or philosophical picture of an afterlife. He describes escorting people toward Focus 27 and losing some along the way, as they slip into the territory matching their beliefs and are welcomed by their own creed.
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