Sound & programs · 12 MIN READ · 8 SOURCE QUOTES
Lifeline and helping others
Lifeline is the Monroe Institute's residential program for exploring the states Robert Monroe linked with life after death, Focus 23 through Focus 27. It is an advanced course for Gateway Voyage graduates, five days and six nights long, and the Institute describes it as the first soul-retrieval retreat, conceived in 1991. Participants learn to enter these states, make contact with people who have died but are confused or stuck, and gently guide them toward what the Institute calls the Light. They can also visit the Park, the afterlife reception center Monroe placed in Focus 27, connect with guides, and reunite with friends and relatives who have died.
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.
Lifeline takes Gateway graduates through Focus 23 to 27 to help people stuck after death, visit the Park, and retrieve lost parts of themselves.
Key points
A graduate program built on Gateway Voyage
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
Monroe described the Park as a way station where people cool off from the trauma of dying and decide what to do next. In a Monroe Institute video he said it looked like a park created by human minds before recorded history, and that it is not religiously based at all, simply a place of rest and recuperation. Honeycutt says these environments were designed to be comfortable, without dogma or judgment, so everyone can create their own space within them.
Service to the dying: from Lifeline to Going Home
A 1994 Hemi-Sync Journal contributor took Lifeline a few months after their mother's death and learned to help those who had left the physical find their way to a parklike reception center in Focus 27. They then gathered a circle of Lifeline graduates, modeled loosely on the Institute's Dolphin Energy Club, willing to help from a distance when people request assistance near the end of life. During that same Lifeline week Monroe unveiled plans for special Hemi-Sync tapes for dying persons and their families, now the Going Home series.
The home version: Voyager, based on Lifeline
The Gateway Experience album Voyager covers service to others and the states associated with the afterlife, Focus 23 through 27, according to its publisher. Its exercises include guided work with people who have died, guiding them to a reception center, and opportunities to send and receive messages. The publisher states that the album is based on the Monroe Institute's Lifeline program. The residential week adds trainers, a group, and a full daily schedule of morning, afternoon and evening exercises.
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.
“Anyway, it's from that, and researching that, and also with the areas of people who I knew had already died, we set up a program called Lifeline … which in essence is one to, in turn, help [you] get totally familiar with the process of moving from Focus 23, which is right after physical death, up to what we call Focus 27.”
“Lifeline is [an] exploration into these other energy systems beyond physical death, and in our exploration we found … what looked like a park that had been created by human minds in some era prior to our recorded history, which is a place where humans after they die can go and [recreate] long enough to decide what they want to do next. And it is not a [religiously] based thing at all. It's simply a place of rest and recuperation.”
“It also helped him sort of develop a constructive place, such that there might be a place where he could meet up with Nancy, my mother, after [her] transition. So he wanted to be able to create a new plateau for Gateway voyagers, if you will, and he also wanted to be able to create an environment to where people could go and consider the thought that they have access to other energy systems and other beings that aren't part of this physical life system.”
“Bob drew this paradigm of a realm beyond Lifeline from his own experiences, from talking with other people, from the near-death experiencers in the reports, to this general overview and concept of some sort of a welcoming area. And Bob called it a park or a reception center.”
“There are some that perhaps die and don't know they're dead, or they get stuck in a certain state, and in Lifeline people learn how to get into different states and then help those people in transition who haven't been able to quite free themselves up, to help them move forward.”
“My mother’s death led me to focus deeply and personally on the dying process. “Coincidentally,” I had preregistered nearly a year before for The Monroe Institute’s Lifeline program. As a result, I took this training just a few months after Mom’s death, learning how to help those who had left the physical find their way to a parklike “reception center” in Focus 27.”
“In a normal, natural dying process, that's a retrieval. It's [a] situation in which someone from that side, someone from this afterlife area who lives there [and] maybe knows you, will come to you and get your attention so that they can communicate with you, and then offer to assist you in going to wherever you'd like to go, or to a better place to see what that's like.”
“Culminating in a retrieval of a part of my-Self constrained in Focus 23. With this new insight into the nature of my makeup, many older limiting questions about my life and about life in general began to dissolve within the process of transcending and including—leaving me with a feeling of connection to Higher Self Purpose, a healing of the self.”
Important things to consider
These are reports, not verified facts
The Park, the retrievals and the reunions rest on first-person accounts. The sources show what trainers and participants say they experienced; they do not verify who was met or where. Skip Atwater put the open question himself in his 2002 study of the Healing and Regeneration Center: is it out there, or is it in here? Monroe's stance, as McMoneagle recalls it, was knowing over belief: go and find out for yourself.
You do not have to meet the dead
Nancy McMoneagle says some participants end up seeing people who have passed on, but you do not have to do that in Lifeline. The Institute's own wording is permissive: participants may connect with guides and may reunite with friends and relatives. Treat a reunion as a possibility, not a requirement, and do not measure a week by whether anyone familiar appears.
Interpretation stays open
Honeycutt says Monroe built these environments without dogmatic principles or judgments. A Hemi-Sync Journal writer in 2003 called Focus 27 an imaginal realm, a term from the scholar Henry Corbin, and suggested taking an experience on board without trying to explain it in everyday terms. You can read the Park as a literal afterlife, a shared mental space or a projection of yourself; nothing in the program's design requires one reading.
Settings reflect the person
Participants describe the Park in familiar earthly terms. That fits Monroe's idea, quoted in a 2003 Hemi-Sync Journal article, that the Park takes on earthlike forms so that newcomers from very different backgrounds can accept it. Atwater makes a similar point: we give the atmosphere physicality for the sake of familiarity and so we can talk about it. Expect your own imagery to differ from other people's.
Grief is a common doorway, but this is not grief counseling
Some accounts begin with a death in the family, and Monroe set up the program while his wife was ill. Lifeline offers a practice and a framework, not therapy. If you are in acute grief, keep ordinary human support around you and talk with a counselor or doctor about how you are coping.
Health caution
The Institute advises anyone with a history of seizures, auditory disorders or adverse mental health conditions to consult a physician before listening to Monroe Sound Science. Lifeline is an exploration practice, not a medical or psychological treatment.
Retrieval language appears elsewhere
Authors such as Bruce Moen teach retrieval in their own workshops and books, and the vocabulary overlaps with Lifeline. When you read an account, check whether it describes the Institute's program, a Gateway Experience album or an independent workshop.
Common questions
What is the Lifeline program at the Monroe Institute?
Lifeline is a five-day, six-night residential program for Gateway Voyage graduates in which participants explore Focus 23 through 27, the levels the Institute associates with the afterlife. Its core exercise is the retrieval, or soul rescue: making contact with a person who has died and is confused or stuck, and guiding them toward the Light or to the Park, the reception center in Focus 27. Participants can also meet guides, reunite with friends and relatives who have died, and retrieve lost parts of themselves. Monroe described its purpose as making people thoroughly familiar with the route from Focus 23 to Focus 27.
What is a retrieval, and who gets retrieved?
A retrieval is an act of guided help. In the Institute's description, some people who have died, or had a real or near-death experience, may not realize it and may feel confused; Lifeline participants learn to reach them and gently guide them toward the Light. Bruce Moen explains that in a natural dying process, someone from the afterlife who knows you comes to get your attention and offers to take you somewhere better. Other retrievals involve people killed so suddenly that they stay fixed at the moment of death. The Institute adds that a retrieval can also mean reclaiming a lost fragment of yourself, as one 2002 Hemi-Sync Journal contributor described.
What is the Park in Focus 27?
The Park is Monroe's name for a reception center in Focus 27 where, in his account, people who have died can rest and decide what to do next. He told Art Bell he was escorted there in the 1960s, calling it a way station where people cool off from the trauma of dying. In a Monroe Institute video he said it looked like a park created by human minds before recorded history and has nothing religious about it. Participants describe parklike surroundings, though Skip Atwater cautions that the physical picture is a convenience and the reality may be more a process than a place.
Why did Robert Monroe create Lifeline?
Monroe gave two linked reasons. He had been escorted to the Park in the 1960s and, after researching it, wanted others to become familiar with the route from Focus 23 to Focus 27. And his wife Nancy was ill, so he wanted to be sure that if she died he could find her and be with her. A.J. Honeycutt, her son, believes the first Lifeline was in June 1991, during her long illness, and says Bob wanted a new plateau for Gateway voyagers and an environment where people could consider that they have access to other energy systems and beings outside the physical life system.
Do I have to see dead people or do retrievals to take Lifeline?
No. Nancy McMoneagle says some participants end up seeing people who have passed on, but you do not have to do that in Lifeline, and the Institute's description says participants may connect with guides and may reunite with loved ones, not that they will. She describes the program as being for people interested in being of service, where participants learn to enter different states so they can help people who are stuck. A.J. Honeycutt adds that the environments were designed without dogma or judgment, so each person makes their own space there, and presences you meet can turn out to be aspects of yourself.
What do I need before taking Lifeline, and can I try it at home?
You need to complete Gateway Voyage first, in its residential, virtual or online form, then apply and be approved. Lifeline is also one of the programs that qualify graduates for Exploration 27. To sample the territory at home, the Gateway Experience album Voyager is, in its publisher's words, based on the Monroe Institute's Lifeline program. It covers service to others and Focus 23 through 27, including guided work with people who have died. The residential week adds trainers and a group. Anyone with a history of seizures, auditory disorders or adverse mental health conditions should consult a physician first.
In Monroe’s books
Summarized in our own words; the books are not reproduced on this site.
Ultimate Journey. Monroe's last book, published in 1994, reports on the early Lifeline sessions: attendees came from varied backgrounds, all were graduates of earlier programs, and nearly all said they could visit the reception center, the Park. It also lists the Focus levels, placing the belief system territories at 24 through 26 and the Park at 27.
Keep exploring
Prepared answers open instantly in the chat; anything else you ask gets a fresh answer.
Connected ideas
Sound & programs
Going Home
A two-album Hemi-Sync series for people facing death and their families, built by Monroe with input from Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and Charles Tart.
Read the summary →11 min · 8 quotes · 6 answersStates of awareness
Focus 23 and retrieval accounts
Focus 23 is where Monroe placed people who died confused or alone; Lifeline trains participants to find them, help them and guide them to Focus 27.
Read the summary →12 min · 7 quotes · 7 answersStates of awareness
Focus 27: reception, learning and assistance
Focus 27 is Monroe's Park: a reception area after death with centers for healing, review and learning, and the place Lifeline retrievals are taken.
Read the summary →12 min · 7 quotes · 7 answersSound & programs
Exploration 27
Exploration 27 goes beyond the Park into Focus 27's four centers, the I-There and optional visits to Focus 34 and 35, with accounts from graduates.
Read the summary →12 min · 6 quotes · 6 answersPeople & places
Bruce Moen and afterlife exploration
Engineer and Monroe Institute graduate who wrote the Exploring the Afterlife books and teaches retrieval: contacting people he reports are stuck after death.
Read the summary →12 min · 8 quotes · 6 answersSound & programs
Guidelines: beyond Gateway
Guidelines, the Institute's second program, teaches Gateway graduates to build a working relationship with their inner guidance in Focus 15 and 21.
Read the summary →10 min · 6 quotes · 6 answers