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Locale I, II and III
In Journeys Out of the Body (1971), Robert Monroe sorted the places he visited during his early out-of-body experiences into three environments and numbered them Locale I, II and III, a makeshift scheme adopted for lack of better names. Locale I is the physical world as it exists at the moment of the experiment, which he also called the Here-Now. Locale II is a vast nonphysical environment that runs on different rules, where thought and emotion act directly. Locale III is a world of physical matter that closely resembles Earth but is not its past, present or likely future.
The three differ mainly in how far Monroe could check them. Locale I produced the only results he could test by ordinary means, such as a friend's whereabouts or the details of a street he later visited in person. Locale II is where his second body kept drifting on its own, so it fills most of the book. Locale III stayed the most puzzling: an Earth-like society with railroads and cities but no electricity, whose people could not perceive him until he briefly and involuntarily merged with a counterpart.
Monroe later moved on from the vocabulary. In a radio interview he called Locale II the old-fashioned name and said he now described the same territory through phasing, and in Far Journeys (1985) he calls the label a misnomer. Today the Monroe Institute maps that territory with Focus levels: Focus 21 at the edge of time-space, then the belief system territories and other afterlife areas beyond it.
Monroe's first map of where he went out of body: the physical Here-Now, a vast nonphysical realm shaped by thought, and a different Earth-like world.
Key points
Three destinations, sorted by what he could check
Monroe built the Locales to answer the question he heard most often: where do you go? He found that his destinations fell into three groups and numbered them for lack of better names. The book follows that structure, with chapters titled The Here-Now, Infinity. Eternity. and Reverse Image for Locales I, II and III. Only Locale I, he wrote, yielded results that could be confirmed by ordinary means.
Locale I: the physical world as it is right now
Locale I consists of real people and places in the material world at the moment of the experiment. Monroe took anything bizarre there as a sign of distorted perception, and it supplied his best evidence. In October 1960 he set out to find a friend about five miles away and reported drifting along over a town's main street. Afterward he checked the corner in person: a white car stood by two open doors, and high-voltage power lines ran at the height where he had floated. The friend, he wrote, had been walking down that street at about the time.
Locale II: a world where thought acts directly
Monroe called Locale II a nonmaterial environment whose laws are only remotely related to ours, an immensity of unknown bounds that seems to interpenetrate the physical world and holds entities of varying intelligence with whom communication is possible. Physical time does not exist there. Reality is made of deepest desires and worst fears, thought is action, and nothing shields you from others. Heaven and hell lie inside it, but most of Locale II is neither. The chapter opens with a sign telling visitors to leave their physical concepts at the door.
Why he kept ending up in Locale II
Monroe concluded that Locale II is the second body's home environment, which is why his attempts to travel to physical places kept turning into involuntary trips there. He compared using the second body in the physical world to sending a diver to the sea floor without equipment: possible briefly, but forced. At the slightest mental relaxation, he wrote, the deeper mind he called the supermind steered him toward Locale II instead.
Locale III: an Earth-like world with different rules
Monroe described Locale III as a physical-matter world almost identical to our own, with cities, families, businesses, roads and railroads. The almost is the point. He found no electrical devices of any kind, no electricity or electromagnetism, no internal combustion engines, no gasoline or oil. Steam locomotives pulled old-style wooden cars along track narrower than any standard gauge, and small four-wheeled platforms moved by a mechanism the rider pumped with the arms while the feet steered. History, customs and names differed too: human evolution looked the same, but technical and social development did not match ours.
Taking over a counterpart's body
The central discovery of Locale III, in Monroe's account, was that its people could not perceive him until he merged, briefly and involuntarily, with a person there whom he calls the I who lives there. He concluded that he was being drawn into the body of a man much like himself and temporarily displacing him. He learned the man's circumstances from his family and from what seemed to be the man's own memory, and he could feel the emotional patterns of that life while knowing he was not that person.
Three guesses about what Locale III is
Monroe argued that Locale III is neither the known past, the present nor the probable future of Locale I, and that it is not part of Locale II. He offered three possibilities: a memory, racial or otherwise, of an Earth civilization older than recorded history; another Earth-type world elsewhere in the universe, reachable through mental effort; or an antimatter duplicate of our world, matched to it unit for unit. He noted that scientists could accept this more readily than Locale II, and he did not claim to know which guess was right.
From Locale II to phasing and the Focus levels
In his later years Monroe described the same territory differently. Asked on Timeless Voyager radio about Locale 2, he called it the old-fashioned term and said the newer, more scientific explanation was a phasing process, with Locale 2 somewhere beyond the stage we call sleep. The first thing met there, he said, are the belief system territories. At the Institute, Focus 21 marks the edge of time-space and Focus 24 through 26 are those territories.
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.
“That's one way of putting it, yeah, that's the old-fashioned way. … Well, we call it a phasing process now. … Well, say, what was it, 20 years ago I called it Locale [2]. Now we have, we've gotten, again, a better and more scientific explanation for what's taking place.”
“When you get into this other area, 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.”
“You are no longer able to stay phased in this because [your focusing] mechanism doesn't work anymore. … But what happens in so many cases is that, upon that exit and moving up, you go there … to the belief system territories.”
“He traveled through Focus 10 and 20 without any problems and even found that funny. The day he was introduced to Focus 21 was unforgettable. He had no clue what it was about. After that tape, he was only willing to travel up to Focus 21. I found that very interesting because he had felt completely lost in Locale 2.”
“I initially employed Locale I, Focus 10 and Focus 12 … More recently, my work while reabsorbing identity has extended into explorations in Locale II, Focus 21 and 27”
“So, it's almost like a mirror image. In fact, the name of this chapter is Reverse Image. And in this world, are people. A very Earth-like experience. There's laws of physics and nature. People go to work, they have families, they have cars, they have houses, all the stuff, but it's not the same as Earth. It's different.”
“It is important to realize these focus levels are merely arbitrary numbers and signposts to identify the state of consciousness one is in. … However, beyond Focus 21, several other focus levels have been identified further removed from the physical, and which involve among other systems the perception of belief system territories (“astral planes”). Thus, The Gateway Experience is meant as a platform from which to explore further on your own.”
Important things to consider
Remember them by what a camera would show
Locale I is what a camera in the room would record, Locale II is what thought and emotion build, and Locale III is a physical world with its own history. Ordinary places and details someone could verify fit Locale I. Symbolic landscapes, guides, the dead and communication without words fit Locale II. An Earth-like country with its own technology fits Locale III.
Locale II material is extrapolation, by Monroe's own account
Monroe said only a small share of his Locale II visits produced evidential data, because such visits resist proof, and he called much of the material cautious extrapolation. What he claimed was consistency across several hundred experiments. He also warned that the conscious mind pictures unfamiliar environments in familiar terms, so Locale II invites more interpretive error than Locale I.
Locale III never made it into the later books
The label Locale III appears only in Journeys Out of the Body. Far Journeys refers back to Locale II as a retired label, and Ultimate Journey drops the Locale vocabulary altogether. Monroe's later exploration moved toward the Earth life system, the belief system territories and other reality systems. For his detailed notes on parallel physical worlds, the first book is the only source.
Do not map Locales onto Focus levels one to one
Institute writers sometimes pair Locale I with Focus 10 and 12 and Locale II with Focus 21 and beyond, but the pairing is informal. Locales are destinations Monroe sorted out of his own experiments; Focus levels are states of awareness reached with guidance and Hemi-Sync, and the Institute's overview itself calls the numbers arbitrary signposts.
Fear shapes what you find in Locale II
Because Locale II responds to desire and fear, Monroe put heavy weight on managing fear; he reported that his own early separations triggered an automatic dread of dying. Gateway sessions begin with a preparation routine, Release and Recharge in the Discovery album aims at letting go of fears and emotional charge, and the program has you master Focus 10 first.
You do not need the Locales to use Gateway
The Gateway Experience is built around Focus levels, not Locales. Treat the Locales as background: they show where ideas such as the second body, the belief system territories and phasing began, and they make Monroe's first book and older Institute writing easier to follow.
Health caution
Accounts of Locale II are emotionally intense, and Monroe himself reported fear in the early work. These are reports of experience, not treatments or diagnoses. If a practice leaves you distressed, stop and speak with a clinician you trust, and read the publisher's guidance on audio entrainment first if you have a seizure disorder or a serious mental-health condition.
Common questions
What are Locale I, Locale II and Locale III?
Locales are the three environments Robert Monroe used to classify where he went during out-of-body experiences, in Journeys Out of the Body (1971). Locale I, the Here-Now, is the real physical world in the present. Locale II is a vast nonphysical environment with its own rules, where thought acts directly and heaven and hell are only parts. Locale III is a physical-matter world resembling Earth, with cities, families, jobs and railroads, but a different history and no electricity. Monroe numbered them for lack of better names.
Is Locale II the afterlife?
Partly. Monroe placed the territories people associate with heaven and hell inside Locale II, and in a later interview he said the first thing you meet in that nonphysical area is the belief system territories, where people are drawn by the religious beliefs they already hold. In the first book, though, he wrote that most of Locale II is neither, that he suspected many or all people visit it during sleep, and that his experiments did not show whether everyone who dies goes there or stays. These are reported experiences, not established geography.
Is Locale III a parallel universe?
It is the closest thing in Monroe's work to a parallel world, and he left the question open. He suggested Locale III could be a racial memory of a civilization older than recorded history, another Earth-type world reached through mental effort, or an antimatter duplicate of our world. He was sure only that it is not our past, present or likely future, since its technology is inconsistent with ours and it has no electricity at all. No independent evidence supports any of it, and it is the least corroborated part of his first book.
Why did Monroe stop calling it Locale II?
His language moved as his model changed. In Far Journeys (1985) he looks back at the label as a misnomer for the structured territory he had since explored. In a later radio interview he called Locale 2 the old-fashioned name and said the newer, more scientific description was phasing: consciousness shifting along a spectrum from full physical focus through daydreaming, meditation and sleep and onward, with Locale 2 somewhere beyond sleep. The Institute's Focus numbers then gave the region a working map.
Which Focus levels correspond to Locale II?
No official table matches them one to one. Hemi-Sync Journal writers have paired Locale II with Focus 21 and 27, and the Institute's overview places the belief system territories, sometimes called astral planes, beyond Focus 21. Its descriptions, drawn partly from Bruce Moen's explorations, call Focus 22 chaotic, Focus 23 a place of people stuck or unaware of their death, Focus 24 through 26 the belief system territories, and Focus 27 an area of greater free choice with centers that help new arrivals.
How did Monroe check what he saw in Locale I?
Locale I was the one place where outside confirmation was possible. In October 1960 he tried to reach a friend about five miles away, described the scene over a main street, visited the corner himself and later learned where the friend had been walking at the time. A woman friend also said she had seen a gray, chiffon-like shape waving in her living room and wondered if it was him. Monroe admitted that routine details fade and that one subject plus a few scientists was not enough for real validation.
Do I need to know the Locales to use the Gateway Experience?
No. The Gateway Experience is built around Focus levels, beginning with Focus 10, mind awake and body asleep, and the exercises do not depend on the vocabulary of Monroe's first book. The Locales are useful as history and as a reading aid, since they show where ideas such as the second body and phasing began and decode older Institute writing that says Locale I or Locale II. In the first book they are set out in chapters 4 through 6.
In Monroe’s books
Summarized in our own words; the books are not reproduced on this site.
Journeys Out of the Body. Chapter 4, The Here-Now, defines Locale I as the physical world at the moment of an experiment and says the only results confirmable by ordinary means came from there. Chapter 5, Infinity. Eternity., treats Locale II as a nonmaterial environment of unknown extent where thought acts directly, and calls much of its material cautious extrapolation.
Journeys Out of the Body. Chapter 6, Reverse Image, describes Locale III as an Earth-like world with no electricity and a different history, weighs prehistoric-memory, distant-planet and antimatter explanations, and recounts briefly taking over a counterpart's body.
Far Journeys. Monroe looks back at the label Locale II as an understatement and a misnomer for the ring-like structure of nonphysical territory he had by then explored.
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