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Past lives in Monroe's accounts
Past lives run through Robert Monroe's work without ever becoming its center. In his later books and talks he treated repeated human lives as a fact of how consciousness works: in Far Journeys the time-space illusion keeps drawing people back into physical life, and in Ultimate Journey his larger self, the I-There, includes the personalities of his earlier lives. Asked about reincarnation in a recorded interview, he described it as a wave: born here, die, continue in another reality below the line, then surface again into a physical body.
His laboratory produced much of the past-life material. Explorers in deep sessions reported earlier lives, and Monroe and the monitors asked the sources speaking through them direct questions, including what an Explorer's previous lifetime had been. The answers ranged from specific names and dates to shared lives in Atlantis. In the early lab days Focus 17 was described as the state between lifetimes, and Nancy McMoneagle recalls overshooting it into scenes of her own deaths. Sources in other sessions said unresolved emotion from a past life can carry into the present, and Explorers used sessions to release it.
None of this is required for Gateway. The program asks only that you treat yourself as more than your physical body, and many listeners never meet a past life at all. Those who do usually report fragments: a scene, a sense of a period, a strong feeling. At the Institute's professional seminars, physicians, hypnotherapists and researchers have presented past-life work and reincarnation studies, and today's Gateway podcasters often pair the tapes with hypnotic regression. Researchers who take the subject seriously, such as Charles Tart, put it in the maybe category, and memory under suggestion is the main reason for caution.
Monroe pictured reincarnation as a repeating wave and his Explorers often reported earlier lives, but the program never made past lives a doctrine.
Key points
Monroe pictured reincarnation as a wave
Asked about reincarnation in a recorded interview, Monroe used the image of overlaid waveforms. The basic wave is physical life: you are born, live along the upper part of the wave, then do what we call die and drop below the line into some other reality structure, where the wave continues. Then you surface again into a physical body. He called this what we think of as reincarnation and said finer waves ride on top of the long one, so a single life is only part of a larger pattern.
Far Journeys: the time-space illusion
In Far Journeys Monroe sets human lives inside what he calls the time-space illusion (later the Earth Life System), a kind of school or training ground that consciousness enters again and again. In his account the intensity of physical experience is what keeps pulling people back for more lives, until they have learned enough to graduate and move beyond the system. Past lives here are not curiosities to recover but the normal history of anyone who has been through it.
Ultimate Journey: earlier selves in the I-There
In Ultimate Journey Monroe describes his I-There, the larger self he belongs to, as a cluster that includes the personalities of previous human lives. Part of his late exploration was finding earlier selves that had stayed stuck after death and helping them rejoin the whole, the same kind of retrieval work the Lifeline program teaches. Past lives become parts of one larger identity rather than separate people you once were.
What he told a 1990 Guidelines group
The archived outline of a May 1990 Guidelines talk shows Monroe answering questions on personal identity. According to the outline, he described his own identity as a composite drawn from multiple past lives, selected for living in the 20th century, said he had found he could travel through past lives with limitations, and discussed time clusters that fade, leaving no personal identity or memories. He also talked about retrieving past personalities along with the belief systems they held.
Explorers were asked about previous lives
Monroe's laboratory sessions often turned to past lives. In one DRO session, according to the summary, Monroe asked the source speaking through the Explorer what his previous lifetime had been, and the answer gave a name, birth and death dates, work in Ohio and a fatal accident in 1931. The same session claimed that Monroe and the Explorer had shared many lifetimes in Atlantis, with Monroe already interested in sound. In AMB sessions, helpers said they had shared earlier lives with the Explorer, including one in 19th-century England.
Focus 17, the state between lifetimes
In the early lab years one of the experimental states, Focus 17, was described as the state between lifetimes. Nancy McMoneagle, who took part in that early laboratory work and later led the Institute, told a 2014 seminar that she kept overshooting it and landing in the death process instead, reliving being hanged and being blown up in a tank in a desert. She added that one of today's programs includes a time between lifetimes.
Unfinished emotion carries over
A theme across sessions is that past lives matter when something was left unresolved. In a May 1986 session a source called Echo said the record of past lives is built into the body and can be found by looking within, and that a past-life matter not worked out to satisfaction may affect the current life. In an August 1986 session Explorer SRM sensed old sadness linked to past-life material and chose to let it move through the body and be released.
A recurring topic at Institute seminars
Practitioners have brought past-life work to the Institute's professional seminars. Neurosurgeon Norm Shealy told the 2016 seminar that he considered past-life therapy the most important tool he had learned since 1972. Hypnotherapist Eva Lange described past-life work with patients at the 2002 seminar. In 2012 Eben Alexander noted that Jim Tucker, who studies children's past-life memories at the University of Virginia, would take part in an upcoming course Alexander was involved in. These are presenters' own views and reports.
Today's listeners pair Gateway with regression
Several popular Gateway podcasters also practice or promote hypnotic past-life regression, including Dolores Cannon's QHHT method and Michael Newton's life-between-lives sessions, and treat them as a natural partner to the tapes. Some listeners come to Gateway after past-life reading; one podcast guest said Monroe's books overlapped strikingly with the regression literature she had read. These are popular syntheses, not Institute teaching.
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.
“The waveform is one of physical life here in and of itself, and that is basically one where you're born here and you have a long wave, and then you do what we call die, and that's one [phase]. And when you are dead, as it were, that waveform continues, but not in this particular … reality system. But it is a waveform, and you surface again and become here again and inhabit, say, a physical body, and that's the upper part of the wave. Then you go down below the line again and you inhabit and exist in some other reality structure.”
“Ask him, if you've been here many lifetimes, what was your previous lifetime just before this one?”
“But Focus 17 in those days was the state in between lifetimes. I kept overshooting it. And so I always ended up in the death process. And it was very interesting to me. … Well, I ended up, I ended up being hanged, being blown up [in] a tank on a desert.”
“I'm also getting a sense that there's a lot of past life material of sadness that hasn't ever really, really … been able to pervade fully and so be released. I had heard, I had people that told me things about past lives and my past lives, and one especially in a concentration camp, and I have a feeling that there's a lot of material that hasn't been released here.”
“For some it is important, for others it [doesn't] matter. The record of past lives is built in the body; one can look within oneself.”
“Survival of death, reincarnation, stuff like that, and I call them the many [maybes] because they're things for which there's a lot of good evidence. There's a lot of maybe-so, maybe-no kind of stuff, and it's sort of reasonable, even for people who know the stuff, to say maybe there is reincarnation, maybe there's not; you could interpret it another way.”
“But there are some that could remember specific things about past lives. And [we were] able to trace it, and it was correct. So I've got some of those in the book, but the majority, the majority are not interested in reincarnation at all, don't remember it.”
Important things to consider
Memory under suggestion is unreliable
Deep relaxation, hypnosis and guided imagery make the mind highly responsive to cues, and people can produce vivid, confident memories that turn out to be assembled from books, films, expectations or a guide's questions. A detailed past-life scene can feel completely real and still be built this way. Treat what comes up as experience first and history only if it survives checking.
Notice where the story came from
SRM's concentration-camp life was something other people had told SRM before the session. That is common: a reading, a regression or a book plants a story, and later sessions seem to confirm it. When a past life appears, ask honestly whether you had already heard or imagined it, and give extra weight to material you could not have known.
Write down anything checkable
Some sessions produced names, places and dates, such as the DRO session's birth and death years and fatal accident. Those are the only details that can be tested. Record them immediately and in full, before searching for anything, and keep a note of which details came first. Most such details in the archive were never checked, and this site has not checked them.
Gateway does not require reincarnation
The Gateway Affirmation asks you to work from the premise that you are more than your physical body. It says nothing about earlier lives. Monroe described past lives in his later books and talks, but he asked listeners to test things by experience rather than adopt his conclusions. You can use every exercise without taking a position on reincarnation.
Treat claims of shared lives lightly
Sources in Explorer sessions sometimes said the Explorer, the monitor or Monroe himself had shared lives in places such as Atlantis. These are reports of what was said in an altered state, often flattering to the people in the room, and none was verified. They tell you about the sessions, not about history.
Use it for what it does now
In the archive the practical use of past-life material is emotional: noticing old sadness, fear or attachment and letting it go, much as Release and Recharge does with present-life material. Judge a past-life experience by what it changes in your current life. Health claims made by seminar presenters are their own views, not established treatment.
Hard scenes can surface
Nancy McMoneagle's early sessions took her through her own deaths again and again. Past-life material can be violent or distressing. Go slowly, stop a session if it becomes overwhelming, and talk with someone you trust or a qualified professional if old material keeps disturbing you.
Where the evidence stands
The strongest case for reincarnation that researchers cite comes from studies of young children who make specific statements about a previous life, begun by Ian Stevenson at the University of Virginia and continued by Jim Tucker. Critics point to cultural influence and weak controls. Charles Tart, a sympathetic researcher, files reincarnation among his many maybes: real evidence, but open to other readings.
Common questions
Did Robert Monroe believe in reincarnation?
Yes, in his own terms. In his later work Monroe treated repeated human lives as part of how consciousness develops. In Far Journeys people keep returning to physical life, the time-space illusion, until they graduate from it, and in Ultimate Journey his larger self, the I-There, includes the personalities of his earlier lives, some of which he describes retrieving. Asked about reincarnation in an interview, he described a wave: you are born, live, die, continue in another reality below the line, and surface again into a physical body. He framed this as what he had found by exploring, not as a doctrine, and Gateway itself never requires the belief.
Can the Gateway Experience take me to a past life?
It can happen, but it is not what the tapes are designed for. Gateway trains states of awareness, starting with Focus 10, and gives you tools to explore with intention. Some listeners report scenes, feelings or flashes that seem to come from another life. Nancy McMoneagle recalls that in the early lab years one state, Focus 17, was described as the state between lifetimes, and she kept landing in scenes of her own deaths. Many listeners never meet past-life material at all, and that does not mean anything is wrong.
What did Monroe's Explorers say about past lives?
Quite a lot. In laboratory sessions Monroe and the monitors asked the sources speaking through Explorers direct questions. In one DRO session Monroe asked what the Explorer's previous lifetime had been, and the reply gave a name, dates and the manner of death, then claimed Monroe and the Explorer had shared many lives in Atlantis. A source called Echo told Explorer GLA that the record of past lives is built into the body and matters to some people more than others. Explorer SRM worked in a 1986 session to release sadness tied to past-life material. These are reports from altered states and were not verified.
Are past-life memories from these sessions real?
No one can say for certain. The experiences are real in the sense that people have them, and some feel more vivid than ordinary memory. But relaxed, suggestible states can also produce detailed, convincing memories built from books, films and expectations, and stories heard beforehand often reappear in sessions. The best test is specific, checkable detail you could not have known, recorded before you search. Researchers disagree on the wider question: children's past-life cases studied at the University of Virginia are the strongest evidence cited, and even sympathetic scientists such as Charles Tart call reincarnation a maybe rather than a fact.
Why would a past life matter to my life now?
In the Monroe archive, past lives matter mainly when something was left unresolved. A source in a 1986 Explorer session said that a past-life matter not worked out to satisfaction may affect the current life, and that some people need to look at past lives while for others it makes no difference. Explorer SRM used a session to let old sadness tied to past-life material move through and release. Treat any such material the way Gateway treats present fears: notice it, let the emotional charge go, and judge it by what changes in your life now.
Does the Monroe Institute teach past-life regression?
Not as a core program. Gateway and the Institute's main courses teach Focus levels, nonphysical exploration and retrieval rather than hypnotic regression. Past-life work does appear around the edges: presenters at the Institute's professional seminars, including physician Norm Shealy and hypnotherapist Eva Lange, have described past-life therapy in their practices, and Nancy McMoneagle has said one current program includes a time between lifetimes. Many Gateway podcasters separately practice or promote regression methods such as QHHT and Michael Newton's life-between-lives work. Those are their own approaches, not Institute teaching.
In Monroe’s books
Summarized in our own words; the books are not reproduced on this site.
Far Journeys. Monroe presents human life as a repeating course within what he calls the time-space illusion, which draws consciousness back into physical life again and again until it has learned enough to move on.
Ultimate Journey. Monroe describes his I-There as a cluster that includes his earlier human personalities, and recounts finding some of those earlier selves stuck after death and helping them rejoin the whole.
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