People & places · 12 MIN READ · 8 SOURCE QUOTES
Tom Campbell and the Monroe lab
Tom Campbell is a physicist who worked on defense and NASA programs and is best known today for My Big TOE, a three-volume theory of everything published in 2003. Before the theory there was the laboratory. In late 1971 or early 1972 he drove with colleagues to Robert Monroe's Virginia farm to find out whether Monroe was for real or just selling books. He stayed for five or six intensive years, spending 15 to 20 hours a week in the lab with electrical engineer Dennis Mennerich.
In Campbell's account, Monroe had just built a laboratory and was looking for scientists to help him understand what had happened to him. Campbell insisted that Monroe train him to do what he did, and within about a year Monroe had taught both men to explore what Campbell calls the larger reality. They worked in acoustically isolated booths, reporting by microphone while Monroe monitored, and tested themselves with targets, hidden numbers and joint excursions. Their lasting technical contribution was the binaural-beat tapes: Mennerich found research on the effect, and together they built tapes that aimed a beat of about four hertz at the listener, the starting point of Hemi-Sync.
When the Institute took shape, Campbell and Mennerich left the training circuit because they wanted to do research, not teach. Campbell stayed on the board until Monroe's death in 1995, changed jobs, and developed his theory afterward. He is careful to separate the two: Monroe, he says, was a good reporter, and the ideas in My Big TOE are his own interpretation.
Physicist Tom Campbell and engineer Dennis Mennerich built Bob Monroe's first binaural-beat tapes in the early 1970s, then left the lab to pursue theory.
Key points
A skeptic drives out to Whistlefield
Campbell’s boss in military technical intelligence handed him Journeys Out of the Body and asked what he thought. His reaction: wow if it is real, and just another man selling books if not. The boss tracked Monroe down in rural Virginia, and a group of colleagues in two cars drove out. Campbell found a solid man with the personality and attitude of an engineer.
An empty building and a call for scientists
Monroe took his visitors to the lab, which held nothing but sheetrock and a roof, and said he wanted to study consciousness and understand what had happened to him. He was looking for scientists. Campbell, a physicist, and Mennerich, an electrical engineer, raised their hands. After Monroe returned from a trip they began going out 15 to 20 hours a week, evenings after dinner and weekends with their families, fitting out the lab, wiring equipment and adding an EEG. Campbell compares it to a half-time job.
His condition: Monroe must train him
Campbell says he would work there only if Monroe taught him to do what Monroe did. Studying someone else’s experience would never satisfy him, he says; he needed to work from basic principles. Monroe agreed, and within a year or so Campbell and Mennerich had both learned to experience what Campbell calls the larger reality. Both men planned to leave if it all proved to be hocus-pocus, so they treated everything they did as a test.
Booths, microphones and the monitor
The two men lay in acoustically isolated booths, Campbell’s also a Faraday cage, with a microphone just above the lips. They reported in a continuous stream of consciousness while Monroe, in the control booth, listened and suggested questions, which let him teach what he could not see. Three booths stood in a row with an empty one between the two men. Campbell recalls that there was only one Focus level at the time, Focus 10, and that numbers such as 15 and 12 came later.
Targets, numbers and a shared excursion
Because remote viewing gave an immediate right or wrong answer, Campbell says they did it most: targets they were told to describe, seven-digit numbers Monroe wrote on a blackboard in the next room, even the next week’s newspaper headline, plus healing exercises and information gathering. The experiment that ended his doubts had Monroe send Campbell and Mennerich out to meet above the lab. Played together afterward, the two recordings sounded like a conversation between them.
Binaural beats: from an article to the first tapes
Mennerich found an article reporting that brain waves could be entrained by binaural beats. Because Monroe said he vibrated at about four hertz just before leaving his body, they aimed for four hertz, watched galvanic skin response follow it on their fingers, and spent two or three weeks, while Monroe taught at Big Sur, tuning bass frequency, volume and waveform. Mennerich produced the first tape. Monroe was impressed, and Campbell says the effect was obvious on almost everyone, though some listeners simply lost consciousness, which was later called clicking out.
A motel test, a sound harness and the Institute idea
Monroe invited friends to a motel at the foot of the Blue Ridge and wired it for the trial; 15 to 20 people wearing skin-response sensors had experience after experience. Word spread, and Monroe was soon overwhelmed with people wanting to try the technology. Campbell, Mennerich and Nancy McMoneagle, Monroe’s stepdaughter, spent about two years on the road with a large sound harness, putting groups on air mattresses in cities such as Boston and in California. Campbell calls that demand the beginning of the Monroe Institute.
Out the back, then the theory
When Monroe sold his property, bought the New Land and built the Institute, Campbell and Mennerich slipped out the back: they wanted research, not training. Campbell stayed on the board for another decade or two, until Monroe died, but his job moved from Charlottesville to Huntsville and the intensive years ended after five or six. He says most of what he understands now came after leaving, and the breakthrough was realizing consciousness is information.
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.
“I met Bob at the very beginning of that year, maybe even late ’71. I, that was a long time ago, but that was about the time … myself and a bunch of the people I worked with went out to see Bob [Monroe]. And my reason for going out to see Bob was to see whether he was for real or whether he was just trying to sell books. You know, was he the real deal or something else?”
“Bob [Monroe] took the bunch of us up to his lab, which was just an empty building. Had really nothing in it, but just sheetrock on the walls and a roof. And he said, “I have this lab. I want to study consciousness. I want to understand what's happened to me. I want to understand this out of body. And I'm looking for some, some scientists.” And we were all scientists.”
“I have to do it from basic principles, so I needed the basic principles. So he agreed, and myself and an engineer, electrical engineer Dennis [Mennerich], we started going out to see Bob [for] 15 to 20 hours a week. It was like a halftime job, you know. It wasn't just a, a minor interest; this was something we dedicated ourselves to. And within a year or so Bob had taught both of us how to experience this larger reality. And everything we did then was evidential, because both Dennis and I had this idea: well, if this turns out just to be a lot of hocus-pocus, then we're out of here, you know.”
“And he rewound all of it, and then he turned mine and Dennis's on at the same time to synchronize them in time. And there was Dennis and I having conversations, asking each other questions. “Oh, do you see that sentence that's over there?” “Oh, you mean the pointy yellow one that's, that's next to the green one?” “Yes, that's the one, you know.” And we're, we're, “well, let's go explore that,” “okay.” And we're having these kind of conversations. And that after I listened to, well, I don't know, the first 20 or 30 minutes of that, my jaw kind of dropped down, and I was like, oh my God, this stuff is real.”
“And we put together some binaural beat tapes. Dennis actually produced the first one, and we went out to experiment. So we started with that, and it worked so well that when Bob came back from another trip he was on, we told him about it; he listened to them. Then we started bringing everybody else that we could grab hold of, including our families, to listen to them, just to see what the effects were. And we found out that the effect was, was obvious on almost everyone. Now, they all didn't have the same reaction. Some people just instantly lost consciousness and would regain them when it was over. What they later termed that clicking out.”
“It got to be very popular, and at that point Bob had the idea of Monroe Institute and a building, and he sold his property, bought New Land, built the Institute, you know. But by that time Dennis and I had both kind of slipped out the back, because we really wanted to do research, not be trainers. Trainers were taking way too much time, and it wasn't what we wanted to do. So that was kind of when Monroe Institute and Dennis and I sort of parted ways.”
“No, no, no, no, they didn't come from Bob Monroe. Bob Monroe was a good reporter. He reported things the best he could. Like any reporter, and like anybody actually, what happens is you get information. You get a data stream, but you have to interpret that data stream. Your reality isn't the data stream. Your reality is your interpretation of the data stream. That's what you get. Now, the interpretation depends on your background, depends on what you know, what you've learned so far.”
“Tom delivered a tour de force address describing how he and fellow physicist Dennis Mennerich collaborated with Robert Monroe in the early 1970s to design experiments and develop the technology (Hemi-Sync) for creating altered states of consciousness.”
Important things to consider
A story told from memory
The lab-years account rests on Campbell’s interviews, published in 2022 and 2025, and on the Institute’s summary of his 2010 keynote. No contemporaneous lab notebooks appear in the sources, and auto-captions garble names and numbers. Treat precise dates, frequencies and counts as his recollection; the Institute’s journal supports only the broad outline.
Credit for Hemi-Sync is shared
Monroe’s team had worked on sound and sleep since 1956, and Monroe described a frequency-following response from that work. In Campbell’s telling, he and Mennerich added binaural-beat tapes in the early 1970s, and Monroe blended the beats into his own sound. The Institute’s biography credits Monroe with creating its portfolio of binaural-beat audio technology. Neither account makes one person the sole inventor.
Campbell’s theory is his own
The Institute teaches no doctrine beyond the premise that people are more than their physical bodies. My Big TOE is Campbell’s model, and he says its ideas about entropy and love did not come from Monroe. You can study the lab history without accepting the theory, and judge the theory on its own terms.
Explorer initials are not names
Monroe’s Explorer tapes use initials, and online commentators sometimes attach names to them. This page does not match any coded session to a person. Unless a participant identifies himself or herself, treat an initialed session as anonymous.
Mennerich’s own account is missing
Dennis Mennerich appears here only through Campbell and the Institute’s journal, which calls him a fellow physicist where Campbell calls him an electrical engineer. Auto-captions spell his name many ways, including Menerich, Menik and Menrik, so search for several spellings.
Informal 1970s experiments are not a template
Campbell says early tapes were tried on families, including children. These were informal trials by enthusiasts, not clinical studies. Anyone interested today should follow current program guidance, including the Institute’s advice to consult a physician first with a history of seizures or auditory or mental-health conditions.
Common questions
Who is Tom Campbell, and how did he come to work with Robert Monroe?
Thomas Campbell is a physicist who worked on defense and NASA programs and wrote the three-volume My Big TOE (2003). In late 1971 or early 1972, while working in military technical intelligence, he was handed Journeys Out of the Body by his boss. The boss located Monroe, and a group of colleagues drove to his Virginia farm. Campbell wanted to know whether Monroe was real or just selling books. When Monroe said he needed scientists for his new laboratory, Campbell and electrical engineer Dennis Mennerich volunteered and spent 15 to 20 hours a week there for five or six years.
What did Tom Campbell and Dennis Mennerich do in Monroe's lab?
They fitted out the lab, worked in isolated booths and learned from Monroe how to explore out-of-body states while reporting aloud to him. They ran remote-viewing targets, tried to read numbers Monroe wrote on a blackboard in the next room, and tested ideas such as predicting a future headline. They also solved a technical problem: the lab needed a reliable way to produce the desired state, and Mennerich found research on binaural beats. Together they built tapes, tuned frequency and waveform for weeks, and presented the result to Monroe.
Did Tom Campbell help invent Hemi-Sync?
In Campbell’s account, yes, in part. He says he and Mennerich built the first binaural-beat tapes in the early 1970s, aiming for the four-hertz rhythm Monroe reported feeling before leaving his body, and that Monroe, impressed, embedded the beats in the sound he already used, which became Hemi-Sync. The Institute’s journal says the two collaborated with Monroe to design experiments and develop the technology. Monroe’s own accounts stress his team’s earlier sleep-sound research from 1956 and credit hundreds of contributors. Most sources describe a shared effort led by Monroe rather than a single inventor.
Why did Tom Campbell leave the Monroe lab?
It was less a departure than a drift. Campbell says that when Monroe decided to build the Institute, he and Mennerich slipped out the back because they wanted to do research, not train others, and training was taking too much time. He stayed on the board for a decade or two, until Monroe died in 1995, and his job moved from Charlottesville to Huntsville, which ended the intensive years after five or six. Nancy McMoneagle said in an interview posted in 2016 that Campbell had given a program at the Institute the week before, so he kept ties to the place.
How is Tom Campbell's My Big TOE connected to Robert Monroe's work?
Campbell says the lab years gave him direct experience of what he calls a larger reality and the problem of modeling it. The theory itself came later. He says he worked out most of what he understands after leaving, and the breakthrough was realizing that consciousness is information; his model treats the physical body as an avatar whose choices are made by a piece of consciousness and ties evolution to reducing entropy, or growing in love. He is clear that these ideas did not come from Monroe, whom he calls a good reporter, and the Institute teaches none of them as doctrine.
Were the early lab experiments scientific?
Campbell calls them evidential: he and Mennerich planned to quit if the results looked like hocus-pocus, and they favored remote viewing because it gave immediate right-or-wrong feedback, using hidden numbers on a blackboard, assigned targets and predicted headlines. They also measured galvanic skin response and later added an EEG. But the sources contain no data tables, protocols or published results from those years, only recollections decades later, and Campbell does not cite published findings. Treat the early lab as an exploratory program run by engaged scientists, not as established evidence.
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