1915 – 1995 · A portrait
A radio broadcasting executive said he began spontaneously leaving his body at night in 1958, then built a research institute and an audio technique meant to help others do the same.
The line above is how his claims were received — by the scientists whose job was to doubt them. It rises as a claim is tested and accepted, and the room brightens with it. It is not a verdict on truth: some accepted ideas are later overturned, and some rejected ones come back. A hollow point is a claim still open.
Monroe said he found himself floating near the ceiling, looking down at his own sleeping body. The experience recurred, unbidden, and he began keeping a private record of it.
Psychologist Charles Tart ran Monroe through repeated overnight sessions, asking him to read a hidden six-digit number displayed out of sight while apparently out of his body. Monroe never read the number correctly.
Journeys Out of the Body, his account of the experiences, was published the same year he founded The Monroe Institute in Virginia to study altered states and teach others his methods.
The institute developed Hemi-Sync, a slightly different tone in each ear, said to guide the brain toward relaxed or expanded states. Binaural beats are a real hearing effect; evidence that they steer brain states is mixed.
An Army officer trained in the institute's Gateway program and wrote an internal analysis mixing neuroscience and speculation. Declassified by the CIA in 2003, it was one officer's working paper, not a scientific study.