Robert (Bob) Monroe was born in 1915 in Indiana (USA). He received a bachelor’s degree in English and worked at radio stations, but he is mostly known as a prominent researcher of out-of-body experience (OBE) and the creator of the Monroe Institute, which still studies this phenomenon.
According to the Institute’s official website, in 1956 Bob Monroe studied the influence of sound on human consciousness, including the possibility of learning in a dream. Often using himself as a test subject, two years into his research he had what he called an “out-of-body experience.” This spontaneous experience and the ones that followed changed his life and the direction of his work.
Monroe published his early research in 1971, in the book Journeys Out of the Body—a breakthrough text at the time. In it, he describes his first encounters with OBE as a feeling of warm light and vibrations throughout the body. It is noteworthy that he had the experience while falling asleep. It was something like a waking dream: Monroe felt that he was in a completely awake state when his hand went through the floor, and next thing knew he was hovering under the ceiling, looking at his own body from above.
The introduction to the book also describes Robert Monroe’s experiment that consisted of deliberate attempts to leave his body. Success was achieved on the eighth try and, according to the electroencephalogram, the brain waves of the researcher corresponded to the REM phase of sleep.
Monroe continued to explore methods of expanding consciousness and teach them to others. He developed a series of seminars, built a campus for teaching and research purposes, and created audio recordings using his own technology. The latter consist of a combination of sounds that helps the listener enter a state of expanded consciousness. Two more books by Robert Monroe—Far Journeys (1985) and Ultimate Journey (1994)—are also considered classics in the field of out-of-body experience.
The researcher’s books are available on Amazon.
