The Gateway Experience — A Personal Journey

Alex Grey, Sacred Mirrors

It sounds like something out of a lower-tier X-Files episode : for almost twenty years, the United States Department of Defense used psychic spies, with some surprising results.

Scoff if you must, but it’s completely true — among other efforts, the Pentagon’s Star Gate Project (no connection to the film & TV franchise of the same name, and also known at various times as Sun Streak or Grill Flame, among others) attempted to spy on the Soviets using a combination of remote viewing and controlled out-of-body experiences. The only controversy is whether or not they succeeded.

Those who participated in the program claim some remarkable, very specific successes, from locating downed planes to giving a thorough and accurate account of a nuclear test. Even they, however, admit that they aren’t perfect. One of the leading psychic warriors, Joseph McMoneagle, claims a 30% personal accuracy rate in his book Mind Trek, while claiming that other remote viewers were closer to 25%. That may seem low, and it would be if we were talking about determining the results of a coin flip, but given that these people were tasked with describing very specific objects & locations while supposedly knowing nothing about them, 30% is shockingly high. Two of the scientists behind the program, Russell Targ & Hal Puthoff, claim a much higher success rate of 65% or better.

Frankly, after reading Mind Trek, if McMoneagle is being honest about even one of the highly-detailed successes he describes, that should be enough to rock the world to its core. On the other hand, it’s worth noting that McMoneagle has made a great many public predictions that completely failed to come true. That’s not necessary incompatible with his supposed 30% success rate, but when your failures are public & verifiable and your successes are classified and anecdotal, that raises a red flag or two.

Eventually, the Pentagon transferred the Stargate program to the CIA, which supposedly claimed that the program hadn’t produced anything useful, and shut it down. However, the CIA analysis did say that remote viewing had produced results that were “better than chance”, which is as good as admitting that there’s either something real going on, or their analysis was wrong. Moreover, several of the remote viewers who worked on the project claim that the analysis which got the program shut down was biased and inaccurate — that it was a whitewash, meant to give them an excuse to stop remote viewing…or at least to claim they’d stopped.

Before anything else, let’s just tackle the bull by the horns : all this stuff is probably bullshit. We know that the military only started investigating it because they’d heard rumors that the Soviets were doing the same thing, and we don’t have any definitive proof that Stargate actually accomplished anything. The military officials who supervised the program were true believers, not skeptics, and the scientists they had running it were even more dedicated to the cause. That’s not a situation that’s suited to producing reliable, trustworthy results. By far the most likely scenario is that their experimental controls were sloppy and their results were fudged, whether intentionally or otherwise.

But a few years ago, I would have said the exact same thing about UFOs. The revelations about the USS Nimitz and USS Theodore Roosevelt encounters, among others, put an end to that notion. It turns out that UFOs probably don’t have a conventional explanation, and that whatever unconventional explanation they may have could end up making us rethink some core notions about how the universe works.

What’s the link between UFOs and psychic phenomenon? Aren’t I just saying that because UFOs might be real, anything could be real? Couldn’t the same apply to the Loch Ness monster, or the hollow earth, or literally any other fringe belief?

Not necessarily. First of all, there are some direct links between the people involved in both phenomenon — Hal Puthoff, of Stargate, is also one of the leading figures in To The Stars Academy, the UFO organization that leaked some of the Pentagon videos, and whose founder, Tom DeLonge, was talking to senior military figures about UFOs in private for many years. Meanwhile, the controversial Lue Elizondo, a former Army counterintelligence officer who has been deeply involved in the UFO question, both before & after becoming a civilian, has supposedly claimed to also be a remote viewer who used his psychic skills in combat.

That doesn’t prove anything, of course. The most obvious and likely explanation is that a few kooks accidentally stumbled into something that might be real. That doesn’t mean that their early fringe notions have any validity whatsoever. In the UFO field, however, there have been a number of reports of connections between UFOs and psychic phenomenon. Given that we now know there may well be something real to UFOs, that gives just the tiniest morsel of credibility to all this psychic nonsense.

Time for a reality check : What do I, personally, think the odds are that there’s any truth to any of this stuff? So low that it’s hard to estimate. One in a hundred thousand? One in a million? One in ten billion? One in a million sounds right, but I don’t have any math to back that up — it’s just a way of expressing a belief that there’s only an infinitesimal chance that psychic powers are real. But I happen to have some time on my hands, so I decided to find out.

Before we go into my personal experiences, it’s time for even more background information and definitions.

First, remote viewing : according to Mind Trek, remote viewing basically consists of putting yourself in a trance-like state, and letting a sensation or impression come to you. The term “remote viewing” was coined as a more neutral way to say “clairvoyant” or “psychic”, but it may be a bit of a misnomer, because it doesn’t involve “viewing”, or even “seeing”. Instead, it’s ideas free-associating in your mind. Supposedly, it can be used to tell you anything about anything — if a sufficiently skilled remote viewer looks at the lucky rock you carry in your pocket, they could tell you what it is, what it’s made of, where it’s from, how you feel about it, how you acquired it, what it was involved in before you got it, and even what it will be involved in in the future. Supposedly.

Out of body experiences, on the other hand, are meant to be another way of using the same basic power. Instead of getting an impression about something, it’s a way to fly around as a ghost-like entity and see things visually, in real time. You get far less information, but it seems like a more personal, vivid experience. Supposedly, some of Star Gate’s remote viewers would occasionally have out of body experiences while remote viewing. And that brings us to Robert Monroe and the Gateway Experience.

The story, according to Monroe and his biographer, goes like this : Robert Monroe was a failed actor who became a very successful writer of radio dramas, which he then parlayed into a telecommunications career. He was also a dedicated tinkerer, who loved taking gadgets apart and making them better. In the 1950s, he was experimenting with sleep learning — listening to a record filled with information while asleep. It didn’t work, but one day he lay down to take a nap, and something very odd happened — Robert found himself floating outside of his body.

Eventually he re-entered his body and woke up, but this was still a disturbing and puzzling occurrence. What made it even more troubling is that it kept happening to him. Eventually, Monroe went to a variety of doctors and scientists, who all said more or less the same thing — “you don’t seem to be crazy, so don’t worry about it. It’s probably not serious, and it’ll probably go away on its own.”

But Robert was scientifically inclined and a born experimenter, so when it kept happening, he started running tests. Not only did he record the conditions that seemed most amenable to creating one of these out of body experiences — orienting yourself north-south, not having a full stomach, trying to get back to sleep around 3am , etc.— he made an effort to see if his experiences were “real” or not. Once he left his body, he would go across town, or even across the state, to visit & observe people he knew. After returning to his body, he would contact those people and ask exactly where they were, what they were wearing, what they were doing, and so on.

One particular instance of this seems undeniable — Monroe knew that his doctor was sick at home, and believed that he would find him in bed. Upon flying to his doctor’s house, however, he saw the doctor & his wife leaving their front door, headed to their garage. A conversation with the doctor afterwards confirmed that Monroe’s observation was 100% accurate, right down to his description of the doctor’s wife’s coat.

There are several other anecdotes with this level of precision in Monroe’s accounts, enough to completely rule out the possibility that he was simply hallucinating or imagining things. This could not be an honest mistake. Either he was lying about everything, or some kind of psychic phenomenon actually was happening. In the absence of actual evidence, I have to believe that he was almost certainly lying…and yet there’s just a tiny shred of reason to believe that maybe something strange was going on.

At any rate, Monroe soon decided that there was some kind of connection between his sleep learning experiment and his out of body experiences. He quickly stumbled onto the concept out binaural beats. I’m afraid this subject gets a little technical, so here’s the short, simplified version.

Neural activity in the brain produces wave-like patterns, known as brain waves. There are at least five different kinds of brain waves, which are distinguished by frequency — some waves are fast, some are slow. Different kinds of brain waves are associated with different mental states — for instance, a brain that’s asleep tends to produce very slow delta waves (0.5–3Hz).

Binaural beats work like this — put a wave, say at 100Hz, into your left ear. At the same time, put a 110Hz wave in your right ear. Your brain will combine them to produce a third wave made up of the difference between the two, in this case at 10Hz. Congratulations, we just tricked your brain into making alpha waves!

Why do something so strange? The idea is fairly simple — if meditation produces theta waves, maybe forcing the brain to produce theta waves will help you meditate. As far as I can tell, this isn’t a settled question. There’s some science to support this notion, and a fair bit of anecdotal evidence, but it’s far from certain. However, I’m not a scientist.

My doubts aside, Monroe decided to go all in on binaural beats. By this point, he believed that meditation could help anyone, not just himself, have out of body experiences. But proper meditation is hard, and requires a great deal of practice, so using a fancy radio gadget to do it almost immediately was a perfect solution, especially for a guy whose work & passion was fancy radio gadgets. Monroe loved coining terms and acronyms, and so he re-christened binaural beats as “Hemi-Synch technology”.

He then took it to the next level, combining binaural beats with guided meditation and something approaching sensory deprivation : dark, soundproof closets with waterbeds, which he referred to as CHEC Units — controlled holistic environmental chambers. They even had signs asking people to PLEASE not use them for sex. He soon invited friends and neighbours to give them a try, and quite a lot of the folks who took him up on it ended up having their own OBEs, or so they claim. They also claim to have experienced a number of other phenomenon — a parking space that reliably drained car batteries, strange lights in the sky, spectral guides, and so on.

Monroe ended up creating the Monroe Institute, which had three wings — in-house seminars at the Institute, weekend seminars in various cities, and the famous Gateway Experience.

The Gateway Experience is a training course that’s meant to develop all sorts of psychic abilities, but with a special focus on out of body experiences, and all from the comfort of home. Essentially, it’s the same thing you’d get at the Monroe Institute, but without the personal attention or the sensory deprivation room. It’s a series of recordings that combine binaural beats and guided meditation, and what seems like a little light self-hypnosis.

So what’s the connection between the Pentagon’s remote viewing program and the Gateway Experience? It seems they actually had a surprisingly close relationship. One remote viewer found the Monroe Institute extremely usefully in keeping his abilities under control. Another says that he and other potential remote viewers were send to the Institute as a kind of screening — he felt that if you had an OBE, you’d be accepted into the Star Gate program, and you’d be washed out if not. He claims he ended up having a partial OBE — his arm left his body, but the rest of him stayed put.

For a period of time, members of the Defense Intelligence Agency staff who weren’t directly connected to Star Gate were sometimes sent to TMI as a general mind-expanding program — something that came to an end after a DIA staffer who got sent at the last minute, without proper screening, had a mental health emergency while there. More recently, a former Advisor to President George W Bush claimed that TMI has been receiving government funds for decades. To the best of my knowledge, the open connection between the government and TMI ended in the ’80s, when that staffer had his accident, which means that any continued funding was likely secret.

Notably, the Gateway Experience was studied by the CIA in 1983, which produced a glowing report about its potential. That’s less encouraging than it seems, because the report itself is largely an explanation of the Experience’s theoretical underpinnings, which reads exactly like pseudo-scientific New Age gibberish, designed to separate fools from their money. It reminds me of what little I know about Scientology, and although I don’t know of any connections between Monroe and Scientology, Hal Puthoff is a former Scientologist, which is another red flag. Whatever the theories behind it, it seems that the Gateway Experience was used as a training method for members of the Army’s remote viewing team, even though the Experience itself only touches lightly on remote viewing.

So it was with deep, deep skepticism that I embarked upon the Gateway Experience’s training course. What follows is a daily log of my efforts. Very little has been edited or removed, even when it seems redundant, because even negative results are relevant.

Note for the concerned : early on in this account, I describe experiencing some unusual mental states. This might lead you to worry for my mental health. I eventually learned that these mental states are the perfectly normal, well-understood product of sensory deprivation, like a much more mild version of what Homer & Lisa experience here. It’s nothing to worry about, and it’s kinda cool, like getting high for free, without breaking the law.

Day 1 : I definitely got off on the wrong foot. The tape starts with calming ocean sounds, and I’m probably meant to be meditating right away, but instead I’m busy preparing myself by turning off lights, getting comfortable, and so forth. One of the first things the narrator (who I believe is Robert Monroe himself) says is that you shouldn’t do these exercises right after eating, but I just finished off a big midnight snack. Oops. This just seems like some guided meditation with a touch of New Age bullshit. The only issue is that early in the exercise, you’re supposed to hum along with a certain frequency, and I can’t really do that because I don’t live alone, and I certainly don’t want anyone to know what I’m doing.

Day 2 : I’m a little better prepared this time, even though I still don’t have the humming thing quite solved. I do my best to hum very quietly, and somewhat sporadically. If I fail to become a Jedi, it’s probably because I hummed poorly. There’s a lot more New Agey stuff this time, and this tape claims to teach a technique to give you perfect recall. That seems so wildly unlikely that I decide not to try it, because it would obviously fail, and I don’t want to be prejudiced against the rest of program. I suppose you could charitably interpret the perfect recall stuff as a self-hypnosis technique meant to help improve your memory.

Day 3 : This time I decide to listen to the tape lying down, instead of sitting. That helps, but my legs get cold, and I make a mental note to use a blanket next time. Something strange happens during Day 3 — the exercise is meant to help you “control your energy flow” & reach a state of mental alertness combined with physical tranquility, and it provides a lengthy period of quiet, uninterrupted meditation. During that period, I get two distinct impressions out of nowhere. It doesn’t feel anything like what happens when your mind wanders, and it feels different from the disordered, random thoughts you sometimes experience just as you fall asleep. If anything, it feels like McMoneagle’s description of remote viewing (which is not the point of the exercise).

The first impression involved a prominent politician being killed by a genuine lone nut, one motivated by insane beliefs rather than anything sensible. I don’t think this was remote viewing — it’s just a version of that Gambino family boss who was assassinated by a mentally ill Q fanatic, but with a certain politician substituted for the mobster. The second impression concerned a Twitter acquaintance’s former spouse, a person I’ve never met and know nothing about. The only feature of the impression was that I felt there was something negative going on. I can’t come up with any explanation for why I thought about this person.

So did I experience a genuine psychic event? No, of course not. Meditation and self-hypnosis can make your brain play tricks on you. Nevertheless, the whole thing felt weird, and it threw me, just a little.

Day 4 : I remember to put a blanket over my legs. This exercise takes it for granted that you’re completely familiar and comfortable with all the previous exercises, and I feel out of my depth. Nothing unusual happens.

Day 5 : I check in advance, and see that this exercise is supposedly to a) teach you how to put yourself into a deep, natural sleep, and b) drop you directly into a deep, natural sleep at the end of the exercise. That’s slightly awkward for me, because I’m doing this exercise at work (parts of my job are very active & difficult, but I also do some overnight/asleep shifts), and also because you have listen to these tapes with headphones or earbuds, and it seems unsafe to fall asleep with stuff in your ears.

I more-or-less get around the practical issues involved, and dive into the exercise. It passes very quickly, and it doesn’t drop me into a deep sleep, or any sleep at all. To be fair, I was pretty intent on staying awake, if only so I could take my wireless headphones out (I got them for free in a case of Michelob). However, I use the deep sleep technique right before I go to sleep, and what happens next surprises me : absolutely nothing. When I sleep at work, I use a fairly crappy fold-out bed with a thin mattress and creaky springs. I wake up at least two or three times a night, guaranteed. But after using the deep sleep technique, I don’t wake up until my alarm goes off. More than 7 hours of uninterrupted, restful sleep. That’s highly irregular.

Day 6 : I used a little marijuana to help with a headache, and you’re not supposed to combine any kind of mind-altering drugs with Gateway, so I think I’ll take the night off. A contributing factor is that I’m not sure if I should proceed to the next tape, or review tapes 2 and 3 first. I feel like I should try to get a more solid grounding before moving on, but I also feel like this is almost certainly a waste of time, and getting a more solid grounding in bullshit just leaves me even deeper in bullshit.

Day 6 Continued : I don’t do any new exercises, but I do use the deep sleep technique taught on Day 5. Does it help me get to sleep any faster than usual? Maybe, but certainly not right away. I’m honestly not sure if I get to sleep any faster than I would have otherwise. While falling asleep, though, I do have another one of those weird impressions, like on Day 3. I can’t remember what it was. Honestly, I now feel like I was probably just falling asleep a little bit on Day 3, and that’s even more boring than my previous self-hypnosis/sensory deprivation theory. At any rate, I wake up a couple times during the night, which is pretty normal. I’m a bit groggier than normal when I wake up, but that’s probably just normal variation. Kinda feeling like this whole thing is silly, but I’m going to keep it up.

Day 7 : This exercise (Tape #6 — skipping a day has complicated things a little) was a bust. It began with the expectation that I had completely mastered all the previous techniques, and then went into complete sandbox mode. The only instruction was “set a goal and achieve it.” That’s so vague as to be useless. The previous tapes, even if they didn’t accomplish anything metaphysical, at least used a combination of breathing & mental exercises to induce a meditative state, but this one didn’t do any of that — I was just thinking normally the whole time.

Day 8 : Another disappointment, but it’s my fault this time. Work ran late, and I didn’t get a chance to do any exercise. I did use the “deep sleep” technique from Day 5, and I don’t know if it affected my sleep. I did have a bunch of very vivid dreams, including one about an out of body experience. It wasn’t a real OBE, though, just a dream.

Day 8 Continued : The person I mentioned onDay 3, about whom I had an impression involving their ex-spouse & some kind of negative event, just revealed a seriously negative event they experienced, in which their ex-spouse played a tangential but notable role (not his fault). It’s just a coincidence, but it’s still a little spooky.

Day 9 : I decide to re-do Tape #2. Nothing particularly interesting happens, but I discover that I’ve been doing the “instant full alertness” technique wrong. Doing it right doesn’t seem to be any more or less effective than doing it wrong.

Day 10 : Up until this point, the tapes have been all about the so-call “Focus 10” state, in which your mind is fully aware, and your body is fully asleep. As far as I can tell, this is the meditative state that Tapes #2–5 did a decent job instigating. Tape #7 (which is the first tape in the second set of 6 sets) is about reaching an even deeper level of consciousness, “Focus 12”, in which your mind expands beyond your physical body. Possibly because I had a headache, I definitely did not reach Focus 12 — in fact, I barely reached Focus 10, and it only lasted briefly. However, in that state, I did experience the same kind of free association images that I experienced on Day 3. The images were about a video game I’ve been playing, so I’m pretty damn sure it wasn’t a manifestation of psychic powers, but it did happen. Possibly I was just falling asleep.

Interlude — some might accuse me of not taking this whole thing seriously enough, while others might dismiss me entirely because I tried it at all. To the first group, I can only say this — no, I don’t think any of this psychic stuff is real, but it would be nice if it was, and I’m doing the exercises in good faith. I’m also philosophically committed to mind-body dualism, a stance that’s rare among intellectuals these days, but which is wholly compatible with the Gateway philosophy. According to the booklets included with the tapes, my open-minded skepticism should be good enough.

To the second group, well, you might be right. Being willing to try this at all may mark me forever as a sucker and a rube. After all, I believe in being open-minded, but not so open-minded that my brain falls out, and we’re perilously close to that point.

Day 11 : In a bout of sincerity, I do Tape #3 again. Nothing unusual occurs.

Day 12 : I’m relatively free of discomfort, and so decide to give Tape #7 a second chance. The narrator heavily implies that this is where the freaky paranormal stuff starts to come in. Spoiler alert : nothing supernatural happens. And yet the experience is just the tiniest bit unusual.

When the narrator talks about your mind leaving your body, I start visualizing the room around me. That’s intentional, and definitely not any kind of out-of-body experience — it’s just memory and imagination. But I’m not at all a visual person, normally. Maybe I have a touch of aphantasia. I certainly have some face-blindness, which is a related condition. But I have a very easy time visualizing the room, and then the house, and then (because I’m a giant nerd), my high school, and finally my university. I take a mental tour of the old Arts building, where I spent so many hours. Again, I need to stress that there’s nothing supernatural about this experience, but it is quite odd that I was able to visualize it all so clearly. Maybe it’s a product of self-hypnosis, or maybe it’s a simple side-effect of the meditative state. So maybe I didn’t reach the vaunted “Focus 12” state, but I still had a slightly unexpected experience.

Day 13 : This is an exercise (Tape #8, for those of you keeping count) that I probably could have skipped. It’s all about “asking a question, and then getting the right answer”. If you interpret that metaphorically, it’s about using meditation to let your unconscious mind help you solve your problems. But you’re not supposed to interpret it metaphorically — it’s meant to be literal as hell. You’re supposed to magically receive answers to any problem or question you may have.

This actually presents a rather significant issue for me. Basically all of my problems fall into one of two categories : either I already know the solution, but I haven’t implemented it because my brain is broken, or I don’t know the solution, but the Gateway Experience claims it can solve them. Only the second category requires answers, but if the Gateway Experience actually works, then the answer will be trivial — just do the relevant Gateway exercise. (Obviously, if this is all nonsense, then it doesn’t matter what I ask).

Eventually I decide to ask what supernatural stuff I should be studying in addition to the Gateway Experience. The answer I get is, coincidentally enough, the same one I had been leaning towards already. The experience itself is a tiny bit less mundane than it sounds, but that’s just because meditation can make you think in strange ways.

On an unrelated note, I’ve been having & remembering very vivid dreams lately. Some people doing the Experience have reported the same thing. It’s not necessarily cause and effect, though — possibly we’re just paying more attention to our dreams.

Day 14 : OK, this is a weird one. Normally I wait until the next day to write these summaries (so day 10’s activity is written on day 11, and so on), but I’m writing this immediately after doing Tape #9. The actual exercise was about “shaping the pattern you want in your life” — basically an even more New Age version of The Secret. What I experienced seemed unconnected to that — first, a whole bunch of those same kind of impressions that I got on days 3 and 6. They weren’t long or vivid, and I’m pretty sure they were mostly just about this video game I’ve been playing, but there were a lot of them. It’s still not a psychic experience — it’s pretty obviously just my brain, in a deep meditative state and lacking outside stimulus, throwing out random associations. But it’s weird, nevertheless.

What happened next is also odd. Towards the end of the exercise, I began to feel that my head, or possibly just my self, was far above my body. It wasn’t an out of body experience, or anything like it. It was more like my neck had become incredibly long, or my body had become unimportant & irrelevant. Again, I’m confident this is just a product of deep meditation, not something psychic, but that doesn’t make it mundane. By the end of the exercise, I was pretty eager for it to end. The whole thing was a bit too strange for me…but not so strange that I was willing to pull the cord and end it prematurely.

Interlude : Is this a cult, a scam, or what? As far as I can tell, the Gateway Experience/Monroe Institute may be a scam, but it’s a probably not a cult. The Gateway tapes are fairly expensive (around a thousand dollars for the whole set), but if they work, that’s an amazing deal. If they don’t work, then of course any price would be too high. But that’s pretty much all there is to it — they offer fairly expensive courses and directed study, but that’s not considered necessary, and they aren’t nearly as expensive as you’d expect from a real cult. Beyond that, it seems like the Institute has, in the years since Monroe’s death, pivoted away from the hardcore New Age stuff, and towards more general well-being products. The Gateway Experience, which used to be their whole raison d’etre, seems to be largely on the back burner.

Interlude : When I talk about being in a meditative or trance-like state, what do I mean? I’ve had a few different experiences, so let me describe each.

Back on Day 7, I didn’t enter a meditative state at all, and just thought “normally” (or as normal as my thoughts ever are) throughout the entire tape. That’s an exception.

More advanced that than is a kind of transitional state, where I’m trying to enter a deeper state of awareness, and partially succeeding, but normal thinking frequently intrudes. I often catch myself thinking about how I’m going to write up the exercises as I’m doing them, which is counterproductive.

Beyond even that is a state that of deep, focused thought, with no intrusion or babble. I think this is something like what Western monks might experience when meditating. I’ve never claimed to be a good thinker, but I do think a lot, and this is nothing like how I normally think. If my ordinary mode of thinking could be compared to one of the lesser works of Joss Whedon, buzzing, popping, and bouncing all over the place, this meditative thinking is more like a Socratic dialogue — simple, slow, deep, and uninterrupted. I’m not claiming any intelligence or accuracy, mind you — I’m just talking about the style.

Finally, there’s the deepest level of meditation that I’ve experienced, a state of no-thought (or no directed thought, anyway), a radical emptying of the self. By focusing on breath control and mental exercises, it’s possible to almost completely turn off your mind and simply be. It’s a fascinating and exhilarating experience, and it’s here where all those weird sensory deprivation things start happening.

Day 15 : Today’s tape is one of the less abstract ones. It claims to teach various techniques to help you control your emotions, be stronger, and heal your body. Honestly, I can see how someone would be suckered in by this stuff. “Here’s a CD you can listen to that will let you see the future” is neat and all, but “here’s a CD that can cure all those aches and pains that you’ve resigned yourself to living with” is one hell of a selling point. I’ve got a few of those aches myself, so I’ll practice this technique and report back.

On another note, this tape is very focused on teaching these new techniques, and it leaves little time for free meditation, which I found rather disappointing. I also got off on the wrong foot right away. Ever since tape #4, the narrator has begun each tape by saying “OK, do exercises A, B, C, and D. I’ll give you some time for that, and then we’ll get started.” In this tape, however, he just says “OK, get to D, and we’ll get started”, and I assumed he meant that I was supposed to use the shortcut technique that’s intended to be used outside the tapes. It turns out he actually meant “do exercises A, B, C, and D the normal way”, and that threw me for a loop.

Day 16 : Today’s exercise is more abstract. It’s all about mentally creating an “energy bar” that will be used for some currently-undefined purpose. That’s kinda fun, I guess, if you like to imagine playing with a light saber. On a more practical note, I was distracted by my dog several times, and had to start fresh each time, which was rather frustrating. I still managed to enter a meditative state, albeit fairly briefly.

Day 17 : OK, that’s the end of Tape #12, which is the final entry in “Wave 2” (of 6 “waves”, each with 6 tapes). This tape is all about various kinds of physical and emotional healing. As appealing as that is (despite my rather extreme skepticism), I find it very hard to concentrate. I enter into a meditative state very easily (possibly because I’m tired after a long day of work), and I find myself unable to concentrate on the exercises. There are long gaps between them, and I keep getting swept away by some of those pesky impressions. This is a pleasant, interesting session, but not particularly productive (if it’s even possible for them to be productive).

Day 18 : I haven’t read ahead in the official booklets, so I don’t know what’s coming up (except for a remote reviewing exercise that should happen soon, which has some practical problems that are giving me stress already). Maybe that’s part of an unconscious desire for this to be an initiatory experience. So I’ve heard different things about when out-of-body experiences actually get taught. Some people say it comes towards the end of the course, while others have said that OBEs can potentially occur as early as Focus 12. Well, I started doing the Focus 12 exercises a week ago, and I sure haven’t experienced anything out of body.

As such, I decide to give Tape #7, the introduction to Focus 12, yet another try. I have absolutely no trouble immediately slipping into a meditative state. Do I actually reach some awareness of things beyond my physical perception? Not as far as I can tell. I haven’t got much sleep the last couple of nights, so this is a restful and relaxing experience. Perhaps too much so — for the life of me, I can’t remember the last minute or two or the tape. I remember being talked down from Focus 12 to Focus 10, but I completely blanked out on everything after that. I probably just fell asleep for a wee bit.

It may be worth noting that for the last week or so, I’ve been doing some extra meditation, using the Gateway techniques, but without the tapes or the patented “Hemi-Synch” technology. I do them right before I go to sleep. So far they haven’t been as relaxing or meditative as using the tapes, but they are fairly pleasant in and of themselves. Absolutely nothing interesting has occurred during them.

Day 19 : What a disappointment. I have a LOT to say about today’s exercise, so let’s deal with the practical stuff first.

I’ve been using the healing techniques from Days 15 and 17 (Tapes #10 and #12, for those of you keep track), and my various aches and pains do seem to be a little better. There are half a dozen perfectly mundane explanations for this, all of them far more likely than anything supernatural, but it’s still a little annoying that this seems to be working a little. I suppose the ideal cases would be either a) it doesn’t work at all, thus vindicating my skepticism, or b) it works perfectly & immediately, which gives me great health and a rational basis to believe in some weird shit. For it to maybe kinda-sorta half work, which probably just means I’m gullible, is incredibly frustrating.

Normally the tapes begin with the narrator instructing you to do exercises A, B, C, and D on your own, before the actual exercise of the day starts. For A, C, and D, you’re completely on your own, but exercise B is the one that involves humming in tune with a particular audio cue. Today’s tape started with the same instruction, so I did exercise A, and then waited for the audio cue to begin. And then waited some more. Eventually I concluded that it wasn’t coming, which seemed very strange, so I went ahead and did exercise B as best I could without it, and then exercises C and D. And then the audio cue for B started. That threw me off my game completely.

OK, practical issues aside, here’s what happened with Tape #13, the beginning of the third “Wave” of tapes. While the narrator never says as much, it HEAVILY implies that this tape is meant to induce an out of body experience. I mean, even saying the words “out of body experience” wouldn’t convey that idea as strong the exercise itself implies it.

Needless to say, I didn’t experience an OBE. I didn’t experience anything. Look, I don’t actually believe in psychic powers. I may wish they were real, ’cause that would be neat, and I’m open to the one-in-a-million chance that there’s something to them, but I sure as hell didn’t expect to have an out of body experience. I kind of expected something, though.

The Gateway Experience has been around for a long time, and many thousands of people, including a bunch of Pentagon and CIA spooks, claim that it works. They must be experiencing something, even if it’s only self-induced hallucinations. And hey, I’m not knocking hallucinations — that’s kinda what I was going for with all of this. Me, though, I got a big fat fistful of nothing.

Day 20 : I really do want to give this my best effort, so I go back to Tape #7 yet again. Nothing to report.

Day 21 : I mostly want to put off the remote viewing exercise, so I try Tape #7 for what will probably be the final time. Once again, nothing to report. Tomorrow I’ll go back to Tape #13, and then on Monday I suppose I have to try the damn remote viewing exercise.

Day 22 : Another crack at Tape #13. I attempt a different visualization method than last time, which is difficult. Still no out of body experiences, but I have now read through all the pamphlets, which gives me some more context. While Tape #13 is explicitly described as being about OBEs, apparently that’s more aspirational than anything else. From what I can tell, it’s more about laying the groundwork for an OBE, and if one happens to occur early, great.

Day 23 : One more attempt at Tape #13, because I can’t do Tape #14 (the remote viewing one) until tomorrow. Again, nothing happens, but I have achieved a tiny nugget of insight. These exercises aren’t meant to be pure meditation — they’re all about mastering psychic powers. But it’s the meditation stuff that I’ve enjoyed. Tape #13 is almost entirely visualization exercises, which may further the psychic goals, but leaves little room for pure meditation. Once I’ve finished the Gateway Experience, I may find something similar that focuses more on meditation.

Day 24 : OK, this is the Big One, Tape #14 — remote viewing. It’s the one I’ve been worried about, for purely practical reasons, and it’s also the first one that potentially offers verifiable proof that this shit works. I have a lot to say, so here we go.

First thing’s first — Tape #13 left too much time for preparatory exercise A, while Tape #14 leaves too little. I just barely finished before exercise B started. What gives? You’d think that consistency would be easy and desirable to achieve.

Now to admit my mistake. The handbook says that you should listen to Tape #14 in its entirety without actually doing any of the exercises first, just so you know what you’ll need to prepare. To my mind, that seems like a sloppy, inefficient way of handling things, and so I decided to skip it. I figured that reading the handbook was enough, and it sort of was. The handbook details 3 exercises that you’ll do, and doesn’t mention the 4th…but the 4th doesn’t require any extra prep. The worst that might happen is that you’ll get caught off guard. In any event, I wasn’t able to do the 4th exercise, for the same circumstantial reasons I wasn’t able to do the 3rd, so it didn’t matter.

So what was the actual experience of Tape #14 like? I didn’t enjoy it. The visualization exercises were stressful, and I frequently found my whole body tensing up. When I wasn’t stressed, I was bored — perhaps because I knew exactly what was coming up next, I was very impatient for the narrator to get a move on.

Alright, alright, enough bullshit. You want to know how I did on the remote viewing tests, and I want to tell you. For test #1, I had a friend write down 6 numbers between 1 and 100 before the exercise began, and put the piece of paper in a known location. For test #2, I had that same friend put a crumpled up piece of paper (you’re supposed to use a cotton ball, but I didn’t have one handy) anywhere he wanted in his living room/dining room/kitchen area.

Out of the six numbers, I guessed 2 correctly. I studied to be a philosopher, not a mathematician, but between helpful people on Twitter and looking up lottery math on Wikipedia, I believe the odds of guessing 2 out of 6 numbers correctly, given that they’re all between 1 and 100, is around 3% or 4%.

As for the paper ball, I told my friend to put it on a table, a chair, or a counter. That gives roughly 11 or 12 distinct locations. I got it correct…sort of. I got the impression (or rather, I guessed) that it would be on the coffee table, but I immediately started second-guessing myself. Only a few hours earlier, I had helped my friend move his furniture around, and we switched the coffee table and the dining room table. As a result, I chickened out and wrote down “coffee table or dining table”. It was on the coffee table.

So, what does this mean? Absolutely nothing. If we have to choose between saying “the one in a million chance of psychic powers being real actually paid off” or “I made a 1 in 25 guess”, there’s an obvious correct answer…but I have to admit, seeing those numbers right there, on paper, spooked me a little bit. It’s a lot like how my various aches and pains felt a little bit better after doing the healing exercises. I would have been much more comfortable if I got every answer wrong, and I would have been thrilled if I got every answer right. This just left me cranky and unsettled.

Day 25 : OK, this is a bit of a weird one. In some ways, it felt like a waste of time. The exercise was all about maneuvering your consciousness while experiencing an OBE, and since I’ve never had an OBE, that seemed pointless. I also had a hard time following the instructions, which seemed unnecessarily confusing.

On the other hand, towards the end of the exercise I experienced a number of those impressions that I had earlier in this course. Most were fleeting and not particularly vivid, but one was quite distinct — it was about a remote viewing team, possibly in Nevada (probably because I’ve just been reading about Nevada-based remote viewers). They had just submitted the results of their viewing a location in California, and were celebrating because it turned out to be accurate. It was nothing more than an unasked-for daydream, one that I didn’t realize was happening until it was half over, but it was still kind of neat.

What’s more, towards the end of the exercise, during a lengthy cool-down period, I did began to feel somewhat detached and distant from my body. It wasn’t an OBE, but it felt like it could be the precursor to one. This was like a somewhat stronger version of what I experienced on Day 14, but it wasn’t scary this time.

Again, it’s nothing mystical, but it was enjoyable. Unlike on Day 14, I didn’t want it to end.

Day 26 : Today’s exercise is basically a more advanced version of Tape #8. Instead of asking a question of my own choosing, I’m directed to ask 5 specific questions about my nature and purpose. Do I get back any kind of answer? Not really, unless you count whatever is thrown up by the workings of my own mind. Nothing interesting happens, but it’s not a negative experience either. It’s just a big blank nothing.

However, I wake up at around 3 AM, and in that moment, half-asleep, I feel convinced that I just received an answer to one of my questions, from some sort of distant, supernatural force. That answer is : “Chrono Cross and Hamilton”. Chrono Cross is a mostly-forgotten cult classic video game that I never got around to finishing, and Hamilton is a sub-par city in Southern Ontario. I’m pretty confident this was just my mostly-asleep subconscious mind fucking with me. I sure hope it was, because if my life’s purpose is mid-tier JRPGs and Toronto-adjacent industrial wastelands, I might have to become a nihilist.

But after my formal Gateway meditation (and a break to watch Stranger Things and do some light reading), I go back to do some of my own meditation, using Gateway techniques, but without any tapes or Hemi-Synch tech. I’ve been doing this a lot lately, but I get my most spectacular results tonight. It’s just impression after impression, for an extended period of time. I’m not sure how long it takes for them to kick in, but it doesn’t feel too long, and the entire meditation period lasts for just over half an hour.

This doesn’t feel anything like dreams, or like day-dreaming, and I’m also convinced that it isn’t a real psychic phenomenon, mostly because most of these impressions — which have a visual component this time — are about a video game I’ve been playing. God help us all if I’m actually psychic, and using those powers to investigate the metaphysics of Saints Row IV. I’ve more or less become certain that this is just a side-effect of sensory deprivation. To be completely fair, that doesn’t rule out the possibility that some people could be experiencing genuine psychic phenomenon through the medium of sensory deprivation hallucinations (although I doubt it).

Day 27 : Well, this is an interesting one. Interpret it metaphorically, which is the most reasonable interpretation, and it’s an attempt to teach appetite control. Interpret it literally, which is absolutely what you’re supposed to do, and it’s an attempt to teach you how to draw energy from the astral plane, which will replace your need for food. So color me skeptical.

On the other hand, the vast majority of the exercise is unguided meditation. I’m quickly distracted from the intended purpose and end up just meditating, which is lots of fun. I have plenty of impressions, most of which pertain to video games, one of which is about a student at a school for remote viewing, who’s worried that her classmates will find out she comes from a long line of powerful remote viewers. That may be my subconscious doing a remix of the Harry Potter fanfic I’m re-reading, or it may be related to me binging Stranger Things.

Day 27 Part 2 : I decide to cheat and do a second exercise in one day. This is for a number of reasons — the last one was a bit of a dud, I’m more than a week behind, and I’m very eager to have some kind of OBE, damn it, which this current tape is meant to provoke.

It doesn’t. It’s also very heavy on visualization exercises, which I find more stressful than relaxing, because I’m bad at visual stuff.

Day 28 : Another crack at Tape #18. Still no OBE. I find this one particularly difficult, because I’m not just bad at visualization in general, I’m also especially bad at first-person visualization and slow, gradual visualization, both of which this exercise relies on.

It doesn’t help that some of the exercises are…well, somewhat perplexing. At one point, the narrator tells you to imagine backing away from your physical form. Which might make sense, except this is a kind of meditation that’s done lying down. It requires a whole ‘nother layer of abstraction just to follow simple commands, which I suspect is bad.

Interlude : I’m now halfway through the Gateway Experience (sort of*). I haven’t had any out of body experiences or mystical experiences. I have had some unusual experiences, but they’re all much more likely a product of natural phenomena. Does that mean this whole thing has been pointless? I don’t think so — at the very least, it’s been quite enjoyable.

However, it seems fairly clear that I’m unlikely to get anything from the second half of the experience (if there’s anything to be gotten, that is) unless I’ve actually had at least one out of body experience. I think that means my course for the next little while is clear — I need to keep doing Tape #18, at least for a few days, and give it a reasonable chance to “work”. If I do have some sort of out of body experience, or pseudo-OBE, then I can move on.

If not…well, that’s the question, isn’t it? I’m not a quitter (my academic career aside), and there is a marginal chance I’d get something out of the course even without an OBE, so I mean to stick with it — after all, it’s not like it takes significant effort, resources, or time.

• As I understand it, originally the Monroe Institute only offered the first four waves of the Gateway Experience for in-home study. The final two waves were reserved for in-person teaching at the institute, or at various retreats. They eventually released the whole course, which is the version I’m using (I think). Then, after Monroe died, his successors re-worked the 6th Wave, and added a 7th, which I don’t plan to do.

Day 29 : A third night with Tape #18, and no further progress. This remains a challenging exercise — visualization is a constant struggle.

Day 30 : Once more unto the breach with Tape #18. No noticeable results, but I’m coming to terms with the idea that even if this stuff “works”, this is probably an exercise that would require repetition and practice before anything happens. I’m a little less frustrated, but it’s still clear that there’s a long haul ahead.

Day 31 : My fifth attempt at Tape #18. Still no out of body experience, but a whole lot of impressions/hallucinations towards the end of the exercise. It feels warm and comfortable. Even though that’s not the point of the exercise, it’s nice to have something happen.

Day 32 : Tape #18 again. Lots of impressions, and towards the end of the session, some sense that my body was far away from me, or unimportant, like when I did Tape #9 all the way back on Day 14, but the sensation isn’t quite as strong. I’m thinking that maybe I should throw together a theta-wave binaural track that lasts for half an hour and try that. In theory, it should be a more concentrated, focused experience that skips right to the hard core stuff.

Day 33 : Work ran very late, and I didn’t get a chance to anything even remotely Gateway-related.

Day 34 : I’ve been dabbling in making binaural beats, which is the basic science behind the Hemi-Synch method, and so I decide to try meditating to my own MP3. No impressions, and no out of body experiences, but my body did feel a little weird, like an even weaker version of what I experienced at the end of Day 32.

Day 35 : After a few days away, I’m back to Tape #18. I wish I could call it a triumphant return, but absolutely nothing new has happened. No progress, no impressions, no odd bodily sensations. This is my 7th attempt at Tape #18. Am I losing heart? Not really. I’m determined to keep at it. I figure I can alternate days between this tape and my own binaural MP3 for quite a while.

Day 36 : A second crack at my homebrew binaural track. Some vague, fleeting impressions, and maybe a tiny bit of a weird bodily sensation, but that’s all. I notice that it’s hard to focus on meditating at the start of the session — maybe the narration, even without any metaphysical results, is useful as a focusing tool. I’m toying with the idea of adding some guided meditation to my own track, but that seems like a big project.

Day 37 : Work runs late, and I don’t have the heart to try Tape #18. Instead, I go back to my own track. This time I use most of the Gateway preparatory exercises, which seems to help me focus. Some impressions do come, but they’re faint and fleeting. I’m not sure if I end up falling into a light sleep or not — the last part of the session is kind of a blur. All I can say for sure is that I decide to stop a little early, and then realize I’ve been meditating longer than I thought, and that the “wake-up” alpha waves kicked in two minutes ago.

Day 38 : I don’t know if I’d call this a triumphant return, but it’s definitely something. The impressions kick in pretty early, and they last for a while. They’re also more vivid than usual, although not as strong as the first few times. To round things off, I get what is probably the most intense physical sensation yet, and that lasts too. Unfortunately, they don’t last the entire session — eventually, the urge to analyze what’s happening overcomes me, and by the time we reach the final main exercise, I’m back to feeling normal.

Interlude : I read McMoneagle’s book before embarking on this venture, but it’s only now that I’ve started to read Monroe’s first book. It’s filled with very detailed accounts of his OBEs, and if Monroe is telling the truth, then there’s no way to interpret his experiences as anything other than a real, supernatural phenomenon , if they actually happened — there’s no way any of this could be written off as a coincidence, or things that Monroe could have possibly known through non-supernatural means. Of course, that still leaves the possibility (now a virtual certainty) that Monroe made all of this up. It can only be real or fraud, not an honest mistake.

Day 39 : Back to my home-made tape. Complete failure. I’m plagued by distractions and ordinary thoughts, and never even enter into a meditative state, much less experience any impressions or sensations. I’m doubting the efficacy of my tape — it might be worth recording some guided meditation narration of own rather than giving up entirely.

Interlude : The more I read of Monroe’s book, the more I feel that I’ve started on a fool’s errand. I’ve reached a point where he makes one increasingly implausible claim after another. He has a whole metaphysical thing going on that goes way beyond mere OBEs and remote viewing. I’ve revised my personal estimates of this stuff being real from one in a million to one in a billion — this shit is just crazy. But if it is real, it’s also clearly vastly more dangerous (and somewhat more rewarding) than I realized at the start. The whole cost/benefit ratio of this adventure seems to far less worthwhile than I believed. Then again, I’m no quitter — I mean to see this thing through.

Day 40 : More of Tape 18. I find myself easily distracted, with a hard time entering into a meditative state. Some impressions, but not many. Physical sensations are fairly strong, but only happen towards the end of the sensation, and since I realize the session is going to be ending soon, that colors the experience.

Day 41 : Tape 18 again. I align myself north-south, as per the advice in Monroe’s book. I can’t manage to enter into a meditative state at all, and nothing out of the ordinary happens. Disappointment.

Day 42 : Spoiler alert — I haven’t discovered the meaning of life, the universe, and everything. The same results as yesterday. I’ve finished reading Monroe’s first book — according to him, the “impressions” that I’ve been experiencing, and which I’ve written off as sensory deprivation-induced hallucinations, really are just sensory deprivation-induced hallucinations. They are, however, a good sign — they mean that you’re meditating properly, and the key to success is remaining in the meditative state after the hallucinations have ended (which supposedly takes 40 minutes or more, longer than any of the tapes so far).

Day 43 : Nothing, once again. I believe this is my 12th crack at Tape 18. I’ve now read a book by one of Monroe’s most prominent followers, and I gotta say, it’s not helping any. Quite the opposite — Rosalind McKnight’s Cosmic Journeys is full of insane bullshit that seems to have very little connection to anything that Monroe was doing, and absolutely none of the “scientific” basis that Monroe tried to lend to his work, but Monroe clearly ate it up, and even incorporated some of it into the Gateway Experience. I’m trying to do this stuff with an open mind, but the more I learn, the harder it is. I’m starting to think that this isn’t just New Age nonsense, it’s an outright pseudo-religious scam, motivated by profit. I’ll take another attempt or two at Tape 18, but if I don’t make any progress by the end of the week, I’m moving on to Tape 19.

Day 44 : I head back to my homebrew. The impressions start early this time, and the first is both vivid and long-lasting. The others are less so. Some fairly strong physical sensations toward the end of the session. Honestly, this all comes as a bit of a relief — I was worried that I had lost my mojo.

Day 45 : I’m feeling a bit under the weather, so I decide not try anything tonight.

Day 46 : Aha! It turns out that I was feeling under the weather last night because I’ve got COVID! It’s not too serious, so far, but I’m still not feeling up to anything Gateway-related.

Day 47 : For the first time, I’m writing this entry before-hand, because I’m pretty sure I’m not doing any more Gateway stuff tonight, either. Hopefully tomorrow I’ll be up to it.

Day 48 : Turns out COVID really does a number on you, energy-wise. Not even attempting anything tonight.

Day 49 : This is beginning to get ridiculous. Nothing tonight, but I’m determined to do Tape 18 again, to mark day 50. I had kinda hoped, back when I was starting, to be done all of this by day 36. Oh well.

Day 50 : Right around the time I would normally start listening to one of these tapes, my dad had trouble breathing and had to go to the hospital. He ended up being fine, but needless to say, I didn’t get a chance to do Tape 18. On the other hand, because I was scared, I did try sending him some healing energy, as per one of the early tapes. That’s hard to admit, because I don’t believe in this stuff. Even if I did, Monroe specifically says not to do that — it’s unclear if he thinks that healing other people is impossible or just inadvisable. I was desperate.

Day 51 : It didn’t even cross my mind to try a tape tonight.

Day 52 : Back at Tape 18. 10 minutes in, my dog decides she desperately needs to go outside, even though I’d just taken her out before I lay down. The whole thing is so frustrating that I give up for the night. Imagine having blue balls in your third eye.

Days 53–56 : I’ve just been way too stressed out to try anything Gateway-related. My mom has had a couple of late-night hospital visits (she’s doing somewhat better now), and I’m in no mood for any psychic nonsense.

Day 57 : I didn’t try any Gateway stuff, but I had a very vivid dream about out of body experiences last night. In the dream, the first OOBE went exactly as I would have hoped — I left my body and went to visit someone I know, who was aware I was there. In the second OOBE, I was flying through a city that I didn’t recognize, supposedly en route to visit someone I know, but got trapped in a tunnel that was rapidly flooding, and had to fight off various hostile entities. I was rescued by higher beings, who put me through some kind of test. Before I could finish the test, I was woken by my phone. Just to be clear, these were dreams about OBEs, not real OBEs. It was still a very intense experience, and I was reluctant to go back to sleep.

Day 58 : After an experience like I had on day 57, how could I not get back on the horse? I decide to take it nice & easy, and try my home tape. I find it hard to embrace the meditative state, and never fully get there. It’s disappointing, but this is a marathon, not a sprint.

Day 60-something : In an attempt to get back to basics, I go back to Tape 13. Nothing happens.

Day 75 or so : I haven’t been able to work up any interest or enthusiasm for hemi-synch, or meditation in general. Only a refusal to quit has brought me back. I’m taking one last crack at Tape 18. Whatever happens, I’m moving on to Tape 19 next.

Day 75 continued : Nothing happens during the first half of the tape. Keeping in mind some of the instructions from the pamphlet, I decide to abandon my dignity and put out a silent call for assistance. Shortly thereafter, I start getting some fairly strong bodily sensations, without any impressions. That’s an odd combination, but nothing new actually happens.

Day 80-ish : Putting on headphones and engaging in a formal meditation session seems like an excessive burden, so I just do some freestyle meditating instead, to the sound of my white noise machine. Oddly enough, it sort of works. I’m not sure if the “impressions” I get are the same sort of sensory deprivation hallucinations I’ve before, or if they’re just the kind of disordered, fantastic thinking that you sometimes get before sleeping, but they’re present, and quite strong. No bodily sensations of note this time. After finishing the meditation, I go directly to bed, and I’m woken after an hour or so with some vivid, intense dreams that seemingly relate to my mediation, although I can’t quite recall how.

Interlude : I’ve been reading another one of Monroe’s books, and in it he claims that many of his out of body experiences come at night — he’ll wake up around 2 or 3 in the morning, be aware that he’s prone to an OBE, and then choose to explore. I woke up a bunch of times last night, and nothing of the sort happened to me. Disappointing.

Day 81, maybe : Finally, I’ve reached Tape 19! And I have to say, it’s deeply underwhelming. First of all, it’s basically just a re-run of Tape 9, which I did all the way back on Day 14. The only conceptual difference is that it’s about shaping the pattern of the next year of your life, not the next month. So what’s my problem with that? Mostly that it’s poorly organized. The narrator asks you to focus on different parts of your life, but doesn’t tell you what they are ahead of time, and doesn’t do a good job distinguishing between them, so you’re asked to “shape” your mental life, and then your “emotional” life. What the hell is the difference? Of course, this is all probably nonsense…but about half an hour after finishing the tape, something happens to me that slightly increases the (already infinitesimal) chances that I’ll achieve the professional goals that I set in the exercise. Probably a coincidence.

Day 83 : On to Tape 20! This is another “ask questions and get answers” deal. I don’t get any answers.

Day 84 : Another night of working late. I’ve been reading another book by Monroe, and it just makes me feel less confident about any of this stuff. His first book was about half OBEs, and half weird adventures in other dimensions, but this book is almost entire weird extradimensional stuff. One point gives me pause — he claims that the exercises & tapes used at his institute are very good at causing OBEs, and it’s heavily implied that the Gateway Experience tapes are a direct descendant of those tapes & exercises, but he also says that he doesn’t expect people doing the Gateway Experience at home to have OBEs. It reads like a bait and switch scam to me.

Day 85 : Tape 21 is more my speed. It’s a freeform exercise, a real sandbox. The narrator walks you through the opening exercises, as usual, and then basically says “OK, we’ve given you all sorts of tools. Now use’em however you want. Go nuts.” There’s a lot of stuff I’d like to do, but I decide to keep things simple — I focus on meditating as deeply as I can, without any particular goal or attempt to use any tools. It’s fairly successful — I get a whole host of impressions, almost constantly. They’re rather weak, and there are no physical sensations, but quantity is a quality all on its own, and I certainly have a quantity of impressions. One small annoyance is that there’s a recurring horn sound, meant to remind you to focus on your goal. It’s counterproductive for me, but for people who are actually trying to accomplish something, it’s probably useful.

Day 86 : My plan has always been to do Tape 21 at least twice — the first time to just embrace the meditation, and the second time to attempt to use the “tools” of the Gateway Experience. I decide to try to get into a deep meditative state first, and then try an experiment. This fails — I can’t seem to focus. Instead, I move into the second part of the exercise, and try to telepathically contact (as taught in Tape 14) an acquaintance of mine who I haven’t talked to in a couple of years. I figure that will help to rule out false positives — if they suddenly get in touch, that will be strong evidence in favor of this exercise working. As of Day 89, they haven’t reached out, so I’m going to call this a failure.

Day 88 : Tape 22. This one is all about “non-verbal communication,” which is really poorly named. It’s used by Monroe to mean “directly communicating ideas without words, through telepathy”. The first half of the exercise is very simple — Munroe gives you a word, and you have to think about the concept it represents. I’m not really clear on whether he wants us to visualize the object or to concentrate on the concept itself, so I do both. I have no idea what this accomplishes, but it quickly puts me in a deep meditative state, and the actual exercise becomes a distraction from meditation. The second half of the exercise, which involves “listening” for non-verbal communication, is less productive and less meditative. On the whole, I don’t think I accomplished anything, but the meditative state itself was very pleasant and soothing. This was definitely an enjoyable experience.

Day 91 : Tape 23 is a significantly more advanced version of Tape 22, and I honestly find it challenging. Trying to conceptualize ideas without using words is very difficult, just as difficult as the visualizing exercises in Tape 18, if not more so. Unlike my attempt at Tape 22, where the exercises were easy and lulled me into deep meditation, that doesn’t really happen in Tape 22 — I spend too much time planning and second-guessing myself. Only in the second half of the exercise, which is once again about “listening” for non-verbal communication, do I experience anything, and it’s just some fairly strong physical sensations. Don’t get me wrong, those are neat, but not nearly as cool as the mental impressions/hallucinations the Experience sometimes causes.

Day 92 : Back to Tape 22, because clearly I’m not ready for Tape 23. This is a bit of a disappointment — I don’t have any impressions, and only mild sensations. It feels like I accomplished very little.

Day 95 : Another attempt at Tape 23. Some very mild impressions and sensations. The exercise is definitely easier this time, but I still feel that I haven’t completely mastered it. I think I’ll forge ahead, though — only one more tape to go in order to finish Wave 4!

Day 98 : The instructions specifically say that you shouldn’t do the Gateway stuff after a heavy meal, but I ended up having two dinners, and I’m full as hell. Just absolutely stuffed. Instead, I just do a light meditation session, without any binaural beats whatsoever. I definitely get some mild impressions, but to be honest, there’s a thin line between “sensory deprivation hallucinations” and “weird disordered thinking that sometimes happens on the verge of falling asleep”, and while I can normally tell them apart, this time I’m not so sure. My brain definitely did some weird stuff, but I’m not confident that meditation was the sole, or even the main, cause.

Day 99 : Same procedure as Day 98, with the same results.

Day 100 : Tape 24, which is the end of Wave 4. A disappointing exercise, in several ways. This one is all about using “non-verbal communication” to communicate, and the booklet suggests imagining yourself in an environment conducive to communication. I settle on the bridge of the Enterprise-D (naturally), only to be let down when this visualization never comes up in the exercise. Instead, it’s just an extension of Tape 23. How are the results? Well, I was hoping for something spectacular, because it’s Day 100, but instead I get nothing. I can’t even manage to enter a meditative state. The whole session is a total flop.

Day 102 : I can’t really decide if I should re-do Tape 24 or move on, so instead I do neither, and take another crack at unassisted freestyle meditation, as on Days 98 and 99. The result is the same. If nothing else, it’s nice that I can fairly easily slip into a trance-like state and let my brain get wiggy whenever I want.

Day 103 : Essentially the same procedure and results as yesterday, except I make sure to do it much earlier in the evening, a good 6 hours before bed. This makes me a little more confident that it’s not just pre-sleep weirdness that I’ve been experiencing in this unassisted sessions.

Day 104 : Unassisted meditation has been working reasonably well so far, so I decide to give it another shot. I end up doing 2 sessions, one short and one long. The results are basically the same. Some definite impressions in the short session, and some maybe-impressions, maybe just pre-sleep nuttiness in the long one. Either way, the impressions are all mild and fleeting. I feel like I’ve done as much with unassisted meditation as I reasonably can at this point — it’s pleasant and comfortable, but certainly not transcendent.

Day 106 : Tape 25, which is the beginning of Wave 5! I’m rather disconcerted to hear a voice other than Monroe’s acting as the narrator — apparently I’ve got the updated version of the Experience. That’s a little disappointing. Monroe was probably an asshole, but he had a good voice, and the new guy isn’t nearly as good. As for the exercise itself, it’s meant to take you into a slightly deeper level of meditation, and then let you get used to it. I just let my mind drift. There are some impressions, but they aren’t particularly strong or lengthy, and there are no noticeable physical sensations. Honestly, this is pretty similar to the unassisted meditation I’ve been doing.

Day 108 : Tape 26. This exercise is meant to train you in using your intuition, and you’re supposed to think of an occasion when you had an instant and unreasoning belief about something that turned out to be true, and recall how that felt. Unfortunately, I can’t think of any occasions when this happened to me, so I just end up with the same experience as Tape 25, interrupted by commands that I try to follow, but which don’t really apply to me.

Day 112 : I attempt some more unguided meditation just before bed. I definitely get some impressions, but I was tired and kinda high, so this isn’t the most productive session. On the bright side, I’ve recalled a few times when I had a gut feeling about something that proved correct, so I think I’ll try Tape 26 again.

Day 115 : Another crack at Tape 26, this time using my memories of accurate intuition. I can’t say that the results are all that different — I end up in a pretty deep meditative state, but nothing particularly interesting or relevant happens.

Day 116 : Tape 27. This one is about taking the enhanced intuition and putting it to use. I end up in another trance-like state, but nothing in particular is accomplished. On a more prosaic note, I don’t particularly like the new narrator’s voice, or the new background music, but I will admit that these last two tapes have been pretty good at putting me deep into meditation.

Day 118 : Tape 28. This is meant to take you to an even deeper level of consciousness, so-called “Focus 15”, which is “timeless”. OK, my skepticism is off-the-charts, but I’ll give anything a shot. The results, sadly, are about in line with my expectations, but I can’t entirely blame the exercise. I’m not as physically comfortable as I should be, so I find it difficult to get into deep meditation at all. I dip in and out of the trance-like state which I think is what they mean by “Focus 12”. In the spirit of fairness, I’ll have to give this one another go.

Day 119 : Tape 28 again, with even worse results. Or, to be more precise, no results whatsoever. For whatever reason, I find it impossible to get into any meditative state at all. That’s rather annoying — I’m not actually expecting to get anything out of 28, but I want to get it over with fairly, so I can move on.

Day 121 : Work runs late once again, so I just do some freestyle meditation right before bed. The results are pretty typical — a reasonable number of mild impressions, no sensations. But at least I can now retire the notion that the weird shit my brain does is “just” me going to sleep — after about 25 minutes of meditating and experiencing weird thoughts, I’m still fully aware, able to say “yeah, I’ve probably done all I can tonight,” walk through the “cool-down” steps, and then go to bed.

Day 122 : Tape 28 again. Some vaguely interesting results this time — I don’t enter into any kind of “timeless” state of consciousness (I didn’t expect to), but I do manage to get into a pretty deep meditative state without any impressions. Normally those two have gone hand-in-hand, but not this time. I don’t know what’s up with that.

Day 123 : Tape 29. I’m unimpressed with this tape, for a couple of reasons. Conceptually, it’s all about opening yourself to “creative” energies — not in the artistic sense, but in the sense of creating things in the world. It’s basically more The Secret-style nonsense. Practically speaking, you’re supposed to do this exercise from Focus 15, but you’re also supposed to focus on what you want to create, which makes it a lot harder to enter a meditative state.

However, I have come to suspect that maybe the deep meditative state I’ve been talking about, the one that almost always accompanies weird brain stuff, is what they mean by “Focus 15”. It isn’t literally timeless, but there’s a certain amount of subjective experience that could be considered a distorted perception of time — I can see how someone might be inclined to describe it as “timeless” if they were speaking metaphorically and already invested in the New Agey parts of this stuff. Of course, against that there are two arguments — they definitely don’t mean for their terminology to be taken metaphorically, and if this state IS Focus 15, I’m some kind of prodigy, because I’ve been reaching it since way before it was introduced. It seems unlikely, but possible.

Day 127 : Tape 30. This one is just freestyle Focus 15, which should be very much my jam, but I can’t get into a meditative state at all. Disappointing, really. I only have 6 tapes to go, and I’m eager to finish, but I’m going to have to give 30 another shot.

Day 133 : Another attempt at Tape 30. This time I reach a pretty deep meditative state and have a number of impressions, none of them particularly vivid. I suspect this is as much as I’m going to get from Tape 30, so on to Tape 31 and the final set of exercises!

Day 134 : Just some unaided meditation this time, with the exact same results as yesterday.

Day 135 : Tape 31. This one is supposedly about “sensing your non-physical body”, but it goes well beyond that — you’re meant to use your “non-physical body” to actually touch and feel things…and move them. They never use the word, but we’re talking about straight-up telekinesis. Needless to say, I don’t actually experience any of this, which is a damn shame — being able to move things with my mind is one of my most-coveted super powers.

Day 136 : Another attempt at Tape 31, with the same results. The only difference is that this time I know what to expect, and place two objects directly in front of me — that really should have been mentioned in the booklet.

Day 137 : The third time is the charm…is a saying that doesn’t apply here. Tape 31 again, with none of the intended results. That said, I do manage to get into a really deep meditative state, with impressions that come one early and are stronger than usual. The first one even has a visual competent, which is rare — I see that all things are, at a basic metaphysical level, envelopes that contain bundles of properties. Now, I’m not actually saying that’s true — of course not. I’m just saying that’s what I hallucinated.

Day 140 : Tape 32. I would say that this exercise is clearly meant to cause an OBE, except according to the booklet, it’s tape 33 that’s supposed to do that. Tape 32 is just laying the groundwork. Even so, I have to call this evening a failure — I can’t even get into a meditative state. Parts of the exercise are about “feeling” the “vibrations” in your “energy body”, and I can’t feel shit — maaaaaybe this is because I’m not meditating deeply enough, but I’m pretty confident that even if I was in a deep trance, I still wouldn’t feel anything.

Day 141 : Tape 32 again, with identical results. I’ll give it one more try, in the hopes I can at least get into a deep trance-like state.

Day 142 : Work runs late, so I just do some unassisted mediation, with pretty great results. I enter a deep meditative trance, get plenty of impressions (although none of them are particularly vivid), and the whole session lasts about 40 minutes. So nothing paranormal happens, but otherwise this counts as a win.

Day 143 : Yesterday went well, so I decide to follow up with another unassisted session. The results are less impressive — some impressions, but nothing spectacular.

Day 144 : A third unassisted session, but this time it’s a complete bust. I can’t get into any kind of meditative state.

Day 146 : Another unassisted session. It takes a while to get into the groove, but ends up being roughly the same as day 143.

Day 149 : Not exactly sure what the deal is this time. An unassisted mediation session, no impressions, but I seem to achieve a somewhat deep meditative state anyway.

Day 150 : More unassisted meditation. Lots of impressions, some of them fairly vivid. When I decide to pull out and return to normal consciousness, I’m shocked to see that more than 90 minutes have passed.

Day 151 : OK, this is the big one. I decide to skip a repeat of Tape 32 and go right to 33, which is the one that’s almost explicitly about having an OBE. Yeah, that doesn’t happen. I do manage to get into a deep meditative state and have some impressions, but that’s it. I dunno, maybe I’ll take another crack at Tape 32 before retrying 33.

Day 153 : I’m feeling lazy, so more unassisted meditation. Some impressions, but it’s a relatively brief 20 minute session. Nothing exceptional to report.

Days 156–158 : Virtually identical results from these three unassisted meditation sessions. Fairly strong impressions, with each session lasting about 25 minutes. The middle one ends naturally, the first and final end because I’m interrupted.

Days 160, 163–164 : The same as the last entry. I know I’ve been slacking, but it’s been an incredibly stressful week for me, and I just didn’t have it in me to do more.

Day 165 : I decide to rewind a little, and go back to Tape 31. While I still can’t “sense my energy body” or anything like that, I do come to an embarrassing realization — this exercise isn’t about telekinesis at all. I completely misunderstood the instructions, even though I listened to them several times. When you “push” your “energy hand” (yes, I know exactly how silly that sounds. Believe me, we’re on the same page here) at a physical object, you’re meant to be pushing THROUGH the object, like a ghost walking through a wall, not pushing the object itself.

Day 167 : Some unassisted meditation. I get fairly deep, but don’t really experience any impressions, which feels a little odd.

Day 169 : More unassisted meditation. I decide to try provoking an OBE and fail. I can’t even manage to get particularly deep into a meditative state.

Day 170–174 : I’ve been reading about one of the Monroe Institute’s OBE specialists. He recommends a variety of different approaches to causing an OBE. One simply involves repeating “I’m going to have an out of body experience” to yourself before you go to sleep. Frankly, that seems like a cop-out — it’s already hard enough to tell a lucid dream from a legit OBE (if there is such a thing), but apparently this is a method that can work. Maybe it does for others, but not for me. I do manage to have a dream about having OBEs, but it is very much a dream, not an “actual” OBE.

Day 175 : Tape 32, again. My headphones run out of power halfway through, but it doesn’t really make a difference — this exercise is all about “feeling” your “energy body”, but I can’t feel shit.

Day 175–186 : I believe Medium accidentally didn’t save my logs from these sessions, but that doesn’t really matter, because nothing of note took place.

Day 186 : Unaided meditation, strong impressions that come on quickly.

Day 189 : Unaided meditation, maybe some impressions. Pulled out of it by a text message.

Day 190 : Unaided meditation, some weak impressions.

Afterword

Day 328 : Well. I talked a lot about not being a quitter, yet here we are. In the last 138 days, I’ve only meditated a single time, and haven’t made any more progress on the tapes. What happened? Why’d I stop, so close to the finish line?

I’m honestly not sure. I started this project the day one of my dogs died. I desperately needed a distraction, and the Gateway Experience provided exactly that. It was also probably good for my mental health — the last time I lost a dog, it utterly destroyed me and ruined my life. This time, I coped. I have to give Monroe some of the credit for that (much more credit goes to my SNRI). Finally, if doing this project didn’t help me believe in some more than the physical world around us, at least it gave me an excuse to be a little more open to the possibility. I needed that.

So why stop? Why not finish it? Back on Day 160, I noted that it had been an incredibly stressful week. My remaining dog had a health scare, and it looked like we might lose her, too. We didn’t, thankfully, and now she’s fine — or as fine as a very large 12 year old dog can be, anyway. But clearly that sent me down a different path.

I only used the tapes twice more after that, and I can only say that I just wasn’t feeling it any more. To an extent, doing them felt silly. There was all this talk about “feeling vibrations” in your “energy body”, and I felt absolutely nothing. It was like gibberish. That really took the wind out of my sails. Throughout the entire Experience, I hadn’t experienced a single thing that could reasonably be ascribed to supernatural forces. I managed to keep my mind open, but being confronted with a tape that talked a big game about the supernatural & completely failed to deliver robbed me of all enthusiasm.

Perhaps I gave up too easily. I certainly gave up on meditation in general too easily. Even without any hope for supernatural experiences, I enjoyed meditating, and I think I benefited from it. I probably shouldn’t have let my disappointment with the Gateway Experience sour me on meditation as a whole. And yet I can’t honestly say that I’m likely to go back to it.

So how do I feel about the Monroe Institute and the Gateway Experience? Going through all of this was definitely a fascinating and rewarding project…but they make some HUGE claims, claims that I gave a fair chance, and they didn’t produce. To my mind, that doesn’t 100% disprove them, but it comes close. On the other hand, there are thousands who claim they have had extraordinary results from the Gateway Experience, and the cloak & dagger side of the US government seemed pretty enthusiastic. Mind you, the Pentagon and CIA have gone all-in on incredibly dumb stuff before, and this could be more of the same.

If you pushed me, I’d say that all of this stuff is probably nonsense…and yet, I wouldn’t say it’s 1 in a billion, or even 1 in a million. I might say that there’s a 1 in a thousand chance there’s some truth to it. And if I was a rich man who wasn’t worried about COVID, I might just try out one of those week-long seminars at the Institute, just to see what would happen. I guess there’s a sucker born every minute.

Annotated Bibliography

Alexander, John B., “Reality Denied: Firsthand Experiences with Things that Can’t Happen — But Did”

Alexander is a pivotal figure in the field of spooky shit. Much of his military career was focused on esoteric subjects, from non-lethal weaponry to the outside-the-box thinking of the First Earth Battalion concept, all to the way remote viewing and UFOs, although he was only tangentially connected to Star Gate. This book is largely a recitation of various odd things he’s either seen or heard quality reporting on. While I think he’s far less skeptical than he should be, there is some interesting material here, and I have to admit that I’m deeply jealous of his Scooby Doo-esque lifestyle, traveling the globe to study paranormal phenomena. Most of this book isn’t about remote viewing or out of body experiences, and much of what is present is found elsewhere. Not a key volume for these subjects, but still an interesting look at the broader field.

Buchanan, Lyn “The Seventh Sense: The Secrets of Remote Viewing as Told by a “Psychic Spy” for the U.S. Military”

Essentially Buchanan’s biography, with a fairly heavy focus on his work for Star Gate. Buchanan, like McMoneagle, is a legend of the field, so this is a must-read for anyone interested in Star Gate or remote viewing.

Kelleher, Colm & Knapp, George, “Hunt for the Skinwalker: Science Confronts the Unexplained at a Remote Ranch in Utah”

Not directly related to remote viewing or the Gateway Experience, but there’s some use of remote viewing in this book, and it seems like the people who are interested in those two subjects are often interested in this one as well. It sure sounds like some odd stuff is going on at Skinwalker Ranch, but some of the anecdotes are VERY hard to swallow, and one of the authors (Knapp) promotes other stuff that even fellow UFO buffs generally consider a hoax.

McKnight, Rosalind, “Cosmic Journeys”

I read this during my Gateway Experience project, and it really shook my confidence, because McKnight was one of Robert Monroe’s closest associates, but her book is just terrible. Aside from the weak, implausible writing, her experiences & practices seem to have absolutely nothing in common with Monroe’s…and yet not only did he believe her, he adopted some of her material into official Monroe Institute protocols. If you’re seriously interested in TMI or the Gateway Experience, as something to do or as a scholar, this is an important read because it will shine a light on one of the least plausible aspects of the whole thing.

McMoneagle, Joseph, “Memoirs of a Psychic Spy: The Stargate Chronicles”

“Mind Trek” was about the theory and practice of remote viewing. In contrast, this volume is the full-on autobiography of a remote viewer, including his time in Star Gate. If you’re interested in remote viewing or Star Gate specifically, but only have time to read one book, this is probably the one to get.

McMoneagle, Joseph, “Mind Trek: Exploring Consciousness, Time & Space through Remote Viewing”

An introduction to remote viewing by one of the most famous, respected vets of the Star Gate program. Thorough within its limits, it doesn’t really discuss Star Gate.

Mitchell, Edgar, “The Way of the Explorer: An Apollo Astronaut’s Journey Through the Material and Mystical Worlds”

Ed Mitchell walked on the Moon, and then he got really damn spiritual. He was open to all sorts of ideas, and quite frankly, I get the impression that he wasn’t anywhere near skeptical enough. This book is about 50% half-baked philosophy, and 50% anecdotes about the unusual. There’s a little material here that’s indirectly related to Star Gate and remote viewing, but it isn’t an essential read.

Morehouse, David, “Psychic Warrior: The True Story of America’s Foremost Psychic Spy and the Cover-Up of the CIA’s Top-Secret Stargate Program”

Of the books I’ve read by Star Gate vets, this one is the least plausible. It includes a strange, quasi-religious experience and entire sections which seem to be straight out of a Jason Bourne novel, but which are supposedly true. I don’t want to offend Morehouse, and it certain seems like he’s been through trauma, but I just find his non-remote viewing experiences very hard to believe. As to the Star Gate part of the book, his stories seem to correspond pretty well with McMoneagle and Buchanan…but I just heard a rumor, which I can’t substantiate & which I don’t endorse, that claimed Morehouse lifted some of his RV stories from other Star Gate members. It’s an important work if you’re researching Star Gate, but probably not that valuable otherwise.

Monroe, Robert, “Journeys Out Of The Body”

Monroe’s first book, which includes his early experiences with OBEs, his work on Hemi-Synch, the early years of the Monroe Institute, and also stories of extra-dimensional exploration. An acknowledged classic of the genre, and a seminal work in the field of OBEs.

Monroe, Robert, “Far Journeys”

Unlike his first book, this is almost entirely an account of his explorations through different states of being & planes of reality. It includes very little that occurs on Earth, or even in “standard” OBEs. Basically, it reads like a second-rate science fiction story. If you’re a believer, it contains crucial metaphysical information, but if you aren’t a believer, it will probably make you even more skeptical about all of this stuff.

Monroe, Robert, “Ultimate Journey”

Monroe’s first book was “hey, here’s some weird stuff that happened to me, and here’s what I did to figure out what was going on.” His second book was “here’s a weird and important thing that happened to me, and everything I learned about the nature of reality from it”. Ultimate Journey follows the same trend, and is mostly “here’s my philosophy of life, based on what I learned from some incredibly weird experiences.”

This is the Back to the Future 3 of paranormal trilogies, the Godfather 3 of self-help, and the Ghostbusters 3 of metaphysics. For believers and scholars of the field, it’s regrettably a must-read. It has very little to offer anyone else.

Ronson, Jon, “The Men Who Stare At Goats”

Ronson started out meaning to write a book about the Star Gate program, but instead stumbled across a conceptually related program that had all sorts of even more fascinating aspects, some of which are relevant to Star Gate. The only direct connection to Star Gate is his discussion of one Star Gate vet, who made some very public, very outrageous, very wrong prediction, and who helped encourage the Heaven’s Gate mass suicide. Ronson briefly touches on the notion that this particular remote viewer, while claiming to be independent, is actually still on the government payroll, and is under orders to intentionally be wrong in order to discredit remote viewing. The whole chapter about Heaven’s Gate is absolutely worth reading if you’re interested in Star Gate, because it shows how dangerous taking this stuff seriously can be. In his book, John Alexander claims that Ronson got 90% of his facts wrong.

Russell, Ronald, “The Journey of Robert Monroe: From Out-of-Body Explorer to Consciousness Pioneer”

It’s a well-written, well-researched, and easy-to-read volume that doesn’t play softball — it makes it very clear that Monroe was a temperamental and paranoid asshole, especially towards the end of his life.

On the other hand, this is a book about a man who claimed to be a prophet but was almost certainly a fraud, and it never once doubts his core message. How do you write a whole biography about a man who claimed to have supernatural powers, and never once question those claims?

Who is this book even for? If you’re a skeptic, it has little to offer, whereas if you’re a believer, I doubt you’re going to be open to Russell’s warts-and-all approach. I found the book enjoyable and useful, because I’m working on a project about Monroe. If you’re in the same boat, this is a critical volume. If not…I don’t know.

Thurman, Robert (trans.), “The Tibetan Book of the Dead: The Natural Liberation Through Understanding in the Between”

Not directly related to either of the subjects at hand, although it does have a few references to other works dealing with a Tibetan Buddhist approach to OBEs. Partly a collection of brief essays providing an introduction to the concepts behind the Bardo Thodol, as well as a translation of the Bardo itself. Mostly included here because it’s kinda neat that Thurman is the father of Uma Thurman and the grandfather of Maya Hawke from Stranger Things, which has an ENORMOUS amount of overlap with Star Gate.

Vallée, Jacques, “Dimensions: A Casebook of Alien Contact”

Not directly related to our subjects, but a fascinating & deeply novel theory about UFOs. To me, some of his reasoning is rather flimsy, but his theory is absolutely worth considering. Included here both because of general overlap between our subjects & esoteric UFO-ology.