CHAPTER 11
End Game (2)
In the past, Monroe's judgment with regard to the residential programs had been inspired. Gateway and Guidelines had stood the test of time and the Lifeline program was in high demand. Sales of tapes continued to increase and the new Metamusic compositions were proving popular. In his relationships with program participants Monroe was, as ever, informal, friendly, willing to listen and take notice. Many were devoted to him and most of those who worked for him or with him admired his achievements and regarded him with great affection. But now that his judgment seemed less sure, those who knew him well, including most of the members of the board of advisors, felt a growing concern both for his own well-being and for the future of the Institute.
This concern was expressed at the board meeting in July 1993. In the past Monroe had shown scant enthusiasm for these sessions—in a previous meeting he had walked out halfway through—and the discussions had little or no effect on Institute policy. Now, however, he declared that he intended to draw the board into greater participation. Many words were spoken and many issues and questions raised, although few conclusions were reached. Observing him, it was clear to those present that Monroe's health was failing. He looked tired and older than his years. The meeting was shadowed by the question that no one was prepared to ask: “What was to happen to the Institute after Monroe's death?” The best that the advisors could do was to tighten up their own organization, voice their questions and concerns, and propose a further meeting in six months' time.
Although this was not the happiest of times for the Institute, one of the most effective items of publicity appeared midway between the dates of the two board meetings. This was an article entitled “Notes from the New Land,” by Murray Cox, published in the October 1993 issue of the glossy magazine Omni. Illustrated by fine photography—had Bob Monroe ever looked more relaxed or Skip Atwater more beatific?—the article took the readers through the author's own experience of a full Gateway Voyage, together with extracts from his journal and a clear and informative account of EEG brain mapping of the Hemi-Sync process. Cox also makes a provocatively thoughtful comment that, he says, occurred to him early in the week:
Lying in my cell on the second day I thought of Don Quixote whom Monroe reminds me of. Where the Don saw giants, Sancho Panza, his sidekick, saw windmills. Gazing into a simple barber's basin, the Don saw the Shield of Mambrino, and Sancho wondered, How can these things be? Monroe, I think, is a descendant of the Don, telling us there's more to reality than what we see or touch.
At the end of the course he summed up his thoughts and experiences:
For a week we knocked on doors, our own doors of perception, our belief systems—what we say is real or possible, what we dismiss as ridiculous, impossible. Some of us traveled out of our bodies on tours of the known universe—the coveted OBE. I didn't. Others encountered “entities” out there, beyond the known. I may have. Most of us opened worn steamer trunks and rummaged about in old memories. And each time I opened the trunk I was rewarded…After my brief sojourn at the Institute, I know I have the capacity to “see” beyond flesh or physical reality.
In December 1993 Monroe circulated a year-end report to all staff, advisors, and others associated with the Institute. The report opened with an admission that attempts to attract major grants had failed. While accumulating profits was not the prime goal, the vital need was “to maintain a solid financial base that not only provides tools for expansion, but at least a symbolic reward for outstanding performance.”
The report continued with a description of three long-term goals:
• To redefine and verify a new understanding of the process now identified as sleep.
• To identify and isolate the patterns of human thought that incite and control (M) Field energy.
• To bring forth practical solutions to the above that can be used to create a massive evolution in the human species.
With regard to the first of these, Monroe declared that the sleep state was not simply one of “physical restoration and rejuvenation” but that it had been proved and demonstrated “that human mind-consciousness can indeed exist…without signal input from the physical body,” and that such mental activity was fully retained in memory upon awakening. He listed a number of questions to do with dreams and nightmares, the unconscious, intuition, ideas and precognition, and channeled information as reported by the Explorers. The answers to these and other questions, he added, “may provide a profound change in the knowledge and behavior of Humankind.”
In Ultimate Journey, Monroe described the (M) Field as “the only energy field common to and operational both within and outside time-space and present in varying degrees in all physical matter.” Here he defined it as “the contemporary label for the power behind certain phenomena induced by the human mind with or without willful intent and awareness.” These phenomena included telepathy, prophecy, healing, affecting physical matter by using the mind, remote-viewing, and the measurable reduction of gravitational fields. Hitherto, he said, these had been almost always dismissed as fantasy, hallucination, fraud, or “help from a source beyond the capability of human mind-consciousness.” He now proposed that the Institute would organize research into (M) Field energy applications and make those results available to anyone who desired them.
What was going on in the mind of this elderly man, his physical capacities in decline, sitting lonely in his log cabin, seeking to find means to change “the knowledge and behavior of Humankind” and to create “a massive evolution in the human species”? Was he suffering from delusions of grandeur—believing that he was the one marked out to perform this massive task? Had he been affected by the attitude of those who attended his courses, some of whom regarded him as a kind of guru, or as a prophet to whose words the closest attention had to be paid? Or, as he recalled his experiences recorded in Ultimate Journey, had he been marked out as one chosen to know the Ultimate Truth? Yet in that book he had declared that he had no desire to become a guru or “spiritual” leader; that fame and fortune were not his motives; and that his role was merely that of a facilitator. Had his attitude changed since those words were written?
There can be no firm answers to these questions. Without Nancy to provide love and companionship, as well as sound common sense, without Scooter to talk with and confide in, isolated on the mountaintop with, apart from brief interludes, his own thoughts and his animal friends his only company, only too aware of the weakening of his physical body, it is not surprising that from time to time he lost contact with the realities, and also the limitations, of the audio technology he had created.
Seeking to fulfill his intentions, he propounded a number of practical solutions embodied in Interim Goals for 1994 and 1995. For 1994 these included promotion of Lifespan, Timeout, an idea for a new series to be called Going Home, reworking of the Gateway Experience albums, research into using Hemi-Sync with hyperbaric oxygen and with ultrasonic sound, and a raft of public relations proposals, including books, magazine articles, videos, conferences, and so on. The following year would see an expansion of Lifespan, to include among other areas past-life regression therapy and “penal inmate behavior modification.” Seven books or workbooks were proposed as well as “sonic and elf gardening,” which unfortunately was never explained. Reading this document gives the impression that Monroe was desperate to find new programs to encourage more participants, and also to sponsor publications that would bring in grants for research. It is as if he was casting here and there to fish up ideas and jot them down without having the time, or possibly the inclination, to think them through. Yet it was already obvious that programs based on the H-Plus concept, such as Lifespan, failed to attract participants, no matter how enthusiastically they were presented.
However, recent years had provided one undoubted success. The Lifeline program was in constant demand. It attracted would-be participants by providing the opportunity to experience Focus levels beyond the hitherto impassable barrier of Focus 21, thereby opening up a means of exploring the realms beyond the physical, freeing participants from the bonds of time and space while still enabling them to act as required and report on what they observed and did. Such reports were treated seriously, being collected and filed in the office; others were mailed in by Lifeline graduates who had continued their explorations back home, and who had met together in groups or teams with the intention of helping those approaching their transition or guiding others who had already moved on.
Whatever advisory board members thought of the goals set out in the report, these concerns were excluded from the discussions in the meeting in January 1994. For the first time since its formation Monroe did not take the chair, yielding it to Dr. Suzanne Morris, a long-standing member of the board. The primary purpose of the meeting, she explained, “was to explore alternative structures and functions for the Board and its members,” so that the advisors could support the Institute more effectively and efficiently.
Monroe outlined the changed structure of the Institute, commenting that the financial health of the nonprofit element was not good, adding that he was no longer able to subsidize it himself. While the Institute was never profit-oriented it had to become self-supporting, although he gave no clear indication as to how that could be achieved. Board members then questioned him about the internal organization, to which he replied that he had been working on this for six months with the intention of producing a formal organization chart, including job descriptions for all employees and setting out lines of communication between them. There was a pause and then—at last—he admitted to the severely depressed state he had been in since Nancy's death. There was more to come. He acknowledged that he had lost trust in many of those who were associated with the Institute and referred to certain “subtle take-over attempts” that he had become aware of during the past two years. As the Institute was not a profitable undertaking, he claimed that he could not understand anyone's reasons for wanting to have it. Board members suggested that to put an end to these attempts he should develop a long-range plan of succession to create continuity within the organization after his death, adding that it was important to deal with these matters when death was not the issue. To this, for reasons that became clear later, Monroe made no response.
Although not all the advisors may have been aware of it, Monroe's suspicions had some justification. Owing to the uncertainty about the future, some of the senior staff members had discussed plans to take over the running not of the Institute itself but of the laboratory after Monroe's death. They believed that there was far more potential in the laboratory setup than was being realized, potential that Monroe himself might not fully appreciate, and they wished to ensure that research, experiment, and their own employment would continue. They may have been misguided in avoiding any discussion of their plans with Monroe and were terrified lest he discover their intent—which almost happened when they spotted Monroe approaching the lab while they were holding a meeting there—and possibly also naïve, as without knowing the contents of Monroe's will and without the blessing of the surviving directors they would have no knowledge of how the company structure operated and no control over financial matters.
However, what Monroe seems to have told no one was that a successor had been in his mind at least since 1985, when on the flyleaf of Laurie's copy of Far Journeys he had expressed the hope that she would “take on her inheritance” when the time came. He felt he could not ask her formally because she was married, both she and her husband were working in Florida, and he could not be certain that she would agree. The question of succession was a cause of great worry for him, and he frequently discussed with Rita Warren the reasons why each staff member in turn was not up to the task. Nevertheless, the hope—a card that the old poker player had kept close to his chest—that on his death the Institute and its associated companies would pass to Laurie remained alive. Eventually it was fulfilled.
The Institute staff knew little or nothing about Laurie, although some of them had met her on one of her rare visits. She had a successful real estate business and, although she had taken several Gateway and Guidelines programs over the years and had been a participant in the first Lifeline, she had never held any position in the Institute structure. Then, in 1989, Monroe, who had kept her updated on what was going on, appointed her to the board of directors. But it is doubtful that any of the Institute's employees or advisors envisaged that it was Laurie who would be Monroe's chosen successor.
All this served to intensify Monroe's depressed state. While he was very hopeful that Laurie would accept her role when the time came, he had no clear idea of what might happen to the Institute should she reject it. His depression was becoming obvious, although he could still sparkle in his evening talks to program participants. Darlene Miller recalls that he would often be feeling tired and unwell when he arrived at the hall. One evening when she met him out of sight of the group to help him put on his lapel microphone, he seemed so weary that she asked him if he felt up to doing his talk. “I'll be fine,” he said. “Willy will help.” (Willy, Darlene later discovered, was the old-time showman aspect of Bob.) She watched him walk down the stairs into the hall. “In a kind of awe I observed the transformation which occurred,” she continued. “His shoulders straightened, his steps became purposeful and confident, the trademark twinkle returned to his eyes, and by the time he reached the front of the room and picked up his coffee cup he was clearly ready for ‘show time’ and proceeded to deliver an energetic talk and engaged enthusiastically with the group for an hour or more. As he left the hall that night he winked at me and whispered, ‘That Willy's really something, isn't he?’”
While Willy, or “Performer Bob,” as Leslie France named this aspect, was able to entrance the program participants, Monroe himself was becoming increasingly pessimistic about human beings in general. The predator theory that he had developed and had surfaced previously in dealings with apparently wealthy entrepreneurs from overseas now came to dominate his thinking. He felt he was being pressured by members of the board of advisors to name his successor and he became suspicious about their motives. He continued to think that certain staff members were plotting to take over when the time came. “I feel like a man dying on a desert plateau and watching the buzzards circling,” he once said to Mark. One of those who attracted his attention was Dave Wallis, whom he suspected was cooperating with others to assume control of the Institute after his death. Hitherto, Wallis had been one of the most valued members of the Institute and his warm, outgoing personality enabled him to gain the confidence of course participants and assuage any qualms they might have about what lay ahead of them. After he had spent many years as a consultant, Monroe had acknowledged his contribution by appointing him in 1989 to both the board of directors and the advisory board, and in the following year making him full-time systems engineer in charge of Hemi-Sync development.
As time passed, however, Monroe became concerned that Wallis was not producing the results that he had hoped for. This put him in a difficult position. He felt indebted to Dave for the valuable work he had done as a consultant and for the service he had provided in maintaining and improving the physical environment of the Institute, but as a full-time senior member of staff on what was, for the Institute, a generous salary, Monroe thought—or persuaded himself to think—that he was falling short of what was needed. It was not that Wallis lacked experience or technical ability but that, possibly because of his past experience at Lockheed, where ample funds for research were available, he sometimes acted as if problems could best be solved by spending more money on them than the Institute's funds could meet. In the hope of finding a way out of what was becoming a difficult situation, Monroe sent him on a course on fundraising, from which Wallis concluded only that the Institute lacked the structure and experience to succeed in this area. Then, without warning, early in 1994 Monroe sent him a devastating letter outlining the areas in which he claimed that Wallis had failed to merit his salary, dismissing him from his position and informing him that he was only permitted to remain on the payroll subject to certain restrictions that removed any authority he once had and reduced him to what was in effect a part-time member of the maintenance staff.
Wallis was deeply hurt. He considered that he had given many years of faithful service to the Institute and was responsible for much of the creation and success of the technology. He claimed not to understand what had happened. As he had been dealt with in writing and referred to Ron Harris if he had any questions rather than to Monroe himself, he felt that there was no point in taking the matter further. He resigned immediately—which was what Monroe had hoped he would do.
This episode reveals certain features of Monroe's management style at this stage in his life. If he was so unhappy about Dave Wallis's failings over the past three years, why had he not called him in to discuss them? In his letter he refers to various memos that Dave had sent him, but there is no sign that he responded to them at the time. He also refers to people who were plotting to deceive, cheat, and manipulate the Institute for their own personal gain and the implication is that he believed Wallis was among their number. But no evidence has been revealed that this belief had any justification. For the thousands of program participants who had met him, Dave Wallis was the warm and welcoming face of the Institute and his presence was greatly missed.1
In his address to the Professional Seminar in July 1994, Monroe seemed to be fumbling for words and to have little idea of what to say next. Only when he spoke of the two Buddhist monks who had attended a recent Gateway did he seem to recapture some of his old energy, referring to their acceptance of everything they had learned in the program, all of which, they declared, dovetailed with Buddhist philosophy. One other ray of sunshine that managed to penetrate the gloom was when the Wall Street Journal printed a front-page three-column piece on the Institute. Most of the journalists who came to Roberts Mountain worked for New Age, local, or specialist publications. To be taken seriously by such a prestigious journal, in a well-researched article with references to Du Pont, a member of the U.S. Senate, the military, and the head of a Buddhist temple, was something very different.
Replying to a question from Bob Ortega, the Journal reporter, Monroe declared that he no longer traveled out-of-body. Two days after Nancy's death, he said, he had made an attempt to visit her, but the experience had been so traumatic that he was unable to cope with it. He had described this in more detail in Ultimate Journey: “The result was an emotional explosion that included every nuance existing between two humans deeply in love, all up-front and simultaneous, without the limitations of time and physical matter.” It took him, he said, a week to recover. Then he made a second attempt, with a similar result. It was all too much. He resolved from then on to desist from out-of-body travel and to put up a shield to restrict any kind of nonphysical activity. Thus thirty-four years of exploration into the farthest reaches of consciousness came to an end.
Monroe's past experiences had made him aware that only those heavily addicted to physical life remained for long in the area of Focus 27. Nancy, he was certain, was not so addicted. That part of him he called his “I There” was assured that the freedoms she would be attracted to would draw her onward. By the time he had completed what he had to do and was ready to leave physical life, there was no telling where she might be. All he was certain of was that they would be reunited in the totality that, as he wrote in the final paragraphs of Ultimate Journey, would “wink out and pass through the Aperture” when Earth-time reaches the thirty-fifth century.
Mark Certo, because Monroe believed that he had no ambition to take over the Institute, still retained a good measure of Monroe's confidence. He told Mark how greatly he regretted spending so much time on Institute concerns instead of being with Nancy, and how sorry he was that he had never fulfilled his promise of taking her to Hawaii. He talked about his fascination with the Pacific islands. Years ago he had spent several months in Fiji, but eventually he became aware that the motivation that drove his need for success was melting away there and he had never returned. Reminiscing over his past made him feel the need to recover something of it, and he decided to make a visit to his childhood home in Lexington, Kentucky. This was the longest drive he had undertaken for some years and Ron Harris and Dick Savigny agreed to accompany him. He arranged to meet Emmett and Alice in the town, but the trip worked no magic. Monroe had been looking for something of the Lexington he remembered from the 1920s. They found the horse farms and the golf course where Bob once caddied, and then drove up and down the streets in the town center looking for their old house, the school they once attended, and the routes they walked when they were young. Watching him, Ron was moved by the innocent and childlike way Bob remembered and cherished those memories. Sadly, most of the district they once knew so well had been razed to the ground and replaced by a large shopping mall. Bob's spirits began to droop and he cut the visit short. As Emmett commented, he wasn't able to accept one of his basic quotes: “There is one thing that's certain—change.”
Then a few days later, much to Mark Certo's amazement, Monroe burst into the lab with a huge smile on his face. He had at last managed to knock into shape his idea for the new project, Going Home—one he was convinced could not fail. This was the Outreach project for which the seed had been sown years before by Ruth Domin of the Hospice of Chattanooga. Monroe now saw this program as one of self-controlled change, “designed to enable you to remember better how much more you are.” In addition, it would offer a means “whereby the individual can be helped to overcome the common fear of physical death.” As he explained it, the program would incorporate the basic structure of the Lifeline program, including the higher Focus levels. It was intended to provide a personal journey both for the person who was dying and for the family, friends, and caregivers who would be helped to understand and accept what was happening when a loved one was approaching death and would thus be enabled to provide appropriate support. Each would have their own set of taped exercises, allowing them to share their experiences of the afterlife as envisaged in the Lifeline program and affirmed by many of that program's participants. Hence, fear and apprehension need no longer be a part of the dying process.
This proposal created something as near an uproar as the Institute ever approached. The cost was prohibitive, as the series as originally envisaged would occupy twenty-four tapes. The release of higher Focus levels to the general public who had no previous experience of Hemi-Sync was running an unjustifiable risk. As Mark Certo put it: “It seemed as if one of the Ten Commandments was being shattered by Moses himself!” Monroe would have none of this. By recording different content on each side of a tape, the total required for the series could be reduced to twelve. And as for the higher Focus levels—they were no more, and no less, than markers for certain different states of consciousness within anyone's compass. All arguments were dismissed: Going Home would go ahead.
To provide authority to this concept, Monroe asked two old friends to record their views. Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, whose best-selling books, lectures, and life-changing workshops had created her worldwide reputation, had been a participant in the November 1991 Lifeline program, which she attended equipped with bars of Swiss chocolate, home-made cookies, and slices of Swiss cheese. She had responded enthusiastically, having on the last day of the program made her own contact with a woman and a child who had been killed by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and whom, she said, she had been able to escort to the Park in Focus 27. She came from her farm near Headwaters in the Shenandoah Mountains and joined Monroe and Mark Certo in the recording lab. With Monroe putting in the occasional question, she gave her views on how people should be allowed to die with dignity and in character according to how they lived. Their one disagreement was on the question of suicide. While Bob supported the right-to-die issue much discussed at the time in the press, believing that no rules or regulations should be imposed on anyone who wished their life to end, Elisabeth was adamant that suicide was not an option, maintaining that there were strong karmic repercussions that would come into play in the afterlife. This part of the conversation, while fascinating, was omitted from the final recording.2
The second contributor was Charles Tart, now professor of psychology at the University of California at Davis. Although commitments prevented him from traveling from the West Coast, Professor Tart spent several weeks working intensively with Monroe on the design of the series, scrutinizing and suggesting revisions on all the scripts sent to him, followed by lengthy discussions via telephone. One particular suggestion he made was to tone down some of Monroe's instructions from the authoritarian to the permissive. Tart submitted his contribution on tape, with Mark editing in Monroe's questions and the occasional affirming grunt or comment. Then Monroe added his own introduction. The three talks fill two sides of a cassette tape and are altogether fascinating, providing as they do the opportunity to hear three very different minds—leading minds of their day—discussing their ideas on this all-important subject.
With regard to the Going Home program itself, it is doubtful whether many individuals who are aware that they are approaching death have actually used the materials specifically intended for them. But the support exercises, especially when employed in a group setting, have proved of much value to relatives and caregivers, and even more so to those who have been bereaved. Like its parent program, Lifeline, it challenges assumptions, relieves anxieties, and, as many of its participants testify, enables contact to be made with those no longer in physical form. There are instances in both programs where participants have reported entering into each other's experience. Some have told of retrieving aspects of their own selves and reintegrating them into the whole. Both programs also tactfully demonstrate the limitations of certain belief systems.
In October 1994 a Lifeline program was in progress with Franceen King as lead trainer. During his evening meeting with participants, Monroe asked, as usual, if there were any questions. The first question came from the back of the room: “In which Focus state is the Gathering taking place?” (The Gathering is referred to in Far Journeys as “a very rare event—the conflux of several different and intense energy fields arriving at the same point in your time-space.”) Franceen was surprised as questions about the Gathering had often been asked soon after the publication of Far Journeys but hardly at all in recent years. To questions such as this Monroe's usual answer was “go find out,” but this time he gave a direct reply. “The Gathering is taking place in Focus 34 and 35.” Chatting with Monroe and another trainer a few days later, Franceen casually mentioned that it might be time to create a program that would take participants to the Gathering, but Monroe did not respond.
Some two weeks later Franceen, who as well as being a trainer was a licensed psychotherapist and an ordained minister in a church in Tampa, Florida, was asked to sit in on a psychic development class at her local church. During the evening a student declared that she had received a message for Franceen herself. To her astonishment, the essence of the message was that it was very important that she approach Bob Monroe as soon as possible about the new course she had suggested. Knowing that Monroe did not take kindly to being told what to do, Franceen was at first hesitant, but eventually she decided to send him a casually phrased memo including some ideas that had come to her and suggesting that he seek guidance about the possibilities. This she did in December when she returned to the Institute to train another program. Again there was no response, so towards the end of the week she asked him if he had read the memo. He had already decided to create such a program, he told her, and she could announce to the course that this new program would take participants to the Gathering in Focus 34/35. He asked the office to arrange and publicize dates for the new program, to be called Exploration 27, and referred to it in his talks to Lifeline groups, arousing so much enthusiasm that the first two programs were immediately fully booked. In the last piece he was to write for the Focus newsletter he explained that the program was designed for Lifeline graduates, adding that “it will truly examine in detail, and with as much documentation and validation as possible, human life beyond the physical.” He told Franceen that he would write all the scripts himself. But this was not to be, and in the event it was Franceen King and Darlene Miller who completed the task.3
One of the very few who occasionally ventured up the mountain to spend time with Monroe was George Durrette. For a while he failed to appreciate how unwell Monroe was, seeing that he drove to his office every day. But during the summer of 1994 he became concerned, noting on one occasion the difficulty Monroe had in trying to open a packet of doughnuts. Several times George's offers to drive to Nellysford to collect something to eat, or to take him down to his office, were rejected, Monroe insisting he was able to do this himself. Then during the summer months George, who was now visiting more frequently, became aware of a change. “I know he was failing because he wanted to get everything straight,” he recalled. “I knew he was going…because he was wanting me to stay there and he'd tell me you don't need to go anywhere, you sit right here and talk to me. He said, go over there and get your guys doing something and then you come on back.”
One evening about eight George drove up to spend time with Monroe and found him in a deeply depressed state. “He said there weren't no use in him hanging around no more with short days, sleeping all the time.” Monroe complained that no one came to visit him and he had no friends. George refused to accept this. He told him to ask Ed Sturz if he'd like to go out to breakfast and then Ed would invite him down to his house. Then he added: “Tomorrow you get up and I want you to call Dave Wallis and say, ‘Dave, let's go out to lunch.’” While Monroe was always on friendly terms with Ed, and breakfast with him presented no problem, it says much for the respect he had for George that he agreed to reestablish contact with the man he had so recently downgraded. Wallis, who had hoped above all else for reconciliation with Monroe, whom he had always regarded as a friend rather than a boss, accepted. The lunch went well, neither of them mentioning their parting, until Monroe himself raised the subject, implying that he had acted as he did because someone—he did not say who—had persuaded him to do so. Although the reason for this was not made clear, it was as good as an admission that he had been in the wrong. For Wallis, this meant more than words could say.
For several months Monroe had been communicating regularly with Laurie, calling her two or three times a week to share his problems and update her on matters at the Institute. As Christmas approached, Monroe invited her to visit. For four days they sat in the cabin and talked from morn until night. “It was a time where we laughed, cried, shared memories and related to each other as pure essence,” Laurie wrote afterwards, adding that her experiences during these sessions led to her creation two years later of a new program called Heartline.4 Since her childhood they had spent little time together as father and daughter. Laurie had followed her father's pattern in striking out on her own to make her way in life, but now it was as if they needed, even at this late stage, to get to know each other more thoroughly. Laurie had a record of success in her chosen career and Monroe, appreciating this, suggested that after his death she should stay in her occupation and oversee the Institute from Florida. It was clear to her that this was not possible. She was employed by an organization that managed forty-five shopping centers in Florida and elsewhere and she also ran her own real estate company. Combining all this with presiding over The Monroe Institute and its associated companies was a likely recipe for failure in both regards. In any event, her choice had already been made.
At a board of directors meeting, Monroe asked Laurie if she would accept the nomination of president of the Institute. She agreed, and became its president on January 1, 1995. From then on she traveled from Florida whenever she could to spend three or four days talking with Bob in the cabin. He had first told her about his out-of-body experiences when she was ten years old and, as with many children, she thought that everyone flew around out of his or her body so she was in no way surprised. In the early days of experiments she had acted as a kind of unofficial Explorer, trying out new procedures in the laboratory, but since then they had spent little time together. These visits now enabled them in many ways to rediscover each other.
Towards the end of February Monroe paid a surprise visit to Scooter and Joe. Since Scooter's resignation he had spent little time with them, feeling, quite unjustifiably, as if he himself had been slighted. For many years they had been paying him monthly installments on the acreage they had bought from him to build their house. Now he absolved them from the remainder of the balance that they owed, handing over a document showing that he had been repaid in full. To Scooter it seemed as if he was putting his own house in order, ready for his final journey into nonphysical reality. While he never said so much in words, she understood this gesture to mean that everything between them was now well.
Laurie Monroe
Early in March, Monroe developed pneumonia. He was driven to hospital in Charlottesville, returning home after a few days with a supply of medications and sufficiently recovered to work in his cabin. Then, on Tuesday, March 14, he called Mark Certo to have lunch with him at Truslows'. Saying he wasn't feeling too good, he asked Mark to drive. They had burgers and fries as usual, which seemed to revive his energy. They crossed the road to the grocery store. Mark grabbed a basket, expecting that Monroe would fill it with essential items such as butter, eggs, and so on. They walked up and down the aisles with Monroe stopping now and then, murmuring, “Hmmm, this looks good,” and filling the basket with a selection of junk food, finishing with a jar of cold remedy and a bottle of Phillips Milk of Magnesia, grumbling that he was having a hard time with indigestion. Mark drove him home and helped him unpack what he'd bought and put it away. It was then time for his afternoon nap. “I'll see you tomorrow,” he said to Mark as he turned to leave.
That same day Laurie was due to fly out of Tampa at seven in the morning to arrive at Charlottesville by eleven. The flight was cancelled, so she called her father to say she'd be late. He was, she said, furious—a very unusual reaction—and kept repeating that she had to come. She arrived late in the afternoon and found him in the cabin making out his “to do” list for the week. He insisted that he felt fine, although she did not find this convincing.
A Lifeline program was in progress and, as was his usual practice, Monroe drove down to the Center on the Monday evening to have dinner before talking to the participants. Franceen King, who was one of the trainers for the program, went to the employees' dining room to see how he was. He said that he felt Nancy had been visiting him during the previous two weeks, but he would not allow her to come close to him as he was afraid of what might happen. Franceen had been reading an article on a process known as instrumental communication and asked him if he would be more comfortable in seeking to communicate with Nancy in this way. This seemed to attract his interest, although he said he had never had any success with this in the past.5
Franceen noticed that he seemed very weak and was unable to steady his hand to light a cigarette. She left to prepare for the program, expecting him to follow in a few minutes. But he did not appear. The second trainer, Bob McCulloch, went to see what was happening, returning to say that Monroe would be along shortly. But he did not arrive. Having checked again, McCulloch told the group that Bob needed to rest that evening but would try to come and talk to them later in the week. He drew Franceen aside, saying that Bob had fallen twice after leaving the dining room and he had told him to go back home.
The next day Laurie arranged to bring her father to the evening session. They met the trainers in the dining room, where he asked them how Barbara Brennan, the well-known healer who was taking part in the Lifeline course, was doing. Then Laurie took him across to the hall, where Franceen helped him fix his microphone and said he could lean on her for support when descending the stairs. “Well, we don't want to make this look too bad,” he murmured, declining her offer.
Laurie joined the course participants, deeply concerned by the cautious way Monroe walked over to his chair and by the weakness of his voice. He talked about the history of Lifeline, answered various questions about the higher Focus levels, and told the group that three of the H-Plus exercises had been sustaining him in his weakened state. Suddenly, he asked if there were any healers present. Some of the participants pointed to Barbara, who said she would be willing to do a session with him although he might prefer to have this in privacy. Bob said he was happy to do it there and then. While a massage table, pillows, and blankets were being fetched, one of the participants walked over to Bob and began energy healing work with him.
When all was ready the overhead fluorescent lights were turned off. Monroe was helped onto the table and the course members watched as Barbara's hands moved over his body. Looking closely, Franceen observed what she described as “massive releases of various kinds of energy formations from Bob's body.” Barbara talked quietly to Monroe throughout the treatment, explaining that she was clearing and restructuring the lower chakras of the auric body and clearing the pancreas and liver organs. She also told him that she was untangling, organizing, and rebuilding some of the “cords” that he had attached to various people and events in his life. He said that it was fine for her to do whatever she had to do, adding that he was willing for his life to be open and assuring her that he was basically a good person. It seemed to Franceen that Barbara was clearing old patterns of guilt and judgments.
At one point Barbara said quietly, “You see who's here, don't you?” Monroe nodded. “Do you hear what she's saying to you?” He nodded again.
After about forty-five minutes, Bob indicated that he wanted to end the session. He asked Barbara if she knew where she had learned her healing approach, but before she could reply told her that it was very many thousands of years ago in a civilization where she was a healer named Chiana. He now seemed stronger in both speech and energy. He joined in a closing circle with the group and thanked them for their patience and participation.
Laurie drove her father home to find that Maria had driven over from Richmond and had prepared his favorite meal of fried pork chops, mashed potatoes, country gravy, and a salad. He ate little. In reply to Laurie's question if he felt any different after the session, he uttered only one word: “Somewhat.” The three of them sat around talking about the past, comparing memories and contrasting viewpoints. At eleven Monroe went to the counter to take his medication. As he stood there it seemed to Laurie as if his energy was draining away from his physical body. Then his knees gave under him and he began to sink to the floor. Maria and Laurie caught him, helped him to his bedroom, gave him his medication and a glass of orange juice, and made him comfortable in bed.
When his daughters entered Bob's room next morning, they found him sitting on the edge of his bed staring out of the window. It was, they both felt, as if he was having a nonverbal conversation with someone unseen. He took his medication and said he wanted to stay where he was. Barbara Brennan had offered to do a follow-up session with him if he so desired and he agreed to see her early that afternoon. A massage table was found and set up in the room next to his bedroom. When the treatment was finished there was a period of silence. Then as Barbara rose to leave she turned to Bob and said, “See you later, Ashaneen.” “See you later, Chiana,” he replied. It was a moment of recognition, Laurie later wrote, “a recognition of a part of the wholeness from where we originate…a recognition of spirit.”
Monroe seemed exhausted, lying on a sofa, drifting in and out of sleep. He roused himself to insist that he should go down to the Center to give his Thursday night talk to the program participants. This was clearly out of the question. Laurie, having studied him closely, decided to call his doctor, who told her to take him to the hospital immediately for a blood analysis. Bob, who always hated the thought of hospitals, agreed to go on condition that Laurie and A. J. would take him and stay with him there.
They arrived at the hospital at 6:45 P.M. After some delay an examination room was found and oxygen was administered. Bob's spirits quickly recovered. He grumbled half-seriously about how hospitals always kept you waiting and then complained that he was hungry. The doctor agreed to admit him, but there was another lengthy delay while the nurses searched for a room where he could stay overnight. The only vacancy turned out to be a private room in the cardiac ward. Unhappy at this, Laurie recalled the feeling of loss she had experienced as an eight-year-old child when her father suffered his heart attack. Then, as he was settled in, this feeling was replaced by a sense of gratitude that she was able to be with him. Before she left, they expressed their love for each other—the last words they shared in physical existence.
Laurie and A. J. arrived back at the Gift House about 12:30 A.M. Maria had already left to return to Richmond. A. J. went to bed while Laurie, anxious but at the same time feeling that she had support, prepared herself a cup of soup. Standing at the kitchen counter she suddenly felt the presence of what she sensed as “a familiar energy.” She turned around and felt as if “a vast number of sparkling lights” was moving towards her and surrounding her. To Laurie this signified the presence of Nancy assuring her that everything would be all right. It was a sign to her, she believed, that her father was making his conscious choice to die.
At 4 A.M. the hospital called to say that Monroe was now in Intensive Care and on a respirator. Angry and upset because she knew that he was wholly against any artificial means of life support, having said that he wanted to die on his own terms and conditions, Laurie asked for it to be removed. This, she was told, could not be done without her signature. She woke A. J. and they called Scooter and Maria as they drove to the hospital. On arrival, Laurie, A. J., Scooter, and Joe gathered in the waiting room, talking, making a few jokes to relieve the tension, reflecting on how they all felt that Nancy was ready to welcome him. Maria, who had just gone to bed when Laurie called, drove back from Richmond to join them. One by one they went into the IC unit to have time with him, to express their grief and thank him for all he had done for them. The respirator was removed. Monroe was unconscious, although the monitors showed his body was still active and alive.
After the family had made their individual farewells, they gathered together and held hands around the bed, wishing him a good voyage as he crossed over. Some time later he stopped breathing and the monitors flat-lined. They called a nurse, who went to fetch a doctor to certify that he was dead. After a couple of minutes, to the surprise of the watchers, Monroe suddenly took a huge breath and the monitors began to register. The watchers wondered if he was about to come to, but after a few moments his breathing once more stopped. Again the nurse was called—and again his breathing resumed. It began to seem as if Monroe was doing what he used to do—going out of his body, checking what it was like out there, and then coming back. Three times this happened until, shortly after nine on the morning of St. Patrick's Day, Friday, March 17, his breathing finally ceased. The family hugged him one last time, hugged each other, and pledged to keep strong as a family, deeply sad but also relieved that he was free from his physical troubles and reunited with his beloved Nancy. Laurie said later that she felt he made the decision to leave his physical body three hours earlier.
Towards the end of Ultimate Journey, reflecting on Nancy's death, Bob Monroe had questioned if it was possible to live in two worlds—with Nancy in Focus 27 and Here in a lonely house. Then he recalled what another voice from his “I There” had insisted: “Once the transition is made, only the heavily addicted remain closely attached to the physical life they have just departed, according to your data and others. For most, the resonance/interest/attachment begins to fade almost immediately, some slowly, some rapidly. But it does.”
For the first half of his life it seems that no thoughts of there being anything that might be described as an afterlife ever entered Monroe's head. He was focused on earning money and on enjoying himself—indulging himself perhaps—flying, gliding, sailing, driving fast cars, and, it might be added, getting married. “How many times have you been married, Ron?” he once asked Ron Harris. “Just once,” was the reply. Monroe burst out laughing. “You're a smart boy, aren't you?” he rejoined. Perhaps late in life he could afford to laugh at his earlier marital ventures. But it was not only his out-of-body experiences that caused him to change direction. Without the love, support, tolerance, and consistency of Nancy Penn, he might still have created the Institute but it is very unlikely that it would have radiated the warmth, the style, the feeling of “a home with a heart” that not only welcomes and embraces those who visit it but calls so many of them back time and again.
It is not easy—perhaps it is not possible—to categorize Bob Monroe. Ron Harris made a bold attempt at summing him up: “Author, musician, businessman, land developer, cattle farmer, poker player extraordinaire, naturally curious scientist, philosopher, etc.…in short, a true renaissance man!” Like many renaissance men, as history demonstrates, he could be intolerant, peremptory, and capable at times of serious misjudgment. Unlike many of the New Age gurus who were his contemporaries, he was unpretentious, was unassuming, and had no desire to be set on a pedestal—or even on a soapbox. He was essentially, as Harris says, “a man of simple tastes whose favorite lunch was a cheeseburger and fries, followed by a cigarette or two, at the local ‘greasy spoon,’ rather than any ‘high end’ fare available nearby.”
For George Durrette, who knew him for over thirty years, who began by cooking his hamburgers, who accompanied him to auctions, ran his farms, played poker with him, and always told him what he thought, “he was the best friend I ever met in my life.”
And for Leslie France, “he was the most frustrating, perverse, childish man to work for at times. I once calculated that up to fifty percent of my creative energy on the job went to dealing with the ‘Monroe Effect.’ When it tipped over the fifty percent mark, it was time for me to go.” She continues: “As consuming as those moments were, they are the little picture. In the big picture, Bob Monroe changed my life in a major and positive way. His books, Hemi-Sync, the Institute, his brilliance and creativity—there are no words that can accurately evoke the depthless thanks I owe, and gladly give, to Bob for sharing himself with me in a meaningful way. I am so much more myself than I would have been without his influence and guidance. Wow! I really can't imagine my life without Bob Monroe.” There are countless thousands who would echo that last sentence.
In his final decade Monroe had developed two major aims: to demonstrate that death was not a terminus but a gateway, and, using his own words, “ to create a massive evolution in the human species.” In the first of these aims he succeeded, as far as many of his readers and the great majority of his Lifeline graduates were concerned—and to those can also be added many of those, in the United States and countries overseas, who have experienced Going Home. In the second, it looked as if he had failed. His attempts to develop the H-Plus material into comprehensive programs that would radically affect those with the good fortune to experience them came to naught. Yet it may be that the failure was more apparent than real. He placed in the hands of others the audio technology known as Hemi-Sync that he had discovered and developed. These others—doctors, teachers, psychologists, research scientists, composers, and other professionals among them—took this gift and worked with it. The applications of Hemi-Sync, when allied to their professional skills, proved to be manifold, including such areas as pain management, learning and memory, hyperactivity, support for cancer patients, stress relief, sleep patterns, pregnancy and childbirth, depression, and many more. While “massive evolution” may be an overstatement, the benefits of this discreet and noninvasive technology are already apparent and increase exponentially year by year.
As for Monroe himself, consider some words of William James.
I have no doubt whatever that most people live, whether physically, intellectually or morally, in a very restricted circle of their potential being. They make use of a very small portion of their possible consciousness, and of the soul's resources in general, much like a man who, out of his whole bodily organism, should get into a habit of using and moving only his little finger…We all have reservoirs of life to draw upon, of which we do not dream.
Bob Monroe was one who was able to draw upon those reservoirs. More than that: he gave others the encouragement and the means to do likewise. This was the gift he brought back from his hero's journey.
Notes
1. Dave Wallis remained on the New Land, continuing to build his new house on a wooded slope overlooking the creek. He became involved in an ambitious and potentially dangerous project to contact the afterlife that required some complicated electrical engineering. In January 1998 he crashed his car on the approach road to the Institute, and, while hospitalized, it was discovered that he had been suffering from a tumor on the brain. He made a good recovery, but he had to undergo a second operation in midsummer. His condition deteriorated in the fall and he died the evening before Thanksgiving Day, 1998.
2. Elisabeth was both hated and feared by many of the local backwoods fundamentalists, who tried to force her to leave by such actions as covering the entrance to the drive to her farm with broken glass and even shooting from the hill above at the log cabin she had built for visitors to stay in, in the belief that she slept there herself. When she was involved with seeking to remove babies of parents with AIDS from the hospital (“pincushion babies” she called them, as they were subject to many investigations and procedures), they refused to follow her into the local store, terrified of receiving in their change any money she had handled lest it carried the AIDS virus. In October 1994 her house was burned down and her llamas were shot. No one was ever convicted, although a customer in the store was heard to say, “We've gotten rid of the AIDS lady!”
3. Darlene Miller commented that while she was working on the scripts she was aware of the presence of Bob and Nancy helping her.
4. Heartline is a graduate program, described as “for those who are serious about looking within. It is about creating ‘heartspace’: self-love, self-trust, and non-judgmental acceptance. It is about allowing, understanding, and moving beyond feelings into the transcendental.”
5. Instrumental transcommunication (ITC), which incorporates electronic voice phenomena (EVP), studies the various ways in which, according to the survival hypothesis, “the dead”—that is, those of us no longer in our physical bodies but existing in nonphysical reality—seek to communicate with the living, including through the media of audio recorders, telephones, television, computers, and video recorders. Listen in, and draw your own conclusions.