6

Through a Gateway, Lightly

Changes are the epitome of Unknowns—the greatest of fear generators.

—Robert A. Monroe, Ultímate Journey (1994)

If you are not prepared to step through the doorway of change, you can't grow with the learning process.

—Joseph McMoneagle, Mínd Trek (1993)

“But Becoming What I Do Not Know”

I felt as if I'd been dropped inside a labyrinth, built with invisible walls. One minute I was happily strolling along in the clear. Next, I was flat on my backside, gazing up at the sky. Walls I thought to be barriers served as guardrails gently guiding me to yet another opening in the crumbling edifice of my old beliefs. I sensed certain patterns in this process of disillusionment, readjustment, or whatever one wishes to call it, though I could not say what they were.

I'd experience a series of dreams, coincidences, or inner “knowings,” all related and highly meaningful, apparently heading toward a conclusion. Then—nothing, as if a joke had been told with the punch line omitted. At times, then, I seemed to be flowing smoothly along a specific path. Yet, if pressed, I would have admitted I hadn't the slightest idea as to my direction: north or south, east or west, up or down. I kept my eyes peeled for clues, signs—or maybe even a helping hand.

Then, by “chance,” I came across a book that gave me some encouragement. It was One White Crow by Dr. J. Norman Emerson and George McMullen.

Dr. Emerson had been an eminent, if (by his own admission) fairly conventional scholar. Revered as the “father of Canadian archaeology,” he was senior archaeologist and professor of anthropology at the University of Toronto. He was also the founding vice president and a past president of the Canadian Archaeological Association. No mean honors! Dr. Emerson, in short, had a fine career and a splendid reputation.

Then one day the professor discovered that his friend, George McMullen, could psychometrize objects. Simply by holding some ancient coins in his hands, George could gather details about their past—things Dr. Emerson didn't know but that subsequently checked out. From that time on, George collaborated with Dr. Emerson in his field research, providing on-site guidance and other information that was accurate, in Dr. Emerson's scientific estimation, about eighty percent of the time.

Dr. Emerson also courageously published and presented papers about “intuitive archaeology” at meetings of learned societies. But privately, the professor knew even more, for he had begun having psychic experiences. Mostly, these were helpful synchronicities that he could not write off as coincidences. The line between him and his work, the subject and object of research, became increasingly blurred. The professor had become part of his own inquiry and was changing in unpredictable ways. As he freely admitted (in an unpublished paper), sometimes it felt more like magic than science:

I am not the same person who began these studies two and a half years ago. Each passing day seems to have its impact and to initiate change. I very much sense that I am part of a situation and/or events which are part of a process or state of becoming—yet becoming just what I do not clearly see. The state of change is almost too fast and complex to grasp in a tangible, organized way.

Many things have happened which have almost daily urged me on in my pursuit. Much as I have endeavoured to follow a policy of go slow and take it easy the whole matter seems to snowball and develop at an ever-increasing rate. There is something mysterious working behind the scenes that I cannot grasp and define, nor yet can I dismiss.

Events have proceeded forward in such a manner that I have developed a daily attitude of anticipation and expectancy—what will happen today that will help develop the program? A phone call? A letter? A new person that I will meet? An old friend with a relevant story to tell me? A challenging article? A new book that presents knowledge that is helpful? Something like this does happen almost daily.

Such events, as I have suggested, appear to be more than just coincidental and also seem to form a pattern. This raises the question…What is the ultimate purpose, the real priority, the possible and foreseeable end of this work? I am really no closer to an answer, for I seem—even myself—to be involved in a process of “becoming.” But becoming what I do not know.1

Dr. Emerson had described my own predicament to a T. I, too, was bewildered. I, too, felt the process was taking me somewhere, all right. But exactly where—and how and why—was a mystery. Most of the time, the best I could do was hang on for the ride.

Kaito's Gifts

More and more, I was burdened with shadowy presentiments of death. For example, one night I dreamt that someone blew up an entire block of a nearby town. The downtown buildings had been reduced to piles of rubble. The scene resembled a war zone. It was realistic and matter-of-fact, as if I were watching a television news report.

The following evening on the actual TV news, the anchorman reported that an entire neighborhood in a town near Mexico City had been leveled by an explosion in a fireworks factory. Pictures showed that the site resembled a war zone.

One morning, I went into a spontaneous reverie as I lay in bed. Behind the velvety blackness of my closed eyelids, I saw the word TRIP spelled out in large block letters of swirling luminescent colors—red, green, orange, and purple. The letters looked like candy canes. Suddenly the T fell over on its side like a drunken sailor, leaving only the letters RIP standing. Instantly, I knew that someone would soon be taking a final trip, to rest in peace. A day or so later, I received word that my great-uncle had died.

Not long afterward, I dreamt I visited the house of a distant cousin, Benny, whom I hadn't seen or spoken to in years. His house was packed with boisterous party-goers. Strangely, Benny wasn't there. Several days later, I learned that he died the day that I had this dream.

All this death business was starting to spook me. I needed someone who could give me some perspective on my wanderings in the labyrinth. So I visited a psychic friend who gave me a “reading.” Among other things, she informed me that I had a helpful “spirit guide” named Arthur. She added that I would soon receive some confirmation of this.

I had forgotten all about Arthur when, several days later, I flipped on the car radio only to hear an advertisement that made reference to King Arthur slaying a dragon. (I hadn't heard the ad before this.) Neat coincidence, I mused. But so what?

The next day I was discussing the concept of love in one of my classes. I briefly thought of introducing the Arthurian romances as an example, but somehow I got sidetracked. Then Jerry, one of my favorite students that semester, raised his hand.

“Did you just say King Arthur?” he asked, looking befuddled.

I was dumbstruck. I just stared at Jerry, unable to respond.

“No, I didn't,” I finally managed to say, “but I sure was thinking about him!”

More and more I began to understand that the wall separating the private and public spheres is largely a social convention. In truth, this wall is more like a semipermeable membrane. Telepathy, sympathy, synchronicity, or call it what you will, began occurring with increasing frequency. At times, it was unnerving.

One morning, I was working in my college office, trying to make sense of a recent dream. I had dreamt that I was being operated on by two shadowy beings. One of them held me down while the other wielded a strange, horseshoe-shaped device with a crystal tip—like a pair of calipers—to mark off a spot on my shoulder. Then, with a power drill in hand, he proceeded to drill right through my shoulder. Oddly, I felt no pain. At the same time, in my mind's eye, I was shown a blueprint for what the two mysterious shadow beings were doing: They were replacing all of my bones with interlocking metal bars.

Through research I discovered that some individuals on the verge of becoming tribal shamans have vivid, sometimes horrifying, visions or dreams of being rebuilt from the inside out—so-called bone dreams. What follows is a description of such an experience as recorded by that great student of shamanism, the Romanian scholar Mircea Eliade:

For example, a Yakut shaman, Sofron Zatayev, states that as a rule the future shaman “dies” and lies in the yurt for three days without eating or drinking. Formerly the candidate went through the ceremony three times, in which he was cut to pieces. Another shaman, Pyotr Ivanov, gives further details. The candidate's limbs are removed and disjointed with an iron hook; the bones are cleaned, the flesh scraped, the body fluids thrown away, and the eyes torn from their sockets. After this operation all the bones are gathered up and fastened with iron [italics mine]2

The “bone dream” was clearly a symbol of a transformation of awareness—cutting to the bare bones, so to speak—and the similarity to my dream was startling. Was I tapping into another archetype? Was I in store for that kind of change?

Just then I was startled by a knock on my office door.

“Come in,” I announced, as I put my journal aside.

The door opened. My visitor was Kaito, a quiet Japanese student who sat behind Jerry in the philosophy class. I motioned for him to come in and sit down.

Kaito told me that he had come to this country to study English. But what he wanted to talk about was Socrates' guardian angel—his daimon, the mysterious divine voice that had spoken to him since childhood, protecting and prophetically warning him of potential danger ahead.

“I think I also have a daimon,” Kaito confessed somewhat sheepishly. Even as a young boy, he indicated that he had seen and heard things that others did not—ghosts. (Eventually, he would tell me the story of his boyhood encounter with the spirit of the murdered man in the park kiosk that I recounted in chapter 4.)

“The other world is out there, on the other side of the door,” Kaito stated matter-of-factly, gesturing at my office door. “Spirits knock. You can choose to open or not. It's up to you.”

“Yes, I believe that,” I said.

“I think maybe it runs in my family,” Kaito continued. Then he told me a story about his mother, who still lives in their small village in Japan. One day she was out walking. Passing by a neighbor's house, she was suddenly overcome with intense feelings of shame and anguish. She did not believe that these feelings were hers. Something told her that they belonged to the people who lived in the house, whom she did not know well. A horrible thing happened there, she said to herself with a shiver. As she hurried home, she felt as if she were fleeing the presence of Evil itself.

Later she learned what had happened. The man who owned the house, a shopkeeper, had taken out a high-interest loan with the Japanese mafia (Yakuza) to prop up his failing business. When he couldn't repay the loan, he was found hanging from the rafters in the house. His son, who ran a construction business, vanished without a trace, Jimmy Hoffa style. The rest of the family left town soon after.

Having told me about his mother, Kaito was now ready to tell me his story.

“One day I was taking a nap,” Kaito began. “Before I awoke I felt someone on my body. This one was holding my arm, not letting me move. So I thought that I needed to struggle with this one.” This being took the form of a white shadow that had a female shape. Somehow Kaito knew that this shadow was the spirit guide whose voice he had heard ever since he was a little boy, informing and instructing him. But now, for the first time, he was seeing her and feeling her powerful presence.

They communicated telepathically, he said.

“I asked her why she was on my body and holding my arms,” Kaito continued. “She told me that she was holding my body because I might abuse my power or skills to do selfish favors. Also, she warned me if I abused my power, it would take over and control me. So, I asked her, ‘If I have control over myself, what will happen to me?' She said, ‘You may keep your power.' Then I said, ‘How am I going to do that?' And she said, ‘Have good morals!' I accepted that because it seemed to me that I had no choice. Just like, ‘Take it or leave it.' Then she disappeared.”

A look of relief washed over Kaito's face. “I don't know,” he mused, shaking his head. “It's strange. Maybe I am a shaman.” Then, grinning, he wagged his finger at me.

“Maybe you are a shaman!” Kaito exclaimed gleefully.

I was speechless, though I knew Kaito would have no idea why.

“But, you know,” he added seriously, shaking his head, “it's a big responsibility.”

“You won't believe this,” I finally managed to say after a long pause. “But just before you came in this morning, I was sitting here working on a dream I'd had recently. It was about us all being shamans now.”

Suddenly, all the pieces fell into place. Then Kaito said goodbye, leaving me to my musings. I now knew why the shadow beings were holding me down (just as Kaito's spirit guide had done to him), and why they were drilling my shoulder, of all places.

Why, then, the shoulder? The shoulder, after all, is a prime symbol of doing one's duty, of stepping up to the plate. The Greek Titan Atlas is shown carrying the globe on his shoulders. In ordinary conversation, we speak of individuals who shoulder (or fail to shoulder) their responsibilities, or of an acquaintance with stooped shoulders who seems, like Atlas, to be bearing the weight of the world.

Mircea Eliade also suggests a specific association of the shoulder with shamanism. He reads the ancient Greek myth of Pelops (in which a missing shoulder plays a prominent role) as a symbolic tale of shamanic initiation, illustrating the shamanic process of death and resurrection (as well as the dismemberment-bone reconstruction motif).3

As for the myth: You will recall that Tantalus, Pelops's father, killed his son Pelops, dismembered him, and then served the remains to the gods for dinner. The Olympians caught on to Tantalus's perverse deception, but not before one of the gods (just who is in dispute) inadvertently nibbled a bit of “Pelops stew”—a shoulder. So when the gods restored Pelops to life (Tantalus, of course, was punished severely in the underworld for his perfidy), they had to fashion for Pelops a new shoulder—a prosthesis—made of ivory.⁴

Pelops, brought back to life and changed “in his bones,” so to speak, had new responsibilities to shoulder. Just as Kaito understood, enlarging our awareness, increasing our sensitivity is a huge burden. Are we up to the task? Today we are all called upon to play our part. No longer can “magic” be left in the hands of a select few—an esoteric or priestly elite. We must all learn to become healers. We must all reestablish our link to the whole and experience ourselves as part of everything, connected by the invisible bonds. For everything is depending on us. The stakes couldn't be higher.

A few days passed uneventfully. One morning there was another knock on my office door. It was Kaito. After exchanging greetings, he shyly handed me two gifts he had purchased during a recent visit home to his village in Japan. He explained that his mother had insisted that he repay me for the “kindness” of listening to his stories.

First I opened a small box. It contained a wooden plaque bearing the comically fierce visage of a beady-eyed, long-nosed, red-faced demon. Kaito explained that this was no ordinary monster. It was the image of a local deity who acts as the guardian of wisdom. One must wrestle with the god to obtain his treasure (as all true philosophers know so well).

As I unfurled what I thought was a poster, Kaito informed me that it was a Japanese calendar for the coming year. I couldn't take my eyes off the front cover. It was a delicate painting of a peaceful scene, with lots of blank space in the Zen style. Three long-eared, snow-white rabbits (or hares) lazed about, looking rather satisfied. I felt a jolt, reminded of my rabbit dream of years before and the three white baby bunnies nestled in the womb of the kitchen sink.

But the rabbits in the calendar were no infants. They were mature adults.

I stared at the painting. Clearly, I was being sent a message. Only what was it?

After recovering my composure, I broke the silence by thanking Kaito for his gifts. Then I explained vaguely that the rabbits held a special significance for me.

“Oh, yeah?” he asked rhetorically. “In the Chinese Zodiac, this is the year of the rabbit.”

I was relieved when Kaito then said good-bye. Alone once more, I sank back into my chair to ponder the meaning of the message.

“Ripeness is all,” as Shakespeare said. Clearly, the time for something had come. An auspicious moment had arrived. A process set in motion almost twenty years before, when I first had the telepathic rabbit dream, was reaching fruition. My three baby rabbits were all grown up now. I figured this meant that the time was ripe for me to make a move. Now I just had to figure out what that move was.

Harder still, now I would have to trust my intuition to be my guide.

Maiden Voyage

Several months later, I received some welcome news: I had been awarded a modest research grant. It was not all the money I'd requested, but at least it would give me the impetus to begin work on my new research project: the philosopher as shaman.

In my grant proposal, I'd said that creative thoughts spring from the depths—not from old-time religious “faith” or the unquestioning acceptance of beliefs delivered by external authorities, but from one's own Exceptional Human Experiences. Real philosophy is inspired. It is also unafraid of boldly investigating the mysterious sources of that inspiration, even if they seem to defy rational comprehension. After all, how can our understanding grow if it isn't stretched? To dismiss outright or ignore the nonrational basis of intellect is the epitome of narrow-minded, bone-headed stupidity….

All of which sounded fine as academic rhetoric. But as Nietzsche declared, the true philosopher must be willing to be his own guinea pig, his own experiment. Abstract theory is not enough. So I knew I had to go to the Source myself. Nothing less would do.

I now knew what I had to do. I contacted The Monroe Institute (TMI), a nonprofit research and educational center nestled in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia, and enrolled in its famed six-day Gateway Voyage program. I'd wanted to do this for years, but kept putting it off. It was as if some part of me knew that I wasn't ready. Now I was getting the green light.

I had long admired the late founder of TMI, Robert A. Monroe. He was a most reasonable man who, starting in the late 1950s, found himself caught up in a most unreasonable situation. Bob Monroe was a straight-laced, successful radio and television executive and entrepreneur who began, quite involuntarily and much to his initial horror, to leave his physical body whenever he tried to take a nap or fall asleep.

Nothing like this had ever happened to him before. He possessed no frame of reference to understand the out-of-body (OBE) phenomenon. Fearing that he might be suffering from a brain tumor or some other physical or mental malady, Monroe sought the counsel of physicians and psychiatrists. After receiving repeated assurances of his health and stability, he began to calm down enough to want to investigate his wild talent.

A doctor friend suggested he visit an ashram in India to study with yogis, some of whom, according to the doctor, deliberately try to induce OBEs. This was news to Monroe, yet he balked at the suggestion. He could not see himself abandoning his critical reason and apprenticing himself to gurus. His own solution would have to be palatable to his modern, Western mind-set. There could be no relinquishing of personal autonomy, no “erasing” of individual ego, no silencing of nagging left-brain questions.

After verifying for himself that his OBE episodes were real (a lengthy process he described in 1971 in his first book, journeys Out of the Body5) and even subjecting himself to independent scientific study by parapsychologists, Monroe took another tack. He used some of his own money to set up a research and development division of one of his privately owned companies (the early forerunner of TMI).

Monroe and his engineers expanded his earlier work with special sound patterns that could facilitate sleep and sleep-learning. They created the now famous (patented) audio process called Hemi-Sync (hemispheric synchronization), which enables the right (intuitive) and left (rational) cerebral hemispheres of the brain to work together. They discovered that such harmonious, balanced, whole brain-wave patterns or states of awareness (“Focus Levels” in Monroe's nomenclature) are conducive not only to OBEs, but also to a host of other beneficial peak, visionary, and revelatory-type EHEs.

Bob Monroe would eventually lecture on OBEs at venues as diverse as the Esalen Institute and the Smithsonian. TMI would receive international recognition—in the pages of the staid Wall Street journal, no less. Institute professionals and independent researchers alike would publish numerous scientific papers supporting or confirming the efficacy of the Hemi-Sync process in altering brain states and facilitating EHEs.6

Yet it was not the technology or the aura of scientific respectability that had always impressed me about Monroe's work. From the time I had picked up a dog-eared copy of Journeys Out of the Body on the dusty back shelves of a secondhand bookstore in the late 1970s, I was taken with Monroe's refusal to worship any sacred cows. There were no old-time religious or spiritual dogmas, no a priori limits set to inquiry. Monroe was a pragmatic explorer of an open reality not an Answerist constructing yet another closed system of beliefs. His mantra was: Here are the tools; go check it out for yourself. The following quote, from his third and last book, Ultimate Journey, is vintage Monroe:

What we need to do, whether in- or out-of-body, is to ignore or tear down the No Trespassing signs, the taboos, the notice that says Holy of Holies, the distortions of time and translation, the soft black holes of euphoria, the mysticisms, the myths, the fantasies of an eternal father or mother image, and then take a good look with our acquired and growing left brain. Nothing is sacred to the point where it should not be investigated or put under inquiry⁷

Bob Monroe spoke my language. Now I realized it was high time that I got acquainted with his. In other words, I had no choice but to check it out for myself.

CHEC-in Time

On a hot, humid Friday in late August of 2000, I drove the seven or so hours from New Jersey to Virginia on boring inter-states. My immediate destination was a Holiday Inn in Charlottesville. The program was not scheduled to begin until Saturday afternoon, but I wanted to be as fresh and rested as possible for the inner journey that lay ahead.

On a mountainous section of I-64 near Charlottesville, I stopped at a scenic overlook to stretch my stiff legs. It was a magnificent view. A grey mist hugged the verdant earth in the valley below. A white farmhouse, the lone outpost of human activity, sat on the banks of a meandering stream. This pastoral scene could have been from a hundred years ago. It was a place out of time.

I recalled my last experience of such pacific timelessness, years before. I had lolled about for hours under a tree on the grassy banks of Coniston Water in the Lake District of northern England. I watched white puffy clouds float by. I was serenaded by bleating sheep in the pasture. Nothing, it seemed, had changed for centuries. It could have been medieval times.

Once again, I felt myself in a timeless abode. But what was I feeling? Was it a pang of longing for a simple, rural life that I have never lived? Or nostalgia, perhaps for a lost time and place but not of this life?

Later that night, in my drab hotel room, I fell into a fitful sleep. I dreamed I was a time-traveling explorer who visits a bizarre post-apocalyptic world of the future. In this nightmare scenario (of Mad Max meets Jurassic Park), the remnants of the human race, armed with the dregs of their technological dystopia, are forced to battle with resurrected dinosaurs to survive.

At one point, I'm behind the wheel of a battered Jeep, ferrying a friend to a trading post for supplies. I feel the wind in my face and the bumps in the uneven dirt road as we drive on its dusty, potholed surface. Suddenly, the vehicle mysteriously picks up speed. I'm not in control. We're sent careening down the road in a roller-coaster ride and it feels as if the truck could lift off and fly into the air at any moment.

Next I am in darkness, the void. Although I can feel my physical body in the bed, I'm also inside the vision unfolding in the velvety blackness before my closed eyelids. I'm still moving very fast, hurtling like an Olympic bobsled racer along the inside of a winding tunnel-track composed of a lattice-like structure of colored lights. It is a web of different colored neon tubes—red, green, orange, and blue—glowing brightly in the dark. The image is vivid, sharp, crystal clear. The sensation of flying through the tunnel is all too frighteningly real, like an amusement park thrill ride. Then the scene fades out.

The next morning, after a brisk walk and a shower, I headed downstairs to the hotel restaurant, famished. I was in no hurry, as I didn't have to be at the Institute for hours. As the waitress filled my coffee cup for the fourth time, I pondered my dream.

My nightmare world was a place out of time, past and future scrambled together. Yet it was no blissful Happy Valley paradise. This seemed to serve as a warning that I would once again have to face fears that were holding me back—the fear of things from the past (resurrected dinosaurs) as well as the fear of the future (chaos, conflict, and change). Above all, I'd have to come to terms with the dread of losing control (the wild ride over the outback road and the aborted tunnel flight).

I wondered whether by ending my flight through the tunnel I had cut short an out-of-body experience—something I'd been seeking. I had to admit that I've never been fond of amusement park rides.

Well, it looked to me like I might be in for a bumpy ride over the next six days. My bluff had been called. It was put up or shut up time. It's tough to break out of old patterns.

Could I do it now?

The pastoral landscape surrounding the Institute was even more gorgeous than the scene that had moved me on the highway lookout. I felt the energies of the place supporting the work and consciousness of all those who visited or worked at the Institute.

I made my way inside and was warmly greeted by one of the staff. The comfortable, knotty-pine paneled interior of the center reminded me of a rustic Maine log cabin. I was shown to my room and my CHEC unit, in which I would be spending most of the next week, listening to Hemi-Sync tapes over headphones and sleeping. Bob Monroe adored acronyms: CHEC stands for Controlled Holistic Environmental Chamber; essentially, it is a narrow bunk bed designed as a sensory deprivation chamber, complete with heavy black curtains and soundproof walls. Many have likened it to a Pullman berth.

Since I had arrived early, Lee, one of the trainers, poked his head into my room and introduced himself. He invited me to do my intake interview before I unpacked. I agreed, and we adjourned to a small lounge area in the front of the building.

“What do you hope to get out of this experience?” Lee asked.

I explained that although I had enjoyed spontaneous psychic and mystical-type experiences since early childhood, I wanted a more controlled way of entering into these states. I told Lee that I'd already worked with some of the Hemi-Sync tapes at home.

Lee nodded. “Well, you've come to the right place,” he declared. “This is the only true Western Mystery school.”

I could tell that Lee was speaking here from deep personal experience, from what he had obtained from his own work at TMI. I could tell that he knew I had more in mind than I was saying.

“I sort of feel like I've reached a creative dead end,” I blurted out. “My teaching and writing have become dry and dusty and unsatisfying. I'm in a rut. A big rut.”

Lee nodded. He understood. We talked a bit more about my background. He seemed certain that I would find the program both beneficial and enjoyable.

Still, I wondered: Do I have what it takes to climb out of the rut?

The Laugh's on Me (or, The Eyes Have It)

The first few tape exercises of the program introduced the early signpost states of altered consciousness, which Monroe labeled Focus 10 and Focus 12. Focus 10 is described as “body asleep/mind awake,” the baseline state of relaxed alertness that is a prerequisite for further exploration. Focus 12 is the first step toward “expanded awareness” of dimensions beyond the purely physical. (The numbers were emotionally neutral, arbitrary conventions Monroe introduced in order to distinguish identifiably different states of awareness without getting caught up in loaded associations with older spiritual and religious vocabularies.) I had already worked with the Hemi-Sync tapes at home, but this was different.

During one of the early Focus 10 exercises, I had the impression that I owned two sets of hands and feet, each set being slightly out of phase with the other. I felt my second set of hands as not quite in the same position as my (physical) hands, which were placed palms down on the bed at my sides. This sensation was at once strange, yet completely natural (and not at all unpleasant). My whole body (or was it bodies?) felt tingly, as if electrified.

In another Focus 10 exercise, I had the impression of my “second” left (nonphysical or subtle energy) arm reaching out and opening the door of a wooden cabinet. This felt like a physical action. Then in my mind's eye, I saw what looked like a pirate's treasure map that I had evidently pulled out of the chest. It showed an island in the middle of a large football-shaped lake surrounded by land on all four sides. On the far right was an asterisk accompanied by the legend, “You are here,” marking my present location on the mainland. I somehow knew that the central island was my destination.

Was this a symbolic map of my inner journey? Later, as I stared at the rough sketch of the map I had made in my journal, I realized that it was shaped like a human eye. “Eye,” of course, could also be a play on the pronoun “I.” So here “I” was, staring into the depths, and who was staring back at me? None other than myself. Or rather, it was some unknown, hidden part of me. Perhaps this was the inner eye of subtle perception, the expanded awareness promised by Focus 12.

In another session, I was surprised to see a balding, middle-aged man floating in the black void, wearing a slightly goofy-looking angel's costume (white robe, wings, and all). This cheesy outfit looked like it had been rented at a costume shop. Then 1 realized with a start that the “angel” looked familiar. It was none other than Bob Monroe.

I sensed amusement on the part of “Angel Bob.” I felt him shrugging mentally, as if to say, “Well, it's your vision, but I'm no angel!”

Then he communicated with me, telepathically.

“Trust the process,” he said.

I asked “Bob” if he could give me evidence that it was him and not simply my fantasy or a projection of some sort of Jungian Wise Man figure.

“It's too soon for that; it would be distracting,” replied the figure. Then he indicated that he had to leave, and the scene dissolved.

Afterwards I recorded the incident in my notebook. But I was still skeptical that I had encountered an aspect of Bob Monroe's postmortem personality. This, despite the fact that several months before I knew that I would be attending the Gateway I had dreamed of meeting Bob Monroe.

In the dream, I walk into a lecture because it's advertised as being given by Bob Monroe. Since I know he's dead, I raise my hand and ask him how it's possible that he's here giving a lecture. He responds with a complicated explanation (it sounded plausible at the time) involving “time loops.” I'm astonished that he calls me by name. When I ask him about this, Monroe chuckles warmly and tells me that, yes, he knows very well who I am. In fact, he adds, he “checks in” on me from time to time.

Although the Bob Monroe in my dream felt like a real presence (and someone who knew him reassured me that my experience was valid), even after my encounter with “Angel Bob” at the Gateway I was not prepared to accept that it was “really” him. Trust (in myself and in the process) did not come easily.

Perhaps this was because many of my fellow Voyagers reported detailed visions in which they felt themselves to be at the center of action in a densely plotted, three-dimensional scenario, whereas my own fragmentary and fleeting mind's-eye impressions felt like viewing faded snapshots in someone else's photo album. I yearned to perceive more, and better. I couldn't help comparing myself to the others and feeling frustrated when, on my own strict accounting, I saw myself coming up short.

In a later Focus I 0 session, I issued an invitation to my non-physical guides to reveal themselves and to help me understand the purpose of my life. In response, I received several fragmentary impressions that made no sense to me, and then came this: the eerie sound of the echoing laughter of many voices.

Immediately after the session ended, I grabbed my notebook and scribbled down the phrase, “an Olympian laugh.” There was something…well, not exactly inhuman, but rather nonhuman, about that laughter. It felt as if the gods were looking down from the top of Mount Olympus and having a jolly good time at my (or our) expense—not sadistically, mind you. A wise, compassionate, and, above all, divinely humorous wit was at work.

As an answer to my request, however, I found this Olympian laughter puzzling, and I still felt frustrated over the lack of improvement in the clarity and quality of my inner vision. So that evening, I corralled Karen, one of the trainers, and explained my predicament. She listened patiently as I poured out my self-doubt.

“You know,” Karen offered, “sometimes the Higher Self acts like a parent who refuses to give in to a child's tantrum. It will not reinforce old patterns by rewarding unproductive demands.”

“You mean, I keep asking for clarity of vision, so I get an aural message instead?”

Karen's eyes twinkled. She smiled warmly and nodded. “What does the laughter mean to you?” she asked.

“Lighten up,” I replied without a moment's hesitation. This answer surprised me. I hadn't thought of it until I'd said it. Then it seemed obvious. Humor offers a higher, godlike perspective. If you can laugh at yourself, and your situation, then you're free.

“You are receiving validation,” Karen added. “Only it may not be the kind you want or expect. It's like, you're being offered a rose, but you say, ‘No, I want the lily.”'

Was I acting like a spoiled child, demanding “my way or the highway”?

“You know,” she counseled, “as you do the exercises try to recall a time in your life when you were having fun. Play with it. Don't treat it as work.”

I nodded my understanding and thanked Karen for her good advice. Truth was, I still didn't get it. I couldn't help treating the workshop as something I would be graded in. Humor and play were interesting concepts—nothing more.

Sometimes I have to get hit on the head. Hard, even.

The Three Weird Sisters Enter a House of Mourning

Working in Focus 12 (the state of expanded awareness) seemed to trigger many synchronistic events. For example, one afternoon at lunch I found myself seated next to Jon, an optometrist from California with a wickedly dry sense of humor. (When we met he explained that his wife thought him crazy for spending a week at the Institute, “to lay in a box listening to humming.”) Jon was making a joke about the Wizard of Oz when I remembered that during a tape exercise that very morning I had been given a pair of shoes that were supposed to help me fly. It reminded me of Dorothy and the magical ruby slippers. There were numerous other such “coincidences.”

Next we were introduced to Focus 15. The trainers were surprisingly mum about Focus 15 in our pre-tape briefing. This was unusual, and it lent an air of mystery to the proceedings. About all we were told was that Focus 15 is officially referred to as the state of “No Time” (though, in fact, as others have noted, this name is slightly misleading, as Focus 15 is a state in which all times—past, present, and future—are accessible).

As I moved into Focus 15 along with the tape, I momentarily felt myself pooling out in all directions at once, like water on a flat tabletop. Then it felt as if I were tumbling in slow motion, head over heels, like an astronaut in deep space. It was very quiet and peaceful.

Then I briefly glimpsed three women. They were wearing shawls, and they had their backs turned toward me, so that I couldn't see their faces. In silence, and bent over in grief, they entered the front door of a large house—a house of mourning. I sensed that these women were sisters, and that someone close to them had died.

The image made no sense to me. It was not a memory. It didn't feel like a fragment from a “past life.” When I mentioned it in the debriefing, however, I heard my own voice catch as I described the scene to the group. Karen must have heard the raw emotion.

“I think there's something more for you in there,” she indicated gently.

All I could do was wordlessly nod my agreement. I could not speak. It felt as if I had swallowed a hot coal that burned a hole through the center of my being.

By lunchtime, the hot coal had become a nameless dread burrowing in the pit of my stomach. For the first time at the Gateway, I felt emotionally fragile. Anxiety, my old enemy, had returned. I was on the verge of a panic attack.

Lee, the trainer who had done my intake interview, must have sensed my discomfort. At lunch, he brought his tray over to my booth, where I was sitting alone, feeling on edge. Forced to make small talk, I was distracted from my inner turmoil. I felt a bit better.

Later that afternoon, we resumed the exercises. Alone in my CHEC unit, waiting for the next tape to begin, my mind raced. Slowly the mood music playing over the loudspeaker entered the penumbra of my awareness. It was a hauntingly familiar, bittersweet melody Then I recognized the music. It was a fragment from one of my favorite pieces, Dvorak's New World symphony. Specifically, it was the section where the composer had included themes from the old African-American spiritual, “Going Home.”

Going Home. Home!

The senseless fog of dread lifted, leaving behind the dewy residue of its essence: grief. Tears ran down my cheeks, accompanied by sobs. I realized now that the sorrow of the three sisters was my own. I was grieving for myself, for the lost parts of myself, for all the parts I had mislaid or abandoned over the years. This included the humorous, playful, joyous parts that had become inconvenient or useless; the intuitive, sensitive, and imaginative parts that I had to ignore in order to make myself safe and successful and acceptable to others. Sadly, that was my fate.

But it was not my fate to suffer alone and in isolation. It was also the fate of our “civilized” culture. The three sisters belong to us all. They are the Moirae, the Three Fates of the ancient Greeks, or the exiled triple goddess of old Virgin, Mother, and Crone—our rejected feminine side, the Eve principle. Call it what you will.

The panic subsided like a passing storm. In its place was a tender, poignant sense of loss. Everything was as it had to be, and yet, in the words of the I Ching, the Taoist book of wisdom, “No blame.” It didn't have to stay that way, after all. I still had a choice. My sadness, tinged with a sense of sweet vulnerability, was bearable. I felt looser, freer.

Would this feeling of freedom last? What would come next?

Enter (and Leave) Laughing

The climax of the workshop was our introduction to the state Monroe labeled Focus 21. He described Focus 21 as “the edge” or interface between the physical and nonphysical energy systems. It is the bridge from Here to There. But within these broad parameters, the individual's experience of each Focus Level will be uniquely his own. The principle that the observed is relative to the observer is always operative.

In my first voyage to Focus 21, I felt like I was entering an enormous, brightly lit movie soundstage, like a cavernous set from a Stanley Kubrick film. Everything in the enormous room (floor, walls, ceiling) was brilliant white. The set was nearly empty, with a solitary couch, club chair, and coffee table (also white) in the middle of the floor. Seated in the chair was a mysterious, dark-haired woman. She held up her right hand in greeting. All about her familiar figures rushed by to make brief cameo appearances, including Woody Allen, John Cleese, and even Wile E. Coyote of the old Roadrunner cartoon.

I was mystified by this celebrity parade, and I couldn't square the description of Focus 21 as a “bridge” to other energy systems with my own ridiculous Hollywood extravaganza. I was disappointed. Had I even managed to get to 21?

At lunch, I buttonholed Lee once again. “Do you think it's possible to distinguish between what one subjectively experiences and what is ‘objectively real' in the Focus Levels?” I asked.

Lee put down his fork and paused for a moment before he spoke. “I think what you came here for is a feeling experience,” he said thoughtfully, seeming to change the subject. “As a child, you experienced real magic.”

“True,” I acknowledged. I knew from the start that things are not what they seem. To me there was never any doubt that, in the words of the Gateway affirmation, “we are more than our physical bodies.” The ballerina had taught me that long ago.

“And now you have to know that you can experience your emotions and survive,” Lee added. It was not about metaphysics or epistemology. I had already taken those courses—and passed them (with flying colors).

At last I got it.

Shakespeare said, “All the world's a stage,” and so it is. In my Focus 21 experience, I had been afforded both a glimpse of the stage, stripped down to its bare essentials, as well as the staging area for what lay behind (or beyond) the curtain. Eve herself (the mysterious female) had welcomed me to the party. The figures I'd glimpsed were not accidental walk-ons. I realized now that they were comedians—clowns and tricksters all. (Coyote, of course, was a trickster figure in many Native American cultures.) This troupe was there to teach me a lesson.

Lee was right.

Well, I had already survived fear.

There was only one thing left. Were the gods still laughing?

The culminating exercise of the Gateway was a tape called “Superflow.”

Inside my CHEC unit, I put on my headphones and flicked the ready light switch to signal the trainers that I was on board and ready to go. Usually they played ethereal meditative music to set the mood for the exercise, but the jumpy dance tune coming over the headphones was hardly meditative stuff—it was…the Macarena!

As I rolled in laughter, I heard the familiar voice of Bob Monroe and the soothing sounds of ocean surf in my headphones. But this time the surf was more than a mere symbol of peaceful relaxation. I felt as though I had indeed plunged headlong into the cosmic surf, riding wave after wave of surging non-physical energies. Although I was completely aware of my physical surroundings in the CHEC unit, it was as if part of me were simultaneously detached. This “other me” was rocketing along on invisible energy currents in deep space, speeding up and down like a roller-coaster ride. It was a smooth, effortless joy of total freedom. I was engulfed by continuous waves of ecstasy. Starbursts exploded in my hands and feet. Images zoomed in and out of my awareness like shooting stars. A chalice was put to my lips, and I drank. Grapes were put to my mouth, and I ate. An artist's easel and paints stood on a deserted ocean beach, gulls flying overhead, ready and waiting for a willing creator to create. I was welcomed by a man and woman to a strangely familiar log cabin set deep in a tranquil wood. Their German shepherd dog, a playful Cerberus, guide of souls, ran to greet me.

So much more happened than I could take in, and more was taken in than I could say.

Finally, too soon, the fun was over. I was back.

Or was I?

On the way to the dining room, I felt I was floating a few inches above the floor, so ecstatic was I. Happier than Scrooge on Christmas morning. An idiot's wide silly grin was plastered on my face that I could not have suppressed even if I'd tried. I was like the cat that had swallowed not just the canary, but the whole cage. I kept my eyes glued to the floor as I walked. I couldn't look anyone in the eye. Not yet, anyway.

Standing ahead of me in line at the salad bar was Patricia. She had come to the Gateway with her husband, Sam. She'd paid for Sam's admission; it was her birthday present to him. But, standing there in line, I felt like a kid at my own birthday party.

Just then, Patricia turned to face me. Our eyes met. We just knew.

We both exploded into hearty, uncontrollable belly laughs. I laughed so hard it hurt. Tears streamed down my cheeks. I placed my hand on Patricia's shoulder in acknowledgment of our shared journey. Nothing else needed to be said. I had my confirmation. We had been There, all right, and it was pure joy.

Sauntering through the Doorway of Change

Our (materialist) cultural common sense tells us that life sucks, then you die. Our everyday experiences seem to confirm the wisdom of popular cynicism. There are the countless hurts, large and small, given and received. There is the gratuitous rudeness, the crude competition of bloated, fragile egos fighting for superior position at every turn, from the highway and supermarket aisle to corporate boardrooms and school classrooms. Not to mention the inevitable losses and betrayals of time and failing bodies, folding relationships and foolish choices. Ignorance, pain, and mistrust seem to stalk us at every turn. You would have to be an idiot not to know that the world is shit.

Through clenched teeth and contrived smiles, grim “religious” folk preach about “Love” and “Grace.” But their hellish belief in a tormenting, judgmental deity and their own daily actions belie their words. They, too, keep their powder dry.

Piety is puffery.

Then there are the serious, hardworking “spiritual” people. Even as they boast of their own “egolessness” and “compassion,” they look down their noses in elite disdain at the unwashed, unenlightened multitudes who lack the necessary esoteric skills (or the right karma, or the right spiritual practice, or the right guru) to become perfect.

Violence and aggression take many forms.

But what if they're all wet? What if joy, delight, and playfulness are not self-indulgent therapies for the unsophisticated, the unsaved, and the uninitiated? What if these experiences express an important insight into the true nature of reality?

Two of my favorite TV programs from childhood were silly kids' shows called Wonderama and just for Fun. Lately I have come to suspect that recovering and nourishing our childlike sense of wonder and fun may cut closer to the metaphysical bone than all the science (and philosophy) texts, Bible verses, and yoga sutras put together.

Could it be that Eve's playful curiosity is the best clue we have?

Widespread acceptance of this insight might put conventional wisdom in all its current forms out of business. Perhaps it's time for the lot of them to file for Chapter Eleven.

Would that be such a bad thing?