The gentle way to try

The teaching

As Robert Monroe's Journeys Out of the Body (1971) teaches it.

Mind awake, body asleep

Monroe's method rests on one state: the body fully relaxed and passing into sleep while a thread of awareness stays on. Everything else in the method is a way of reaching that state, staying in it, and meeting calmly what arises there. The house teaches it gently: at an ordinary bedtime or in a short daytime rest, never by breaking the night, with nothing taken and nothing forced, and with the freedom to stop at any moment.

The setting

Monroe lay in a darkened room, warm and in loose clothing, with jewellery and anything metal set aside, at a time when nothing would disturb or hurry him, and he liked to lie with his head toward magnetic north. He found his best state easiest to reach when rested rather than tired, since a tired body simply falls asleep, and so he favoured the morning or a short nap over the end of an exhausting day. A rested body holds the borderland longer; a worn one should be given its sleep.

The resolve

Before relaxing, Monroe set a resolve and repeated it five times: that he would consciously perceive and remember everything he met during the relaxation. Spoken plainly and meant, such a resolve is the projector's version of the intention a lucid dreamer carries into sleep. Then he let himself relax, breathing easily through a half-open mouth.

Relaxing the body

Relaxation comes first and takes as long as it takes. The house's way is to let the body go part by part, beginning with the feet and rising slowly to the face, letting each part grow heavy and warm in turn, and to leave the breath to itself. There is no need to count or to strain for stillness. The body knows how to fall asleep; the method asks the mind only to watch it happen.

Into the borderland

The next step is to reach the state bordering sleep and to hold it there, which Monroe calls Condition A. He leaves the way to it open. The raised forearm, which falls and wakes the sleeper as sleep comes, and the single object of thought, held until other images begin to arrive by themselves, are the two the manuals most often give.

From there the state deepens in stages. Behind the closed eyes patterns of light appear; Monroe counts them as of no consequence and lets them pass, and when they cease he calls the state Condition B. Deeper still, awareness of the body and the senses fades until only one's own thoughts remain, which is Condition C. Condition C reached by choice from a rested state, and not as the drift of ordinary tiredness, is his Condition D, the state from which he left.

The vibrations

In Condition D, Monroe would move his attention outward to a point about a foot beyond his forehead, then three feet, then six, and then turn it upward above his head, reaching there for the vibrations and drawing them in. When they come they feel like a surging, pulsing current sweeping through the body while it grows rigid. His teaching is to meet them calmly and to smooth them by letting them pulse until they run even.

Before trying to leave, he would sometimes reach out with the hand of the second body toward something just beyond reach, feel the hand pass into it, and draw it back, as a first and gentle trial of separation.

Lifting out and rolling out

Separation, in Monroe's teaching, is done by thought. The first way is to think of growing lighter and lighter until one floats upward out of the body. The second is to turn over as if rolling in bed, head and shoulders first, until one rolls clean out and floats free. He suggests beginning with the first and holds that both serve equally well. The physical body is not moved in either; if it moves, the attempt is over, and that is perfectly all right.

Coming back

The way back needs no technique. A thought of the body, a sound in the house or a flicker of fear, and the traveller is back. Anyone who wishes to end an attempt at any stage moves a finger, opens the eyes or turns over, and it ends. Afterwards it helps to lie still for a minute and then sit up slowly before writing anything down.

The notebook

Monroe's book grew from a diary kept from his first experience, and the record is part of the method. Write the date and hour, how rested you were, how far the stages went, and what was felt or seen. Keep apart what happened and what you thought it meant: a feeling of floating is a fact of the night, while a journey across town is a conclusion still to be checked. Three honest lines are worth more than a page of interpretation.

What the house leaves out

Many methods since Monroe rest on breaking the night: an alarm in the small hours, a short time awake, then a return to bed to catch the borderland at its richest. Others use thirst, fasting or substances. The house leaves all of these out. Sleep is never cut short for this, and nothing is taken to force it. The gentle way may bring nothing at all, and then the result is a good rest.

Some people should not practise this: anyone who has had psychosis, mania, dissociation or seizures. Anyone should stop if it brings a fear that follows them into the day, or a lasting sense that the world or their own body is unreal. Those are not stages to push through but signs to rest, and a doctor can help if they stay.