Robert A. Monroe

According to the literature of the psychic underground, the religious-mystical history of man constantly makes reference to this Second Body. Long before Christianity and the Bible appeared, cultures in Egypt, India, and China, to name a few, held the Second Body idea as standard operating procedure. Historians have found these references again and again, but evidently consigned them to the mythology of the times.

If one reads the Bible from this point of view, the belief is confirmed many times in both the Old and New Testaments. In the Catholic Church are found consistent reports of saints and other religious figures having such experiences, some of them willfully. Even in Protestantism, devout followers have reported the out-of-body experience during some form of religious ecstasy.

In the Orient, the concept of a Second Body has long held a natural and accepted position of reality.

To me, it was a place or condition of pure peace, yet exquisite emotion. It was as if you were floating in warm soft clouds where there is no up or down, where nothing exists as a separate piece of matter. The warmth is not merely around you, it is of you and through you. Your perception is dazzled and overwhelmed by the Perfect Environment. The cloud in which you float is swept by rays of light in shapes and hues that are constantly changing, and each is good as you bathe in them as they pass over you. Ruby-red rays of light, or something beyond what we know as light, because no light ever felt this meaningful. All the colors of the spectrum come and go constantly, never harshly, and each brings a different soothing or restful happiness... You respond and drink into you the eternity of the blues, yellows, greens, and reds, and the complexities of the intermediates. All are familiar to you. This is where you belong. This is Home... The mundane is missing. Choirs of human-sounding voices echo in wordless song. Infinite patterns of strings in all shades of subtle harmony interweave in cyclical yet developing themes, and you resonate with them. There is no source from which the Music comes. It is there, all around you, in you, you are a part of it, and it is you.

I did not see who was assisting me. However, just prior to the assistance, I saw someone sitting yoga-fashion, with robes and headpiece... Of all the helpers from whom I have obtained some repeatable identification, only one have I been able to identify a second time.

Early in the experimentation, a side effect began to manifest itself. It was not an out-of-body activity as such, but took place in states of deep relaxation prior to any separation. It is evidently called in the trade "precognition." As I was lying down, my mind stilled and body relaxed, without my volition, the "vision" would occur.

Having described the "physical" aspects of the Second Body, it would seem most important to examine how the mind apparently operates in reaction to the Second Body experience.

The moment I left the physical, I became aware of three beings in the room. I stayed cautiously close to my physical body as they came nearer. They started to pull at me, not hard, but deliberately as if to see what I would do. They were having a good time at it. I tried to stay calm, but there were three of them. I wasn't sure I could get back into the physical quickly enough before they pulled me away. So I prayed. Again, I used every prayer I knew. I asked God to help me. I prayed in the name of Jesus Christ for help. I tried a few saints I had heard of through my Catholic wife. The result? My tormentors laughed loudly and worked me over more enthusiastically. "Listen to him pray to his gods," one chuckled, most contemptuously. "Listen to him!" I think I got a little angry after that. I began to push back, got close to my physical body, and dove in. I wasn't exactly fighting back, but I certainly didn't remain passive.

The experiences differ from the typical dream state principally in the following ways: (1) Continuity of some sort of conscious awareness; (2) Intellectual or emotional (or blends of the two) decisions made during the experiences; (3) Multivalued perception via sensory inputs or their equivalents; (4) Non-recurrence of identical patterns; and (5) Development of events in sequence that seem to indicate a time lapse.

Paradoxically, the scientist today can conceive far more easily of the possibility of the area here labeled Locale III than that of Locale II. Why? Because it fits his latest discoveries in physics, small bits of evidence he has uncovered in his experiments with matter bombardment, accelerators, cyclotrons, etc. The best way to get acquainted with Locale III is to take the significant experiments leading up to it directly from the notes.

I was about to lift out when two hands held a book in front of my closed eyes. The book was riffled, turned around on all sides so that I could see that it was a book. The book was then opened, and I started to read. The gist of what I read was that in order willfully to bring back a condition, it was necessary to recreate the feeling of a similar experience that had occurred in the past (i.e., was a part of your memory). I took this to mean that one should think of the "feeling," rather than the details of the incident. Several illustrations were given, then gradually the book went out of focus as the vibrations faded, and try as I might, I could not continue reading. Finally, I sat up physically and made notes.

Most of all, who quietly insisted that I return to the physical when I drifted in that seemingly eternal bliss? I don't know whether to be grateful or sad for that particular help.

In the midst of normal activity, whatever it may be, there is a distant Signal, almost like heraldic trumpets. Everyone takes the Signal calmly, and with it, everyone stops speaking or whatever he may be doing. It is the Signal that He (or They) is coming through His Kingdom. There is no awestruck prostration or falling down on one's knees. Rather, the attitude is most matter-of-fact It is an occurrence to which all are accustomed and to comply takes absolute precedence over everything. There are no exceptions.

My family and I are in a situation where the whole population of the city we live in is trying to leave. Gasoline is unavailable, electric power has been shut off. There is a great sense of fatality among everyone. It doesn't seem to be the product of atomic war, and there is no concern as to radioactive fallout. There is principally a feeling of doom and the breakup of civilization as we know it due to something momentous having taken place, a factor beyond human ability to control.