American radio-broadcasting executive who began experiencing spontaneous out-of-body states in 1958 and went on to found The Monroe Institute, a Virginia-based consciousness-research nonprofit. His books 'Journeys Out of the Body' (1971) and 'Far Journeys' (1985) popularized OBE techniques; the U.S. Army sent intelligence personnel to the Institute for OBE-related training in 1978 and 1983 as part of its psychic and remote-viewing research programs.
Robert Allan Monroe was an American radio and cable-television executive who, beginning in 1958, experienced spontaneous states he described as out-of-body experiences (OBEs). He documented these in his 1971 book 'Journeys Out of the Body,' which popularized the term and introduced techniques for self-inducing OBEs to a wide readership, selling roughly a million copies. In 1985 he spun off his company's research division as the nonprofit Monroe Institute in Faber, Virginia, which develops 'Hemi-Sync' audio technology intended to entrain brainwave states conducive to altered consciousness. He detailed further explorations in 'Far Journeys' (1985) and 'Ultimate Journey' (1994). Declassified U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command documents show officers were sent to the Institute for OBE-related training in 1978 and 1983, part of the same era of government-sponsored psychic-research programs that produced remote viewers such as Joe McMoneagle. Monroe died in 1995; his daughter Laurie Monroe continued the Institute's programs until her own death in 2006.