by Robert A. Monroe

It was beginning to seem a never-ending task, this answering of signals for help each time I went out-of-body, and it was certainly an inefficient way to do whatever was needed. I could spend the rest of my available physical life period doing this and nothing else and still make no perceptible dent in the mass of such signals.

The question was: why had I suddenly become exposed to these signals after so many years? And another question: why were they causing distress in my physical body?

It seemed that most if not all of these signals were originating in areas off the Interstate (as I was now accustomed to regard it) immediately adjoining the termination of physical existence, or death as we humans call it. I knew something of these areas but was not familiar with them. Further exploration was needed.

I began the next morning, about three o’clock, by taking a methodical, slow-motion approach. Feeling rested and relaxed, I started the phasing out of the physical and into the blackness of the out-of-body state, with left brain mode on full alert. I was now at the beginning of the Interstate, or rather on my entry ramp into it. Then, as I was about to bridge over the close-in areas with their obvious exit ramps, as I usually did, one of the strange signals pulled hard at me. Reluctantly, I followed it.

The signal flashed me to a city, then to an apartment building, and tightened in to a bedroom in one of the mid-rise apartments. There was a large and fancy king-size bed with three naked people in it, two men and a woman. One of the men was having sex with the woman, while the other was attempting to get in between them, with no success. Each time he tried, he fell through the bed to the floor beneath. I knew he was the one who caused the signal, and wondered why he didn’t keep falling right through the floor.

I caught his attention on his next cycle from under the bed to the top of the busy couple. He stared at me in surprise, as he shook in excitement.

“Who the hell are you?”

I told him it wouldn’t work. He might as well come with me.

“What do you mean it won’t work? I’ve been waiting ten years to get this, and now I’m going to get it!”

Again I indicated that it was no use. Things were different with him now.

“You better believe they’re different! I’m free now! I don’t know what happened, but I’m free! And as soon as I found out, I came here. Now if she would just stop having it with Sammy, I could get it on with her!”

I asked him what made things different.

“Oh, that! I’d just come up out of the subway at Fifty-third and Madison and suddenly I felt a pain in my chest. I fell down. I wasn’t down on the sidewalk long, just a minute maybe, and I got up. Man, did I feel different! What business is it of yours, anyway?”

I told him as clearly as I could what had really happened.

“I’m dead? The hell you say! Do I act like I’m dead?”

I reminded him about his falling through the bed, unable to touch either the man or the woman. He looked at his hands, then down at his replicated body.

“But I’m still me! I still feel like me! I guess I still act like me!”

He laughed and I joined in. I remarked that we don’t change that much when we die, at least not right away. He looked at the couple on the bed, who now had relaxed and were lying back apparently contented.

Feeling that he may never have sex again, he replies, “Buster here won’t like being dead!”

I told him there were compensations and he brightened up.

“I must have had a heart attack then . . . But I never had trouble with my heart . . .”

I was about to reply when I noticed the woman in the bed. Her eyes were open and she was staring straight at me. She was actually seeing me! Her eyes widened with astonishment but she didn’t seem afraid. She looked straight into my eyes, and there was knowledge in her stare. I turned to the man standing beside me and told him I had to leave. He was shocked.

“What do you mean, leave? What about me? What do I do?”

I suggested he come along if he wished. He laughed again.

“You can’t get rid of me! There’s no action here—I should have known that. Besides, I want to find out about those compensations.”

We laughed some more. I took his hand and started to lift out, and he followed easily. Just as we went through the ceiling, I looked back at the girl in the bed. She was still watching, and our eyes met. I knew I wouldn’t have to come after her. She already knew.

A few moments more we went slightly out-of-phase. I felt the man tugging at my hand.

“Let go of me! Will you let go!”

I looked below. There was a pile, a huge mass of ex-physical humans, writhing and struggling in an endless attempt to have sex with one another. The man’s heavy radiation had diverted our path.

Suddenly he wrenched his hand loose and dived into the mass.

I should have been alert to the diversion. Well, win a few, lose a few, I said to myself. I moved away, thinking that I would get him out of there tomorrow, if I could. But before I could return to my body, there was another signal. I turned and followed.

This one was easy to identify; it came from a hospital room complete with life support systems and electronic gauges. There was a small figure, a woman, in the bed with all the gadgetry attached to her. She was folded up in a near-fetal position. Her hair was gray and stringy, her face wrinkled. She looked very old. As I approached I could perceive her moaning and gasping. Yet the sheet was over her head. I moved close to her and asked her what the matter was.

“Can’t you see I’m hurting?”

I asked her why.

“I’m dying, that’s why. I’ve been dying for years but nobody would believe me.”

I believe you, I told her.

“That’s all you doctors say, but you don’t mean it.”

I told her I wasn’t a doctor, and that I did believe her.

“If you’re not a doctor it doesn’t count. It’s the doctor who has to believe me.”

Why is that so important, I asked.

“So that they’ll let me die. Then I won’t have any more pain.”

I suggested that she didn’t need a doctor to believe her. Did she really want to die? I asked.

“Of course I do! Why else would I be going through all this pain?”

There was no need to wish for death, I told her. It was all over. She was dead.

For the first time she turned her head and looked at me.

“No, I’m not! I still hurt!”

The pain will be fading away quickly, I said gently. All she need do was to move away from her body. She stared at me.

“But . . . I’m still alive! I’m just the same!”

I told her that being physically dead doesn’t change you much at first. You just don’t have a physical body anymore – you’re only remembering the pain now, but you don’t have the pain itself. Look around, I said; see for yourself.

She did look around, very slowly. Then she turned back to me.

“It’s all black . . . just deep black . . .”

Except for me, I reminded her. She opened her eyes wider, and her body slowly began to straighten out.

“Ernie . . . ? Is that you, Ernie?”

I reached for her hand and suggested we go where friends were waiting. She held back.

“Why didn’t you come before? I’ve been calling for you night and day to come and get me.”

I said that she had to die first. Now that she had died, it was all right. I held out my hand again and she took it firmly.

“Ernie . . . Ernie!”

We started to move up and out slowly. I asked her about the pain. She looked puzzled.

“The pain? Oh, the pain. It isn’t important now, is it?”

No, it isn’t, I said. We went more out-of-phase and out of blackness into the light. I took it slowly as we moved further out-of-phase and into the area of the Belief System Territories because I wanted to see what was happening. I was trying to determine exactly where we were – somewhere above the midpoint – when I could no longer feel her hand in mine. I refocused as fast as I could but it was too late. She was gone. Picking up pieces and dropping them along the way was surely not how it was supposed to be. It was certainly not productive.

I had better try again. The problem was that I didn’t know precisely what I was looking for, but I was not going to give up. Several days later I made an afternoon run. I lay down on the cot, relaxed, and phased out slightly – and, sure enough, there was another signal. This was a frantic one. I focused on it and used my quick-switch method.

There was a flash and I was over an alley in a small town. I looked for the reason – and there it was, just below me. He was hiding behind a cluster of trash cans in the alley. On the street nearby a pair of police cars, red and blue lights flashing, had angled up to the curb. On the sidewalk in front of a store entrance lay a crumpled form in a pool of blood. A crowd of morbid spectators was gathering, held back by a yellow band of plastic.

I went directly to the trash cans. The skinny boy crouched behind them couldn’t have been more than seventeen, and he would never get any older. Not this time anyway. I asked him to stand up. He did slowly, uncertain, alert, ready to run if he got the chance.

‘How d’you know I was here, man?”

I told him I wanted to help him.

“I don’t need no help, not from no cop.”

I asked him why he was hiding if he didn’t need any help.

“What do you mean, why? That dick in the store had a piece and he started shootin’!”

I suggested that he didn’t need to worry about that anymore. He looked at me warily.

“Gonna take me in, are you?”

Not exactly, I said. He didn’t have to pull any more heists, I told him, and nobody was ever going to shoot him again. He didn’t have to worry about going to jail either. He stared at me.

“You’re crazy, man!”

I told him the bullet had caught a corner of his heart which let him live just long enough to stagger out of the store and fall dead on the sidewalk. His face portrayed a mixture of emotions.

“What kind of crap is that? If I’m dead, what the hell am I doin’ standin’ here and talkin’ to you?”

I pointed to the street behind me and suggested he take a look for himself. Still keeping one eye on me, he sidled to the corner of the alley and peered down the street. He forgot me completely, fixed on what he saw. Eventually he turned and slumped down to a sitting position and buried his face in his knees.

I could feel his sobbing. I moved over to him, looked down, and gently touched his shoulder. It was time to go, I said. He gazed up at me.

“They still got cops after you’re dead?”

I smiled and shook my head. But there were better places to be than hanging around in a back alley, I said. He looked at his hands.

“I remember puttin’ out my hands to break the fall when I hit the concrete. And before that, I remember lettin’ go of my piece when the cashier shot at me from behind the counter. So I couldn’t shoot back. It was like somebody hittin’ me with a tire iron in my chest. Then I got out the door and I remember hittin’ the sidewalk. It was like there was a big click in my head – and I got up and ran into the alley. But . . . but who the heck are you, man?”

I told him his Uncle Ben sent me. He laughed.

“Ben? Ben the boozer? Come on, he didn’t even know I was around! He died when I was a kid! I know! It’s all a new shtick you cops put up to get me to roll over! You come on – take me in and stop all this crap about bein’ dead!”

If he wanted proof, I suggested, we should take a close look at the body on the sidewalk. He resisted at first, so I told him to hide behind me and nobody would see him. I turned and walked out into the street and strode through the crowd. I knew he was right behind me.

We got there just as the ambulance was arriving. We stood directly over the body – there was blood all over the place – and watched as they rolled the body over, checked for any vital signs, and put it on a gurney. They threw a cloth over the face, but not before the kid beside me had got a good look. Anyway, I knew he could still see the face, cloth or no cloth.

As they rolled the gurney into the ambulance and closed the door, the kid started sobbing again. I gently took his hand and began to lead him up over the street. Now he didn’t resist; he simply wept uncontrollably as we moved up away from the street and more out-of-phase. This time as we approached the middle and upper rings I kept him under constant observation. Whatever was happening, I reckoned I would be ready for it.

I wasn’t. At a given point, the kid disappeared. One moment he was there, and then he was gone. Not even a wisp of radiation remained. Wherever I searched – nothing.

Whatever I was doing, it wasn’t coming out as I expected. I was getting some action, but it was incomplete. I returned slowly until I was back in phase with the physical, still looking for answers.

There was just one clue. That night there were fewer penetrating signals. My sleep periods were less hectic. Was it cause and effect? Perhaps I was taking the right path – but even if I was, my left brain was screaming out for more data. I certainly wasn’t cut out for this job. I kept losing them!

Then, several weeks later, another change surfaced. I was lying down and relaxing easily when I was suddenly hit by a strong help signal, on what I understood to be my own frequency, even before I was out-of-body. My physical body responded with a strong sense of heat. Quickly I rolled out and followed the signal. Somewhere over the Belief System Territories the signal led off down an exit ramp that I could only just perceive.

It did not take me long to find the source. The belief system radiation gave me a picture of a steep rocky cliff with a heavy, humid jungle below. I wondered why it was so clear and real to me. This was unusually rare; the belief system activity is generally dim and hazy to me at best.

A small mature female stood at the edge of the cliff. Behind her were some fifty or sixty assorted males and females of all ages. They were humanoid, partly dressed in animal skins, with heavy, Neanderthal-like heads and facial structures.

Reason immediately wanted to know why I was buying into this particular belief system. The only answer was the obvious one: at some time it was part of me. The scene brought back what I called ‘‘the lure of tropical Pacifica” that I had half-suppressed throughout my life. The call of the ocean was reflected in my sailboat adventures and scuba diving. Then there was my going to Hawaii for a weekend and staying for three weeks; going to Ecuador for three weeks and staying for three months – and almost taking up a career in the tropical lowlands. I always felt immense nostalgia in tropical settings.

As I positioned myself on the ledge beside the female, the group behind her shrank back and covered their eyes. I turned to the female, who was staring at me with calm appraisal. Could we communicate, I wondered. At my thought, she smiled.

“You came.”

“Yes, I did. But why did you call me?”

“I called a picture.”

“Why did you do that?”

“Are you Megus?” She looked at me carefully. “No, you are not.”

“You called for Megus. Why?”

“Because Megus does not know something is wrong here.”

“Where are you? Where is here?”

“I am here. In the Sky Land of Megus.”

“Do you know how you got here?”

“Oh, yes. I came out of my mouth with the bubbles when my body sank to the bottom of the great water.”

“Why were you in the great water?”

“It is the rule for a female when she does not make a child.”

“And after that you came here.”

“Yes. But there is something wrong.”

“Wrong? With you or with the others?”

She shook her head. “With me. When we jump off this hill into the valley, we must fall onto the rocks below and die, again and again. That is the rule of Megus.”

“Who is Megus?”

“Megus is Sky God. He came to us many suns past and told us of his Sky Land. This is what he promised . . . but something is wrong.”

“Tell me just what is wrong.”

“When I jump off the hill, I don’t fall and I don’t die. The others do, but I don’t. I just float.” I lifted up slowly until I was just above her head.

“Like this?”

“Yes! Yes! You are Megus, you are! Help me keep your rule! Help me fall so I can die and live again!”

I reached out with my hand.

“I am not Megus, but I can help. It can be good to float. This is a new rule. Come, try it!”

She grasped my hand with both of hers and we lifted slowly up and out. The structure of the belief systems began to fade rapidly as we approached the Interstate, and was gone completely when we went up the entry ramp. I moved us more out-of-phase when the change was indicated, observing and reassuring my Neanderthal friend. She was calm, relaxed but expectant. I was pondering why I seemed to be so compulsive in my rescue pattern when the expected unexpected happened again. She dissolved, faded into nothing as I watched.

This time I accepted the phenomenon without question, but I wondered why I had received her signal among all the others. Alone, I moved slowly past other exit ramps that were dimly familiar. I knew that at some point in distant time I had visited and turned off each of these ramps and was a part of each of the belief systems they led to. But there seemed no reason to go through again what I had already experienced and presumably outgrown.

Although I felt I needed help, I did not consult any of my philosophic or psychiatric physical friends. Instead, several weeks later, I did what they would have prescribed. After three cycles of sleep, some four and a half hours, I awakened rested, relaxed, and fully alert at three in the morning. To use the quick-switch technique, roll out-of-phase with the physical, and head for one of my pre-INSPEC [INSPEC = Intelligent Species] friends seemed absurdly easy. A smooth vibration and I would be there.

But it was not as easy as that. Somewhere deep in the Belief System Territories a strong and demanding signal hit me. I resisted, but to my great surprise a part of me overrode my resistance. When I stabilized, I found I was lying on a cot in the corner of a small room. I pulled myself up to a sitting position and stood up. I was in a physical body, it seemed, or a good facsimile of one. It felt quite normal. On the far side of the room was a closed door. Beyond it I could hear a strong humming sound. I opened the door and stepped through.

Close by it was dark; beyond was a brightly lighted area and the humming came from somewhere beyond that. It was made by many human voices, not chanting, just humming in harmony. A hand touched my arm and I turned. A woman stood by me, beautiful, ageless, very familiar. Her face and eyes were radiant with joy.

“I’ve been waiting for you. I knew you would be here if all of us met together as one. Come.”

She led me out of the darkness and into the light. Then she stepped back. The humming gradually faded away. On the edge of the range of the light were faces looking up at me, many hundreds, as far back as I could perceive. They were expectant. The radiation I know as love was overwhelming.

I stood still, altogether unsure of the situation, of what was expected of me. Then, as I stood there, another part of me took control and I relaxed. That other part began to speak.

“I had no idea there are so many of us. This is one of the few points where we have gathered as one. As all of us have discovered, it took a belief system to get us here – and therefore we are somewhere on the outer edge of the Belief System Territories. Thus we have several ‘Knowns’. That we are, and can be, here. That we do not need a physical body to exist and be. This alone has freed us from the constraints and restrictions that all of us encountered in our sojourns on Earth. Even though each of us has a few beliefs left, we can release them at will.

“Now we are awakening from the dream.

“The important ‘Known’ is the one that brought us together. That not only were we more than our physical bodies, but we can be free of any and all Earth-life-generated beliefs, without exception. This freedom is the exciting part because we now have no limits. This ‘Known’, without fear, gives us a full range of choice.

“My role is another ‘Known’. It is not that of leader. Leadership is not necessary in the old sense of the term. Perhaps my part has been, and still is, as a recruiter. But to me the role of scout, information gatherer, trailblazer, seems to fit much better. This has been my pattern . . . for thousands of Earth years and lifetimes.

“Now it seems we are finally at the point of fruition. When we meet again, the move into various options will begin.

“The love we share is the greatest ‘Known’ of all.”

The I-There of me – the IT that each of us has, containing all previous and present lifetimes – reached upward and I moved off the floor and passed slowly over the sea of upturned faces. Somewhere from deep in the multitude an arm reached up and a hand grasped mine. A man moved up and joined me. Side by side we rose in a slow spiral, higher and higher. I looked over to see a big grin as he winked at me. Was it Agnew? Lew? Rodius? Cheng? It was none of these. It was my old friend from my early days of OB exploration – the friend whom I knew as BB!

I should have known; I should have remembered. BB, who followed me from Home, from the cruise an eternity past . . . It could have been no other.

The phasing was complete and the eager faces disappeared. With them went the feel of BB’s hand in mine. I looked and he was gone.

The return to the physical was without incident.

Excerpt from Ultimate Journey

See Part I here.