Nancy Moneagle (Interview Archive)
Think of it as a different framework altogether. The starting point is simple: accept, at least as a possibility, that you are something more than your physical body. That single idea opens the door to everything we do here. We run several programs, and the one people begin with is the Gateway Voyage. The name itself says it. It's a gateway into other focused states of consciousness.
Bob coined those terms. He wanted language that stayed plain and didn't drag along a lot of emotional baggage, so instead of loaded descriptions he used numbers. Focus 10, for instance, means body asleep, mind awake. You practice by lying down and listening. There are sounds, there are spoken exercises woven through the sounds, and sometimes music carries it along. Focus 12 is the state of expanded awareness. From there you move into Focus 15, which Bob described as the state of no time. Then Focus 21, and 27, and it keeps going.
Somewhere around 27 you reach a kind of edge. It's the place where you start questioning what this physical matter reality actually is, and what might lie far beyond it.
Right now we have a near-death experience program running. We've offered lucid dreaming programs too. The near-death experience program is brand new; this week is the first time we've taught it, and the feedback coming back has been wonderful. Participants are given out-of-body exercises and a fresh way of looking at the near-death experience itself.
The lucid dreaming program is extraordinary. Two instructors trained up to run it for us, Luigi Sciambarella and Thomas Hasenberger, both from Europe. They built something remarkable, a way to teach people to take control of their dreams and even to remember them in the first place. People get woken several times through the night and handed techniques, a toolbox, really, to reach the lucid dreaming state. What struck me was how many of them ended up having out-of-body experiences while they were at it.
We also run an out-of-body experience program, taught by Bill Buhlman, who has written a number of well-read books on the subject. So there's plenty happening here at once.
Believe it or not, I'm a fairly practical person. My reaction to all of it is this: wonderful, you can travel out of body, you can touch these other realities. And then what? How do you put any of it to use in this lifetime? How does it make your life better, or anyone else's? What are you actually going to do with it?