Advanced Techniques
Having reached Focus 10, the participant is now ready to endeavor to achieve a state of sufficiently expanded awareness to begin actually interacting with dimensions beyond those associated with his experience of physical reality.
This state is called Focus 12 and involves conscious efforts on his part while additional forms of “pink and white noise” enter the sound stream being directed into his ears from the Gateway tape. Once the participant has achieved this state of greatly expanded awareness, he is ready to begin employing a series of specific techniques or “tools” as the Monroe Institute characterizes them which enable him to manipulate his newly found expanded awareness to obtain practical, useful feedback of value for promoting self-discovery and personal growth. The specific techniques involved are described individually below.
A. Problem Solving
This technique involves identifying fundamental problems which the individual wishes to see solved, filling his expanded awareness with his perception of these problems and then projecting them out into the universe. In this way, the individual enlists the assistance of what Monroe Institute calls his “higher self”, in other words his expanded consciousness, to interact with the universal hologram to obtain the information required to solve the problem.
This approach may be used to solve personal difficulties, technical problems in the realm of physics, mathematics, etc., practical administrative problems, and so on. Responses to the problem solving technique may be received almost immediately, but often they come based on developing intuition over the next two to three days. Frequently the response comes in the form of a sudden, holistic perception in which the individual suddenly finds that he simply knows the answer in all of its ramifications and completely in context, sometimes without even being able to put his newly found perception into words, at least initially. In some cases, the response may even arrive in the form of visual symbols which the individual will “see” with his mind while he is in the Focus 12 state and which he will have to interpret after he returns to normal consciousness.
B. Patterning
This technique involves use of the consciousness to achieve desired objectives in the physical, emotional, or intellectual sphere. It involves concentration on the desired objective while in a Focus 12 state, extension of the individual’s perception of that objective into the whole expanded consciousness, and its projection into the universe with the intention that the desired objective is already a matter of established achievement which is destined to be realized within the time frame specified.
This particular methodology is based on the belief that the thought patterns generated by our consciousness in a state of expanded awareness create holograms which represent the situation we desire to bring about and, in so doing, establish the basis for actual realization of that goal. once the thought-generated hologram of the sought after objective is established in the universe it becomes an aspect of reality which interacts with the universal hologram to bring about the desired objective which might not, under other circumstances, ever occur.
In other words, the technique of patterning recognizes the fact that since consciousness is the source of all reality, our thoughts have the power to influence the development of reality in time-space as it applies to us if those thoughts can be projected with adequate intensity. However, the more complicated the objective sought and the more radically it departs from our current reality, the more time the universal hologram will need to reorient our reality sphere to accommodate our desires. Monroe trainers caution against attempting to force the pace of this process because the individual could succeed in dislocating his existing reality with drastic consequences.
C. Color Breathing
The next technique is called color breathing and is designed to use the expanded awareness and highly focused attentiveness associated with the Focus 12 state to imagine various colors in a particularly intense and vivid manner so as to use them to resonate with and in turn to activate the body’s own energies. Fundamentally, in terms of practical application it is a healing technique which is designed to restore the body and to enhance its physical capabilities by balancing, revitalizing and retuning bodily energy flows.
It is predicated on the principle that the body’s electromagnetic field is capable of altering its resonance pattern so as to entrain energy from the earth’s electrostatic field for its own use. The various colors envisaged in the imagination as part of the technique cue the mind as to which frequencies and what specific amplitudes are desired in connection with this entrainment and the subsequent alterations in bodily energy flow patterns. That color has the capacity to affect the human mind is well known, and the effectuality of color in certain kinds of healing is a demonstrable fact.
For example, application of an intense blue light to an area of physical tumescence leads to relatively rapid and easily observable reduction in the swelling while red, and to a lesser extent, yellow have quite the opposite effect. However, in the Hemi-Sync application of the technique external light sources are not involved but, rather, the mind is the sole agent of the healing and revitalization.
D. Energy Bar Tool
Magic wands and enchanted scepters have been part of the folklore and occult practices of many cultures. The scepters, staffs and maces carried by monarchs and high priests alike occur with such frequency in the history of bygone eras as to suggest that at the very least these items are aspects of some type of archetypical symbol which the human mind seems to appreciate,
Perhaps quite subliminally. In any case, the energy bar tool technique involves envisaging a small, intensely pulsating dot of light which the participant charges in his imagination with enormous energy until it is virtually pulsating. The participant then extrudes the dot into the shape of a sparkling, vibrating cylinder of energy which he then uses to channel force from the universe to selected parts of his body for purposes of healing and revitalization.
E. Remote Viewing
In addition, the energy bar tool is used as a portal for initiating a follow-on technique called “remote viewing.” In this context, the participant turns his bar of energy into a whirling vortex through which he sends his imagination in search of new and illuminating insights. The apparent purpose of the symbolism involved in the vortex seems to be to cue the subconscious and convey to it instructions as to what the participant wishes to do but in terms of nonverbal symbols which the right hemisphere of the mind is capable of understanding.
F. Living Body Map
This technique provides amplification for application of the energy bar tool as a means of healing specific areas or systems of the human body. The configuration of the participant’s body is imagined and then the various major systems such as the nervous and circulatory systems are envisaged in appropriate colors within the confines of the outline being held in the imagination.
The energy bar tool is then applied to energizing, balancing and healing in whatever manner the participant desires. In the process, the participant visualizes various streams of colored energy flowing out of the tool into the organ system or area upon which the revitalizing or healing application is being made. Since colors are the result of differing wavelengths of light, which is to say energy at various frequencies, this technique operates on the assumption that as the human body is composed of energy it can be vitalized and healed through the additive application of additional energy provided that the energy is applied in the appropriate form.
G. Focus 15: Travel into the Past
All of the preceding techniques are conducted at the level of expanded awareness known as Focus 12. However, the technique of time travel into the past involves further expansion of consciousness through the inclusion of additional levels of sound on the Hemi-Sync tapes. Some of the sound is probably merely an intensification of the basic Hemi-Sync frequencies, being designed to further modify brainwave frequency and amplitude.
Other aspects of the added sound patterns appear to be designed to provide subtle, almost subliminal suggestions to the mind as to what is desired by way of further expanded consciousness so as to support the verbal suggestions and instructions also contained on the tape. Even the instructions are highly symbolic, with time being visualized as a huge wheel in the universe with various spokes each of which gives access to a different part of the participant’s past.
Focus 15 is a very advanced state and is extremely difficult to achieve. Probably less than five percent of all participants in any given Gateway Experience actually fully achieve the Focus 15 state during the course of the approximately seven days of training. Nonetheless, Monroe Institute trainers affirm that with enough practice, eventually Focus 15 can be achieved. They also state that not only the individual’s past history is available for examination by one who has achieved Focus 15 but other aspects of the past with which the individual himself has had no connection may also be accessed.
H. Focus 21: The Future
The last and most advanced of all the Focus states associated with the Gateway training program involves movement outside of the boundaries of time-space as in Focus 15 but with attention to discovering the future rather than the past.
The individual who has achieved this state has reached a truly advanced level. Except in unusual circumstances, it is probably not attainable except by those who have conditioned themselves through long application of meditation or by those who have practiced long and hard through use of the Hemi-Sync tapes for a period of months if not years. A. Problem Solving
This technique involves identifying fundamental problems which the individual wishes to see solved, filling his expanded awareness with his perception of these problems and then projecting them out into the universe. In this way, the individual enlists the assistance of what Monroe Institute calls his “higher self”, in other words his expanded consciousness, to interact with the universal hologram to obtain the information required to solve the problem.
This approach may be used to solve personal difficulties, technical problems in the realm of physics, mathematics, etc., practical administrative problems, and so on. Responses to the problem solving technique may be received almost immediately, but often they come based on developing intuition over the next two to three days. Frequently the response comes in the form of a sudden, holistic perception in which the individual suddenly finds that he simply knows the answer in all of its ramifications and completely in context, sometimes without even being able to put his newly found perception into words, at least initially. In some cases, the response may even arrive in the form of visual symbols which the individual will “see” with his mind while he is in the Focus 12 state and which he will have to interpret after he returns to normal consciousness.
Hemi-Sync Introduced
After that, he is exposed for the first time to the Hemi-Sync sound frequencies, and is encouraged to focus on and develop a perception of and appreciation for those feelings which accompany the synchronization of brainwaves that results. Next comes the technique of progressive and systematic physical relaxation while the Hemi-Sync frequencies are expanded to include additional forms of “pink and white” noise designed to put the physical body at the virtual threshold of sleep as well as to calm the left hemisphere of the mind while raising the right hemisphere to a state of heightened attentiveness.
The Out-of-Body Movement
This remarkable phenomenon has been saved for discussion in detail until last because of the interest which it occasions and special circumstances involved in its attainment. Monroe Institute stresses that the Gateway program was not established solely for the purpose of enabling participants to obtain the out-of-body state nor does the program guarantee that most participants will succeed in doing it during the course of the training at the Institute. Only one tape out of the many which make up the Gateway Experience is devoted to the techniques involved in the out-of-body movement.