Sarah wasn’t anticipating to expertise paralysis at 7 am on a weekday throughout a meditation at her residence.
However in August, whereas listening to “The Gateway Tapes”—a set of guided meditations meant to assist folks attain new planes of consciousness—she says her limbs froze.
Sarah, who’s in her early thirties and didn’t need her actual title used because of privateness issues, says the tapes—which she had been listening to on and off for months—took her on a roller-coaster journey of out-of-body experiences. “I used to be out and in of time and house,” she says. It felt like a foul journey, she says, regardless of the actual fact she was sober.
She recollects a subsequent three-week interval of disorienting instability that veered from emotions of intense non secular connection to fears that she might by no means once more relate with others. Trying again, she is relieved she was not left “in a sort of a non secular psychosis,” however she sees the occasions as a part of an in the end constructive “awakening” course of.
Sarah is just not the one one to report baffling and petrifying experiences because of the Gateway Course of, which has been round for over 50 years and has exploded in reputation because the pandemic. However, like many others, she additionally credit it with serving to her calm her thoughts and make transformative life adjustments.
Developed by radio broadcasting govt Robert Monroe, the Gateway Course of claims to be “a voyage of self-discovery” that may assist folks go “farther, deeper and quicker into totally different dimensions of consciousness.” Monroe based the Monroe Institute in 1971 in Faber, Virginia. Dubbed an American “Hogwarts” by one consciousness content material creator, the power claims to assist coax folks out of their our bodies by way of in-person and digital retreats, and even Spotify playlists, by means of self-hypnosis type workouts powered by “binaural beats”—sounds attuned to totally different frequencies which play in every headphone ear. Proponents declare binaural beats steadiness the 2 sides of the mind and increase wellness. And whereas there may be nonetheless an absence of scientific proof to help the institute’s strategies, that hasn’t stopped the navy from taking an curiosity in Monroe’s mysterious programs which additionally embody manifestation and “distant viewing”—a type of clairvoyance through which one leaves the physique to research the true world utilizing solely the thoughts.
Since 2022, some 12,500 folks, together with navy service folks, psychonauts, and meditators, have joined on-line and in-person “Gateway Voyage” applications. That’s a 35 % improve in members over the pre-pandemic interval of 2016 to 2019. In 2025, there have been 80 in-person retreats with 20 members every, based on the institute. “For the primary time in our historical past, we now have reached absolutely the most capability of our campus retreats this 12 months,” says Paul Citarella, the Monroe Institute’s govt vice chairman. In-person retreats value $2,695 whereas digital ones are $1,150. The rising demand has prompted the institute to host retreats past simply Virginia at different places throughout the US, in addition to in Romania, Italy, Switzerland, and Greece. The group’s Broaden app has been put in 386,000 instances since its July 2021 launch, firm information exhibits.
In June, the institute introduced it’s endeavor what it calls “the world’s first larger states of consciousness examine” with neurofeedback firm Neuphoria, which claims that the analysis may assist folks change into “among the many first people in historical past to map, grasp, and return to altered states—on demand, with information.” Some 333 Gateway Voyage graduates have signed up and can quickly spend 4 weeks monitoring their mind state information whereas listening to the meditations, paying $897 a bit.