This post is part of a series on The Gateway Experience. The rest of the series can be found here.
The Gateway Experience is designed to enhance your ability to explore consciousness and develop self-awareness. The tapes are meant to act like training wheels on a bike; first, they are a guide, but over time, you learn to move freely without them.
The first disk, Discovery, contains six lessons. Each lesson builds upon the previous one, forming a foundation for deeper exploration in later albums.
Going into the first lesson, my initial thought was that the guarantees made about the Gateway Experience, in both the CIA document and the audio files documentation, seemed like political promises during an election, too good to be true.
After putting on headphones, I lay on my back and started the lesson. The first sound I heard was waves crashing into the shoreline. The Monroe Institute selected the sound of ocean surf as its introduction tune because it symbolizes nature’s natural energy.
The first part of the lesson introduces hemispheric synchronization (hemi-sync). A steady tone is played in one ear, and then a different steady tone is played in the other. When the tones are played synchronously, your brain alternates between them like a beat or wave. Apparently, this helps focus your attention, enhances creativity, and improves your awareness of your environment.
After being introduced to hemi-sync and the ocean surf sounds, Robert Monroe, who narrates the exercise, introduces both the Energy Conversion Box and Resonite tuning. The Energy Conversion Box is an imagined box, where you are supposed to “place” all your fears, anxieties, and concerns. Resonate tuning is a breathing exercise to help vitalize and charge your body. It is supposed to promote the gathering of your vibrational energy.
I found that during the lesson, I kept drifting in and out of consciousness. I am not sure if that was due to the hemi-sync sounds or the fact that I stayed up too late last night, and needed to catch up on sleep.
Next up, Robert Monroe introduced Focus 3. Focus 3 is the first “signpost” on the Focus levels. Focus 3 is a Hemi-sync state where your brain is supposed to be coherent, synchronized, and balanced. To get to Focus 3, Robert Monroe slowly counts from one to three. This part of the exercise reminded me of how a hypnotist would count to induce a hypnotic state.
After achieving Focus 3, you listen to the hemi-sync sounds for several minutes, as you “experience” that state. Eventually, Robert Monroe ends the exercise by counting backwards from three to one. At the conclusion of reaching one, the exercise ends, and my mind and body was wide awake.
