conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is a description for a book titled Journeys Out of the Body about Virginia, Unpredictably, East with the genre: Self-Help, Hypnosis?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: In 1958, the author, a Virginia businessman, began to have experiences that drastically altered his life. Unpredictably, and without his willing it, the author found himself leaving his physical body to travel, via a second body, to locales far removed from the physical and spiritual realities of his life. He was inhabiting a place unbounded by time or death. The author tells of his initial resistance to these out of body experiences, which soon began to appear with alarming frequency. As time went by, however, his fears were alleviated by his discovery of a long history of these experiences in the literature of the East, as well as a surprisingly large underground in this country, made up of people who had shared the authors experiences. This book is the gripping personal account of the authors courageous adventure into the unknown. This fully-documented, first-hand story challenges the reader to explore the limits of our physical universe-and re-think his ideas of life and death. For the adventurous, the author also provides instructions on how to initiate the out-of-body experience.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is the first five paragraphs for the book? End with the sentence ' Behind the house, "I" There had an office, a one-room building where he worked.'.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Journeys Out of the Body
  When this took place—and it began to be an automatic process when I went to Locale III—I simply took over "his" body. There was no awareness of his mental presence when I temporarily displaced him. My knowledge of him and his activities and his past came from his family, and what was evidently his brain memory-bank. Though I knew that I was not he, I could feel objectively the emotional patterns of his past. I have wondered what embarrassment I have caused him as a result of the periods of amnesia created by my intrusions. Some must have brought him much distress.
  Here is his life: "I" There—at the first intrusion, was a rather lonely man. He was not particularly successful in his field (architect-contractor), and not too gregarious. He came of what might be classified as a low-income group, and succeeded in going to the equivalent of a minor college. He spent much of his early career in a large city in an ordinary job. He lived on the second floor of a rooming house, and took a bus to work. It was a strange city to him, and he made few friends. (The bus, incidentally, was very wide, seating eight abreast, and seats rose behind the driver in successively higher tiers, so that all could see the road ahead.) My first intrusion caught him just as he was getting off the bus. The driver looked at him suspiciously when I tried to pay a fare. It seems that none is charged.
  The next intrusion came at an emotional crisis. "I" There met Lea, a wealthy young woman with two children, a boy and a girl, both under four years of age. Lea was a sad, wistful, and somewhat preoccupied person, who seemed to have experienced some major tragedy in her life. This had some relationship to her former husband, but was not clear. "I" There met her quite accidentally, and was deeply attracted to her. The two children found in him a great companion. Lea appeared only mildly interested at this first meeting. Her greatest response lay in his attention to and warmth for the children.
  A short time later an intrusion occurred just as Lea and "I" There had announced to friends—her friends—that they were going to be "married" (this has a slightly different connotation). There was much consternation among the friends, chiefly due to the fact that it had been only thirty days (?) since some major event had occurred in Lea's life (divorce, her husband's death, or some physical debilitation). "I" There was still greatly attracted, and Lea was still sad and introspective.
  A later intrusion came when Lea and "I" There were living in a house in a semipastoral surrounding. The house sat on a low hill, had long rectangular windows, and very wide eaves much like those of a pagoda. The railroad curved around the hill some three hundred yards in the distance, the tracks coming in from the right in a straight line, then across the front of the hill, then around to the back and to the left. There was deep green grass from the steps of the house, down over the roll of the hill. Behind the house, "I" There had an office, a one-room building where he worked.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is five more paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The "act" itself is not an act at all, but an immobile, rigid state of shock where the two truly intermingle, not just at a surface level and at one or two specific body parts, but in full dimension, atom for atom, throughout the entire Second Body. There is a short, sustained electron (?) flow one to another. The moment reaches unbearable ecstasy, and then tranquillity, equalization, and it is over.
  Why this takes place, why it is needed, I do not know, any more than the north pole of a magnet understands its "need" for the south pole of another magnet. Unlike the magnet, however, we can perceive objectively and ask "why." One fact is certain: as in the physical state, the act is equally needed in the Second. In some part of Locale II, it is as ordinary as shaking hands. Here is an excerpt from the notes.
  Sexual dream fantasies caused by some early sex repression? This might be the Freudian answer, and also the "easy" way out, the mislabeling to avoid facing uncharted possibilities.
  Many of the experiments in the notes are also "too personal" for me to relate. What has been presented thus far will, I trust, give enough indication. Suffice it to say that there have been experiences of all types, as there are evidently all types in the Second State both in Locale I and Locale II. The followers of the "astral planes" concept would say that the "quality" of those met would determine the "level" of the plane visited—"quality" meaning intensity and/or degradation or elimination of the sexual experience. This would depend upon interpretation. Those who have not begun to understand the conditions of the Second State ("alive" or "dead") might well still relate the pattern to that of the physical, only without the inhibitions and limitations of the "civilized" physical society. We continue to evaluate sexuality as good or bad strictly in terms of such inhibitions, restrictions, and social structure. The fallacy of this viewpoint is shown in that in our own space-time continuum, we cannot reconcile sexual practice with social rules, nor agree on this subject among the various social orders now in existence.
  Throughout this writing, I have made many references to one evident fact: the only possible way for an individual to appreciate the reality of this Second Body and existence within it is to experience it himself.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Add another sentence about anything, determining.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The "act" itself is not an act at all, but an immobile, rigid state of shock where the two truly intermingle, not just at a surface level and at one or two specific body parts, but in full dimension, atom for atom, throughout the entire Second Body. There is a short, sustained electron (?) flow one to another. The moment reaches unbearable ecstasy, and then tranquillity, equalization, and it is over. 
  Why this takes place, why it is needed, I do not know, any more than the north pole of a magnet understands its "need" for the south pole of another magnet. Unlike the magnet, however, we can perceive objectively and ask "why. " One fact is certain: as in the physical state, the act is equally needed in the Second. In some part of Locale II, it is as ordinary as shaking hands. Here is an excerpt from the notes. 
  Sexual dream fantasies caused by some early sex repression? This might be the Freudian answer, and also the "easy" way out, the mislabeling to avoid facing uncharted possibilities. What evidence is there that it is anything else? There is no way to prove the above, because there is no means of determining the "where" of it. 
  Many of the experiments in the notes are also "too personal" for me to relate. What has been presented thus far will, I trust, give enough indication. Suffice it to say that there have been experiences of all types, as there are evidently all types in the Second State both in Locale I and Locale II. The followers of the "astral planes" concept would say that the "quality" of those met would determine the "level" of the plane visited—"quality" meaning intensity and/or degradation or elimination of the sexual experience. This would depend upon interpretation. Those who have not begun to understand the conditions of the Second State ("alive" or "dead") might well still relate the pattern to that of the physical, only without the inhibitions and limitations of the "civilized" physical society. We continue to evaluate sexuality as good or bad strictly in terms of such inhibitions, restrictions, and social structure. The fallacy of this viewpoint is shown in that in our own space-time continuum, we cannot reconcile sexual practice with social rules, nor agree on this subject among the various social orders now in existence. 
  Throughout this writing, I have made many references to one evident fact: the only possible way for an individual to appreciate the reality of this Second Body and existence within it is to experience it himself.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is the last five paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Perhaps one of the commonest themes in Monroe's life is his security in not having to continuously define the external world. This attitude has given him the ability to journey through realities normally not accessible to people whose lives necessitate, for one reason or another, a continual definition of the physical external world. Monroe's early life also demonstrates not only independence, but stubbornness and a tendency to rebel against traditional values, although there is no evidence whatsoever that this rebellion, mainly internal, created major problems in his life. He does not demonstrate any major trauma during his childhood, nor any of the sorts of childhood difficulties that a psychiatrist might look for. I think this results from an excellent relationship with his parents, who did not have a normal middle-class attitude to life, and were themselves quite independent. His mother, a dynamic woman, tended to step over the ugly things in life, an at-tribute that emerges in the analysis of Monroe's personality. It appears that both Monroe and his mother use what could be called in traditional psychiatric terms denial or avoidance, except that it is done consciously, and does not appear to have created difficulties for either his mother or himself. He has a tendency to bring out the best in people by an oblique form of communication in which he focuses his attention on that which will synthesize rather than that which will destroy. He had no major childhood traumas, although one experience he reports as highly traumatic was that of moving from a small to a large city. He went to college at the age of fifteen, entering pre-medical school. He eventually qualified himself as an engineer with very good grades, although his courses were quite unorthodox.
  Test examinations of his attitudes to death indicated that, compared with a normal population, Monroe's anxiety and fear of death is very low. Some writings and studies of people with out-of-the-body experiences have laid considerable emphasis on the denial of death. On one level this appears logical, especially in the reported studies of people whose first experiences have often occurred in life-threatening situations, situations that many of us never face in the course of our lives. Perhaps the experience becomes deeply imprinted in the mind, and may make the unconscious mind continually afraid that the event may happen again. Deeper analysis of Monroe's psychological test findings demonstrate no evidence of fear of imminent death, or an attempt to deny death, but mainly to contain and control and utilize intensively split emotions within his unconscious mind.
  As part of a break from the intensive psychological investigation we conducted a brief experiment in the psycho-physiological laboratory of the hospital, with a psychologist, Dr. Fowler Jones of the Kansas University Medical Center, as co-observer. We simply asked Monroe to put himself into the state of mind he defined as out-of-the-body. We had him hooked up to a polygraph and took some brain wave tracings and measurements of his anxiety level and level of alertness (GSR). We observed him through a one-way mirror over a thirty-minute time period. Most striking was his slow rate of breathing and his intensive depth of relaxation. His breathing was shallow and he had periods in which he would not breathe at all, and then would take a few gulping breaths. At about the same time as a technician entered the room to tell us that the brain wave tracings were changing, Dr. Jones and I simultaneously had the impression of a heat-wave-like distortion of Monroe's upper body while the lower part of his body was clearly in focus to us. This distortion lasted until approximately two minutes before the termination of the experiment. Monroe had stated that he would be able to get out of his body very quickly, but he could not signal, although he could signal within five seconds of return, which he did. This signal correlated with a change again in his brain waves. Since there were problems in hookup, the technician entered the room during the experiment to check the attachment of leads. It was interesting to note that as the technician was attempting to adjust the leads there was no record whatsoever that this affected Monroe's arousal level on the GSR. From a technical point of view, while out of the body, Monroe's GSR level showed an arousal of approximately 150 microvolts and was marked by a total absence of either specific or nonspecific responses once the experiment began, even when the technician actually touched his body to adjust the electrode placements. This is most unusual, as the GSR is highly sensitive to such interferences. The technician also noted that Monroe's skin was very dry and hot. After re-entering his body Monroe was slightly disoriented with blurring of his speech, and could not recapture or describe his experiences immediately, although later he did describe that he had left the experimental room and entered the room where the polygraph and technicians were located. It is also noteworthy in comparing Monroe with reports of other people who are adept at out-of-the-body experiences that prior to the beginning of this brief informal psycho-physiological experiment, Monroe had demonstrated his ability to move the needles of sensitive voltmeters by waving his hand over them. These sorts of energy manipulations might also explain some of the technical problems created in the highly sensitive apparatus which often goes wrong in such experiments. It is almost as if energy is rampant and not under the full control of either the experimenter or the subject.
  What does this mean? Essentially, this brief experiment showed that Monroe was able during a state he defined as out-of-the-body to focus his brain energy into a narrow frequency band and to produce visible distortions of his body, observed by two people independently under low-illumination conditions. He was able to achieve an unusually deep state of physical relaxation, which is what he claims to do in his focus ten tape condition. It is almost as if his body were comatose rather than asleep. In other experiments we have found different types of brain wave responses to what is defined as out-of-the-body, but they all seem to have one thing in common: there is a slowing in the brain waves, and a shifting of energy focus.
  In summary, it can be said of Monroe that his energetic life with a high sense of purpose, and his need for and relentless desire for understanding, is a good demonstration of what W. R. Inge once said, "One test is infallible. Whatever view of reality deepens our sense of the tremendous issues of life in the world wherein we move is for us nearer the truth than any view which diminishes that sense."