The Thorn Institute

Out-of-body experiences

OBEs as a category — the phenomenology, the leading models, the overlap with sleep paralysis and lucid dreams, and what serious practitioners (Monroe lineage and otherwise) actually do.

02 · Keynote topic

Out-of-body experience is one of the most reported and least discussed categories of human consciousness. We work through it without sensationalism — what people consistently describe, what the major models say, and how the Monroe lineage approaches induction and integration.

Source material

Recommended books on the subject

Not a reading list review — these are the works whose intel and lived experience sit behind this talk. The keynote is a distillation, filtered into something you can use in 30, 60 or 90 minutes.

Robert A. Monroe

Journeys Out of the Body

Monroe · 1971

The 1971 field notebook of an American broadcaster who started slipping out of his sleeping body and decided to document it properly rather than panic.

Far Journeys

Monroe · 1985

A decade and a half later, with Hemi-Sync and the Institute running, Monroe charts the destinations — Locales, the Gathering, Loosh — instead of debating whether they exist.

Ultimate Journey

Monroe · 1994

His last book reframes leaving the body as phasing out of time-space, and lays out the Aperture, the I-There, and the work of getting properly free of the Earth Life System.

William Buhlman

Adventures Beyond the Body

Buhlman · 1996

Buhlman's practical, technique-heavy guide to out-of-body experience, written after years of his own exploration.

Robert Peterson

Hacking the Out of Body Experience

Peterson · 2017

Peterson takes a tinkerer's approach to OBE — what works, what doesn't, and the trade-offs between methods.

30 min

Primer

A tight introduction — what it is, what it isn't, and the two or three things most worth knowing.

60 min

Keynote

The full talk — the science, the history, the practice, and an honest read of what's serious and what's hype.

90 min

Keynote + practice

Keynote plus a guided demonstration or short practice the audience can take home and run themselves.

Bring this talk to your audience

Tell us about the audience and the date — we'll come back with format options and a quote within a few days.