Far Journeys
This is Part 2 of my review for Robert Monroe's book Far Journeys. To read part 1, click here.
In part 1, I talked about how much of Far Journeys consists of out-of-body narratives, laden with new terminology and bizarre concepts. One of the most bizarre concepts is the concept of "Loosh."Early in the book, Monroe mentions Loosh in passing, but doesn't define it, which makes the reader wonder what the heck he's rambling on about. Quite a bit later, in the middle of a "rote" explaining the origins of reality, he gives us some more clues:
"In the natural state, Loosh was found to originate from a series of vibrational actions in the carbon-oxygen cycle and the residue was Loosh in varying degrees of purity." (pg. 162)
Shortly thereafter he writes:
"Thus it was that the Rule of the Prime Catalyst came into being. Conflict among carbon-oxygen cycle units brings forth consistent emanations of Loosh. It was as simple as that. (pg. 164)
A bit later:
"The creation of pure, distilled Loosh is brought forth in Type 4M units by the action of unfulfillment, but only if such pattern is enacted at a vibratory level above the sensory bounds of the environment. The greater the intensity of said pattern, the greater the output of Loosh distillate...." (pg. 169)
Then:
"From experience, the Collectors have evolved an entire technology with complementary tools for harvesting of Loosh from the Type 4M units. The most common have been named love, friendship, family, greed, hate, pain, guilt, disease, pride, ambition, ownership, possession, sacrifice--and on a larger scale, nations, provincialism, wars, famine, religion, machines, freedom, industry, trade, to list a few." (pg. 169-170)
The way I read it in 1985, physical existence was created for the sole purpose of generating and harvesting Loosh, which is like non-physical emotional energy. It sounds pretty negative, like some superior life-form is using people like us as cattle, milking us for Loosh. It makes the whole world sound not like an adventure or a school, but like a depressing slog as someone's silkworm, pulling something out of our asses that's valuable to someone else, someone completely out of our scope that we can't hope to know.
In an out-of-body conversation Monroe quotes a non-physical entity named "Bill":
"The big game is to control and develop this emotional energy to its most effective condition, which is vaguely set by us humans as love, until we graduate. The more we score, the more fun it becomes." (pg. 203)
Monroe also gives us, through his OBE rotes, a vision of the distant future. After traveling into the future, Monroe asks, "What year is it?" The answer is:
"Year? Oh...time. They gave up that kind of measuring somewhere after they reached the 3000 mark. Didn't need it anymore..." (pg. 211)
Monroe wonders if his current location is somewhere in the United States, and gets:
"Not the United States any longer. No states or countries anywhere. Don't need them." (pg. 211)
It was a familiar place in today's United States, but:
"...the houses, fences, buildings, roads, all were gone. The lake. The lake was still there. And trees, so many more trees and of varieties I had never seen before, and to the east, there was...water. Water where once was a four-lane highway, water stretching off into the horizon." (pg. 211)
Less disturbing are Monroe's descriptions of:
- The invisible helpers, which I've described many times in my own OBEs. Monroe writes: "I had called them helpers at the time and let it go at that. At the minimum, I had not turned my activities over to my "greater self," but to them, whoever "they" were.
- Similarly, in one of his narratives, Monroe writes, "Surprise crossed Charlie's face. (I heard him! I heard him but I can't see him!)" (pg. 196)
- The mechanics of out-of-body movement or travel. Many times in the past I've talked about how hard it is to describe how to move from location to location. It's harder than just thinking about a place. It's more like thinking about a person (or place,) setting a mental "anchor point" at that place, then pulling yourself to the anchor point. Monroe describes it very well in this book. He talks about grabbing onto someone's "Ident" then following or "skipping" to that Ident.
Here's something else Monroe described that I failed to understand on the first reading: He talked about:
"...classes--attended by countless humans during a portion of their deep sleep, during the sleeping out-of-body period." (pg. 79)
Now I get it because I've seen these classes firsthand.
Throughout the book, Monroe writes about "The Outer Rings" which includes several layers (some would say "planes") including, I assume, what most people call the astral, the etheric, and the physical planes. In the Epilogue, he describes this in better detail:
"The first inner layer or ring was clear and more distinct from my non-physical perspective, and all seemed to be completely focused on the activities of the in-human physical condition." (pg. 238)
He describes the various entities you can encounter there, with long paragraphs of explanation, much like C.W. Leadbeater did in his book, The Astral Plane, but I trust Monroe a whole lot more for reasons given in my review of Leadbeater's book. Monroe describes them as:
- The Dreamers - entities attached to a physical body, and sleeping, or in an out-of-body state.
- The Lock-Ins - similar to dreamers, but they don't have physical bodies. Dead physically but don't know it, but they still try to interact with the physical world. I assume normal people, and even ghost hunters don't even perceive they're there.
- The Wild Ones - Do not realize they're dead, and they try to interact with people and things in the physical world, and sometimes they can get "mean." I assume these are what I call ghosts.
He also says:
"On the inner side of such null point, the dominant force is HTSI, short for Human Time-Space Illusion, strongest at the innermost sub-rings and lessening inversely throughout the entire ring until it is quite insignificant in the outer edge. On the outer side of the ring, the dominant force is NPR, or Nonphysical Reality, which is as general as one can get if there is no accurate translation available for the little that is known of it." (pg. 241)
Monroe also has some diagrams to support his claims. This is where Monroe gets kind of "manifesto-like." He talks about human sexuality and detaching matter from emotion. I disagreed with him on this:
"Free Will Is Fantasy
Within time-space, the very constraints thereof preclude any such theory. At physical birth, we are bound not only by our previous experience, whatever it may be, but by the genetic structure of the physical body we inhabit. From that point on, we have no choice but to be bonded into the flesh for that lifetime, long or short. We are bound to maintain and operate our physical bodies within the limitations they impose. The set and setting of our physical existence is controlled, initially at least, by others. What remains, colored and modified as it is, might be considered free will. Exercising this upon another only increases the load. Off-loading is accomplished by maximizing this remainder in nonphysical areas and accepting without emotion the limitations so imposed." (pg. 261)
I disagree with Monroe on much of these assertions. Based on my experience, I believe we have freewill, but our lives are carefully planned by our "Higher Self" and limited by a life-plan we set up before we're born. I explain much of this in my blog article titled Deja Vu, Synchronicity, Fate, Destiny and the Law of Attraction.
If you follow me on Facebook, you know I have a pretty weird sense of humor (or if you're British, humour). I liked Monroe's stance on humor. He writes:
"As a direct expression of the Prime Energy, when in doubt, let it out. An inadvertent smile is part of the same spectrum. It's one of the best of emotions, but must be spontaneous to produce results. Seeing and enjoying the humor in life is something not to be missed. It relaxes, de-tunes the ego, puts any event into its proper perspective." (pgs. 261-262)
Toward the end of the epilogue, Monroe gives the full text of his famous bedtime affirmation, the one that starts, "I am more than my physical body..." I won't repeat the whole thing here, but I'm sure you can find the whole text if you search for it. Monroe recommends:
"Say it first as words in your mind just as you are drifting off to sleep. Convert as early as possible to nonverbal communication (NVC), stating the affirmation in mental action rather than words. After you are well established with the technique, add specific needs such as information, health care, problem solving, communication, or any of the procedures listed previously, using NVC." (pgs. 262-263)
After the epilogue, Monroe has an appendix "Questions and Answers," most of which are pretty basic, and much of which I cover in my blog's OBE FAQ article.
Appendix II is an article by professional psychiatrists Stuart Twemlow and Glen Gabbard, titled "The OBE Psychophysiology of Robert S. Monroe." (pg. 271)
Appendix III is another article by Twemlow and Gabbard, titled "The Out-of-Body Experience: Phenomenology." The same pair went on to write the book, With the Eyes of the Mind, which is an outstanding scientific discussion of out-of-body experiences, where they do an in-depth comparison of OBEs to other phenomena and body-boundary disturbances, such as autoscopy (doppelgänger), lucid dreaming, schizophrenia, and so forth. It's a fascinating read, but unfortunately, I haven't re-read or book-reviewed it.
Far Journeys is bizarre, unsettling, and, well, kind of depressing. It makes all of human existence sound trite and meaningless; an addictive game, or a delivery system for "loosh" that's fed to non-humans. At least that's how I felt.
I've always maintained a more positive view of human existence and the meaning of life. I believe this existence is kind of a playground created to learn (and teach) life-lessons to further our spiritual growth. I believe all of us are connected, and all are fragments of the "Highest Self," in other words, God. I believe God is love-based and so our very existence is love-based. And my belief in love is, I believe, reflected in the narratives of near-death experiences (NDEs) reported in countless books. I believe that by learning our lessons through physical existence, we grow spiritually, and our spiritual growth raises the consciousness of the whole.
Maybe I'm not as "advanced" an out-of-body traveler as Robert Monroe, so what do I know? Other more advanced travelers, like Jurgen Ziewe, say nothing about "loosh" and some of Monroe's more bizarre concepts, so I consider myself in good company..
For now, I'll keep my head buried in the sand because it gives me a more positive outlook on life. That's what I need right now.
I give this book 3 stars out of 5. Like I said, the third book in the series, Ultimate Journey, was much better.
Bob Peterson
11 August 2026
----------------------------
If you want me to review
a book about out-of-body experiences or astral projection, send me an
email: bob@robertpeterson.org, but please check the index first to see
if I've already reviewed it. Also, I've got a huge pile of books I'm
planning to review, so don't expect a quick turnaround.
If you like my work, visit my website, robertpeterson.org, where you'll find lots of other free OBE advice and links.
