Happiest Highlights from Monroe Institute

Since I first read about The Monroe Institute in Ostrander and Shroeder's revolutionary book: SuperLearning, I was fascinated with their work. Around 1991 I had mailed a letter to them requesting an information packet; their address was in the Appendix of SuperLearning.

I promptly received a package chock full and brimming with information. This package included a reprint from Omni magazine detailing the author's journeys into vast new realms of consciousness during a Gateway Voyage, a weeklong group journey featuring audio excursions using Hemi-Sync technology. I was enchanted by the photo in the article featuring the beautiful property nestled among the lush hills of the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia.

I absolutely had to participate. So I sent them a letter requesting an interview, telling them I wished to contribute. My sweetheart Emilie and I drove down there, from Virginia, where she attended Mary Washington University. It was fall and the leaves were absolutely beautiful. My heart thrilled at the opportunity to visit this place.

The first sight that opens up is the Gatehouse, and on top of that hill are the main buildings including a studio and research lab and a main guest house featuring a cafeteria, hall, and dozens of CHEC units.

I remember being first greeted by the laboratory engineer Dave Wallis, and then the musician and editor Mark, also the Professional Division manager Shirley Bliley and Skip Atwater, Research Director. They were initially skeptical about my participation, as they never had a staff intern or volunteer. A further writeup about my experiences can be found in the TMI focus journal and in several articles I've published.

I had a mind-blowing week at the Gateway Voyage, which the staff comped me for my contributions to their week.

I kept in touch with TMI over the years. Phillis and Arnie Popkin lived in a home literally a block away from the New Land. Arnie was an opthamologist who ran a private practice and invited me to listen to him play the piano. Phyllis reads the spirits of deceased people and pets and was written up in publications about this.

I also kept in touch with David Wallis and Leslie France, and stayed a few nights in their beautiful home carved into a mountain wall at a meadow at the end of the last road before the hill leading up to the Gatehouse. The house overlooked a large green meadow, at the end of which was a huge hill with a stream running through it. There they would throw a massive 4th of july party which was as close to heaven as I could ever imagine. Beautiful spirited people, lovely food, music, fireworks, kids and families playing, all sprawling along their beautiful two acre field.

Dave Wallis was definitely not of this world. I remember having such profound discussions about the cosmos, engineering, other life forms. One night we were driving back to their house in the snow and he revealed to me his age, I was stunned to discover he mentioned he was in his 60s.

That same summer I met Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, and volunteered at her Death and Dying center in West Virginia, an hour or two drive north of the New Land. There was a beautiful carving from one angle looked like a suffering dying man and on the other angle was an angel bringing him ascension. We were all helping to paint her center. Then one day, sad news, I heard that the center was closed because of rumors that the locals were accusing her of polluting the stream with AIDS water. I also heard rumors that the locals had burned down her house.

Also once I drove to Yogaville, VA, Sachitananda's ashram. I also went to the New House? a home near Monroe Institute in which someone from a different religion lived in each room, which was lavishly decorated with fabrics and books.

I attended this with Rita Fisher.

While at 4th year at Duke, I drove up to spend a halloween with Rita Fisher, a Swiss-German woman who was taking care of Phyllis Whitney, a writer who was living off of Robert's mountain road. I stayed at Rita's home underneath. and dressed up as Stephanie, much to the entertainment of Phyllis. Phyllis at the time was in her 70s. Her daughter and son-in-law lived next door. Ed I believe was son in law but what was daughter's name?

I also stayed at the home of Emily and Dennis Galumbeck. Looking back at these experiences I realized that I experienced such incredible bliss, why did I ever leave?

Around 1995 I also reunited with the group from the Gateway Voyage, who attended another workshop: Guidelines or Lifelines. Trish was there, so was Jennifer Lewis who lived in Atlanta.

During my gateway voyage, I also remember David Mulvey and Franceen King moderated the group experience. One of the attendees worked for the Wall-Street Journal and wrote up an article which was subsequently published in WSJ that summer but it did not accurately portray the institute slant. "Institute Shows People a Way out of their Bodies" He was an undercover reporter. I also recall Jessica a psychic, Trish Smith, who I am still close friends with and she and I are part of an extended "Psychic Friends Network." I also remember Claudius, an Austrian being of light, as well as David ?? whose last name i do not recall.

Meeting Bob Monroe in 1994 was a fascinating experience. It was one of my last few days of work or employment there. I first met him and shook his hand and he said "oh I heard about you" and I felt an electrical shock. I later suspected this electrical energy could have been something he accessed to go out of his body which he wrote about in Journeys Out of the Body, Far Journeys, and The Ultimate Journey.

I met Robert Monroe again at my going away send-off party which the staff threw for me on one of the last days of my employment. Robert appeared and told me that it would be interesting to see how my interests would expand and evolve into the future. I mentioned my integrative interests in medicine and computer science, and pre-med.

That same summer I won a scholarship to the Institute for Humane Studies and George Washington University to study Objectivism and Liberty at Bryn Mawr College. I drove through a huge hailstorm to get there.

They paid me a stipend of $100.00 per week and I was amazingly happy with that stipend, living in that area. The cost of living is amazingly cheap.

The back road which led to 151 also drove past Synchronicity, a compound run by Master Brother Charles, which offered a similar technology.

Jim and Stu lived at the top of a beautiful ski mountain just nearby TMI.

During 1995-1996 I drove up to meet Trish and Jen at their completion of Lifelines or Guidelines. I also visited some guy's house which was filled with crystals and beautiful gemstones, he built this cabin off of Roberts Mountain Road.

There was also an ice storm which I visited Rita during, which I think was around 1996-1997. amazingly we drove up to skyline drive and the ice melted on the road but stayed intact on the mountains. And we drove up to this abandoned mansion near the 151 and 29 and the highway which

Also took skip out to lunch and he wrote me letter of recommendation for medical school, which eventually I had him rewrite for graduate school

Also the new CFO comped me for the Guidelines workshop because of my ongoing contributions to TMI.

during 1994 I met Barbara Bullard, who discussed and taught Accelerated Learning to special children in Orange County and shared this at the Professional Division seminar the first one that I attended. I performed some work for her doing literature review for her.

subsequently I attended the professional division seminar during which I met Edgar Mitchell.

I also did lectures promoting the monroe institute technology and offering free demonstrations. For example, in Durham NC during a spirit in business meeting, where i met AlexSandra Lett.

How Meeting Deepak Chopra Changed My Life

Durham, NC. An interesting chain of events led me to meet Deepak Chopra eventually.

Around 1993, as a sophomore in Duke University, I founded a mind-body medicine studies group. This founding was publicized by a reporter from the Chronicle, the Duke University campus newspaper. At the time I was a pre-medicine student, and took intensive demanding classes involving hard sciences: physics, chemistry, biology, organic chemistry...although I wanted to become a physician, I found something lacking in the soul of my education. This inspired my reaching out for alternatives, as I found no organized group providing integrative medical approaches that complement the hard sciences.

To get started, I made some inquiries starting during my first year of college about who was most actively involved in these activities--apparently there was a Mind-Body Medicine Studies Group at Duke University Medical Center; I was directed to contact Larry Burk, M.D., a Radiologist at Duke University Medical Center. His secretary Mirjana Cudic first answered. I indicated my interest in integrative medicine, and she told me I came to the right place.

We hit it off immediately. I introduced myself by telling him that I began my "field research" in alternative and complementary medicine by writing to all the integrative health centers in the back of the book "SuperLearning" and "SuperMemory: The Revolution" a revolutionary book by Ostrander and Schroeder about how to accelerate learning and retention by over 30% simply by listening to baroque music in a light alpha-state, breathing rhythmically. They listed fascinating resources in the back of the book. This was a revolutionary book for me that I read in high school because it indicated the vast underutilized potential of the mind, perhaps accessed by only a few.

So I wrote to all the resources in the back of the book, and heard about the Monroe Institute, which I eventually landed the first intern position ever offered.

Larry was impressed by my unusual initiative, and after a few discussions, agreed to serve as my faculty sponsor for this study group. I also enlisted the help of a colleague to co-found the organization with me, Ali Zomorodi, now a full fledged neurosurgeon at Duke.

On a monthly basis I began inviting community practitioners from the local community. For example, Carol Sanks, RN, an integrative nurse and bodyworker, who discussed an integrative model of the human by overlaying transparencies, one over the other; Jon Seskevich, nurse clinician at DUMC, who taught simple energy work and therapeutic touch; Jim Spira, tai chi; Mark Eisen, M.D., to discuss anthroposophical medicine; Larry Burk to discuss peak performance through anodyne imagery, a special visualization protocol to minimize chronic pain and enable peak performance, and Jon DiJianne (sp?) offering an acupuncture demonstration.

The study group took a peak when I participated in the promotion of Deepak Chopra came to speak at a large auditorium on West Campus. I landed several free tickets, and invited Ali Zomorodi, Ally McCoy, and Leila, and my girlfriend at the time, Emilie Slechta to attend.

From the vantage point of the upper balcony, I watched and listen as the internationally renowned Ayurvedic physician Dr. Chopra spelled out the concepts of integrative medicine, and the quantum physics behind the concept of "ageless body, timeless mind" which is also the topic of his latest book.

In one of the most influential (and prophetically accurate) intuitive reading of my life, Tomiko Smith, elaborated in a reading Chopra's concepts: although our cells atoms and subatomic particles are comprised mostly of empty space, this so-called empty space is teeming, vibrant with energy particles. This energy responds to our consciousness, in fact, it IS our consciousness. Through an awareness of our ageless nature, we regain a quantum awareness of our timelessness, as the concept of time as a human construct.

Hearing Chopra's concepts rang true to me; the vast, incredible success he experienced sharing his integrative medical concepts, bringing the ancient wisdom of Ayurvedic medicine from the East to the West indicated to me how hungry the public was for this type of knowledge. Instead of becoming a neurosurgeon, I decided that I wanted to become a doctor but not not in the conventional sense of a diagnostician who is attempting to label and identify disease, but rather as a creative practitioner who looks deeply to the root cause of an ailment, and doing so systemically, not simply looking at the physical body.

Following the speech I attended Chopra's book signing, and introduced myself. I shared with him how inspired I felt by his words, that it was a privilege for my group to promote his appearance. He autographed his book Ageless Body Timeless Mind, which I displayed proudly on my bookshelf of autographed books.

Chopra serves an excellent role model for what it takes to pioneer a field and the enormous success that can come to someone who is a leader in a new field.

Celebrity Jane Seymour Revealed to Me When I Met Her

First during a phenomenal exhibition of her artwork creations at a special exhibit at Simic Galleries in old town Scottsdale, Arizona around 2003. She was unusually talented in painting still lives that brought her and others joy. I felt inspired by her work and approached her to an interview.

She obliged and shared with me the contact information of her publicist in the LA area. As a reporter and regular columnist contributor to the Scottsdale Times, I knew my editor would be interested.

When I interviewed her, she revealed how painting was something she took up during an especially challenging financial period of her life resulting from a divorce. She painted in between filming as well, and her work caught the eye of the film crew. Her work caught wind and eventually she was approached by major labels to feature her work, e.g. Discover Card, and other cosmetic companies.

This interview was eventually published in the Dream Network, (Vol. 24 No. 4 & Vol 25. No 1), Interestingly the editors published this interview, because Seymour reported having a near death experience on the Larry King Show, May 23, 2005. Click here for further details about her amazing experience.

The near death experience is indirectly related to dreams because it occurs in a state of consciousness related to the dream state but surpassing it.

I found Ms. Seymour to be classy, sophisticated, and gracious in the way she carried herself. I respect her humanitarian efforts and her public encouragement of "green" values. In fact, Jane mentioned that she was recognized by the Queen and received a title comparable to knighthood.

What the 6th man on the moon personally taught me

December 1995, Little Silver, NJ. I was busily shoveling snow out of my parent's driveway over winter break from college when my mom called me "Stefan, Dr. Mitchell is on the phone!" Breathless I ran inside and took the call...

It turned out that Edgar Mitchell, the 6th person to set foot on the moon, was an alumnus of Carnegie Mellon, the same university where my mentor Larry Burk's father graduated. Larry Burk, MD was a Radiologist at Duke University Medical Center and served as faculty advisor for the Mind-Body Medicine Study Group I founded, which was a forum for inviting and sponsoring leading integrative health practitioners to enlighten and inspire the undergraduate community.

What inspired the call? I had phoned Dr. Mitchell to informally interview him about his latest book in its final editing stages. In this book he proposed a dyadic model of consciousness, and this was subsequently named The Way of The Explorer. A dyadic model states: "any model of consciousness that is rigorous and complete must be compatible with both the way that we experience consciousness subjectively and consistent as well with what we know about the physical world through the protocols of science. "

He forwarded me a pre-publication galley draft, not intended for distribution. The subject book was especially relevant to my recent travels based with Dr. Burk to an "Intuition in Business" conference we attended in fall of 1995.

This conference was so-sponsored by the Intuition Network and Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) which Dr. Mitchell played a role in founding. The purpose was to explore consciousness and develop applications for what we discovered.

I love to learn from world-class minds of leading individuals. Interacting with Mitchell was definitely a rare privilege.

Years later, I heard Mitchell speak at the Professional Division conference of The Monroe Institute, around 1998. During the Apollo 14 mission, Mitchell conducted some of the very first documented ESP and parapsychology experiments, which I cited in my dissertation: Dream Homes - Dreams that seem to predict real estate sales.

In one of my first conversations, Mitchell acknowledged acclaimed anthropologist, human potential trainer, and U.N. delegate Jean Houston for her work. He participated in her Possible Human workshop years prior, which appeared to have inspired him.

Mitchell is a controversial figure for taking a public stance that some UFOs are geniunely extraterrestrial beings. For example on Dateline NBC in 1996 he spoke out against the government-sponsored suppression and disinformation about this topic.

Mitchell also appeared in the documentary the Phoenix Lights, which chronicled arguably the world's most famous UFO sighting, reported by thousands of Arizona residents. /Although the local authorities deny this event, science cannot explain away the phenomena. (Some of the most famous footage of this event occurred within a mile of my residence in Scottsdale, just west of me on Camelback mountain. This mountain is clearly visible from my balcony and looks like 2 peaks of a pyramid, hence the name- Camelback.) Twice during her public appearances I met Lynn Kitei, MD a hard-nosed Radiologist who personally filmed the footage from the balcony of her Paradise Valley home and suddenly became a believer.

One of the lessons I learned from meeting Dr. Mitchell is to be true to yourself, be true to your deepest held convictions even if they go against prevailing public opinion. Based on his personal experiences, Mitchell is convinced of the existence of extraterrestrial life even if the mainstream media denies it or ridicules him.