The CIA Used This Psychic Meditation Program. It’s Never Been More Popular

Sarah didn’t expect it One time feeling paralyzed at 7am on a weekday meditation in his house

But in August, it’s time to listen to “The Gateway Tapes” — a set of guided meditations intended to help people reach new planes. Consciousness-He says his limbs are frozen.

Sara, who is in her early thirties and did not want to use her real name due to privacy concerns, said the tapes – which she has been listening to for months – have taken her on a roller-coaster ride of out-of-body experiences. “I was in and out of time and space,” she says. It felt like a bad trip, he said, even though he was sober.

He recalls the next three-weeks of disorienting restlessness that stemmed from a sense of intense spiritual connection to the fear that he would never be able to relate to others again. Looking back, he is relieved that he was not relegated to “a kind of spiritual psychosis”, but sees the events as part of an eventual positive “awakening” process.

Sarah isn’t the only one to report wonderful and terrifying experiences for the Gateway process, which has been around for more than 50 years and has exploded from epidemic to popularity. But, like many others, he credits it with helping to calm his mind and make transformative life changes.

Gateway Process, created by radio broadcasting executive Robert Monroe claim To be “a journey of self-discovery” that can help people move “deeper and faster to different levels of consciousness”. Monroe founded the Virginia Fabre Monroe Institute in 1971. Dubbed an American “Hogwarts” by a spirit Content creators, benefits Through in-person and virtual retreats and even Spotify playlists, it claims to help people get out of their bodies through self-hypnosis-style exercises powered by “binaural beats” — sounds matched to different frequencies played in each headphone ear. Proponents claim binaural beats balance the two sides of the brain and promote well-being. And although there is still an absence of scientific evidence to support the Institute’s methods, that hasn’t stopped the military from taking an interest in Monroe’s esoteric courses, which include revelation and “distant vision”—a type of clairvoyance in which a person abandons the body to explore the real world using only the mind.

As of 2022, approximately 12,500 people, including military servicemen, psychonauts and meditators, have attended the “Gateway Voyage” program online and in person. This is a 35 percent increase in participants from the pre-pandemic period of 2016 to 2019. In 2025, according to the institute, there were 80 private retreats with 20 participants. Paul Citarella, executive vice president of the Monroe Institute, said, “For the first time in our history, we have reached maximum capacity for our campus retreats this year. In-person retreats cost $2,695 and virtual ones cost $1,150. Growing demand has prompted the institute to host retreats beyond Virginia and elsewhere in the United States, as well as in Romania, Italy, Switzerland and Greece. Organization Expand the app It has been installed 386,000 times since July 2021, company data shows.

Dr. Institute in June announcement It’s doing what it calls “the world’s first higher state consciousness study” with neurofeedback company Neuforia, which claims the research could help humans “map, master, and return to altered states among the first humans in history — on demand, with data.” About 333 Gateway Voyage graduates have signed up and will soon spend four weeks tracking data on their brain states while listening to meditation, for $897 apiece.