My Gateway Experience – Re-Enchanting the Universe One Out-of-Body Experience at a Time

I became interested in the Gateway Experience back in 2012. Prior to this, I had some experience with lucid dreaming, and I’d encountered plenty of strange happenings in meditation, but I’d been trained to treat such things as distractions.

I’d been practicing vipassana meditation for years, and I’d definitely made progress in regards to developing inner-peace, but it just felt like something important was missing in my life. I had memories from early childhood of reality having a ‘magical’ quality, and it was the desire to get this back that kicked-off my spiritual quest in the first place. I had found peace, but my life felt a bit dry.

I began looking deeper into lucid dreaming, and I came across the book ‘Journeys Out of Body’ by Robert Monroe. I ended up reading all of his books, and this got me interested in his course ‘The Gateway Experience’. It was an expensive program (for my budget), but it just felt like something that I needed to do.

Introduction to Robert Monroe

My attraction to the Gateway Experience troubled me at the time. There was an inner voice that was screaming ‘can’t you see this is complete woo-woo, and if you keep going like this you will end up in cult waiting for a magical flying saucer to take you to the next level’. There was also a fear that I was somehow being disloyal to the teachings of Buddhism that had given me so much so far (this idea turned out to be nonsense).

I’ve always had a bit of a rebellious streak, and I think it was this that gave me the push to start the Gateway Experience program. It took me awhile to shake the feeling that I was being ‘naughty’ or ‘gullible’, but I’m so glad that I persisted with it.

Emptiness and the Gateway Experience

My vipassana training meant that I had gained some insight into emptiness. This gave me an advantage because I no longer saw things in terms of ‘real’ or ‘unreal’. I had also given up on the idea of ‘Truth’ a long time ago. When it came to perception, the question wasn’t ‘is this real?, but ‘is this useful?’. I already knew that the mind could produce incredibly convincing experiences (e.g. past life memories), so I was able to encounter strange things without becoming attached or trying to convince myself of other people that these experiences were ‘Real’.

What I Got From the Gateway Experience

I spent about a year playing around with the Gateway Experience, and it helped to free my imagination. I could see that I’d been conditioned into viewing reality in a certain way, and it was liberating to perceive in new ways. Of course, these new ways of perceiving were just as empty as the old ways of perceiving, but it allowed me to see how there is a choice in how we relate to reality. If you want to re-enchant the universe, all you need to do is gaze at it with a sense of wonder.

These days I don’t go out of my way to encourage people to do the Gateway Experience (I don’t discourage people either). It was an important part of my own journey but only because it entered my life at the right time. I think our willingness to drop any preconceived notions we have about reality is far more important than any program or approach. It has also been my experiecne that when the student is ready, the teacher appears.

There were lots of ideas that I played around with during those Gateway days that I’ve lost interest in. I no longer view consciousness as the main thing because I’ve found something far more wonderful that appears to exists beyond it. I call this stillness.

After the Gateway Experiences

The Gateway Experience introduced me to the world of the imaginal. I started to see how images that appeared in dreams or in meditation could open me up to completely new ways of experiencing reality. Then I came across Buddhist teachers like Rob Burbea who were also talking about the intersection between emptiness and the imaginal. I rediscovered the wonder that I had lost in early childhood, and the world I live in today is an enchanted place.

Ultimately though, my journey led me to stillness. This is where all perceptions arise and fall away. It is the home I always longed for, and it is the source of wonder, trust, and intimacy – it is the source of all of it.