Ron Young, an INSCOM representative, told me in an email that after checking with the unit's division at Fort Meade, Maryland, "no records are on file for the technology you request information on." I reached out to the US Army Intelligence and Security Command, the specific intelligence unit that had a relationship with the Monroe Institute, for any information about its use of Hemi-Sync technology. They're looking for a way to survive and they just can't." And they dress like-oh, hell-it's like a real light silk. "Very tall, again, very large people," the unidentified subject said, according to the transcript. According to the transcript, an interviewer read coordinates and verbal cues to a subject, who claimed to see dust storms, alien structures, and even an ancient alien race. The goal of the psychic session was to make the subject remotely view Mars in the year 1 million B.C. The document doesn't specifically mention the Army or the Monroe Institute, but it precisely follows the description of remote viewing which was explained in detail in a 1983 document that explicitly mentions the facility. After this, one of the institute's research associates would guide intelligence officers into the astral plane, a psychic space in which the institute said that the officers supposedly could heighten their sensory experiences, heal their bodies, travel into the past or future, or even solve real-world dilemmas without the restraints of a physical body.Īnother technique known as "remote viewing" was also employed upon government employees of an unknown agency, according to a declassified document from 1982. Officers would then listen to the "Hemi-Sync" audio. Intelligence officers who were accepted to the program were sent to the Monroe Institute. "Additionally, individuals who displayed an unreasonable enthusiasm for psychoenergetics, occult fanatics and mystical zealots were not considered for final selection."īetween 30 and 35 of the original 251 candidates were said to have "desired" traits, such as open-mindedness and intelligence, that made them suited for the program. "Individuals who had objections to the military use of psychoenergetics were not considered for the final selection," the document reads. The document gives no specifics about the survey itself, but does indicates that the interviewer asked fairly direct questions about "psychoenergetics." Of those candidates, 117 were interviewed under the impression that they were taking a survey. McDonnell himself had completed the seven-day psychic program the month prior at the institute, which is lodged in the middle of Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains in a town called Faber, about 30 miles east of Charlottesville.Īccording to one of the declassified Army files, 251 Army intelligence candidates were selected for the first year of experimentation.
According to the organization's website, this makes the brain vulnerable to hypnosis. The Monroe Institute is known for its patented "Hemi-Sync" technology, which uses audio to synchronize the brainwaves on the left and right sides of the brain.
McDonnell was asked to give his commander an assessment of the psychic services provided by the Monroe Institute, a non-profit organization focused on treatments designed to expand a person's consciousness.
The psychic experimentation program, which was called " Project Center Lane," interviewed Army intelligence officers in order "to determine attitudes about the possible use of psychoenergetic phenomena in the intelligence field," according to the declassified CIA document from 1984.Īs a huge fan of The X-Files, I couldn't resist reading as much as I could about Project Center Lane, which looks like it could have appeared on the show. The documents were declassified as early as 2001, but they caught my eye when they appeared in a /r/conspiracy post earlier this month. From the late 1970s into the 80s, it even paid for intelligence officers to go on weeklong excursions to an out-of-the-way institute specializing in out-of-body experiences and astral projection. According to the declassified CIA documents that I read, the US Army was extremely interested in psychic experimentation.