Extremely disappointing. I was initially drawn to Monroe because of his apparent earnestness and dedication to trying to understand his OBEs. At first, this book seemed like a good follow up to Journeys Out of the Body, with explanations of his later OBE/conscious­ness studies and experiments… Then out of nowhere it became a first person narrative/science fiction novel with way too many inconsistencies to be taken seriously. Monroe was flying around with beings who could read his thoughts and explain the mysteries of the universe but needed to pause like a foreigner learning English nearly every other sentence to say things like, “how do you say? “Ah yes, (insert random 80s idiom).” The aliens also loved using English acronyms, which was especially odd since they were all supposedly communicating without language. Monroe skipped past most of the insight and explanations OBE seekers actually care about to instead deliver an elaborate series of hokey dialogues and new age wet dream alien adventures. I could have forgiven some of this if it had been presented as an illustration of actual experiences he had, but there was no such disclaimer. He also included a massive amount of personal reflection, which was irritatingly like reading a too-long word salad full of technical terms and historical and philosophical points he seemed to think added credence to the world view given to him by his alien friends. He provided his own overview of the entire history of existence more than once in the text, and both times seemed disappointingly full of contemporary ideas and infirmation that were by no means revelatory. A lot of people seem to gobble this stuff up, but it struck me as disengenous and not at all what I expected from Monroe. The fact that he started the book off talking about how he had run into difficulties getting out of his own body and had been struggling to reconcile information provided by other OBE participants at his institute made it seem even more suspicious that he managed to suddenly completely solve all the mysteries by himself… not using the scientific method, research, or analysis of his signature detailed records of OBEs but through Hollywood style adventures with his spirit guides