first of all, the narration didn’t get in the way, no small feat. i have returned many Audible books because of the narrator adding to and thereby detracting from the Author’s work. that didn’t happen here.
i didn’t start out expecting much, had few expectations, this being my first thing to read or listen to re: OOBE’s (out of body experiences). like everybody else, i’ve heard them mentioned over time.
Monroe’s experiences while out of body are completely different from past-life regressions and experiences between lives, of which i have read many. the interactions with …spirit guides?…who assisted him in his out-of-body travels were enigmatic, to say the least, and had a congruence over time. in soul regressions between lives, in Michael Newton’s books as just one example, the spirit guides interact personally with the souls they oversee. Monroe’s travel guides, while there to help (sometimes, i guess when necessary?) seem unaffected by his experiences, even when he would call for help. they seemed more like robot entities or how you would expect androids with a function to perform, providing necessary technical assistance, no commeraderie. they seemed to be not-him or anything like him. maybe they were hands-off and (were supposed to?) let him figure things out by himself whenever he could, because he was able to, thank God. also, these were his experiences as written in notes in his own words afterwards. nobody was there guiding him through his experiences put into notes afterward, not a regressionist who walked him through recorded sessions. even the part that was good, when he found himself at Home, was not like any regression interviews i have ever read.
even though Monroe was seeking advice from and getting feedback after-the-fact from professional outside sources who mostly happened to also be friends, he actually walked himself through these constant episodes alone. this was his own, private journey in his own words.
before reading this, i had no ambivalence or concerns/fears about dying. now, i am ambivalent about the afterlife, because of the way he described his experiences, and the described states of some of the people he had encountered who had passed. there were no nightmare scenarios, well, there were a few, but for the most part, his experiences and representations of the afterlife were benign.
he had to control his thoughts when out of body, and i do know, personally, that over there, there is no thought-then-action. thought IS action: they exist as one, i.e., to think is to act or to cause action. so if Monroe had a superfluous, errant, undisciplined thought, it would take him to an unplanned place. he would find himself misidentified, in wrong places, and have to escape back to his own body! he would also draw unwelcome entities to him. for the most part, his OOBE travels seem to have been confined to lower planes, as opposed to where (i think) we go when we die. at least, that is what i hope.
this was an unforgettable listen, and i wonder if this review will even get published. am merely sharing my genuine reactions.