RONALD RUSSELL: DEFINITVE BIOGRAPHER OF ROBERT MONROE
Having known the great out-of-body researcher, Robert Monroe, for over twenty years, Ronald Russell had prime access to write a comprehensive portrait of his remarkable life.
After all, he had attended many courses over the years at the Monroe Institute and eventually he and his wife, Jill, joined the Institute’s Professional Division and were appointed to the Board of Advisors.
Together, the couple has presented courses in Cambridge, England using the Monroe Hemi-Sync® technology and also introduced it to Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Through the years, they became close friends of both Bob, and his wife, Nancy Monroe.
In fact, Ronald Russell edited and contributed a preface for the first edition of Robert Monroe’s third and final book in 1994, “Ultimate Journey”, which remains his most popular of the Monroe trilogy of books.
The result of his long association is perhaps the most definitive biography of the life and work of Robert Monroe, entitled, “The Journey of Robert Monroe: From Out-of-Body Explorer to Consciousness Pioneer”, published in 1997.
Ronald Russell offers a very intimate portrait of Monroe’s life –– a life that could be defined as both strange and usual, but at the same time noteworthy and successful. He paints the picture of the man who was an extraordinary visionary and an obsessive explorer into the mysteries of human consciousness, but admittedly, a man who by no means, would be considered a saint.
Monroe was a driven and savvy businessman, having amassed a large fortune through radio broadcasting, cable television and advertising, before he even founded the Monroe Institute® in 1973 as a non-profit company.
He would marry five times and when his fifth wife, Nancy died, he grew very reluctant to continue the consciousness journeys he had so successfully explored and documented throughout his work, because he believed he might not ever return.
But Robert Monroe would forever be defined by the amazing experience that occurred back in 1958, that would change his life’s path dramatically. He would come to call it an out-of-body experience, or an OBE, and would go on to have over an astounding 500 OBE’s during his lifetime.
From that point on, until his death in 1995, he would be consumed by an unwavering passion to truly understand these strange and wonderful experiences. In many respects, he achieved many unforeseen breakthroughs in the investigations of human consciousness and left behind an extraordinary legacy in the form of the Monroe Institute that continues to carry on his work to this day.
“The Journey of Robert Monroe” biography gives the first behind-the-scenes glimpses of how Robert Monroe would discover and develop many techniques, technologies and teachings, that would allow many, many others to create their own individual out-of-body experiences.
Ronald Russell went on to edit two volumes of contributions for the Monroe Institute®, detailing the many ways of using the Hemi-Sync® technology : “Using the Whole Brain: Integrating the Right and Left Brain With Hemi-Sync Sound Patterns,” in 1993 and “Focusing the Whole Brain: Transforming Your Life with Hemispheric Synchronization,” in 2004.
Both of these books delve deeply into the science and research of the Hemi-Sync® technology and the benefits that it offers in its application such as:
* assisting personal growth and development
* in medicine
* in psychiatry and psychotherapy
* with autistic children
* in nursing homes
* in sleep training
* in education
* and many more fields
Altogether, Ronald Russell has authored over 16 books to date. Currently, he lives in Galloway, Scotland, but spends much of his time at the Monroe Institute® in Virginia. He presents the Institute’s Outreach program in Scotland and travels to Cypress every year to present the Going Home program.