The Mountain Revisited

by Viola Johnson
Summer/Fall 2009

Viola Johnson says she was the child of a spiritually enlightened, psychic mother who encouraged her to seek the path less traveled. By the time she was thirteen, she was meditating regularly, learning the basics of nature, and exploring the inner workings of her mind.

College brought her first “sensory deprivation tank” experience. In the 1970s she continued to “tank out” at Tranquility Tanks in New York City and at Altered States in Los Angeles. In LA she first learned about the work of Robert Monroe after hearing Hemi-Sync® through the sound system of the tank. The Hemi-Sync “wave” produced one of her most exciting meditations. Viola continued to experiment but seemed to gravitate to Hemi-Sync more than any other tool for enlightenment. After reading the chapter on The Monroe Institute® in MEGABRAIN, she knew that at some time in her life she would make a pilgrimage to the mountain to take her own voyage.

In 2005—thanks to her family—her dream came true. She packed her laptop, the pelt of Luca (the wolf who is her spiritual companion), and almost twenty-five years of excitement to attend the GATEWAY VOYAGE®. She shared that adventure in the winter/spring 2009 issue of the TMI Focus. In October 2005, Viola returned for a private session in the Bob Monroe Research Lab isolation booth. The results of that journey were—unbelievably—even more extraordinary.

The events themselves are simple to record. The feelings and emotions however…

I left Jasper, Georgia, and drove to Faber where I stayed in a little bed and breakfast about two miles up the mountain from the Institute. I settled into my room and meditated for the rest of the evening.

In the morning, I woke, prepped and then drove to the Institute. I was early so there was time to meditate before the PREP session. At 10:30 Dr. Miller and I met to get me ready to go into the chamber. Shortly afterward we went into the lab and I was made comfortable on the flotation bed and covered with a blanket. The vault-like door was closed, and I was ready for my journey.

As soon as the light was turned off the darkness greeted me. I was wrapped in the absolute blackness that most people never see. It was like coming back to an old friend after too long an absence. My guide started the wave. Not the taped sounds of ocean, but the pure Hemi-Sync wave itself, without white noises to mask its tones and beauty. I tuned, stated my resolution, and easily slipped into a Focus 10 state of consciousness. Within a few minutes Dr. Miller asked if I was ready to go to Focus 12. I said yes.

In the Focus 12 state I was enjoying swirling colors and wispy nebulae of clouds dancing before my eyes. As I opened myself to the happenings around me, there was the realization that I was not alone. The surrounding energy easily transformed itself into a somehow familiar male figure. He told me his name, which I now can’t remember. (Thank goodness it is on the tape.) We talked (definitely the wrong word here) until it was time to move into Focus 15.

I could feel and hear the wave change tones and frequencies. My consciousness followed the wave into the timeless blackness of what I can only describe as pre-creation space. As I acclimated to this emptiness my instinct was to roll or float out of body and try to join the blackness. Whether I changed my mind or something stopped me I do not know. Instead, this new state was greeted, and I allowed it to come to me. Soon I was surrounded—make that cradled—in and by what felt like the universe itself. There was no bed, no room, no sense of self, just the vast expanse of space and the twinkling of distant tiny stars.

I floated through the blackness, merging with it and becoming one with all there was. I felt serenely at peace. Off in the distance I watched a door being formed. My curiosity got the better of me, and I drifted toward it. Slowly the door opened and I found myself looking at a light so pure that I was awed by it. There are no words to describe the color. It was not so bright that it could not be looked upon, but so pure in its color that it was either the beginning or the culmination of All. As I was beckoned to step in, the frequencies shifted from Focus 15 to Focus 21. I joined the light and everything changed.

There are few ways that I can describe the next experiences and have them make sense. I communicated with friends long dead, with people (if that is the right word) I never knew. I became one with all who had walked before me. It’s as if all the ancestors zoned in on their own particular genetic marker in my double helix and came to be with me. If I was a drop of water and each of them were drops also, we merged in a limitless pitcher. There we melded together without form or the limitations of the exterior that keeps us all separated. Our essence flowed to and through each other, shared on a level for which there is no point of reference. I knew true and pure joy. I journeyed even farther, deeper into the purity. I heard the voice of Dr. Miller and made a conscious decision to ignore the beacon, the summons if you will.

Then I heard a growl and felt a nuzzle. I turned away from it and kept on. The energy became more insistent until it took form. My best friend Victoria’s totem spirit—a black panther called Lilly—was snapping at the light, trying to put the pieces of my essence back into some kind of nonethereal form. At first I wouldn’t allow it. Then the cat began to speak, send images if you will, of family, love, and commitments as she dragged my essence toward the now-visible door. I crossed back into Focus 15 sobbing and angry at being ripped away from paradise. My guide asked if I was ready to come back. I asked if I really had to. I said that I didn’t want to.

The journey back down to C-1 consciousness was uneventful. When Dr. Miller opened the chamber door she handed me Kleenex® to wipe away the tears. I had only a few moments to table the emotional jumble so that I could exit the chamber and talk about the results.

Upon my leaving the building, all the familiar post-sensory-deprivation-isolation-tank perceptions reoccurred. Everything was sharper, including my emotions. I walked down the path toward the lake and I could see heat waves capturing updrafts to form vortices. I noted the energy patterns as they moved along the grass and through the trees. Everything was crystal clear … except the jumble of emotions that I could not sort out.

I was joyous, elated, and angry. Angry at my family and friends for being part of the anchor that had kept me within this plane, yet thankful at the same time for having such great loves that I could consciously bring that gift to the cosmic consciousness and share it, in and with the great pool of All.

I did little things through the day to help ground me. I walked the property of Oak Ridge. I succeeded in finding the plantation called White Plains where one of my great-great grandmothers had been a slave. I was fortunate enough to be able to converse with the owner and have a tour of the house and lands. He even gave me a nail from the wallboard that was probably in her slave cabin.

I made the seven-hour drive home in silence. I wanted no sound of any kind to intrude while I tried to process and sort my thoughts. I am still doing so, and probably will be for quite a while.

[Editor’s note: I asked Viola if she’d had any new insights related to the session between 2005 and 2009.]

You asked a very interesting question at the end of the PREP session entry. This is not an easy question to answer in that the word “insight” is not encompassing enough.

As a genealogist and family historian, it is my job to tell the stories of those who have come before me. Even as a child I was always comfortable with the spirits of family and friends who came to share time and space with their living descendants.

In that PREP session I had the opportunity to know them all. Generations so far past that I really had no way of being able to sort out (or cared to sort out) what part of them flowed through me. Since that hour, I have––how in the world do I explain this?––become an aware vessel for those spirits. I can hear and feel them when they come to visit. I am far more aware (and as a result fight less) when they choose to guide me. I know when dreams are my own, versus when they are messages that I should heed. I now accept as usual the fact that “lights can go on” when I am working on the family story. I know that when it happens a family member is trying to communicate with me and that I should stop, slip into a Focus 12 or 15, and just listen.  Would you call that insight or revelation?

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