My life has been deeply affected by my experiences with the Institute and the wider Monroe community. I met Bob Monroe in 1989, did Gateway three years later, did other TMI programs, lived on the New Land adjacent to the Institute for 13 years, did two dozen booth sessions (see below), and wound up writing several books about what I learned there.

That was all-important, but perhaps most important of all was my friendship with Rita Warren.

I would go into an altered state, and she would ask the questions that had long interested her.

Rita was a Ph.D. psychologist, a respected professor of criminal justice, when she did one of Bob Monroe’s early programs, promptly put in for early retirement, and the following year moved down to the New Land. Given her background, Bob volunteered her to be in charge of his consciousness lab, with its newly built isolation booth (the “black box”) designed to help people achieve altered states of consciousness.

The booth is wired for two-way communication, which allows a monitor to provide people verbal guidance as needed. Rita and her husband Martin conducted hundreds of sessions over four years before she re-retired in 1984, and she sometimes asked subjects questions about the afterlife and other aspects of reality, but she said she received no satisfying answers.

In the fall of 2000, the universe began to provide answers. That fall, I did ten black-box sessions with Skip Atwater as monitor, transcribed the session tapes, and sent copies to several friends, including Rita. She and I spent some time discussing the information I had received.

The following August, at her suggestion, we began weekly Tuesday night sessions in her home. I would go into an altered state, and she would ask the questions that had long interested her. Rita later told me that neither she nor Martin had ever gotten answers equal in clarity and consistency to those we got from what I called “the guys Upstairs.”

Direct communication with the nonphysical side of life is about as close to first-hand information as we can get!

Session by session, “the guys” introduced themes, and built upon them, until after a few months Rita and I were living in a very different world. I set out to edit transcripts of 22 sessions, and got Rita to write an introduction, but by the time The Sphere and the Hologram came out, she had already made her transition.

Rita died March 19, 2008. She came to me in a dream to assure me that she was fine, and I assumed our work together was over. So I was surprised and pleased when, in December 2014, I dreamed of her saying she was ready for us to work together again. The next morning, I sat down with my journal and announced myself ready, and that was the start of six months of sessions, usually every day. Then we paused in mid-May, which was all right with me. We had accumulated quite enough material to change anybody’s life.

Rita, while in the body, had been trying to satisfy her curiosity about the hidden nature of things. Now, she was setting out to answer those same questions, with the benefit of her new vantage point. Direct communication with the non-physical side of life is about as close to first-hand information as we can get!

Rita’s questions were superb. They opened doors.  The questions were the gift she offered, and the answers were the gift she—and the rest of us—received.

Rita and I set out to provide a new picture of interaction between the physical and the nonphysical aspects of the world. How do beings there spend their time? What is it they do, and why do they do it? What, if anything, is their relationship to us? What light, if any, does their existence shed on our lives here? The world’s scriptures have been addressing these concerns for centuries, but that doesn’t mean we understand what’s written. Sometimes old truths have to be restated to be heard. What’s more, sometimes, new perspectives make old words more understandable.

While living in the physical world, Rita had questions. Now, in the nonphysical world, she remembered the questions, and—she and I having worked together while she was here—she had a way to give us some answers.

The guys always say, the better the questions, the better the answers.

Rita’s questions were superb. They opened doors.  The questions were the gift she offered, and the answers were the gift she—and the rest of us—received.

Rita’s World II, the third book in the series, was published this year.

The gift continues.

Links:

Frank DeMarco’s books related to his consciousness exploration at TMI and his work with Rita Warren—

• Rita’s World II
• Rita’s World
• The Sphere and the Hologram
• A Place to Stand

TMI program Bob Holbrook and Frank co-created and co-teach the program Accessing Inner Guidance.

Frank’s blog, “I of My Own Knowledge”

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