The CIA and Time Travel | What's True and What's Not? | Unveiled

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The CIA and Time Travel: What’s True and What’s Not?</h4>

Do you think the government knows more than it’s letting on? Could it be that the authorities already have the technology of the future? And might the trial runs have been taking place for a very long time?

This is Unveiled, and today we’re taking a closer look at the truth and legend surrounding the CIA and experiments with time travel.

The CIA. It’s a well-worn acronym for anyone with even a passing suspicion that the government might be up to something. Over the years, the Central Intelligence Agency has come to be seen as a kind of frontline for anything that the top brass in America could be hiding from anyone else. When it comes to the matter of time travel, however, has even the CIA started to reveal its secrets?

On June 9th, 1983, one Wayne M. McDonnell, a then-Lieutenant Colonel in the US Army, compiled and sent an exhaustive report to the US Army Operational Group… all to do with all manner of mystical, seemingly fantastical things. The nature of consciousness; out-of-body experiences; and an apparently valid means of time travel. All of the above (and more) were covered in a now declassified document, titled; “Analysis and Assessment of [the] Gateway Process”. Now, perhaps you’ve heard rumors surrounding governments and intelligence agencies dabbling in this kind of stuff before… and perhaps you’ve never really cared for them. But here, maybe more than with anything else, there really does seem to be something of substance. It isn’t only hearsay; these are long and specific details released by the CIA of a technique that seemingly could change everything.

At the heart of McDonnell’s report is a group later known as the Monroe Institute. It was founded by Robert Monroe as Monroe Industries in 1962, before a name change and restructuring to Institute in 1985. It was primarily interested in research and experiments surrounding consciousness and out-of-body experiences (or OBEs)... and was actually set up by Robert Monroe largely in response to OBEs that he himself had had. More specifically, the CIA document focuses in on something called the Hemi-Sync method, a trademarked term short for “hemispherical synchronization”. This is a phenomenon wherein the waves in both sides of the brain - the left and the right - are synced together to the same level. According to the Monroe Institute, Hemi-Sync can be achieved via carefully cultivated binaural beats, which are sounds created by playing separate beats into the left and right ears of a person. The binaural beats then serve to sharpen brain function. And, when it’s done right, to sharpen function to the point that one might achieve an altered state of consciousness.

In a nutshell, that is what Wayne McDonnell is reporting back on in his now-declassified CIA correspondence. But, while skeptics might immediately write the entire thing off as some good old fashioned mumbo jumbo, what’s incredible is that that’s not what McDonnell himself does. In fact it seems that he, and the US authorities at the time, were really quite convinced by it.

McDonnell begins his report by taking his superiors through things that Hemi-Sync might be considered similar too, although it is different. These are hypnosis, transcendental meditation, and biofeedback - a somewhat controversial mind-body therapy, claimed to enable participants to wield control over their own physiological experiences, such as self-blocking pain. It’s explained that all of the above are believed to work via various versions of compromise or channeling between the left and right sides of the brain, with one side suppressing the other or encouraging it into a heightened state. It’s then told how the Gateway Process and Hemi-Sync differ, however, as it’s all about reaching a kind of equilibrium. McDonnell quotes the Monroe Institute trainer Melissa Jager, summarizing it as “a state of consciousness defined when the EEG patterns of both hemispheres are simultaneously equal in amplitude and frequency”. At that point, McDonnell writes that a person’s consciousness may be altered, “moving it outside the physical sphere so as to ultimately escape even the restrictions of time and space”. In short, achieve Hemi-Sync, and you could become so much more than just your physical self. The CIA report appears to directly suggest that human beings are not, in fact, shackled to merely the time or place that their waking bodies inhibit. This is the classic out-of-body experience, but the potential is seemingly limitless.

According to the Monroe Institute, you can reach this higher level of understanding purely by listening to purpose built audio recordings - delivering those binaural beats discussed earlier - and created by the Institute itself. It’s then further explained how the Hemi-Sync method can induce a profoundly relaxed state where even the bifurcation echo of the body - a physical phenomenon linked to the beat and rhythms of your heart - is silenced. If all goes well, you should - according to the method - eventually reach a state where essentially everything in your body is calmed and quietly vibrating with energy at the same, now low level of frequency. Your circulatory system, your skeleton, all of your organs… it’s as though they’ve all followed your brain into the same altered condition. And here’s where things get really weird.

McDonnell dedicates the next part of his report to explaining theories and models for how the Earth and the wider universe really function, in line with the Hemi-Sync state. He writes how a properly hemispherically synchronized brain should ultimately tap into the same vibrating levels of the energy and matter of its surrounding environment - in our case, of the Earth. Reality is explained as “an extraordinarily complex system of energy fields”. And later, the universe, as “one gigantic hologram of unbelievable complexity”. For the potential of time travel in particular, though, the apparent suggestion is that Hemi-Sync gives access to the wider fields dictating Earth itself. If a participant can delve deeper and deeper into this same state, then it’s suggested that they could gain access to the so-called absolute state of infinite energy. And here, or as close to here as possible, so the report implies, is when the mastery of time might be achievable. It’s explained that if one theorizes the wider universe to have the shape of “an immense, self-contained spiral” - aka, a torus - then the past, present and future should all be knowable because they all actually exist simultaneously. Use Hemi-Sync to better tap into the energies and complexities of the universe, then, and one interpretation says that you should be able to travel in time. McDonnell summarizes by writing; “the tentative conclusion to be drawn is that the out-of-body state may be regarded as an extremely effective way of accelerating the process of enhancing consciousness and of interfacing with dimensions beyond time-space”.

In a sense, then, the Hemi-Synchronized really do become one with their surroundings, which ultimately means that they can move around and through them at will. Interestingly, McDonnell hints that these kinds of supreme connections might also serve to explain any number of other paranormal events and experiences. If Gateway and Hemi-Sync are to be believed, then the lines of what’s considered physically possible really do need to be redrawn. And McDonnell certainly doesn’t suggest that we should doubt the method. He even concludes his report with a step-by-step guide as to how the Gateway process might be used, if and when it’s required. 

Genuine travel to the past (and then to the future) are pitched as among the highest and most difficult aspects of the technique. But McDonnell says that advocates insist that both are possible, given enough time, dedication and discipline. In the last section of his paper, he writes that “there is a sound, rational basis in terms of physical science parameters for considering Gateway to be plausible in terms of its essential objectives”. 

Of course, questions remain. Not least, what’s been happening in the years and decades since this 1983 document was written up? Have the US authorities proceeded any further with all that McDonnell found? And, finally, to add just a little more intrigue to the story… there’s a missing page from the report. While almost all of it is now publicly available, page 25 is still nowhere to be found. Is that purely an administrative error, or was there something else - buried right near the end of the overall document - that someone didn’t want the rest of the world to read? Let us know what you think in the comments!

But, for now, that was a closer look at the Gateway Process, a significant and perhaps crucial chapter in the truth and legend surrounding the CIA and experiments with time travel.