The CIA Used This Psychic Meditation Program. It’s Never Been More Popular

The Monroe Institute claims its meditations, which have also been used by the US military, help people access different planes of consciousness. Its virtual and in-person retreats are now selling out.

Sarah wasn’t expecting to experience paralysis at 7 am on a weekday during a meditation at her home.

But in August, while listening to “The Gateway Tapes”—a set of guided meditations intended to help people reach new planes of consciousness—she says her limbs froze.

Sarah, who is in her early thirties and didn’t want her real name used due to privacy concerns, says the tapes—which she had been listening to on and off for months—took her on a roller-coaster journey of out-of-body experiences. “I was in and out of time and space,” she says. It felt like a bad trip, she says, despite the fact she was sober.

She recalls a subsequent three-week ...