What is the origin of consciousness? This question has perplexed scholars for centuries and has given rise to a range of theories: some claim that consciousness resides within the brain, while others argue that it may not be confined to a physical location.
Such ideas have long been debated among researchers. Yet beyond questions about consciousness and its relationship to life, another perplexing—and often controversial—question emerges: what happens to consciousness after death?
I’m More Than My Physical Body
The Greek philosopher Socrates, as recorded in Plato’s writings, argued for the existence of an immortal soul, drawing on the cyclical patterns of life, death, and rebirth observed throughout nature. In Phaedo, Socrates suggested that the soul survives physical death and participates in an ongoing cycle of rebirth. “The soul is most like that which is divine, immortal, intelligible, uniform, indissoluble, and unchangeable,” Plato records him saying.
Since Socrates’ time, philosophers, religious scholars, and modern scientists have continued searching for answers to these questions. Despite centuries of inquiry, however, definitive conclusions have remained elusive.
The Monroe Institute is a Virginia-based nonprofit organization founded in 1971 by Robert A. Monroe, a radio broadcasting executive whose fascination with altered states of consciousness followed a series of personal out-of-body experiences. Monroe’s book, Journeys Out of the Body, helped popularize the term and, in doing so, sparked an entire subculture focused on experiential exploration of expanded consciousness.
Today, sessions at the Monroe Institute often involve guided meditations that incorporate binaural beats—a variety of auditory illusions that arise from slightly different frequencies played in each ear that cause the brain to perceive a third tone equal to the frequency difference. This unique auditory effect, often referred to by the Monroe Institute as “neural entrainment,” was originally designed by Monroe in the 1970s, based on the belief that it could help participants enter heightened states of awareness.
“Our neural entrainment technology is fundamentally different from the simple binaural beats you might find online, both in its underlying technology and in the sophistication of its design,” said Paul Citarella, EVP/CTO at the Monroe Institute, in an email to The Debrief, explaining the unique methods the Institute employs with its audio technologies.
“First, our latest generation of Monroe Sound Science moves well beyond the classic binaural beat approach. We use advanced 3D spatial audio—not just left-right stereo—to create a fully immersive sound environment,” Citarella said. “As far as we know, we are the only organization using 3D audio specifically for neural entrainment.”
Over the past 50 years, the Monroe Institute has become widely recognized as a leading center for exploring expanded states of consciousness. Through the use of Monroe Sound Science technology, guided imagery, and collaborative group activities, program facilitators are trained not only in Monroe techniques but also in a wide range of meditation practices from around the world. Participants from diverse backgrounds have taken part in these programs, with the only prerequisites being an open mind and a willingness to explore the idea that human existence may extend beyond the known physical realm.
To further the study of consciousness, the Monroe Institute actively conducts research, partnering with scientists, physicians, and academics to investigate the potential benefits of expanded states of awareness. Its stated goal is to advance global knowledge about the questions surrounding human consciousness.
“At the Monroe Institute, we define consciousness as the fundamental, primary reality from which all experience arises—not as a byproduct of the brain, but as the larger field in which the brain operates,” says Citarella.
“In our view, consciousness is not something the brain produces; it is something the brain receives, focuses, and interprets. You might think of the brain as a kind of transceiver—tuning into and processing a vastly larger, nonlocal field of awareness. This perspective grows out of decades of experiential exploration, where participants consistently report verifiable perceptions, interactions, and insights that occur beyond the limits of their physical senses,” Citarella explains.
Guided by the central mantra, “I am more than my physical body,” participants at the Monroe Institute often describe transformative journeys of self-discovery, returning with deeper insights into consciousness, purpose, and interconnectedness. Some report profound shifts in how they understand life—and death. This raises a broader question: as a collective, how does the Monroe Institute interpret what happens to consciousness after physical death?
“Our work at the Monroe Institute suggests that consciousness continues beyond physical death, retaining awareness, identity, and the capacity for growth,” says Citarella.
“We base this not on belief or doctrine, but on decades of consistent experiential reports from participants, facilitators, and researchers—many of which involve direct encounters with nonphysical realities and communication with what appear to be individuals no longer in physical form,” Citarella says.
These experiences often occur in highly structured states of expanded awareness, where participants report environments, interactions, and personal transformations that remain consistent across cultures and time periods,” Citarella adds.
At the same time, Citarella emphasized that the institute does not singularly prescribe to any specific afterlife model. Instead, its goal is to provide safe tools, methods, and frameworks that allow individuals to explore such possibilities for themselves, allowing individuals “to integrate their discoveries into a more fearless, purpose-driven life here and now.”
Blurring the line between life and death
Dr. Sam Parnia, associate professor of medicine at NYU Langone and author of Lucid Dying: The New Science Revolutionizing How We Understand Life and Death, challenges our commonly accepted definition of clinical death. Parnia’s work includes extensive testimony from patients revived through CPR who report that their consciousness continued even after they were considered clinically dead.
One of his patients, “Janna W.,” recalls her July 1983 CPR resuscitation and near-death experience, as detailed in an online case study published by the Near Death Experience Research Foundation (NDERF).
According to Janna’s account:
“Then, things changed, and it seemed like my whole short life was quickly flashed before me like a movie reel. I later learned that my dad grabbed me out of the shower, laid me down, and put a towel on me. Instantly, I whooshed up to the ceiling and saw my dad performing CPR on me. I didn’t linger around, but went down the hall and saw my mom crying hysterically while on the phone,” she explained. “In the living room, I saw my little brother curled up in a terrified ball on the rocking chair. I could see and hear, but couldn’t communicate at all. Going outside, I saw the ambulance pull up. Then, I started to feel a dark but extremely peaceful tunnel around me. Although I couldn’t recognize the faces or identify the spirits around me, I knew that I was with familiar and loving souls, possibly my ancestors.”
Janna then describes a bright, yet warm, light that covered her. “It felt like the most tranquil home full of love, and I did not want to leave,” she says, before describing hearing a voice that tells her it was not her time to leave yet, and she then returned to her body.
Like Janna, many people who report near-death or life-after-death experiences describe remarkably similar elements. These accounts often include sensations of floating above the body, traveling through a tunnel, encountering bright lights, seeing deceased loved ones, or reliving significant life events—both positive and negative.
Such research remains controversial, and skeptics argue that these experiences are most likely to be hallucinations generated by a dying brain. However, there are still many researchers who suggest the phenomenon may point to something more complex.
In a 2014 case study published in Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience, scientists monitored 900 seconds of electroencephalogram (EEG) activity in an 87-year-old patient who died from a myocardial infarction. Brainwave patterns observed in the 30 seconds before and after death closely resembled those associated with memory recall or dreaming, lending possible support to the “life review” phenomenon frequently described in near-death experiences.
More recently, another report documented spikes in gamma synchrony lasting up to 90 seconds after clinical death in patients being removed from life support. During a podcast discussion, anesthesiologist Dr. Stuart Hameroff surmised that this “could be the near-death experience, or it could be the soul leaving the body, perhaps.” Distinguished anesthesiologist and neuroscientist Dr. George Mashour has characterized such findings as a “neuroscientific paradox,” prompting questions about how vivid conscious experiences could arise from a brain presumed to be nonfunctional.
Are Out-of-Body Experiences Parallels to Life-After-Death Encounters?
In August 2025, the author attended a seven-day Creators Retreat at the Monroe Institute, where participants were introduced to its consciousness exploration practices as part of what it calls the Gateway Program, a foundational course required for many advanced training experiences that visitors to the Institute are eventually able to attend.
During the recent event, participants from diverse cultural backgrounds reported vivid experiences early on, which included seeing colors, encountering visions of deceased loved ones, experiencing sudden self-realizations related to childhood trauma, or gaining new perspectives on their lives.
Makeup artist Pati Dubroff, known for working with actors such as Kirsten Dunst and Margot Robbie, was one of the attendees at the retreat and shared her experiences with The Debrief.
“As a longtime meditator, I thought I understood inner states, but the Monroe Institute gave me precise tools to regulate my mind and body so I can align more easily with my spirit,” Dubroff said. “The Hemi-Sync frequencies created a direct pathway into deeper awareness, and now I move through life remembering, again and again, that I am more than my physical body.”
Notable Pakistani actress and Women’s Rights Activist Naeema Butt was also present at the retreat and described feeling an array of emotions and related experiences while attending.
“I met a lot of different creations,” she said. While coping with the grief and loss of her husband just four months before attending Monroe, Butt said that during her visit, she found herself in a space where she could heal, grow, and become stronger.
“The transition of my father and husband to the other realm (barzakh) also connected me with the spirit world,” she said.
“I’ve done ayahuasca in Costa Rica and Peru. At the Monroe Institute, I reached the same level of healing without substances, fully sober and fully in control,” said Jennifer Carmody, a YouTuber and online influencer also known as JK Ultra, in an email to The Debrief. “I’ve even been able to access the same altered states at home using Monroe Sound Science and the techniques we learned. That’s what makes it so powerful: plant medicine isn’t an option for everyone, and this has no comedown or downtime.”
There are obvious similarities between the experiences described by participants in the Monroe Institute’s meditations, which many characterize as out-of-body experiences, and purported life-after-death experiences, although there are still several notable differences as well.
“Out-of-body experiences and life-after-death experiences are not the same thing,” Citarella told The Debrief, though offering the interpretation that these experiences “do appear to access the same nonphysical reality.”
Citarella describes out-of-body states as experiences in which individuals shift their awareness beyond the physical body into what are often characterized as nonphysical dimensions of reality. Robert Monroe, who documented and categorized these experiential “locales” in his books, noted that such reported environments are often described as expansive and varied, and “often strikingly similar to what people describe in near-death experiences and afterlife accounts.”
A Rare Academic Beacon in Life-After-Death Research
With many academic institutions shutting their doors to life after death research, the University of Virginia’s Division of Perceptual Studies (DOPS) remains a notable exception. Located within the same region as the Monroe Institute near Charlottesville, Virginia, the division was founded in 1967 by psychiatrist Dr. Ian Stevenson to establish a research center dedicated to the rigorous evaluation of empirical evidence related to extraordinary human experiences and capacities.
Ranging from research related to life after death, out-of-body experiences, and claims of reincarnation, the primary focus of the DOPS is investigating the mind’s relationship to the body and the possibility of consciousness surviving physical death, often pushing back on mainstream attitudes toward such topics and challenging scientific paradigms regarding the nature of human consciousness.
Dr. Marina Weiler, a neuroscientist and Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences at the University of Virginia’s Division of Perceptual Studies, told The Debrief in an interview that the results of studies undertaken at DOPS are often minimized in the mainstream academic community, and that “many scientists don’t even want to look at it.”
Weiler says that since many professionals already believe such phenomena couldn’t exist, they “don’t even want to look at the evidence” that some academic studies may potentially offer.
Regarding, for instance, empirical evidence on reincarnation, Weiler points to “60 years of research” from multiple academics, including Ian Stevenson’s research from the 60s, and many others who are still currently working at DOPS.
“Dr. Jim Tucker developed a scale to measure the strength of the cases, and depending on what type of information can be recovered from these claims, the cases are going to be stronger.” Known as the Strength of Case Scale (SOCS), the framework establishes criteria used to assess how compelling a case may be based on the type and quality of information obtained.
One factor involves physical correlations, such as birthmarks or birth defects that appear to correspond with injuries or wounds of the deceased person the child claims to remember. Another considers the strength of the child’s statements or testimony—how specific, consistent, and detailed the reported memories are, including names, locations, events, family relationships, and circumstances of death.
Researchers also evaluate behavioral correspondence, meaning whether the child displays behaviors, skills, phobias, or preferences that align with those of the deceased individual, such as unusual play patterns, vocational interests, or fears related to the reported cause of death. Finally, the scale weighs the likelihood of conventional explanations, assessing alternative possibilities such as chance coincidence, fraud, ordinary memory processes, or cultural influences, and how plausible these are given the context.
Not all scientists interpret such phenomena as being literal evidence of life after death, however. Another interpretation offered by neuroscientists suggests that out-of-body experiences or similar visionary experiences are evolutionary defense mechanisms, similar to animals “playing dead” (a phenomenon known as thanatosis). Still others have suggested that it might be a way the brain relies on to try and reorganize itself when it knows it’s passing on, where parts of the brain release memories in exchange for a profound experience.
Whatever one’s interpretation of the phenomena in question may be, a fundamental fact remains: a growing number of academic studies and professional institutions are seriously looking at the topic. Equally, many of these professionals also suggest there is likely more to the underlying phenomena than past attitudes would ever have entertained.
For now, ongoing research and experiences alike suggest less in the way of answers, and something more akin to a widening frontier: one where the limits of the brain, the nature of awareness, and the boundary between life and death remain open to deeper exploration.
Chrissy Newton is a PR professional and founder of VOCAB Communications. She currently appears on The Discovery Channel and Max and hosts the Rebelliously Curious podcast, which can be found on YouTube and on all audio podcast streaming platforms. Follow her on X: @ChrissyNewton, Instagram: @BeingChrissyNewton, and chrissynewton.com.