Vincent Trapinaud
The Loosh is the name Robert Monroe, the American pioneer of out-of-body experiences, gave to an energy that, according to his accounts, is released by living beings when they feel intense emotions, and is harvested by nonphysical entities. He reports it mainly in Far Journeys (1985), where the Earth appears as a kind of farm. The first book of Les Fermiers (The Farmers), a trilogy currently published in French, starts from this account to draw a map: not a belief to adopt, but a hypothesis to look squarely in the face.
Who was Robert Monroe, the radio man who left his body?
To understand the word Loosh, you have to start with the man who coined it. And that man was nothing like a mystic.
Robert Allan Monroe was born in 1915 in the United States. He studied at Ohio State University, then made a career in radio: producer, founder of stations, an entrepreneur drawn to sound technology who filed patents. An American businessman of his time, pragmatic, results-oriented, with no particular taste for metaphysics. As book I puts it, “he was not an engineer by degree. He was one by temperament.”
In 1958, at forty-three, something happened to him that he had neither sought nor wished for. During sleep, he had the sensation of leaving his body. He says he watched himself lying down, moved about the room, perceived places his ordinary senses could not reach. He insists: it was not a dream, and he took almost obsessive care to tell the difference.
His first reaction was anything but ecstasy. It was worry, then a visit to the doctor. The doctors found nothing abnormal. Monroe faced a simple choice: either he was losing his mind, or he was living something real. He chose to treat the second possibility as a working hypothesis, because it was the only one that could be explored. He wrote everything down: dates, conditions, descriptions, sensations.
Three books over nearly forty years
From those notebooks came three books, which remain the reference texts on the subject:
- Journeys Out of the Body (1971): the account of the first exits, the learning curve, the first “places” Monroe tries to describe.
- Far Journeys (1985): more distant explorations, encounters with beings he calls the INSPECs, and the account of the Loosh.
- Ultimate Journey (1994): the synthesis of his cosmology, published a year before his death in March 1995.
The Monroe Institute and Hemi-Sync
Monroe did not stop at writing. In the 1970s he founded the Monroe Institute in Virginia, an organization devoted to exploring consciousness. There he developed an audio technique he called Hemi-Sync: sounds played through headphones, slightly different in each ear, which produce what are known as binaural beats. The idea is to help the listener enter states of deep relaxation or altered consciousness, with no substance and no ritual.
The auditory phenomenon of binaural beats is well known. Their effects on consciousness, however, remain debated, and nothing that follows assumes they have been proven. What matters here is the trajectory: a technical man who, faced with an inexplicable experience, does not turn himself into a prophet but looks for tools, protocols, ways to repeat the experience. It is precisely this technician’s tone that makes his account of the Loosh so disconcerting.
What is the Loosh? Monroe’s definition
The word Loosh has no mystical etymology. Monroe coined it himself, the way you give a code name to a spare part. In his accounts, it refers to an energy produced by living beings when they go through strong emotions. Fear, pain, grief. But also love, attachment, joy.
This energy, he says, has no reality for our instruments. It exists only in what he calls the nonphysical layers of reality, the “places” he visits during his out-of-body journeys. And it has one decisive property: it is collected. Something, over there, has a use for it.
Book I of Les Fermiers sums up what strikes the reader:
That is the key. Monroe does not cry conspiracy, does not name culprits, does not call for revenge. He describes an economy: there is production, there is a harvest, there are consumers. The tone is that of a technical report, not a sermon.
So keep a short definition in mind, one you can compare with everything you read elsewhere: in Robert Monroe’s accounts, the Loosh is an emotional energy produced by living beings and harvested by nonphysical entities. Everything else, the hierarchies, the motives, the consequences, belongs either to his more detailed accounts or to the interpretations that have been made of them. Les Fermiers is one of those interpretations, and it presents itself as such.
Where does Monroe tell the story of the Loosh? Far Journeys and the “farm”
If you are looking for the source, it is Far Journeys. Monroe’s first book sets the stage: levels of reality, beings encountered, the dead still attached to physical life. The second goes further. This is where Monroe reports the account of the Loosh, in the form of an explanation he says he received during his explorations.
As book I reads it, the discovery does not fall from the sky all at once. It builds over years. Monroe first notices that the beings he meets in these layers are not all of the same kind. Some are recently deceased humans. Others have never had a body. And still others seem to watch the physical layer with sustained, almost professional attention. Not out of curiosity. Out of need.
The Earth as a production system
The heart of the account fits in a few sentences, which book I restates without varnish: humanity produces Loosh; this Loosh is consumed by nonphysical entities; the Earth functions as a production system; this state of affairs has existed since conscious life appeared on the planet. That is where the image of the farm comes from, the image that made the word Loosh famous and gives the trilogy its name.
The most troubling detail is not the content. It is the tone. The explanation, as Monroe relays it, does not present the thing as a tragedy or an injustice. It presents it like photosynthesis or the food chain: plants produce, herbivores eat plants, carnivores eat herbivores. And somewhere above, others feed on what humans feel.
In Ultimate Journey, Monroe extends his cosmology. Book I notes in particular that he admits the existence, beyond everything he was able to map, of a level no one truly understands. That silence at the top is itself a piece of information: even the most stubborn explorer acknowledges the limits of his map.
Why is the Loosh of suffering not the same as the Loosh of joy?
Here is the observation book I places at the center of everything, and that many readers pass over too quickly. In Monroe’s accounts, all intense emotions produce Loosh. But they do not produce it in the same way.
According to book I, Monroe observes that some experiences generate far greater quantities than others: great suffering, bereavement, moments of collective terror, the approach of death. But also, and this is crucial, moments of intense love, deep connection, ecstasy. He further notices that the entities are not all drawn to the same situations. Some gravitate around zones of collective suffering. Others seem drawn to something subtler: creation, deep meditation, mystical experience.
Book I draws a consequence that Monroe does not state himself, and which must therefore be read as an interpretation:
Think about what this implies, without even settling whether the Loosh is real. In an ordinary human life, moments of pure joy are rare and brief. Moments of worry, sadness and resentment are many and lasting. A humiliation twenty years old can still tighten your throat. A joy twenty years old comes back as a lukewarm memory. There is nothing esoteric about this asymmetry: you can observe it in yourself tonight.
It is from this asymmetry that Les Fermiers will draw its entire map.
Why is the account of the Loosh so unsettling?
The word Loosh usually provokes two opposite reactions: instant adherence or a shrug. Both miss what is truly unsettling.
Because it does not come from a mystic
Book I says it with humor: mystics are tolerated. They are granted the right to see invisible things, as long as they stay in their lane and speak the language of spirituality. A monk who describes nonphysical entities is exotic. A radio man who talks about them like a circuit is a problem. Monroe had no doctrine to defend, no church to fill. That is what makes his account so hard to file away.
Because it is calm
A terrifying story can be dismissed the way you dismiss a horror film. An indifferent one is harder to shake. The idea that our emotions might have value for others, not out of malice but out of simple need, the way grass has value for the herd, touches a sore spot: our certainty of being at the top of the chain.
Because it meets a common experience
Many people have, without being able to name it, a vague sense that human suffering is too regular to be accidental. That the same cycles return. That fear is kept alive more than it is resolved. Book I opens on this intuition, and states it in a sentence that sums up the whole project: “Not because we are bad. Because we are productive.”
And because it can be misused
It must also be said plainly: the account of the Loosh lends itself to excess. It can feed fear, paranoia, the hunt for culprits. And that is exactly what Les Fermiers refuses. Book I repeats it: no conspiracy is needed for a machine that harvests emotion to work. A dashboard that measures engagement is enough. If you come out of reading about the Loosh more frightened and angrier than before, you have not understood the text: you have just produced exactly what it describes. We come back to this in detail in the article on social media, anxiety and anger.
How does book I make the Loosh the starting point of the Farmers’ map?
The first book of Les Fermiers takes up Monroe’s Loosh and calls it the Astral Honey, then simply the Honey. It does not claim to prove it exists. It asks a question: if you take this account seriously as a working hypothesis, what does it shed light on? The first three chapters build the answer in four steps.
1. Ba-Honey and Hab-Honey
To make Monroe’s intuition workable, book I distinguishes two honeys. Ba-Honey is the energy of heavy emotions: fear, shame, sadness, rage, despair. It is dense, it concentrates easily and it lingers long after the event that gave rise to it. A grief poorly lived through or a chronic anxiety go on producing it for years after the shock. Hab-Honey is the energy of light emotions: joy, gratitude, love, wonder. It is subtler, more volatile, and above all far less abundant. Both notions are developed on the page devoted to the Honey and the hierarchy of the Farmers.
2. The optimized farm
The second step is an agronomist’s reasoning. If you had to choose between a system that produces Ba-Honey continuously and one that produces Hab-Honey in unpredictable bursts, you would optimize for the first. Not out of sadism. Out of yield. A passive farm would settle for gathering whatever grows. An optimized farm acts on the conditions: it keeps the livestock from dying too fast, which would stop production, but it also keeps them from being too happy, which would reduce it.
Book I answers the obvious objection in advance: why is there still joy and beauty, if the system is tuned for suffering? Because exhausted soil no longer produces anything. In this reading, Hab-Honey serves as fertilizer: it maintains the capacity to produce. And because other beings, higher in the hierarchy, are said to feed on Hab-Honey sparingly, without trying to maximize it. Two economies coexisting, and therefore an internal tension in the harvest.
3. The production calendar
The third step is the most unsettling. The optimal balance, says book I, is not a humanity in total misery, which would produce nothing but emotional numbness. It is a humanity kept in a chronic background anxiety, with regular peaks of collective fear, interspersed with periods of false hope that regenerate emotional capacity before the next harvest. And the book proposes a thought experiment: reread history not as a series of accidents and progress, but as a production calendar.
4. The hierarchy of the Farmers
Finally, chapter 3 arranges the consumers in levels. The Field Harvesters act closest to us: they do not create human emotions, they amplify them and keep them going at the right moment. The Traders would move the honey between systems. The Architects, at the top of what can be mapped, would have designed the producing species. And beyond, a stratum no one sees. Book I insists on one point: these beings are not monsters. Hunger is not a crime. What is in question is not their nature, but the possibility of changing the terms of the relationship.
“Knowing changes everything”
This is the pivotal sentence of chapter 2, and the real reason for the whole construction. Understanding the system does not make fear disappear. But it takes something away from it: its natural, inevitable, fated character.
Book I in fact reads Monroe’s work in this light. According to this interpretation, which is the author’s and not a statement by Monroe, Hemi-Sync and the Institute’s work would amount to an attempt to “renegotiate” the production relationship: not to suppress emotions, but to change their nature. Monroe himself spoke the more accessible language of consciousness exploration and personal growth. The link is a reading hypothesis, and it should be held as such.
Is the Loosh an isolated idea? What the traditions say
The strength of Monroe’s account, for book I, does not lie in its novelty. It lies in the opposite: Monroe is not the first. He had not studied the Gnostic texts in depth, knew little of the Kabbalah, was not an anthroposophist. And yet his description, according to the author, meets maps drawn long before him.
The Gnostics of the early centuries speak of Archons, guardians of the spheres who keep the soul in ignorance. The Kabbalah describes the Qliphoth, the “shells” that feed on the emanations of separation. Rudolf Steiner evokes entities he calls Ahrimanic, drawn to fear and materialism. Each of these traditions speaks its own language, and none of them says “Loosh.” But book I sees the same structure in all of them: a humanity whose emotional energy feeds beings it does not see.
A skeptic will object that Monroe may have absorbed these ideas without knowing it. Book I grants it: “It is possible.” But that does not settle the other question: why do traditions separated by centuries and continents describe such a similar geography? Monroe, the author concludes, does not explain this convergence. He illustrates it.
We devote a whole article to this question, with the Nag Hammadi texts and what they actually say: the Archons and Gnosis. Simply bear in mind here that a convergence is not a proof. It is a clue, which invites you to look, not to conclude.
What to do with the Loosh today? Seeing without believing
You may close this article thinking that Monroe was dreaming, that he mistook his visions for journeys, and that the Loosh does not exist. You may also close it convinced of the opposite. Either way, you will have missed the essential. The motto of Les Fermiers is “a map, not a belief.” A map is not something you believe: you use it, and you judge it by what it lets you see.
The second book, Le Troisième Miel (The Third Honey), says it bluntly:
What you can do, on the other hand, is verify in yourself what can be verified. And that requires no belief.
Observe your own production
For a week, simply note what makes you react strongly. Not to judge yourself. To see. Which news, which conversations, which screens leave you tense, indignant, anxious? How long does the emotion last after the event? And how long, by comparison, does a moment of joy last? You will probably notice the asymmetry described above. It holds whether or not the Loosh exists.
Spot what is after your reaction
Faced with alarming news or provocative content, ask yourself: what here needs me to react? Often the answer is very down-to-earth: a business model, an algorithm, an audience. This is the most solid lesson of book I, and it requires no invisible entity. A machine that feeds on your emotion does not need to be conscious to work.
Stop betting
Book I offers a precious image: the player who, having understood that the table is rigged, simply stops betting. He does not overturn the table. He fights no one. He does not try to defeat the Farmers, which would be yet another reaction, and therefore yet another harvest. He sees, and he no longer automatically converts what he sees into fuel. This is neither the suppression of emotion nor denial: it is an emotion that remains yours. Les Fermiers calls this state the Third Honey, the energy of conscious lucidity. We go into it in the article on the three honeys and our emotions.
Card XVI of the Atanor, A Suffering, carries exactly this invitation: to “avoid sinking back into the ease of past dreams, move forward and stop complaining.” Not to deny pain, but to stop dwelling on it until it becomes an endless production.
Why does Monroe’s Loosh remain a useful map?
The account of the Loosh is nearly forty years old. It has been borrowed, distorted, dramatized, turned into a theory of anything and everything. Going back to the source lets you recover what is most precious in it: a cool gaze on a burning subject. Monroe does not ask to be believed. He reports what he says he saw, in the voice of a man who would rather not have seen it.
Whether you take the Farmers’ map as a metaphor, a hypothesis or a literal description, it raises the same practical question: what are you producing, day after day, without knowing it, and for whom?
That is the only question that really matters. Because if the Loosh exists, knowing changes everything. And if it does not, learning to see what exploits your emotions, and to stop betting on it, already changes a great deal.
To go further, the first book, Les Fermiers (in French), devotes its first three chapters to the Loosh and the farm, then a whole chapter to Monroe, before setting his account against Gnosis, the Kabbalah, Steiner, Plato and Wells.
