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Although Robert Monroe was not a musician, his exploration of consciousness, perception, and invisible space became deeply connected to the atmosphere and inner landscape behind Velvet Ashes.
Robert Monroe was not originally someone I actively searched for.
My interest in his work began indirectly through the autobiography of Joseph McMoneagle, whose experiences with remote viewing and the Monroe Institute introduced me to Monroe’s ideas about consciousness and altered states.
At the time, I was already deeply interested in Emanuel Swedenborg, whose writings described journeys through unseen worlds and expanded states of awareness. Because of that background, Monroe’s exploration of consciousness never felt strange to me. Instead, it felt like another path toward understanding human perception and invisible space.
In my younger years, I explored Hemi-Sync recordings myself. I owned both the cassette tapes and later the CDs, attended seminars, and experimented with altered states of consciousness such as the “Focus 10” state. While I never experienced dramatic out-of-body phenomena, the experience itself left a lasting impression on me.
Looking back now, I believe those experiences influenced the way I understand music and sound.
For me, music has never been merely entertainment.
Certain sounds can alter perception, open inner landscapes, and transport the listener into another emotional or psychological space. I experienced this feeling through The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Bauhaus, and even the architectural depth of Bach.
Songs such as The Rain Song, Most High, or the dark atmospheric spaces created by Bauhaus often felt less like songs and more like environments or states of consciousness.
Over time, I realized that many aspects of my life were connected by a single fascination:
Whether through sound, memory, atmosphere, or focused awareness, I was always searching for unknown spaces beyond ordinary perception.
In that sense, Robert Monroe was never simply an “occult” figure to me.
He represented the possibility that human consciousness may contain unexplored landscapes － invisible territories that music, silence, memory, and perception can sometimes reveal.
Velvet Ashes was born from that same continuing exploration.
Representative Works (Books)
Robert Monroe
・Journeys Out of the Body
・Far Journeys
・Ultimate Journey
Joseph McMoneagle
・Mind Trek
Emanuel Swedenborg
・Heaven and Hell
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