This viral hand-drawn sketch by Kailey Sweeney describes what she says she saw during a near-death experience. Interestingly, Robert Monroe described a somewhat similar concept called the I-There: a larger or more complete self made up of a cluster of lifetime personalities, experiences, and aspects of consciousness that together form the greater “you.”
Sweeney appears to show ordinary human beings at the bottom, a transition away from physical existence, several intermediate levels populated by other conscious beings, and, finally, a much larger structure that she labels the “Over-Soul.”
What makes the drawing especially interesting is how closely some of its basic ideas resemble a concept described by Robert Monroe, a consciousness researcher and founder of the Monroe Institute. Monroe called his larger structure of identity the “I-There.” He did not describe it simply as a soul that leaves one body and later enters another, but as a vast collection of personalities, experiences, and individual lives that remain connected as parts of a greater self. In one seminar, Monroe referred to the I-There as “the totality of you.”
The similarity does not mean Sweeney and Monroe were necessarily describing the same thing, and it certainly does not prove either interpretation of consciousness. Their models differ in important ways. Yet when the sketch is placed beside Monroe’s description of the I-There, there is an intriguing shared idea running through both: the human personality we experience during physical life may represent only a small part of a much larger system of consciousness.
Kailey Sweeney’s NDE Sketch
At the bottom of Sweeney’s drawing is the Earth, with a row of small human figures standing above it. These appear to represent people living ordinary physical lives. Compared with everything drawn above them, the humans are tiny, which gives the impression that earthly existence occupies only a small portion of a much larger reality.
Long lines extend upward from the people, and Sweeney identifies these as “silver strand connections.” Whatever their exact meaning within her experience, the visual message is fairly clear: the people living on Earth are not completely separated from whatever exists beyond the physical world. They remain connected to something above or beyond their ordinary condition.
Immediately above the human level is an area labeled “In Transit.” The phrase suggests movement between states rather than a permanent destination. If the drawing is understood as a representation of her NDE, this may correspond to consciousness moving away from ordinary physical existence and entering another condition, although the sketch alone does not provide enough information to define precisely what every stage represents.
Above this transitional area is a much larger region labeled “Intermediate State.” Numerous individual figures appear inside several horizontal layers, with connecting lines passing through and around them. Some of the figures appear to be reacting to events, and handwritten comments such as “No!”, “Stop it!” and “Boo!” appear nearby. The drawing therefore does not portray this intermediate region as empty or unconscious; instead, it seems populated by individual centers of awareness that continue to observe, respond, and somehow remain involved.
The most striking feature is the enormous form occupying the top of the page. Sweeney labels it “Over-Soul.” Hundreds of marks or smaller shapes appear inside it, while many lines from the regions below seem to converge toward or connect with this larger structure. Visually, the Over-Soul dwarfs every person in the drawing, almost as though the human being at the bottom represents only a small extension of something vastly greater.
Sweeney’s sketch seems to present consciousness as a layered and interconnected system rather than a collection of completely separate individuals. Physical humans exist at one level, consciousness passes through transitional and intermediate conditions, and all of this appears related to a much larger organizing reality represented by the Over-Soul.
There is one important limitation when interpreting the picture. The drawing itself does not clearly establish that every figure in the intermediate levels is another incarnation of the same individual, nor does it tell us exactly whether one Over-Soul contains many human beings, whether multiple Over-Souls exist, or how the different figures relate to one another. Those details should not be invented simply because they would make the drawing fit another spiritual model more neatly.
This is where Robert Monroe’s description becomes particularly interesting, because Monroe was much more explicit about what he believed the individual personalities inside his larger structure actually represented.
Robert Monroe’s I-There
Robert Monroe became known for exploring altered states of consciousness and what he described as out-of-body experiences. During one seminar, he explained an experience in which he moved inward through different layers of himself until he encountered something he initially struggled to describe.
He compared what he encountered to a huge field or collection of flowers. As he approached these apparent “flowers,” he realized that they were not flowers at all in the ordinary sense. They represented personalities, faces, and complete lifetime experiences.
The realization produced a radical change in how Monroe understood himself. Instead of seeing these personalities as unrelated beings, he concluded that they were all somehow components of his own greater identity. In the seminar, he described the realization by saying that all of these were “life personalities” and “lifetime experiences,” followed by the recognition: “This is what I am.”
Monroe eventually called this greater identity his I-There. He also played with the phrase by removing the hyphen and describing it as the “IT” of himself, suggesting something larger than the Robert Monroe personality that happened to be living one particular physical lifetime.
Later in the same seminar, he gave perhaps the simplest definition of the idea when he described the I-There as “the totality of you.”
That phrase matters because Monroe was not describing the ordinary personality as the entire person. Robert Monroe, the man living in the twentieth century with a particular name, family, history, and set of memories, represented only one expression inside a much larger identity.
According to Monroe, his own I-There cluster contained more than 200 lives. He joked that nobody was particularly interested in counting every single personality, but his point was that the number was large enough to completely change the ordinary concept of identity.
This was also not conventional reincarnation in the simple sense of one soul repeatedly becoming one new person after another.
The familiar reincarnation model is usually imagined as a straight line in which Personality A dies, later becomes Personality B, then Personality B dies and eventually becomes Personality C. Monroe’s description was considerably more complicated because the previous personalities remained part of the larger I-There rather than simply disappearing into the next incarnation.
Monroe Believed Several Personalities Could Form One New Human
One of the most unusual parts of Monroe’s explanation concerns how a new physical personality might be formed. He described something within the I-There that operated almost like an “executive committee,” although he openly admitted that he did not understand exactly how the process worked.
According to Monroe, this organizing aspect could select several existing life personalities according to the experiences and qualities required for a future physical life. Elements of those personalities would then contribute to the personality entering a new Earth lifetime.
Monroe believed approximately five personalities were dominant within his own current incarnation. He said they had “melded together to become what I am,” adding that throughout his life he had apparently used these components unconsciously or automatically.
That produces a very different picture from the idea that a single past-life personality simply returns wearing another body.
In Monroe’s model, the larger I-There could contain Personality A, Personality B, Personality C and hundreds of additional lifetime personalities, while selected aspects of several of them might contribute to the creation of a new physical personality.
Monroe suspected that people could “flicker” from one personality component to another depending on circumstances. One aspect might become more dominant when a particular ability, emotional quality, or type of response was required, while another might emerge under different conditions.
From the perspective of ordinary consciousness, all of those reactions would simply be experienced as “me,” because the physical personality normally has no awareness of the larger system operating behind it.
Monroe also described earlier personalities within his I-There as potentially useful sources of experience. If the present personality encountered a situation that another personality had already faced, the accumulated experience within the larger self could theoretically provide guidance. He even claimed that during serious difficulties, a previous personality capable of dealing with a particular situation could sometimes function as a kind of helper.
Sweeney places the ordinary physical human at the lowest visible level of a much larger structure. Lines connect those humans to regions containing many other conscious figures, and the entire arrangement ultimately reaches toward the massive Over-Soul above them.
Monroe likewise places the everyday human personality inside something far larger. Behind the personality exists a cluster containing numerous other personalities and lifetime experiences, all of which belong to what he considers the greater self.
In both models, therefore, the person walking around on Earth is not the whole story.
There is also a common emphasis on connection. Sweeney represents connection literally with long strands running between levels. Monroe describes internal communication within his I-There and says the different personalities remain available as part of the larger identity rather than existing as completely disconnected lives.
Even the scale of Sweeney’s drawing is suggestive when compared with Monroe’s account. The physical humans are tiny, while the Over-Soul is enormous. Monroe’s own discovery produced a comparable change in perspective because he began with the familiar Robert Monroe personality and ended with the idea that this personality was merely one component of a structure containing more than two hundred lifetime identities.
The similarity can be reduced to a basic pattern: a physical personality exists within a much larger interconnected consciousness structure containing many individual expressions.
The Two Models Are Not Identical
Sweeney’s sketch appears primarily to be a map of consciousness beyond physical life. Its labels describe movement through “In Transit,” an “Intermediate State,” and ultimately toward an Over-Soul. The drawing has the appearance of a vertical cosmology, with Earth below and progressively larger nonphysical regions above.
Monroe’s I-There is better understood as a map of identity.
When Monroe describes discovering his I-There, he emphasizes moving inward and discovering what he actually consists of. The hundreds of personalities he encounters are not simply random deceased people occupying the same afterlife environment; he identifies them as life personalities and lifetime experiences belonging to his own greater being.
That is a crucial difference because the many figures in Sweeney’s Intermediate State should not automatically be described as previous incarnations of one person. Her drawing does not establish that. Monroe, on the other hand, explicitly interprets his cluster as being composed of personalities associated with his larger identity.
The term Over-Soul should therefore not simply be replaced with I-There, as though Monroe and Sweeney were using two names for an identical mechanism. What can reasonably be said is that the underlying structures show an intriguing resemblance.
Sweeney’s image suggests a human being connected to a much greater field of consciousness while Monroe’s I-There suggests an individual human personality embedded within a much greater field of identity.
Sweeney’s sketch places the human being inside a vast network extending beyond ordinary physical existence, while Monroe describes discovering that his familiar personality existed within an enormous collection of other personalities and lifetime experiences. One is presented visually as an Over-Soul connected through multiple states of consciousness, while the other is described as an I-There containing the accumulated identities of a much larger self.
The comparison becomes especially compelling when Monroe’s phrase “the totality of you” is placed beside Sweeney’s enormous Over-Soul hovering above the tiny human figures at the bottom of her page.
Neither account establishes scientifically that consciousness survives death, that reincarnation occurs, or that a literal Over-Soul or I-There exists. Yet as descriptions of those experiences, they raise essentially the same unsettling possibility: what if the everyday self is not the complete self at all?
