About this app
An independent, unaffiliated study aid for the ideas of Thomas Campbell — a physicist who spent the 1970s running out-of-body experiments in Robert Monroe’s lab and then spent thirty years writing them up as a model. It is not made by him, not endorsed by him, and not connected to the My Big TOE organisation in any way.
How his material is handled here
The problem with an app like this is obvious: it puts words next to a living person’s ideas, and the easiest way to get that wrong is to blur the line between what he said and what someone else thinks he meant. So every piece of content here carries a label, and there are only four of them.
- Campbell’s own words
- Checked against a transcript, a published forum archive, or the official site quoting him directly. Short quotations only, always with a link to where they came from.
- Paraphrased from My Big TOE
- Restated from the official glossary and theory pages, which are unsigned and appear to be volunteer-written under his editorial eye. Faithful to the material, but not his phrasing — which is why it never appears here as “Campbell says”.
- Our reading, not his wording
- Where the model implies something he has not said in those terms, and we have drawn the line ourselves.
- Not from Campbell
- General contemplative technique, included because it works, flagged because it is not his.
A few phrases that circulate widely as Campbell quotations could not be traced to any primary source during research, so they are not used here at all, however well they would have fitted. Where the research left a genuine gap, this app says so instead of filling it.
The thing this app will not do
It will not ask you to believe any of it. That is not a stylistic choice — it is the one instruction Campbell repeats more than any other. His stated position is that My Big TOE is nothing to be believed in, that if it is not your experience it cannot be your truth, and that the right stance is open-minded scepticism: open enough to learn something, sceptical enough not to swallow it.
So the model is presented here as a model. Test it against what actually happens when you sit. That is also why there are no streaks, no scores and no badges in this app: under Campbell’s own account, what gets scored is your intent, and sitting down in order not to lose a number is precisely the wrong intent.
Your data
Everything you write stays in this browser. There is no account, no server, and no analytics — nothing to sign up for and nothing being collected. The practical cost of that is real: clearing your browser data deletes your journal permanently, and it does not sync between devices. Export a backup from Settings from time to time.
A note on intensity
Meditation is not uniformly benign. Long or intensive practice can stir up anxiety, low mood, or a disconcerting sense of distance from yourself or the world, and that is more likely if you are already dealing with something difficult. The sessions here are short on purpose and there is no reason to push past what feels workable.
If sitting consistently makes you feel worse, stop and talk to someone qualified. This app is not a treatment for anything, and nothing in it is medical advice.
Where the real thing is
- my-big-toe.com(opens in a new tab)
The official site. The theory pages and the glossary are the source for most of what is paraphrased here.
- The My Big TOE trilogy(opens in a new tab)
The books themselves. Nothing in this app is a substitute for reading them, and none of their text is reproduced here.
- mbt.guide(opens in a new tab)
Segment-level search across a thousand-plus hours of Campbell's talks. The best way to hear him say something in his own voice.
- AI Guy(opens in a new tab)
A question-answering tool built on his books and videos by a community member, reviewed and approved by Campbell. Better than this app for answering a specific question at eleven at night.
Trademarks and copyright
“My Big TOE” and Campbell’s published work belong to him and his publisher. This app reproduces none of his book text and none of his audio; the tones you hear are generated in your browser from scratch. Quotations are short, attributed, and linked. If anything here misrepresents his position, that is a bug — the fix is to correct it, and the sources are listed above so you can check.