What People Get Wrong This Week: What Are “Grabavoi Numbers”?
Conspiracy theories are nothing new, but the swirling swamp of social media sometimes conjures up new combinations of old nonsense that suddenly resurface. Interest in “Grabovoi codes” or “Grabovoi numbers” has been high recently. It’s believed that the CIA is hiding Grabovoi codes—number sequences that can be focused on to cure illness, become rich, and create new cars. This video, for example, has been viewed over a million times in the past couple of weeks:
“You can search ‘quantum healing codes’ on CIA.gov , and there are tons of different codes for all sorts of things,” says one TikToker . “For example, you can think of the part of your body that hurts and repeat 55515, and voila, the pain will start to disappear,” they add. Many TikTokers are into this . The hashtag “Grabovoi” has over 43,000 posts.
It may seem like frivolous wish fulfillment, but I’ve been researching the origins of belief in Grabovoi codes, and it turns out it runs much deeper than just TikTok. The belief in magic numbers in the online world is a historical phone scandal of sorts, stretching from a convicted Russian fraudster, an American broadcasting magnate who believed he could travel outside his body, and the bizarre history of CIA and KGB paranormal research—things are getting very strange, very quickly. But first, do Grabovoi codes really work?
Can Grabovoi’s codes be used to treat pain and illness and/or attract wealth?
No. But sometimes, in a sense, yes. There’s a wealth of research on the connection between cognitive processes and pain perception, and scientific studies support the general idea that if you’re experiencing mild pain, focusing on something else, like a specific number, can reduce the perception of that pain. But the number itself isn’t important; the distraction is. All the other claims about the benefits of these numbers—that they represent frequencies associated with specific real-life outcomes, that they can help you find love, etc.—are not supported by any evidence.
Were Grabovoi’s codes obtained from the CIA?
No. But partly yes. Despite the claims of internet believers, a search for “quantum healing codes” or “Grabovoi” in the CIA’s declassified files yields no list of healing numbers. The files also make no mention of the inventor of the Grabovoi numbers, Grigori Grabovoi . In fact, the declassified CIA files contain one “healing number.” But first…
Who is Grigori Grabovoi?
Grabovoi is the founder of the Russian group “Teaching Universal Salvation and Harmonious Development.” He claims to be the second coming of Jesus, can cure cancer, teleport, and remotely repair anything, mechanical or electronic. In 2008, Grabovoi was sentenced to 11 years in a Russian prison for fraud after accepting payment for resurrecting children killed in the Beslan school siege . He served his sentence and now lives in Serbia.
Among the hundreds of books (usually lecture transcripts) written by Grabovoi, there’s ” Restoration of the Matter of a Human Being by Concentrating on a Numerical Sequence,” which outlines some of Grabovoi’s numbers. However, not all of them. Grabovoi typically publishes books on numbers on specific topics, such as “Concentration on Numerical Sequences for Restoring the Organism of Cats.” Grabovoi leaves nothing out.
Which brings us to TikTok. Around 2016, Grabovoi and his followers began promoting his numbers and theories on Pinterest, TikTok, YouTube, and practically everywhere else, and they were spread by people associated with hashtags like #manifestation, especially during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic . That’s why everyone’s talking about Grabovoi’s codes, but that doesn’t explain the CIA connection. It’s all about Robert Monroe.
Who is Robert Monroe?
Robert Allan Monroe was a media mogul who made a fortune producing radio shows in the 1930s and 1940s. By the late 1950s, Monroe owned a network of radio stations and the first cable television channels throughout Virginia. In 1958, the wealthy radio host claimed to have had a spontaneous out-of-body experience after listening to binaural sounds.
To study this phenomenon, Monroe used his considerable wealth to found the Monroe Institute . In 1977, the Institute published the ” Gateway Intermediate Workbook,” a collection of mental exercises and visualization tools designed to help people relax and/or project their consciousness through time and space. It advised people experiencing pain to close their eyes and repeat “55515” to dull the pain signals. The reason for this specific number is not explained, but Monroe’s entire concept was based on “semi-synchronous” audio signals, or “binaural beats,” so the idea may have been that repeating a precise rhythmic sequence like “five-five-five-one-five” would reflect pulsating sound frequencies. It’s hard to say for sure. In any case, repeating this number sequence is unlikely to have any more effect on pain than repeating anything else, and research on binaural beats is not encouraging . None of this changes the fact that the CIA had a real connection with the Monroe Institute.
How the CIA Was Connected to the Monroe Institute
The Monroe Institute’s teaching aids and other esoteric materials were stored in the CIA’s reading room, and by the late 1970s and early 1980s, the U.S. Army and CIA were regularly sending high-ranking intelligence officials to the Monroe Institute campus, particularly in connection with Project Stargate —the military’s attempt to create psychic soldiers and/or clairvoyants capable of projecting their consciousness anywhere.
The “CIA connection” is the most compelling reason for TikTok’s interest in magic numbers. The CIA and military intelligence are perceived as serious, intelligent people working with information unavailable to the rest of us. If they believe in magic numbers, it must be true, right? Well, yes and no. The CIA/military are a group of people, and any group of people (even smart ones) can be fooled.
Cold War paranoia leads to esoteric research.
Consider the atomic bomb from a military, non-scientific perspective: if a split atom can level a city, is it so outlandish to believe the human mind possesses abilities we don’t understand? Add to this the fact that the USSR was conducting its own paranormal research, and you have a perfect storm. If we’re wrong about this —presumably, those who pioneered military paranormal research did— and the Soviets make atomic-level breakthroughs in parapsychology, they’ll bury us without firing a shot; it would be madness not to pursue it . And given the enormous military budgets of the time, this was a tiny expense with potentially nuclear impact. (There’s also the possibility that the CIA and KGB deliberately deceived each other about the scope of their research to trick the other into spending more. Things get very murky during the Cold War.)
Meet the Monroe Institute. Robert Allan Monroe was no crazy hippie. He wore expensive suits and had straight white teeth. At least on the surface, the Monroe Institute espoused a corporate approach to the mind-body connection. Its approach was structured, serious, and deliberately clinical. The Gateway Workbook was a step-by-step process, not an act of faith. The Monroe Institute was a place where the military could confidently send its soldiers.
Reality of the 1990s
Research into remote viewing and other esoteric practices continued, seemingly without any tangible results. In 1989, the Soviet Union collapsed without the aid of psychics or atomic bombs, and in the mid-1990s, the CIA took a hard look at its paranormal programs. The 1995 report, ” Evaluating Remote Viewing: Research and Applications ,” concluded, “Okay, it was stupid, it never worked, and we should stop wasting money on it.” That’s the gist of it. In any case, the materials were declassified so we could all see how our tax dollars were being spent.
Which brings us back to TikTok. Anything the CIA publishes is always scrutinized by curious minds, where it’s lumped in with other “official” oddities like UFO research and quantum mechanics, until it’s spat back out in a modified form. The context-free architecture of social media seems designed to legitimize fringe ideas. The magic numbers of a convicted Russian fraudster collide with a wealthy eccentric’s workbook on out-of-body experiences, stored in the CIA’s reading room, and suddenly a million people think the CIA has a secret cure for back pain.
Low cost entry into Grabovoi’s codes
I don’t think many people on TikTok actually believe they can perform magic and relieve pain by repeating a number, but like paranoid military men pouring millions into psychic research in the hopes of a breakthrough that could win the Cold War, the barrier to entry is low. When you’re in pain, or short on money, or scared, why not repeat a few numbers to yourself? It won’t hurt.
But that won’t help much either. Research shows that cognitively challenging tasks, like puzzles or math problems, are more effective ways to distract yourself from pain than repeating numbers, and while studying out-of-body experiences at the Monroe Institute (which, by the way, still exists ) can be interesting, there are better ways to relax and clear your mind. For example, instead of spending $2,895 to sit in a dark room in Virginia and imagine a tropical beach during the Institute’s five-day “Gateway Journey,” book a trip to Bali. For the same price, you could actually be on a tropical beach and stay in a luxury villa with a private pool and a personal butler.