Nothing is really new in conspiracy theories, but the churning morass of social media sometimes mixes up new combinations of old nonsense that bubbles up to the surface unexpectedly. Lately, interest in "Grabovoi codes" or "Grabovoi numbers" is high. The CIA is supposedly hiding Grabovoi codes, strings of numbers that one can concentrate upon in order to cure disease, get rich, and manifest a new car. This video, for instance, has been viewed over a million times in the last couple weeks:

"You can search 'quantum healing codes' at the CIA.gov website and it has many different codes for many different things," This TikToker says, "for instance you would think of the part of your body that's hurting and repeat 55515 and, voila, pain starts to vanish," they add. Many TikTokers are into this. There are over 43,000 posts on the "Grabovoi" hashtag.

It might seem like lightweight wish fulfillment, but I looked into where belief in the Grabovoi codes comes from, and it's way deeper than TikTok. The online world's belief in magic numbers is a case of historical telephone that can be traced to a convicted Russian conman, an American broadcasting tycoon who believed he could travel outside of his body, and the strange history of the CIA and KGB's research into the paranormal—it gets real weird, real quick. But first, do the Grabovoi codes actually work?

Can you use Grabovoi codes to cure pain and disease and/or manifest wealth?

No. But sometimes, kind of yes. There is a library of research about the connection between the cognitive mind and the perception of pain, and scientific research supports the general idea that if you are experiencing mild pain, concentrating on something else, like a specific number, could reduce the perception of that pain. But the number itself is irrelevant; it's the distraction that matters. All other claims about benefits from these numbers—that they represent frequencies connected to specific real life outcomes, that they can help you find love, etc.— are not supported by any evidence.

Do Grabovoi codes come from the CIA?

No. But kind of yes. Despite the claims of online believers, searching "quantum healing codes," or "Grabovoi" in the CIA's declassified files database does not result in a list of healing numbers. There is no mention of the inventor of the Grabovoi numbers, Grigori Grabovoi, in the files either. There is actually one "healing number" contained in declassified CIA files. But first...

Who is Grigori Grabovoi?

Grabovoi is the founder of the Russian group Teaching Universal Salvation and Harmonious Development. He claims he is the second coming of Jesus, can cure cancer, can teleport, and can repair anything, mechanical or electronic, remotely. In 2008, Grabovoi was sentenced to 11 years in a Russian prison for fraud after accepting payment to resurrect children slain in the Beslan school siege. He's served his sentence and lives in Serbia now.

Among the hundreds of books (usually transcripts of lectures) Grabovoi has authored is Restoration of Matter of Human Being by Concentrating on Number Sequence, which lays out some of the Grabovoi numbers. Not all of them, though. Grabovoi tends to publish books of numbers for specific subjects, like Concentration on Numerical Sequences to Reset the Body of Cats. Grabovoi doesn't miss a trick.

Which brings us to TikTok. Beginning around 2016, Grabovoi and his believers/followers started promoting his numbers and theories on Pinterest, TikTok, YouTube, and basically everywhere else, and they were spread by people connected with hashtags like #manifestation, particularly when Covid19 was at its peak. So that's why everyone is talking about Grabovoi codes, but it doesn't explain the CIA connection. That's because of Robert Monroe.

Who is Robert Monroe?

Robert Allan Monroe was a media tycoon who made a ton of money producing radio shows in the 1930s and 40s. By the late 1950s, Monroe owned a network of radio stations and early cable TV channels across Virginia. In 1958, this rich radio dude claimed he had a spontaneous out-of-body experience after listening to binaural sounds.

To study the phenomena, Monroe used his considerable wealth to found the Monroe Institute. In 1977 the Institute published the The Gateway Intermediate Workbook, a collection of mental exercises and visualization tools designed to help people relax and/or project their consciousness across time and space. It advised people in pain to close their eyes and repeat "55515" to dull pain signals. Why this number specifically is not explained, but Monroe's whole thing was "hemi-sync" audio signals, aka "binaural beats," so the idea may have been that repeating a precise rhythmic sequence like "five-five-five-one-five" would echo pulsing audio frequencies. It's hard to say. Anyway, repeating this series of numbers is unlikely to have any more effect on pain than repeating anything else, and the research on binaural beats isn't promising. None of this changes the fact that the CIA had a real connection to the Monroe Institute.

How the CIA connected to the Monroe Institute

The Monroe Institute's workbook and other esoteric material were part of the CIA's reading room, and by the late 1970s and into the early 1980s, the U.S. Army and the CIA routinely sent high level intelligence officers to the Monroe Institute's campus, especially in connection with Project Stargate, the military's effort to create psychic soldiers and/or remote viewers who could project their consciousness anywhere they wanted.

The "CIA connection" is the most compelling thing about TikTok's interest in magic numbers. The CIA and army intelligence are thought of as serious, smart people who deal in information the rest of us are not privy to. If they believe in magic numbers, it must be true, right? Well, yes and no. The CIA/military is a group of people, and all groups of people (even smart ones) can be bamboozled.

Cold war paranoia leads to esoteric research

Consider the atomic bomb from a military, non-scientist perspective: If a split atom can level a city, is it that strange to believe the human mind has capacities we don't understand? Add to that the revelation that the USSR was conducting its own paranormal research, and you have a perfect storm. If we're wrong about this, the thinking that led to military paranormal research likely went, and the Soviets make atomic-bomb-level breakthroughs in the field of parapsychology, they'll bury us without firing a shot; it would be crazy to not look into it. And given the massive military budgets of the time, it was a tiny expenditure with a potentially nuclear-level outcome. (There's also the possibility that both the CIA and the KGB were purposefully deceiving one another about the extent of their research to make the other spend more. Things get shadowy during the Cold War.)

Enter the Monroe Institute. Robert Allan Monroe wasn't a wild-eyed hippie. He wore expensive suits and had straight white teeth. At least on the surface, the Monroe Institute was taking a corporate approach to the mind/body connection. Its approach was structured, serious, and deliberately clinical. The Gateway Workbook is a step-by-step process instead of a leap of faith. The Monroe Institute was the kind of place the military might feel confident sending its men.

The reality check of the 1990s

Research into remote viewing and other esoterica went on, seemingly with no tangible results. In 1989, Soviet Union collapsed without the help of psychic warriors or atomic bombs, and the CIA took a hard look at its paranormal programs in the mid 1990s. 1995's report "An Evaluation of Remote Viewing: Research and Applications," concludes, "OK, this was dumb and it never worked and we should stop throwing money at it." I mean, that's the gist. Anyway, the material was declassified so we could all take a look at how our taxes are spent.

Which brings us back to TikTok. Everything the CIA releases has always been pored over by curious people, where it marinates with other "official" weirdness like UFO research and quantum mechanics until it gets spit back in altered form. The no-context architecture of social media seems designed to legitimize fringe ideas. A convicted Russian conman's magic numbers collide with a wealthy eccentric's out-of-body workbook that got filed in a CIA reading room, and suddenly a million people think the CIA has a secret cure for back pain.

The low cost of entry of the Grabovoi codes

I don't think too many people on TikTok really believe that they can manifest magic and get rid of pain by repeating a number, but like a paranoid military throwing a few million at psychic research in the remote hopes of a Cold War-winning breakthrough, the barrier to entry is low. When you're in pain or you're broke or you're scared, why not repeat some numbers to yourself? It can't hurt.

But it won't help that much, either. Research shows that cognitively demanding tasks like puzzles or math problems are more effective ways to distract yourself from pain than repeating a number, and while learning about out-of-body experiences from the Monroe Institute (which is still around, by the way) might be interesting, there are better ways to relax and clear your mind. For instance, rather than spending $2,895.00 to sit around in a dark room in Virginia envisioning a tropical beach at the Institute's five-day "Gateway Voyage," book a trip to Bali. For the same price, you could actually be on a tropical beach, and stay at a luxury villa with a private plunge pool and a personal butler.