The View from SPACE

An Interview With Edgar Mitchell
by Stephan Martin

Seeing the Earth from space in 1957 was the beginning of a new stage in the history of the world. For the first time, humans saw the Earth as a single integrated system from a cosmic perspective. Economic, political, and cultural boundaries all disappear when our blue globe is glimpsed from space, and the words fragile, interconnected, and unity appear often in the descriptions of men and women viewing the Earth from space for the first time. So many astronauts have reported having spiritual epiphanies and euphoric experiences of “cosmic consciousness” while in space that some have dubbed the phenomenon “The Overview Effect,” referring to the expanded universal perspective that space travel can provide. One individual whose life was altered forever by such an experience is the astronaut Dr. Edgar Mitchell. Following his career as a test pilot and aviator in the Korean War, Mitchell was selected as a NASA astronaut and served as lunar module pilot for Apollo 14, becoming the sixth person to walk on the moon.

Q. Could you talk a little bit about your epiphany on returning to Earth on Apollo 14?

After the work on the surface of the moon was done, and we were coming home, my mission was essentially complete. I was still the systems engineer on a well functioning spacecraft, monitoring dials and conducting a few more experiments, but at this point I could be pretty much a tourist. While getting my Ph.D., I had studied astronomy at MIT and Harvard, and so I was aware of the very little that we knew at the time about how star systems form, how matter is formed in the universe, and how we had only very recently realized that the atoms in our bodies were created in stars long ago.

While we were coming home, the spacecraft was rotating to maintain thermal balance, and that allowed the Earth, the moon, the sun, and the stars to come into my view in a 360-degree panorama every two minutes, which is a pretty powerful sight. Now remember that in space, because you're above the atmosphere, you can see 10 times as many stars as you can from the ground, and so the stars you see are brilliantly bright.

And suddenly it settled in, a visceral moment of knowing that the molecules in my body, the molecules in the spacecraft, and the molecules in my partners had been prototyped and manufactured in an ancient generation of stars. It was not an intellectual realization, but a deep knowing that was accompanied by a feeling of ecstasy and oneness that I had never experienced in that way before.

In that instant, I knew for certain that what I was seeing was no accident. That it did not occur randomly and without order. That life did not, by accident, arise from the primordial earthly sea. It was as though my awareness reached out to touch the furthest star and I was aware of being an integral part of the entire universe, for one brief instance. Any questions that my curious mind might have had about our progress, about our destiny, about the nature of the universe, suddenly melted away as I experienced that oneness. I could reach out and touch the furthest parts and experience the vast reaches of the universe. It was clear that those tiny pinpoints of light in such brilliant profusion were a unity. They were linked together as part of the whole as they framed and formed a backdrop for this view of planet Earth. I knew we are not alone in this universe, that Earth was one of millions, perhaps billions, of planets like our own with intelligent life, all playing a role in the great creative plan for the evolution of life.