He served as Chief, Project Management Division of the Navy Field
Office for Manned Orbiting Laboratory before attending Aerospace Research Pilot
School in preparation for astronaut duties, and certification as a test pilot,
graduating first in his class. As a graduate waiting for the call to work with
NASA full time, he went on to serve as an instructor in advanced mathematics and
navigation theory for astronaut candidates.
And on 6 February 1971 his dream was recorded in the famous photo of
him studying a map while Moonwalking. He described his experience of seeing the
Earth from the Lunar surface, “You develop an instant global consciousness, a
people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and
a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international
politics look so petty.”
He added, "Instead of an intellectual search, there was suddenly a
very deep gut feeling that something was different. It occurred when looking at
Earth and seeing this blue-and-white planet floating there, and knowing it was
orbiting the Sun, seeing that Sun, seeing it set in the background of the very
deep black and velvety cosmos, seeing - rather, knowing for sure - that there
was a purposefulness of flow, of energy, of time, of space in the cosmos - that
it was beyond man's rational ability to understand, that suddenly there was a
nonrational way of understanding that had been beyond my previous experience.
There seems to be more to the universe than random, chaotic, purposeless
movement of a collection of molecular particles.”
Mitchell's interests also included consciousness studies and
paranormal phenomena. On his way back to Earth during the Apollo 14 flight he
had a powerful savikalpa samādhi experience, during which he conducted private
ESP experiments with his friends on Earth. His experience was so profound that
he went on to found the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) for the purpose of
consciousness research and other "related phenomena”. Buzz Aldrin later
confirmed the results of the psychic communication experiment that Mitchell
conducted during the Apollo 14 flight.
If he had a thought to remember, it’s probably, “The desire to live
life to its fullest, to acquire more knowledge, to abandon the economic
treadmill, are all typical reactions to these experiences in altered states of
consciousness. The previous fear of death is typically quelled. If the
individual generally remains thereafter in the existential state of awareness,
the deep internal feeling of eternity is quite profound and
unshakable.”
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