Explorers in the cosmos

I am currently reading the book ‘The Way of the Explorer’ written by the Apollo 14 astronaut Dr Edgar Mitchell and Dwight Williams. I purchased the book several years ago but became caught up in events of life and put the book to one side. For some reason a week or so ago, I had an urge to pick the book up and begin to read it. From the first page, I was captivated and felt a powerful sense of resonance with the narrative of Dr Mitchell.

His words begin to make an impression upon me. He describes how in the 15 years prior to his 1971 Apollo flight, his days had progressed more or less as he’d planned. He conveys the recognition of a life path which has brought him to the present moment. He recounts that as he opened the door to the lunar module and descended the ladder to the surface of the moon, he was aware that hundreds of thousands of miles away, millions of people were watching. He considered that his actions were not only a celebration of particular choices that he had made, but also that of a civilisation, a species. He contemplated the audacity of the venture, coupled with the co-ordination of minds and skills to bring such an event to fruition.

On his return journey and as he gazed upon an image of earth from space, he contemplated that it represented all he had ever known, loved, hated, desired or imagined as ever could be. He describes that he experienced a grand epiphany accompanied by exhilaration and from that moment on, his experience of life was altered.

In the three days it took him to return home, he said that he experienced an overwhelming sense of universal connectedness and felt an ‘ecstasy of unity’. It occurred to him that the molecules of his body and the molecules of the spacecraft itself were manufactured in the furnace of the one of the ancient stars that burned in the cosmos about him. He had a sense that as space travellers, he and his companions, along with the universe itself was not something accidental, but was evidence of an intelligent process at work; he perceived the universe as in some way conscious.

He describes that even in the midst of the epiphany and ecstatic state, he did not attach anything otherworldly or mystical to the phenomenon, but rather considered it curious and exciting that the brain could spontaneously reorganise information to produce such an extraordinary experience. 

Those three days in space marked a transition point for him, one in which his beliefs about life and about who or what he was were thrown into disarray. Shortly after his return home, he embarked upon a journey to explore, to attempt to make sense of what had happened and to be able to communicate it to others.

He recalls that in the early days, one of the questions frequently being asked of him was “what did it feel like to walk on the moon?” He noticed that the question began to irritate him, but not because he thought it an irrelevant question, but because he found that he couldn’t recapture a sense of the earlier experience of epiphany or ecstatic experience that would be necessary so as to convey it in a way which would make some kind of sense to others.

He recounts that in his early days as a pilot, emotion was out of necessity suppressed and he tended to rely upon intuition or a sense of rightness which came into play and this helped to guide him to land an aircraft safely. Having been to the moon, his discomfort with the emotion currently being experienced, possibly to do with his not being able to articulate the depth or the nature of his experience to others, revealed to him that in his early years, he had lacked an understanding of how intuition, emotion and intellect all interrelate.

He asked two friends to regress him under hypnosis, so that he could begin to understand why it was that he couldn’t remember his feelings to do with the moon and why it was that he became so irritated about that. He said that firstly, he had to examine himself, his wants and flaws, to be capable of honestly acknowledged that that was how he was. He also noticed that he was surrounded by some very eccentric and dogmatic beliefs about space and the cosmos and he realised that he had to be willing to question everything he had heard and took to be as factual.

He began to comprehend that most of us accumulate a body of ideas which comprises our belief system through external authorities rather than through our own quest and original insight; and how it is that our traditional modes of understanding do not adequately explain our modern day experience. He contemplated how we could benefit from some revised notions concerning reality and truth, not with an intent to form another cult, but to reveal more fully the structure of reality as we experience it in the present day. He began to see his life’s purpose as one of revealing and interpreting information, firstly in outer space and then in inner space.

~ ~ ~

In one of his Dr Mitchell’s later broadcasts, he says “I had completed my major task for going to the moon and was on my way home and was observing the heavens and the earth from this distance, observing the passing of the heavens. As we were rotating, I saw the earth, the sun, the moon in a 360° panorama of the heavens. The magnificence of all of this, what this triggered in my vision, in the ancient Sanskrit, is called Samadhi. It means that you see things with your senses the way they are, but you experience them viscerally and internally as a unity and oneness, accompanied by ecstasy. All matter in our universe is created in star systems, and so the matter in my body and the matter in the space craft and the matter in my partners’ bodies was the product of stars. We are stardust and we are all one in that sense.”

Engaging with the narrative of Dr Mitchell has provided me with a foundation for emerging insights.

For some 15 years, I have been exploring various quadrants of an online community of spiritual teachers, seekers, change agents, activists, as well as many professional and committed bodies established to encourage research and dissemination of information relating to reality and a study of consciousness. Each sector has value in sharing a glimpse of a bigger picture, alongside evidence of its limitation.

One of the sectors had invested in a body of writing and teaching programs to acknowledge and communicate the unity of our species, its oneness. It shared its endeavour to construct a consensus or image of how all of us would think and behave, if we were to openly acknowledge and believe in ourselves as a unity. The essence of the program works at a level of the mind and of ideas, of sustained and gentle challenge being given to people’s established dogma and their beliefs about the presence of a divinity; at the same time as being offered a new concept of how to view themselves. One goal of this endeavour being that of shifting people’s behaviour into a sustainable and more favourable model, but of course it would have had others.

In practice, such an endeavour contained the elements of a ‘carrot and stick’ approach, as it drew people into its community and they were invited to express their innermost thoughts, feelings, goals and desires. People who ‘got with the program’ were showered with warm recognition whilst the more challenging participants were effectively shamed. Nothing less than a demonstration of behaviour modification and not at all different from the mechanisms which we already have in place throughout many cultures and nationalities. It could be described as a new religion or thought construct of oneness - of unity - but which perversely sets itself apart from and as in some way superior to all of the others. It would not describe itself in this way, as its stated purpose is one of creating a space for something different (or truth) to be expressed. Still, I must infer that it regards all of the other truths out there as having fallen short of the mark somehow.

I have also come across what has been labelled as gurus, who through a process of communicating and teaching about an experience of Samadhi, began to establish acolytes and communities about themselves. Some are compassionate in their approach of encouraging self-realisation and actualisation, whilst others take delight in assuming the role of a mirror, so that a person might more clearly reflect upon what remains unidentified in their shadow. A sense of duality does prevail, with what has been identified as the human ego being construed as an obstruction or a barrier into unity; something to be offered up in sacrifice at an altar and furnace of transformation.

What will surely come as no surprise is the presence of a finely-tuned commercial aspect threading its way through the world of the spiritual seeker; it is a responsive and collaborative energy which both stimulates and feeds upon the nature of a person’s aspirations, needs and desires. It holds a promise of something being present in an outer world which can serve as a key towards unlocking an inner world of sensorial high and of transcendental bliss. The quiet voice in the stillness is that the finger pointing at the moon is not the moon itself.

I have encountered some very illustrious and prestigious organisations and recognition forums, unswervingly dedicated to a business of comprehending the nature of the cosmos and of consciousness, elevating their members and key players to platforms upon which they can receive accolades and a subtle consensus towards continuing their work in the world being deemed as having a cultural and planetary value. We might in some way view them as light bringers of knowledge to a world which has hitherto existed in darkness.

Then of course, there are the worldviews of utilitarianism, superstition and of dogma. I find it interesting in how they are able to utilise relationship and the parameters of time and space.

All of these sectors share a characteristic, in that they are capable of enthralling the human mind through providing it with an image of itself and its purpose. It is in their nature to set a stage for an individual in an environment and expectation of accomplishment. Intention can be an engine of creation, but what might be willfully ignored or overlooked is a frequency and myriad of form by which we are able to reinvent a wheel or designate a mirror.

In the smoky backrooms of what can be referred to as the theatre set of human thought, is a jury or self-appointed team of analysts. Their goal being to measure outcome and performance by which to establish specific characteristics which can be designated as instrumental in aligning ourselves with the best model of reality to be imagined.

Success is held in high esteem and for this reason it has generated an impetus to replicate for one what has been instrumental in transforming or creating shifts in another. So it is that for generations, considerable effort has been channelled into constructing particular methods to ‘transmit’ specific patterns of thought, messages and images, to allow for individuals to be subliminally influenced and at the same time as they are being consciously inspired.

In 1968 during the Apollo 8 mission, the astronaut Williams Anders captured a photograph of the Earth and part of the Moon’s surface. Famously known as ‘Earthrise’, it has been referred to as the most influential environmental photograph ever taken. Beholding such an image for the first time has to be in a realm of that which cannot adequately be put into words, just as in the early days, Dr Mitchell had struggled to find words to articulate what going to the moon had felt like.

This has not deterred publication of photograph after photograph of such an image and of a whole industry of virtual creation, so that a person can choose to clothe themselves in the mantle of an astronaut and potentially be moved by encountering particular images of the cosmos and in a visceral way. Isn’t this what a notion of Samadhi is all about - for our sense of who we are to shift through some mechanism of knowing or communion with that which is being perceived? Not the same as our being capable of recognising a sense of self in another, although this does allow for an experience of empathy. I would add that what might awaken the senses and speak to one individual in a particular way, might not necessarily have the same effect for another. So what is it that could be different?

How can we identify what it is that creates a sense of awe or reverence or gratitude in an individual, even as it is not being felt or recognised by another? If it were truly possible to locate and examine such a characteristic, we might cease with the replication of images or messages being churned out in the hopes of creating a more unified or sustainable world. Not that our endeavours are lacking in any purpose or value, but they unwittingly obscure vision so that we have a tendency to concentrate our resources upon looking for something which by its nature is impossible to find. I guess a more succinct way of phrasing this would be to ask ‘who or what is doing the looking?’