Home > 1 > 2 > 3

PSI in Space

Just a few weeks before the flight, because of my interest, I had happened to meet up with a couple of physicians who were very scholarly and exceptionally good men and as a kind of a break from my routine, talked about these things and they, lo and behold, agreed with me!

These were physicians I met in Florida who were competent men, scientists as well as physicians. They were also distressed at the lack of mainstream science interested in these consciousness aspects. This was right before my flight in 1971. So we cooked up this experiment in parapsychology as a very, very private thing, we were satisfying our own curiosity.

Since no one had ever done any parapsychological experiments from distances beyond Earth, we said "Lets find out" and so we did.

The unfortunate part, of course, is that one of our participants, who was supposed to keep it quiet, let the press know before we got our data accumulated, before we'd published, which put a spin on it we didn't like at all, the sensationalism of the sound bite 'Astronaut conducts PSI experiment on moon-flight'.

The most important part of what happened on the flight was not that experiment, but my own intuitive experience on the way back, of looking at Earth and thinking "Hey, there is really something amiss with our story about ourselves." I had a very powerful experience. It was a subjective experience which, later I came to describe, after I did some research, because I didn't even have a name for it, as an epiphany, an insight. Recognising the separateness of things but recognising that, at a deeper level, there is connection between all things. It is accompanied by a feeling of ecstasy or bliss and a sense of harmony and eternity.

It turns out that many of the lunar module pilots who had time to be contemplative on their flight back, in comparing notes, they would describe it quite differently but I would say if it's not the same experience it sure sounds like it.

The Institute of Noetic Sciences

I say my belief system kind of got thrown in the air and fell on the ground and I've been picking it up and reconstructing it, bit by bit over the past 27 years, to create now, a new model of how things function that is quite different from what we were all taught in our traditional education. We set up the Noetics Institute to look into all of this.

Shifting the Paradigm

Max Planck said it very nicely 100 years ago. "Progress isn't made by convincing sceptics, only funeral by funeral." The whole milieu of questioning is now quite different from what it was twenty five years ago. It's helpful that some people are accepting the parapsychological results, although there are many in the mainstream science community that still do not, although the evidence is overwhelming.

These old paradigms change hard, but the fact is that the older paradigms are falling apart, they're not serving their need. And nature's not enjoying what's happening, I mean we're being taught a lesson that our methodologies aren't working. If you have a flawed metaphysical assumption or you build your house on sand and the tide comes in, your house is likely to crumble. Well, in my opinion our house is crumbling. Globally, economically, you cannot sustain the levels of economic growth that we're seeing and mechanistic thinking, because it is not the way the Universe is put together.

Are you hopeful about the popular interest in these ideas?

Ed Mitchell I think that's the only way a paradigm shift can take place. Because institutional approaches will be the last to change, they have to be forced to change. They have to fall on their own inertia, or irrelevance and as our methodologies become irrelevant to the common good, the people will just remove legitimacy from them and they collapse. And that's what we're seeing happening.

Home > 1 > 2 > 3

email • mail order
credits

© dprogram 1996>2008

Originally broadcast on UK television's Channel 4, dprogram is an award winning, mind expanding trip featuring rare and exclusive interviews with leading edge personalities from areas like cyber culture, consciousness research, parapsychology, music and art.

Volume 1 includes:
• Dan Mapes CEO of San Francisco's leading edge virtual reality design company SynergyLabs on the metaphysics of VR.
• Jah Wobble Musician and founder member of Public Image Limited on Cockney mystics, creativity and the inspiration of William Blake.
• Dr Sara Parker UC Berkeley scholar on the New Age 'colonisation' of Native American spirituality.
• Bishop Joey Head of the First Church of the Last Laugh - the worlds fastest growing snack relgion!
• Burning Man A unique four day experience exploring creativity and consciousness in Nevada's Black Rock Desert.
• Willis Harman Former president of The Institute of Noetic Sciences on their 'conventional research into unconventional areas'.
• Dr Edgar Mitchell Founder of The Institute of Noetic Sciences and Apollo 14 astronaut on parapsychology experiments in space.
• Nick Pope of the British Ministry of Defence on why he had to change his mind about the UFO phenomenom.
• Peter Russell Author, on the global brain, spirituality on the net and our part in the evolution of the planet.
• Ann & Alexander Shulgin Pioneer researchers into psychedelics and the mind, on the politics of ecstacy.
And more...

Running time: 70 mins.
£19.99 plus Post & Packing.
Post & Packing rates:
For the UK add £3.00
For Europe add £4.00
For the United States and the Rest of the World add £6.00

ORDER ONLINE

Snail Mail Orders:
Make a Cheque, Postal Order or International Money Order payable to Digital Media Labs and send to:
Digital Media Labs
8 Manson House
16-17 Manson Place
London SW7 5LT
United Kingdom

Customer Service Helpline:
+44 (0) 20 7225 0861

Please Note
dprogram is only available on VHS PAL. To play this tape in the US you must use a multi-region video machine capable of playing PAL format tapes.

We are currently working to provide dprogram on DVD. If you would like to be notified when this becomes available enter your email address below.