Conversations with Edgar Dean Mitchell

One of my first and most influential mentors as an author and consciousness researcher has been Edgar Dean Mitchell, the sixth man to walk on the moon, founder of the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS), and author of Psychic Exploration and The Way of the Explorer.

I felt blessed to be able to see Dr. Mitchell in person at an IONS event in California in February 2010, where he was the guest of honor. I loved chatting with Edgar that chilly evening at the Chabot Space and Science Center in Oakland about the remarkable speed of technological advances over the past hundred years. He told me how amazing it is that his grandfather had crossed the United States of America in a covered wagon, his father was born soon after the Wright brothers made their historic first flight, and then Edgar walked on the moon and made it safely back home to Earth on Apollo 14. This was even more amazing, because Edgar’s Apollo 14 mission immediately followed the nerve-wrackingly problematic Apollo 13.

I first got to know Dr. Mitchell via email correspondence that began sixteen years ago, in March 2000. When we first began our correspondence, we commiserated about the challenges of the publishing world, and shared our ideas regarding the connection between consciousness and the physical world. Dr. Mitchell provided me with his honest assessment of my manuscripts, and helped me envision a positive future for humanity on our beautiful blue-green planet, Earth.

“We went to the moon as technicians; we returned as humanitarians.” 

I was moved by the way that Dr. Mitchell had a positive vision for humanity that he shared through his commitment to creating an organization dedicated to exploring consciousness, at the Institute of Noetic Sciences. He frequently referred to the epiphany he’d had while in space, returning in his Apollo capsule to the Earth from the moon, as he looked up in the sky to see a full Earth. He describes in The Way of the Explorer that at that moment he felt, “I am one of a growing handful of human beings to have seen the Earth from the point of view of an extraterrestrial. In the heavens there is no up and down, no east or west. Earth is but a beautiful blue speck in the midst of a vast emptiness marked by luminous celestial bodies. We inhabit but one of those celestial bodies; one of the most organized-for all we know.From the heavens, in 1971, the Earth looked peaceful and harmonious, but of course all was not as it appeared. Conflict that threatened our very survival lay below. Weapons were poised, ready to annihilate life as we knew it at a moment’s notice; environmental crises were lurking just beyond public awareness. The common root of these mushrooming dilemmas, I believe, has been conflicting, out-dated, flawed ideology and dogma, with roots in antiquity.”

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On the Difference Between the Map and the Territory

While Dr. Mitchell and I didn’t always see eye-to-eye, we certainly shared a mutual love for exploring the nature of consciousness. We both had witnessed experiences of mind-matter interaction which we wrote books about, and Dr. Mitchell on occasion would remind me of the importance of always remembering that the map is not the territory. He describes what he means by that in The Way of the Explorer, where he says, “This leads to the point that our beliefs are our map of reality. We do not perceive reality directly, but only the information our senses present to the brain at any given moment, which is then compared with the existing remembered experiences to obtain meaning. Because this map is the only reality we humans know, we often make the mistake of thinking that our map is reality itself, when in fact it is just an incomplete portrait painted from memory.”

Dr. Mitchell viewed psychokinetic mind-matter effects to be a way of managing patterns of energy that we would consider to be information, and he considered epiphanies–such as the one he had in space, and the sort of experience that can transform skeptics and “non-believers” to suddenly become concerned with spirituality and the nature of consciousness–to be “an abrupt organization, or reorganization, of information in a way that produces new insight at the level of conscious awareness.”

Edgar and I shared a common view of the role of beliefs for humankind. He writes in The Way of the Explorer, “This leads to the point that our beliefs are our map of reality. We do not perceive reality directly, but only the information our senses present to the brain at any given moment, which is then compared with the existing remembered experiences to obtain meaning. Because this map is the only reality we humans know, we often make the mistake of thinking that our map is reality itself, when in fact it is just an incomplete portrait painted from memory.”

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On Consciousness and Healing

Within a couple of years after I got to know Edgar, he informed me that after receiving a medical diagnosis that he had cancer, he’d opted to go the natural/alternative healing route rather than standard “slash or burn.”  Edgar told me that the IONS board had surprised him in March 2002 with an offer to do a shamanic style healing ceremony for him, which he agreed to. He wrote to me, “I had been on the giving and observing end of such efforts many dozens of times, but never the recipient. What a wonderful experience. We did do some shape shifting!! Subsequent high definition ultra sound sonogram showed the malignancy was gone. I trust that by some diet and life style change, meditation and such wonderfully good thoughts from folk like you that we can keep it that way. Thank you again for your kindness, love and caring.”

I was immensely grateful to hear this good news that one of my heroes and mentors was able to walk his talk and experience for himself the healing power of positive shared intentions, energy, and consciousness.

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On the Matter of UFO Disclosure

Dr. Mitchell grew up within 40 miles of Roswell, New Mexico, in a small town where the old-timers talked about what they’d observed. Though Edgar never mentioned to me any direct experience that he’d had with UFOs or extra-terrestrials, he did tell me that with regard to the matter of UFO disclosure, “Press has called me on couple of points, to which I have responded, but I >do concur this subject should be opened up and obfuscation stopped.”

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On Consciousness & Reality

Dr. Mitchell was a marvelous mentor for me, through his creation of IONS, his excellent writing, and his willingness to converse with me about his thoughts on the topics of consciousness and reality. He was a proponent for quantum holography being the basis for consciousness and mind-matter effects. Here are a few highlights excerpted from my emails with Dr. Mitchell in which we share our thoughts about consciousness and quantum physics:

Edgar Mitchell (1 April 2000): The Bohmian approach that Sarfatti uses and calls post quantum mechanics has a lot of merit, but consciousness events only reach maturity in the complexities of group theory and Lie group algebras with macroscale objects, not theories of individual particle (although the phenomenon must find its antecedents at the particle levels).

Edgar Mitchell (4 April 2000): 

Cynthia Sue Larson (7 April 2000): 

Edgar Mitchell (7 April 2000): 

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At the time of Edgar’s death, we had just been planning for him soon to be a guest on my radio show, Living the Quantum Dream. I miss Edgar Mitchell tremendously, though I am grateful that his legacy of thoughts, ideas, and community of consciousness researchers lives on. Thanks to Edgar’s foresight in recognizing a continuing need to explore not just the far reaches of space–but also the far reaches of mind–our world is an immeasurably better place for having had him in it.