The Way of the Explorer - interview with astronaut Dr. Edgar Mitchell - part two

photo: Dr. Edgar Mitchell's book
The Way of the Explorer

As host of The Explore Your Spirit with Kala Show, Kala Ambrose interviewed Dr. Edgar Mitchell about his book, The Way of the Explorer. Kala shares this in-depth interview as she and Edgar Mitchell discuss space travel, the Apollo 14 mission and the importance of global consciousness to further space exploration.

Kala: (continued from part one) ...religion meet. The scientist, the futurist, the mystic, and the UFO chaser all look to other dimensions to explain the unexplained"

Dr. Edgar Mitchell: Yes, they do, and it’s not clear by the way that other dimensions really exist. We have to explore, but in due course we must come to the reality that what we have to work with what is right here with ourselves and right here in front of us all the time and if we're not going to do it here, it’s not going to get done.

Kala: You mention about the Sun and its life cycle. Of course, there's so much of space we're unable to explore at this time, but how many other planets do you think are out there that are like Earth and other galaxies?

Dr. Edgar Mitchell: Nobody at this point can make a decent guess but we're starting to find more and more just in recent years with the Hubble telescope. With its magnificent use, we can see the universe. It's very clear that we're beginning to realize that the universe is infinite, just hugely larger than we ever thought it was. We have many ways of demonstrating this, because of the Hubble --even though it’s now only a few decades, or so old and about to reach the end of its useful life, unless we do some refurbishing. We are getting a whole new take on what the universe, and what life in the universe, is all about. We really need to start examining that and be thinking about ourselves in quite a different way than what we have in the past.

Kala: The Hubble has shown us so many pictures and we saw some of Mars and it was rather oblique looking in the scope. We've seen some of the amazing storms going on Jupiter and I think I saw one storm that they said was as big as our entire planet. And all of these pictures we've seen and yet, while they're all beautiful and interesting in their own way, there’s also certain obliqueness to these other planets. It’s so interesting to me that Earth is so different with so much water and so much beauty in the way it was created here and with so much life. Do you have any thoughts about that in your mystic side?

Dr. Edgar Mitchell: What it is telling us is that our stellar star system is around a solar system we inhabit with only a finite band of conditions. We experience them on our plane. For example, Mars is twice far away from our Sun as our Earth and that means the solar flux is a quarter of what it is here. That means that the energy flux on Mars is much, much less, than it is here and gives it far less opportunity for life. We have to look out into these star systems and galaxies that contain billions and billions of stars like our own and there's not much doubt in my mind and many others' minds now that large number of these will contain living systems and life, as we understand it. It's a long way to wait and we're going to have to improve and to develop ourselves before we can have a finite space and we are not sustaining our living conditions and our civilization now. We have to wake up and start to live in the real world and that's what space exploration has taught us just in this last fifty years.

Kala: It’s one of the reasons why I’m glad that your book is out. It makes people look in that big picture again and think about how precious this life is on our planet. We get so caught up in our own lives, that what’s going on in our little corner here of the Earth that we forget how important it is. You have a wonderful perspective in that way, from what you've seen, where you're going, and what you study and do  with the Institute in Noetic Sciences and I want to give out your website to our listeners who are listening right now. The Institute of Noetic Sciences is noetic.org and, of course, your personal website is edmitchellapollo14.com where people can find out about your book and DVDs and photos and other things that are of interest as well

Dr. Edgar Mitchell: I do have another research organization; it’s associated with folks here and scientists in Europe, looking at this very deep question that we're alluding to. It's the frontier science to help us solve some of these enormous problems of sustainability that we're talking about.

Kala: And what does that research group say? What do they think we can do?

Dr. Edgar Mitchell: Well, we then have to get with it and get going and we can solve many of these problems. On the other hand, we can’t. It’s going to take money; it’s going to take time and effort to have this all going. And that what the organization is trying to do to is to get all of that type of work going. The website for that is quantrek.org and that talks about some of the very frontier work that we're trying to get accomplished.

Kala: Spell that one more time for our listeners.

Dr. Edgar Mitchell: Quantrek.org

Kala: Wonderful. Thank you. What’s next for you? What are you working on now? Do you continue to work?

Dr. Edgar Mitchell: I sit on the board of Noetics. I'm always writing papers. I also work with the noetic concepts and with people in noetics and working with quantrek and communicating with my colleagues around the world. This is very busy right now.

Kala: I would say with IONS there's been so much work there. You have a distant healing project ongoing, and other types of research. Do you participate in that still?

Dr. Edgar Mitchell: I’ve been very much involved in most of these types of projects. We're finding cooperation in partners for many of these research projects around the world and what Noetics is doing on site and what we're doing individually. It’s a rather large-scale effort at this point. Let’s hope that we can keep all of these things moving, that I think will help contribute our sustaining civilization in the future.

Kala: What questions have you been asked the most, especially when you came back from your trip to the Moon?

Dr. Edgar Mitchell: Depends on the age group. Children under 6 and 7 years old, I speak to those groups, , their first question is how do you go to the bathroom? And, of course, the proper answer to that is very carefully.

Kala: I can see that with the children, that's so cute.

Dr. Edgar Mitchell: Oh, yes. They want to know how you go to the bathroom, how you eat. How do you do all these things that humans have to do, the very basic things.

Kala: It seems to me that a lot of people want to go more, more, more outward in space exploration. It also sounds to me though, that part of the experience of your space travel made you fall in love more and more with home and want to come back home and be focused on what was going on here.

Dr. Edgar Mitchell: Well we have to go inner and we have to go outer. And that the main thing is we're not able to sustain ourselves unless we grow and evolve to different levels of cooperating with each other. And seeing ourselves and neighbors and families as it were on this planet.

Kala: I imagine that you get inundated with talks about foes and alien visitations

Dr. Edgar Mitchell: That's a large part of it.

Kala: Do you have something that speaks directly about that and your thoughts about it?

Dr. Edgar Mitchell: Well I have been pretty knowledgeable. I grew up in the Vegas valley in New Mexico, so, near Roswell as well. And there were Roswell instances. I know many of the so- called old timers who were involved at that time in the military and locally. Many of them are gone now and I have been briefed on that. I know we have been visited; I’ve never had firsthand experience. We have been visited and I hope that, within the next few years, the veil of secrecy will be lifted. Nations like Belgium and France and Brazil and Mexico have opened their files about all of these in just in the last few years and it is long past due for our country. I will be speaking at a conference on that very subject there in Washington DC this upcoming weekend.

Kala: We had Nick Pope on the show, a while back who was talking about some of that, beginning to happen over in Britain.

Dr. Edgar Mitchell: Who did you have?

Kala: Nick Pope, he used to run the British Government's UFO project at the Ministry of Defense.

Dr. Edgar Mitchell: I know who you’re talking about.

Kala: He was mentioning that they're beginning to do that in Britain and let some of the information out . But it seems that it is very slow. Painstakingly slow.

Dr. Edgar Mitchell: It’s really slow and there’s a history behind that. Yes, it’s taking a long time to do it but now we’re trying to get that all opened up.

Kala: What about the people who say that we can’t go back to the Moon and that NASA hasn’t gone back to the Moon because they were told they couldn’t go back to the Moon?

Dr. Edgar Mitchell: Well that’s all nonsense. It’s just that when we stop going to the Moon, after six flights, it occurred to the people that Kennedy said we’re stationed to go to the Moon and return safely to the Earth. We’ve done that. Now they want to know what you’ve done for us recently, but then congress cut off the money. It was a bad decision. We should have done it, we should go on, and we will, in due course, because it is our destiny. We will go outside of this solar system, in due course, because that is our destiny; provided that we don’t kill ourselves with stupidities before that.

Kala: And it always seems to, like you say, comes to the war and the aggression that we have here. I think the last presidency that was really interested in space at all was really Reagan with Star Wars program.

Dr. Edgar Mitchell: That was the wrong reason to be interested in it, really.

Kala: It always comes back to war and aggression again.

Dr. Edgar Mitchell: Exactly, and that is precisely what will keep us from evolving into a stable long-term civilization, with that type of attitude.

Kala: Well let’s hope it’s going to change.

Dr. Edgar Mitchell: It will change because we have to change it.

Kala: Yes. I agree.

Dr. Edgar Mitchell: It's right here with us.

Kala: I agree. You’re on the frontiers of consciousness, exploration, and space, and time, and it really is an amazing time where we are right here, right now with everything that could’ve happened in this century if we would just open up and let it happen as it should.

Dr. Edgar Mitchell: Exactly

Kala: Let it happen, as it should.

Dr. Edgar Mitchell: We have all the future ahead of us. What amazing discoveries were the explorations of the past. The first exploration was to cover our globe and humanity survived and now we’ve been to the oceans, now into air and out into space. And the next step is going out into the solar system.

Kala: We have a lot of listeners on the show that are college students. And to those are listening right now, would you want to give them advice about the programs they’re in whether it is science or whether they are thinking about becoming astronauts themselves? What would you tell them?

Dr. Edgar Mitchell: Well I think the main thing to tell them is have heart, learn to cooperate, and learn to do your best, and learn that we must, we all must survive on this planet together. And right now that’s in jeopardy and I will point out that’s there’s over six and a half billion people on this planet at the moment. Half of whom were not even born when I went to the Moon 37 years ago. But the opportunity to make this a better place to live and to make it sustainable, civilizations must fall right on into the hands of young people, without a doubt. They have to take over.

Kala: It was a pleasure to speak with you Dr. Mitchell. I look at part of your book where it says you were suddenly from behind the realm of the Moon. ..."In long slow motion moments of immense majesty, there emerges the sparklingly blue and white Earth; a light delicate sky blue sphere placed where slowly swirling bells of white, rises gradually like a small pearl in the thick sea of black mystery. It takes more than a moment to fully realize this is Earth, our home. On the return trip home, we gaze into 240,000 miles of space toward the stars and the planet from which I had come; I suddenly experience the universe as intelligent, loving, and harmonious. My view of our planet was a glimpse of divinity. We went to the Moon as technicians, we returned as humanitarians".

Dr. Mitchell, I've interviewed a lot of people on this show. I'm so touched by the person that you are, as a philosopher, as a scientist, and a humanitarian. I really just admire your work so much and what you do and what you continue to do for the world. Thank you for your time.

Dr. Edgar Mitchell: Well, thank you very much. It has been a real pleasure to be with you, Kala.