Edgar Mitchell

IONS Founder Edgar Mitchell

1930-2016


Remarkable men are hard to find ... 

                difficult to tell them  farewell  ...


                                               and impossible to forget...

Traveling back to Earth, having just walked on the moon, Apollo 14astronaut Edgar Mitchell had an experience for which nothing in his life had prepared him. As he approached the planet we know as home, he was filled with an inner conviction as certain as any mathematical equation he'd ever solved. He knew that the beautiful blue world to which he was returning is part of a living system, harmonious and whole—and that we all participate, as he expressed it later, "in a universe of consciousness."

Trained as an engineer and scientist, Captain Mitchell was most comfortable in the world of rationality and physical precision. Yet the understanding that came to him as he journeyed back from space felt just as trustworthy—it represented another way of knowing.

This experience radically altered his worldview: Despite science's superb technological achievements, he realized that we had barely begun to probe the deepest mystery of the universe—the fact of consciousness itself. He became convinced that the uncharted territory of the human mind was the next frontier to explore, and that it contained possibilities we had hardly begun to imagine. Within two years of his expedition, Edgar Mitchell founded the Institute of Noetic Sciences in 1973.

Since it's founding, Dr. Mitchell actively served on the board of directors of the Institute. He is the author of The Way of the Explorer: An Apollo Astronaut's Journey Through the Material and Mystical Worlds and Psychic Exploration: A Challenge for Science, Understanding the Nature and Power of Consciousness.