Carl Sagan said,

"We explore not because it is required but because it is who we are as a species."

Welcome to The Soul Podcast, I’m Stacey Wheeler.

It was February 1971, on a return trip from the Moon. And from out in the empty expanse of space, Edgar was secretly sending psychic messages to Earth. This was not an approved experiment. That was clear. Neither NASA, nor the other two Astronauts onboard knew what Edgar was up to. NASA would not have allowed such an experiment. It was not hard science. It was ‘out there’. And Edgar presumed his shipmates would have thought him a bit odd if they’d known. The Mission Commander was Alan Sheppard; one of the original Mercury Astronauts and the first American to travel to space. He had seen combat in the Navy during World War 2. The other, Stuart Roosa, had been a smokejumper with the U.S. Forest Service, parachuting into at least four active fires in Oregon and California during the 1953 fire season- before becoming a military test pilot and an astronaut. Edgar understood, these men were not the sort to see the value of a psychic experiment in space. How would they react if they knew about it? Telling them, wasn't a risk Edgar was going to take. 

Edgar had always enjoyed a good conversation; the kind which makes you stretch your imagination. The kind which invites you to examine the mysteries of life. The sorts of questions the philosophical minds had always pondered. Topics like the nature of human consciousness and the Soul. Mitchell had had experiences that left him wondering about the possibility that intuition or psychic abilities existed. Experiences he felt might be precognition. And of course, he couldn't explain these experiences. His science and engineering training weren’t even useful. Were these things even possible to prove? He doubted it. But he wondered if there was some way to at least test them. 

While pursuing his eventual doctorate degree in aeronautics, Edgar encountered Eastern philosophies. And he’d read Carl Jung’s work, which emphasized the interconnectedness of all life. These ideas resonated, connecting with some of his own observations. Jung’s ideas about cosmic consciousness were intriguing. The idea that all minds are connected in some grand way -we cannot prove or fully understand- fit well with his ways of seeing things. His university years opened him to considering non-Western perspectives on consciousness. During this time, Edgar developed a strong belief in the power of the mind. Though he was just seven years younger than his Mission Commander, his thinking was more akin to the next generations than the previous. Edgar was curious about the big philosophical questions. He saw no indication his Mission Commander was. So… Edgar was careful.

The planning for his secret experiment had started just weeks before his launch. To achieve usable results he’s need to carefully lay plans in advance of the launch. If the experiment was to have a chance of success he knew he’d need to be able to focus on sending messages at specified time, while his partners on Earth were focused on receiving. That meant he couldn’t be doing anything that could distract his mind from his psychic task. And he’d need to send multiple messages, in order to calculate a rate of success. One or two results would not be useful. But how would he stop everything multiple times while on the 10-day spaceflight, to focus on sending his signals? Fortunately, the rigid, pre-planned work/sleep schedule NASA put together made this task easier. On the return trip from the moon, there were times the other two Astronauts would be sleeping while Edgar was monitoring the systems on the spacecraft. Though this wasn’t technically down-time, his duty was essentially to work as a sentry, noticing if any alarms sounded on the craft. It was vital that nothing on the craft failed, or it might mean death for all aboard. 

And safety was a greater focus than usual. The previous lunar mission -Apollo 13- had failed after suffered an explosion on their way to the moon, disabling its electrical and life-support systems. Many saw it as a miracle that the ship and crew made it back to Earth safely. This was the first Moon attempt since -and nothing was left to chance. A failure on this mission could end the space program. Edgar understood the importance of monitoring the alarms. There was no room for error. 

The Earth slowly grew in size as the journey inched ever-closer to home. All was quiet in the ship aside from the light snores of his fellow Astronauts. Edgar glanced over at the two before reaching for small notepad in his pocket. From the dim illumination of the instrument panel, Edgar selected a random number on one of the pages. Researchers on Earth had been doing psychic exploration since before the 1930s. Their tool of choice was a deck of Zenner Cards. The deck had twenty-five cards. Five had a star design. Five had a cross. Another five had a wavy line, while another five had a circle. The final five had a square. 

To test a person’s psychic ability the deck would be shuffled, and a card would be chosen at random by the person who would act as the ‘sender.’ While assuring the ‘receiver’ could not see the card, the sender would focus on the image. The receiver would try to receive the massage the sender was transmitting. The sender didn’t need to be a have any psychic ability, only the receiver. The sender only had to understand how to focus properly. His psychic partners back on Earth had practiced with him, showing the proper technique for focus and sending. Edgar had seen enough evidence to convince him psychic abilities were possible. It worked on Earth. He saw it. But he wondered, how do you test if it you can get the same results at a distance? The moon trip offered the ideal test environment. He could not have devised a way to isolate two test subjects, better than moving one of them completely off the planet. This was a once-in-a lifetime opportunity for Edgar and his friends. 

But it wasn’t practical to take a deck of Zener cards with him into space, so Edgar had to improvise. He understood every ounce of weight on the ship must be approved, even personal items. And what if one of his shipmates saw the deck and knew what they were used for? How would he explain them? No, he couldn’t bring the deck. So, instead, Edgar devised a way to do the experiment without the added weight of the cards. He created a random number tables to generate sequences corresponding to the five Zener symbols, which he saved in his notepad. So, no extra weight and no need to explain why he was carrying an already-approved NASA notepad. 

With the spacecraft's electric hum as a backdrop, Edgar selected a random number and correlated it with the image it represented. A Star! He jotted a note on the pad, marking the date and image. Then he wrote the time the experiment was schedule to start. Just a minute to wait. He took breath and thought how strange this all was. Would the kid he was back in Texas have believed this? Here he was, flying through space, nearly 200,000 miles from Earth. He was a spaceman. So much had happened since he left home for college. Through the porthole, he glimpsed the glowing orb of Earth, far off in the distance before glancing again at his watch. It was time.

Edgar closed his eyes and allowed his mind to send the image of a star. If things were going to plan, back on Earth, one of his psychic partners would be trying to receive. 

The Zenner cards had been developed forty years earlier, and they’d been the go-to tool for by researchers testing psychic abilities. The success or failure of a psychic receiver was measured on mathematical probability. After a certain number of correct guesses, the rate of success enters a point of improbability. If you could properly guess a flipped coin “heads or tails” more than five times it would be impressive. The more correct guesses, the more you’d move from probability to improbability. The Zenner cards were like flipping a five-sided coin. Multiple correct guesses would defy mathematical explanation past a certain point. 

Experiments on Earth showed that some people appeared to have psychic abilities, getting results that were far outside of the realms of probability. But how could you be sure? What if there was some game being played? Some sort of sleight-of-hand? A trick? How could know the cards weren’t marked, or badly shuffled? Either of these could skew the results. The best way to mitigate cheating would be to isolate the receiver from the sender. Now, hundreds of thousands of miles from Earth, Edgar was as isolated as any researcher could hope for an experiment where isolation mattered. As an added benefit, the experiment provided and added something else. Many psychic researchers who believed these abilities were undeniable wondered- at what distance can a person receive a transmission? It was the next layer of their research. It's true, but from how far can a thought be “read.” The moon mission might offer the ideal way to find out.

Edgar had become interested in parapsychology while in college. The late 50s and early 60s were an exciting time in education. Students were encouraged to think outside of the box, before that term existed. Topics like interconnectedness, meditation, and altered states of consciousness had gained attention in scientific and philosophical circles. Universities were encouraging students to explore. People were starting to look at things with less initial judgment and more curiosity. People were asking questions instead of following the status quo. The counterculture of the 60s had blossomed (in part) from this open thinking.

Given his upbringing, Edgar was not someone you’d expect to be interested in such topics. He’d been born and raised in Hereford, Texas. A town famously known as "Beef Capital of the World.” He was raised in a Baptist family. But there he was, more than a decade after leaving home... floating in space, sending psychic messages to Earth. Edgar scribbled his notes on the pad and concluded the experiment. He would repeat the exercise several more times before he splashed down on Earth, days later. 

When he returned home, he shared his notes with his team. They compared the times the send-receive happened. They look for correct answers and compare discrepancies. They disqualified any results where the timing was off, and then analyzed the data. With the results back, Edgar and the team liked what the data showed. Yet Edgar didn’t plan to talk publicly about it. He kept it to himself. But it wasn't long before one of the participants, a well known psychic named Olof Jonsson let it slip and the press wanted to know more. So, Edgar came clean about the experiment. He said the results of the experiment were impressive. He believed his accuracy rate was much higher than chance and suggested there was much we don't yet understand about the human mind. Some academics dismissed it all as a failure and unscientific. But Edgar felt differently. He later concluded,

"We found that telepathy works whether you're separated by a room or 250,000 miles of space."

He’d been able to replicate the results they'd gotten on Earth on a grand scale, suggesting that consciousness is not limited by distance. 

Others dismissed the results and the experiment because it was never published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. But Mitchel brushed it off, explaining…

"The experiment was never intended to be conclusive but exploratory." 

Years later, when asked about what he’d learned Edgar Mitchell said,

"This experiment confirmed my belief that consciousness extends beyond the body."

The experiment was one of several step that led him to his next and final career. A few years after returning to Earth, Edgar Mitchell found an organization he named the Institute of Noetic Sciences (or IONS). The organization focuses on exploring the nature of consciousness and human potential. It was dedicated to researching phenomena such as ESP, mindfulness, and interconnectedness. It is dedicated to exploring the often-ignored intersection of science and spirituality. 

In talking about why he created IONS, Mitchell said, “We need to make the world safe for creativity and intuition, for its creativity and intuition that will make the world safe for us.”

I agree. Our reliance on approved truths leads us to disregard our intuition. Because of this, many of us (if not most) will never develop our full potential. This is driven by fear of judgment, and dismissal of what can't yet be fully proven. We ignore the light in the corner, obscured by the heavy curtain. Yet all great discoveries came from people willing to look into those corners of our human experience, which others have ignored. 

There’s something at the Soul level that calls out to our curiosity. It beckons us to explore the unexplained and unknown. Human curiosity and creativity has led to the great advances of the world -and is the catalyst for the greatest voyages of human history. Curiosity and creativity drove humanity to put three men on top of a rocket in January, 1971 and launch them towards the Moon. Should we ever lose our curiosity, the human spirit would surely wither and atrophy. Curiosity and creativity are the spaces where we thrive. It’s alchemy. It’s magic. It’s the human impulse. Curiosity and creativity drove Edgar Mitchell to do an unapproved experiment in space, to try and learn something new about the consciousness. About the Soul.

On February 4, 2016, Edgar Mitchell died at the age of 85. Poetically, the date his life ended was the 45th anniversary of the day he began his orbit of the moon. A mathematical improbability? You be the judge.