In February, 1971, Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell experienced the little understood phenomenon sometimes called the “Overview Effect”. He describes being completely engulfed by a profound sense of universal connectedness. Without warning, he says, a feeing of bliss, timelessness, and connectedness began to overwhelm him. He describes becoming instantly and profoundly aware that each of his constituent atoms were connected to the fragile planet he saw in the window and to every other atom in the Universe. He described experiencing an intense awareness that Earth, with its humans, other animal species, and systems were all one synergistic whole. He says the feeling that rushed over him was a sense of interconnected euphoria. He was not the first—nor the last—to experience this strange “cosmic connection”...Text from The Daily Galaxy. Photo: The Sombrero Galaxy (M104), from The HubbleSite, via Conservation Report.
Their experiences, along with dozens of other similar experiences described by other astronauts, intrigue scientists who study the brain. This “Overview Effect”, or acute awareness of all matter as synergistically connected, sounds somewhat similar to certain religious experiences described by Buddhist monks, for example. Where does it come from and why? ...
Mitchell believes that perhaps both the theologians and scientists have missed the mark.
“All I can suggest to the mystic and the theologian is that our gods have been too small; they fill the universe. And to the scientist all I can say is that the gods do exist; they are the eternal, connected, and aware Self experienced by all intelligent beings."
Reposted from 2012 because the concept is important. I'll add this related scene from Midnight Mass where the character Erin channels Carl Sagan in her death scene -
Works for me. --A.
ReplyDeleteMystics work hard for years to achieve that state ~ millions long for it.
ReplyDeleteGreat piece!
Let's set aside for a moment that Captain Mitchell's definition blows right past the rule of parsimony. We know from research with drugs, traumatic brain injuries, and brain tumors that most if not all experiences are attributable to physical changes in the brain, yet this experience somehow requires us to posit gods.
ReplyDeleteMitchell's hypothesis raises questions for further research : Can gods exist in a universe devoid of intelligent beings? Will they cease to exist when the last intelligent being dies? If so then they aren't eternal.
We are the kind of intelligent things that experience this phenomenon. If we found an alien species that to any reasonable observer appeared to be intelligent and aware, yet they did not experience the "Overview Effect" would that falsify this hypothesis? What about an artificial intelligence that failed to experience it?
How much of this theory rests on the fact that you can extrapolate almost any conclusion from a single data point (i.e. human beings)? We used to think that solar systems would have rocky inner planets and gas giants out further because we had one data point and we assumed they would all be like us. Now we see gas giants orbiting their stars more closely than mercury.
Perhaps some day humanity will encounter an alien species that has never had a religious experience.
nollanda, why fearest thou?
DeleteI wasn't aware I expressed any fear, but clearly you have a clever rhetorical device ready for me to take the bait. So please inform me: of what am I afraid?
DeleteWe believe that energy/matter is eternal. That it has just always been. Yet we have no good reason to not believe that an Intelligence also exists. It may or may not have much to do at all with our religious notions, but many of us do believe that there is something more to it all.
ReplyDeleteHowever, there are two types of minds: Those that cannot imagine a world without a God...and those that cannot imagine a world with a God. Both are often utterly sincere. I call it that Math Brain and the Historical Brain. The math brain can comprehend things such as infinity, so that being the case, it sees little need in many cases to posit a God. The Historical Brain sees things differently. Not being able to comprehend fully such notions as infinity, it attributes things to God.
Both could be false. One is not better than the other. Cold efficiency might work out much worse for mankind than the a different take on matters.
But if we are going to believe that there are multi-verses, and if so, then there MUST be absolutely identical universes at some point, it's just easier for me to go with a God. Religion senses this unknown intelligence and builds around it, sometimes in a very limited fashion, to be sure.
You raise some interesting points, but I wanted to address the first sentence.
DeleteScience (and religion for that matter), tells us that energy/matter were not eternal. If it were so, science says the universe would have died a heat death (entropy) an eternity ago. Therefore, the universe had a beginning.
Well I cannot give such educated sounding responses as the persons before me. All I can say is I had this experience without drugs or other influences. Just walking down a dirt country road as a young boy I had an epiphany of that sort. I felt at once as my existence was connected to everything and at once I was nothing without everything else.
ReplyDeleteI’ll start saying that I’m not religious and couldn’t care less if gods exist, but I have experienced something similar several times in my life. There were no drugs or mind altering substances involved, no meditation techniques, and definitely no traumatic brain injuries or brain tumours.
DeleteFirst time it happened to me I was in my early twenties. I was walking home one night and suddenly, for about five minutes I was one with everything in the Universe. Then it ended and I was back to my old self; the world and I were two.
Then, a decade later, it happened again. It was last summer, early morning and I was walking to work. Suddenly I felt something inside myself moving deep inside, towards what I could call for lack of a better word, the center of my being. For one split second that space between them was filled with anticipation; then it was as if a spark ignited everything and separation disappeared. There was no one left. The only name for that state was “I am”. There was no want or need, worry or satisfaction, past of future. There was only joy... that did not know it was joy. Every second expanded into infinity and filled with silence.
I was in that state for twelve hours straight. I could speak, and work and interact with others but everything that I was doing was selfless. I was an observer of all my actions. There was no chatter in my mind, no conflicting thoughts, no restlessness. The silence was coming back after every conversation I had with someone, after each idea that I needed to form for my work. It was always there in the background. It was not the world that had stopped. I had stopped. There was no one left that could be hurt, irritated, angered, scared, betrayed, exposed or abandoned. There was still someone who could laugh and joke and work and help others... someone who could see the unity behind all creation. Someone who was feeling more and more by being less and less. In that state I needed no name, I had no concept of good and bad, right or wrong. There was no self left... there was just existence.
Just to be clear, I don't think that these experiences are necessarily caused by drugs, tumors, or injuries. It is because of research into those areas that we know that for almost every experience you can have there is a part of the brain that can be physically altered to either make you have that sensation/experience or not have that sensation/experience.
DeleteI don't think people who have these experiences are wrong or deluded or crazy or anything like that. Experiences are, by their very nature, real to the person experiencing them.
What I believe is that these wonderful experiences that have been sought by philosophers, sages, monks, priests, and others throughout time are also caused by the physio-chemical changes in our brain. We should research these forms of consciousness and study their ability to improve life for everyone.
Hmmmm...I wonder if whatever causes this experience causes the effects to the brain. Who is to say that whatever was found in the brain caused the experience. Either/Or Fallacy.
DeleteThose are interesting points raised by both Dan and Anon. If I may add my 2 cents, I’ll probably never know what caused what in my case. The whole thing is a little more complex than getting a burn and inquiring whether the heat caused the pain one is feeling or whether the pain is caused by the chemical changes in one’s skin following that moment of thermal exposure.
DeleteWas it an unknown external agent that caused the chemical changes in my brain and, in turn, induced that kind of experience? Or were those chemical changes the result of random biological processes inside my body? It’s hard to think of anything special that happened to me on all those occasions when it just came out of the blue. And definitely not an experience I can bring back at will, although it does come back at times. I know it’s not even funny, because I’m a totally non-religious person, so I shouldn’t even be entitled to it - if having such experiences were a reward for the religious devotion one has in one’s faith (sorry for my bad English, it’s not my first language, so my choice of words is kind of weird sometimes)
AM, your English is superb. I would never have known you weren't a native speaker if you hadn't told us. That was a magnificent description of a profound experience that is typically characterized as "ineffable"--but you effed it brilliantly!
DeleteI had this feeling when i was a small child of about 6, reading about the solar system and universe (i was a voracious reader). It has persisted with me ever since, occasionally recurring in euphoric moments, now and again (for example while stargazing on a moonless night in rural Australia). Perhaps that's been a determinative factor in the spiritual area of my life - perhaps as a result of that early profound feeling, i never felt i needed any religion or faith. I derive my sense of spiritual profundity from the universe and having the wonderful opportunity of being able to share subjective experiences in it. Interconnected?
ReplyDeleteI like to play with the idea that god = gravity. It is fun to flip around in my head.
ReplyDeleteHe looked into the Heart of the TARDIS...
ReplyDeleteAnd then there is this . . . "God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; Neither is worshipped with men's hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things; And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation; That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us: FOR IN HIM WE LIVE, AND MOVE, AND HAVE OUR BEING; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring." (caps are mine) Acts 17:24-28 I normally don't quote so much Scripture at once because it causes people to skip over it. In this case I did it to provide context for the captitalized line. There is a reason we feel a "universal connectedness." The entire universe emanates from the same Source, the eternal God found in the Bible! The more I read about and study the intricacies of science, the more I am amazed at the power, wisdom and creativity of our God.
ReplyDeleteWithout scripture god's inability to satisfy Adam in Eden* and without satan's guidance TOWARDS knowledge, we all wouldn't be here and Adam would just have been another animal in god's zoo.
Delete*- Can you imagine that conversation? 'Hey god, is there someone else I can talk to? I am bored out of my mind...'
Carl Sagan, succinct and profound.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xaj407ofjNE&feature=related
Same phenomenon described by a neuroscientist who had a stroke. See her TED talk:
ReplyDeletehttp://blog.ted.com/2008/03/12/jill_bolte_tayl/
Hard to say there are "no drugs or mind altering substances involved" when DMT is manufactured in the brain itself.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Stan. I had wondered what to call this experience that happens so randomly and infrequently, yet is so real when it comes.
ReplyDeleteAll perception is a construct of our minds. There really is no "reality" in the sense we were taught as children. When I was a child and taught there was a 'god' I had mystical type experiences, but they were no more "real" than stories about the tooth fairy or santa claus. Under the influence of mind altering substances and while under severe emotional distress, I've been visited by apparitions of my long dead mother and have had what would best be described as "out of body" experiences. I reject all of these experiences as "proof" of anything other than the ability of my mind to create whatever "reality" I may think I want or need at the time. If your mind creates gods for you, that's fine with me, unless you start killing people who do not agree with you. 42
ReplyDeleteWhere's Mr. Rogers when you need his philosophy of gentleness? Words. Of course, we are all interconnected. Please go to Wikipedia and look-up Deep Ecology. Is it not a Buddha-like thing? We are beings that contain elements from the universe. If God is out there, hello. She's in here.
ReplyDeleteA turd in the punch bowl: Yes, all is one and infinite. At the same time, all is divided and, on the earthly plane, finite. The former is the realm of surrender and awe. The latter is the realm of struggle and justice. Wisdom means knowing which is which, and when. That is, in terms of our response. I can tell you how many Buddhists show-up on the homeless human rights issues in my community of 100,000: zero. Escaping into a unified field life is not the trick. The trick is to become a moral person and keep your sanity in the face of human depravity (civilization)--which requires knowing when to struggle and when to surrender. And knowing we'll never master this "problem."
ReplyDeleteI never comment here but I have experienced this but under the influence of LSD. I was 16 and not under the care of my parents. I felt as though I could see every raindrop of the storm. I felt as though I was part of something huge like the universe. I can’t describe the experience much better than this but it did profoundly affect my life. It was an epiphany and I am glad you posted this today because I can recall the feeling almost at will.
ReplyDeleteToday I start chemo again. The cancer that I thought was cured has returned and is metastatic. I may live another six months or I may survive a couple of years but there is no cure. In spite of some existential panic attacks that I had when I first got the news, I am feeling better now and so it is a good thing to contemplate my place in the universe.
Please, no sympathy comments.