Astronaut Edgar Mitchell died this week.

I wonder how many people who saw his name flash across their Facebook feed had either heard of him or remembered his name.

He explored both outer space and inner space.

On this date in 1971, he was walking on the Moon.* In the history of our planet, only 12 human beings have had that privilege.  Seven of them still walk the Earth today.

We can only imagine where in the cosmos Mitchell’s spirit is traversing now.

Many have said that a poet should travel into Space to better describe the experience for the rest of us. Mitchell was not a poet, but he could certainly be considered a mystic.

As you can see/hear in the video below, he managed to articulate the experience in a remarkable way.

During his flight home from the Moon, Mitchell had a powerful internal experience, known in the ancient Sanskrit language as samādhi, where he viscerally felt the connectedness of all things

After retiring from NASA, he founded the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) and spent the remainder of his life researching human consciousness.

(* Edgar Mitchell and Alan Shepard’s moonwalks took place on Feburary 5th and 6th, 1971)