Conference lgp30::christian-perspective

    
    Continuing on...
    
    Then there was the poignant reading of the Bible verses by the 
    Apollo 7 crew as they orbited the moon at Christmastime.  I believe
    they read the beginning of Genesis, "In the beginning..."
    
    Very, very touching.
    
    Cindy

  Apollo 8.









   Jim

God's Spirit is in space.

    .0  Cindy, I think you're refering to comments made in topic 87
    "What is fundamentalism?"
    
    There also a related topic 331 "Extraterrestrial life"
    
    Richard
    

        <<< LGP30::DKA300:[NOTES$LIBRARY]CHRISTIAN-PERSPECTIVE.NOTE;1 >>>
                 -< Discussions from a Christian Perspective >-
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Note 87.150                  What is fundamentalism?                  150 of 167
TNPUBS::PAINTER "Planet Crayon"                      20 lines  31-JAN-1994 00:39
                           -< about the astronauts >-
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    Richard,
    
    It's interesting though that of the many astronauts who have been in
    space - particularly on the moon - that they come back either reverting
    to their childhood faith (Jim Irwin, for example), or they go on to 
    experience the unity (Edgar Mitchell).  And for some, the journey had
    no affect on their faith and belief system.
    
    Also interesting that when I was in college, my Circuits teacher was a
    BAC, yet our physics instructors leaned more toward a unitarian view.
    
    As you know, I introduced Edgar Mitchell at the Hindu conference this 
    last summer.  He gave an interview for Hinduism Today that I helped
    to arrange, and I'll try to type it in one of these days.  He is an 
    absolutely lovely person and had done some amazing things since he
    went to the moon over 20 years ago now, including founding the
    Institute of Noetic Sciences, in Sausalito, CA.
    
    Cindy
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Note 87.151                  What is fundamentalism?                  151 of 167
COVERT::COVERT "John R. Covert"                      16 lines  31-JAN-1994 09:14
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Speaking of the moon:

Astronaut Buzz Aldrin was given a small package by his parish priest
just before he left for the very first flight to the moon.

Shortly after touching down (still inside the lunar module) he contacted
mission control and asked for a few minutes of silence while everyone
thought about the significance of what had just happened.

Then he opened the package his priest had given him and poured the liquid,
which "curled slowly and gracefully" into the chalice in the one-sixth
gravity of the moon.  It is interesting to know that the very first liquid
poured on the moon, and the first food eaten there, were the Most Precious
Body and Blood of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

/john

    
    Yep, that's it. Thanks, Richard.
    
    Hm....I'll have to look up the Apollo 7/8 missions again...
    
    Cindy

 Apollo 7 was an earth orbiting mission with Walter Schirra as the commander,
 as I recall.

Apollo 8 was the mission to orbit the moon, with the reading from Genesis
taking place on Christmas Eve (as I recall).




Jim

Interview from: "Hinduism Today", October 1993, North America Edition

Far Out Interview with Dr. Edgar Mitchell, Astronaut and Philosopher

"In 1971 Apollo 14 astronaut Dr. Edgar Mitchell became the sixth man to walk 
on the moon.  On the return trip to earth, he had a transcendental 
experience, a spiritual awakening which changed his life.  He retired 
shortly thereafter from NASA and founded the Institute of Noetic 
Sciences to sponsor research in the nature of consciousness as it 
relates to cosmology and causality.  Mitchell and the philosophy he puts 
forth in books and dozens of lectures a year are not easy to categorize, 
though he expresses affinities to the eastern faiths.  His is a unique 
vision, born of a personal experience in deep space.  Shuba Krishnan 
interviewed Dr.Mitchell, 62, for Hinduism Today in Washington, D.C. [on
August 8, 1993.]

Hinduism Today:  What was your experience in space?

Dr.Mitchell:  On the return trip home, gazing through 240,000 miles of 
space towards the stars and the planet from which I had come, I suddenly 
experienced the universe as intelligent, loving, harmonious.


Hinduism Today:  Hindus would immediately suggest that you were 
experiencing the kundalini force.

Dr.Mitchell:  Yes, that's exactly what I was experiencing, the 
primordial energy of the universe, the primal and subtlest energies.


Hinduism Today:  Were you the only astronaut to have a spiritual 
experience in space?

Dr.Mitchell:  Many of us had a spiritual experience.  One expressed this 
experience in terms of Christian concepts.  Others have expressed their 
experience in terms of an environmental context.  I have expressed 
myself in an intellectual inquiry.  I don't want to speak about the 
experiences of the other astronauts.  But I do suspect that it was this 
kundalini that they were experiencing too.  After the fact, several of 
them sought to find out what this experience was.  The basic experience 
is one of a "high" experience, to perceive anew.  It's the mountaintop 
experience, to see the same landscape from a new perspective.


Hinduism Today:  How did NASA respond to this?

Dr.Mitchell:  We didn't really talk about it much with them.  NASA 
wasn't very philosophic.  Most of us left NASA.


Hinduism Today:  What did the experience mean to you?

Dr.Mitchell:  I was raised as a scientist, to assume that the 
fundamental organization of the universe was accidental.  But my 
religious training, which was fundamental Christian, accepted the divine 
origin, or blueprint.  Those two ways of thinking are not compatible.  I 
now describe our universe a little differently; as evolutionary, 
intelligent, participatory, and continuing to learn.  What we call God 
is the mind of the universe, and what we experience as physical reality 
is the body of the universe, if you want to anthropomorphize.  The 
creative force behind the universe is the same creative force we 
experience within ourselves.  The atman and brahman aspects of 
consciousness have to be put together in order to create reality.


Hinduism Today:  What was it like to be on the moon?

Dr.Mitchell:  When you're working, you're concentrating on your work.  
So the opportunity to be introspective and awestruck was limited.  It 
was the culmination of an explorer's dream.  The most profound 
experience was to look back and see earth in the setting of the entire 
cosmos. 


Hinduism Today:  What do you mean in your writings when you say, "We're 
reaching for the past?"

Dr.Mitchell:  Science has taken the assumption that physicality came 
first and consciousness came second which, on deeper reflection, cannot 
be.  Consciousness had to evolve.  Matter and energy had to be conscious 
in some primitive sense for life to exist.  They had to be simultaneous. 
The universe did not have volition unless it had volition initially.  
Pure consciousness is that which was always there.


Hinduism Today:  How do you regard religion?

Dr.Mitchell:  I have talked and studied with spiritual teachers from 
virtually all religions and found that, at the core, we're saying the 
same thing in different languages, different interpretations.  But 
essentially, we're reaching for the same point.  For example, the Taoist 
tradition in China always had the notion of the tapestry of change, the 
holistic concept, and that change was interwoven in that tapestry of 
life.  The Vedic tradition brought us insights very early as to how 
consciousness operates.  Buddhism brought us a marvelous psychology of 
how to condition the mind.  Coming out of the Judaic tradition was a 
unified notion that there's really only one fundamental principle.  Then 
the Greek tradition brought us discursive reasoning.  So I find we must 
pull from all the religions.


Hinduism Today:  What is reprogramming?

Dr.Mitchell:  Modern understanding is teaching us that our subconscious 
creates our reality.  We program ourselves the first few years of life' 
we spend the rest of our lives creating that reality.  We create the 
circumstances of our lives according to the way we're programmed.  If we 
find life is not working for us, we change that.  The mystics and yogis 
of all times have all done that through meditation, and they sometimes 
take a lifetime to do it.  The modern challenge, as I see it, is to 
compress that, to be able to change ourselves, our physical reality, 
more quickly.


Hinduism Today:  What is your center working on?

Dr.Mitchell:  We're teaching subliminal dynamics, in which we teach 
precisely how people may do this.


Hinduism Today:  What is your definition of God and soul?

Dr.Mitchell:  I define God as the intelligent function.  The soul would 
be that residual aspect of self that is eternal.  I believe that the 
purpose of the universe is to organize itself and to experience physical 
reality, of which we're a part of in creating that.


Hinduism Today:  Not everyone can book a seat to the moon.  How can 
earthling non-astronauts have this experience?

Dr.Mitchell:  You don't have to go to the moon to produce new insight.  
I suggest you listen to what others, the ancients, experienced and then 
internalize them for yourself.


Hinduism Today:  What has generated this change in consciousness being 
observed today?

Dr.Mitchell:  It's being created by crisis, by the fact of breakdown of 
our institutions, and the awareness that we have so populated the earth 
and so misused our technologies.  We have been so asleep and unaware 
that the crisis that we have created today is forcing us to [change].


Hinduism Today:  What would you ask today's youth to observe and 
practice?

Dr.Mitchell:  To learn to live, to discover the process of the planet, 
of the cosmos.  To live in harmony with the process.  I do not believe 
in absolutes.  It's an evolving universe, and what we used to consider 
absolutes no longer hold.  We must hang on to many fundamentals, life 
love, integrity, but we must also be a part of the process of evolution.

	"French author Marc Dern believes the Jews have been persecuted
throughout history because, as God's chosen people, they are not from this
planet and ultimately have got to come from another place.  And he points
to the Old Testament as proof, with an unorthodox, yet literal interpret-
ation of the Scriptures.

	"In his book, 'The Lost Tribes From Outer Space' (Bantam, New York,
1977), Dern claims the Jews are a product of a selective breeding process,
begun when Yahweh discovered on landing here that Stone Age humanoids
were lousy breeding stock.

	"Dern interprets Genesis literally to mean Adam was the first Jew
and Adam's rib, his genetic structure, was used to create Eve.  The author
further interprets that the descendants of the first couple made God angry
because they bred with primitive stock already populating the planet, and
immortality suffered;  Adam lived 930 years,  Noah's son Shem only 600
years, and Abraham but 175 years....

	"According to the author, God called forth the Great Flood to
rinse out the genetic test tube, to purge a Jewish race which had become
almost indistinguishable from the people who emulated them.  Dern claims
Jesus Christ was an inspired humanitarian Jew who, against God's wishes,
wanted to end segregation between Jew and Gentile....

	"Jesus deserves the title of Savior, according to the author,
because he tried to establish a religion that would 'save the Gentiles
who had been condemned by the extraterrestrial YAHWEH...'  But Jesus
failed.  Dern predicts that in the near future, we the people must open
a dialogue with Yahweh, or God making sure that we are in true contact
for best results.

	"For this reason, he adds, to ensure the survival of this planet,
there must be peace between Jew and Gentile.  Anti-Semitism will provoke
the apocalypse.  And so, he claims, will the space program because Yahweh
fears the human race as potential competitors for conquering the universe."

The preceding is from a booklet entitled "Amazing Mysteries of the Bible,"
by Ed Manzi (Globe Communications Corp., Boca Raton, FL, 1993), and does not
necessarily reflect the views the noter.

    Sounds like a great basis for a science fiction book.
    
    			Alfred

    
    You are right, Jim.  It was Apollo 8.
    
    Cindy

  I seem to have a knack for that sorta stuff ;-)

    
    Betcha don't know what Alan Shepard's middle name is. 
    
    Cindy

    .13
    
    lemmmee guess  James? :-)

 Hmmm...'fraid you've got me on that one.  My ex wife talked to him on
 the phone once, though, as she worked at the medical practice that cared
 for his (now deceased) mother ;-)




 Jim

    
    Bartlett (like the pears.)
    
    Cindy

    There are also documented interviews from Russian Cosmonauts telling of
    sightings of angelic beings.  It's been a while so the sources escape
    me, but it shouldn't be hard to find in a library.  There was lots of
    commotion about it in the late '80s.
    
    Mike

Re .-1

Too much vodva, nyet?  :-)

/Mike

    	I thought that American astronauts reported these too...  John
    	Glenn maybe?

    Check out the movie called, "The Right Stuff".  This movie is about
    Yeager, Shepard, Glenn, and the other astronauts who broke the
    ionosphere.  
    
    They attribute that supernatural happening, in the movie, to
    Aberijanise (Sp?) who did some sort of prayer or chant around a fire.
    The embers went up into the sky and in the next scene John Glenn is
    piloting the space module through these embers.  
    
    -Jack 

    
    That was later discovered to be - I believe - urine freezing into
    crystals in space, or some related very mundane event.  I think Glenn
    mentioned this in Moonshot, and I've read it elsewhere too.
    
    The filmmaker took maximum poetic license with that one.  There was
    absolutely no connection to the Aboriginal embers and the event in 
    space, other than to make it seem 'mystical and magical'.
    
    Cindy

    Yes, I figured it was added for effect.  I saw it as deviating from
    what was a credible movie!
    
    -Jack