Overview
Hi friends! This week I’m eager to share a recent obsession of mine. It’s a very big idea in both the literal and figurative sense and it comes with some profound implications. Let’s dive in.
On October 13, 2021, Captain James T. Kirk himself (William Shatner), boarded a Blue Origin space shuttle for a suborbital flight launching out of West Texas. While one might think the Star Trek actor had an idea of what to expect during this flight, what he experienced was something more powerful than he could have imagined. What he experienced was called the “Overview Effect.”
Coined by author Frank White, he explains, “there are no borders or boundaries on our planet except those that we create in our minds or through human behaviors. All the ideas and concepts that divide us when we are on the surface begin to fade from orbit and the moon. The result is a shift in worldview, and in identity.”
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One of the original accounts of this phenomenon comes from Apollo 14 astronaut, Edgar “Ed” Mitchell. After returning from his mission, Ed felt a profound sense of wonder and awe that he could not gather the words to describe. He turned to experts, academics and literature to search for precedent in his experience.
After returning from his mission, Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell felt a profound sense of wonder and awe that he could not gather the words to describe. He turned to experts, academics and literature to search for precedent in his experience.
“The experience in space was so powerful that when I got back to Earth I started digging into various literatures to try to understand what had happened. I found nothing in science literature but eventually discovered it in the Sanskrit of ancient India. The descriptions of samadhi, Savikalpa samadhi, were exactly what I felt: it is described as seeing things in their separateness, but experiencing them viscerally as a unity, as oneness, accompanied by ecstasy.”
– Edgar Mitchell
Mitchell has gone on to say “you develop an instant global consciousness ... an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics looks so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, 'Look at that, you son of a b*tch!’"
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For years now, I have been confused by and even annoyed with the cowboy mentality of getting a rocket into space. Don’t get me wrong… I love all things space and NASA, but the recent, privately funded efforts hit a bit different. But now that I am understanding the profound sense of wonder and awe brought on by the Overview Effect (as best I can from the ground in Dallas, TX), these guys may be on to something.
I can’t help but wonder how having this experience might change the way we do things, the way we treat people or the planet. What I have come to understand in reading about this is that, at the very least, it provides a different way of seeing the world and everything that comprise it: the people, the places, the good, the bad, the dark, the light, the known, the unknown. With this perspective, all of it is one in the same. All of it belongs to us. It’s yours. It’s mine. It’s ours.
With that in mind, I am looking for ways to create this experience here and now. I am challenging each of us to get curious…
How can I provide perspective shifts for myself and others that generate goodness and whole-hearted action?
How can I blur the lines and dismantle the boundaries I’ve inherited from my points of privilege and inherited experience?
These are some pretty big questions, but hey, that’s what we are up to here.
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Back on the ground in the West Texas desert, William Shatner had this to say:
“I’m so filled with emotion about what just happened. It’s extraordinary. I hope I never recover from this. I hope that I can maintain what I feel now. I don’t want to lose it. It’s so much larger than me and life.”
– William Shatner
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To learn more about the Overview Effect from those who’ve experienced and studied it, check out this short film: OVERVIEW.
Sources for this article come from interviews and articles in: Think Again by Adam Grant, Variety, Geek Wire and Cosmic Watch.
Thanks for reading!
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