A Universal Process

An Interview with Edgar Mitchell

What is your image of Creator, God, Spirit, Divine?

Mitchell: We live in a self-organizing, intelligent, creative, learning, trial and error, interactive, participatory, evolutionary system. And that intelligent creative aspect of it is what we call God.

What kind of images or metaphors do you have?

Mitchell: I am a scientist, but one who has looked at the subjective experience in particular the transcendental states of consciousness that have led to the mystical experience that led to religion. The mystical experience seems to be the root for all religion and it's the same in every culture. Let's call that the esoteric experience. When you attempt to explain it and put it into words, then it becomes the esoteric or the cultural expression.

The esoteric is the same the world over. The cultural expression (esoteric) is different the world over because it's culturally based in their language, their belief system and their experience. Since the esoteric is common the world over, it is something science can and should study. And that is what I've been doing; trying to understand consciousness from the point of view of science and studying the strange, wonderfully mysterious conditions we call subjective experience. Particularly I am looking at the so-called (although I don't like this word) "paranormal" expressions in that consciousness. There is overwhelming support for the validity of these expressions, but an explanation has not been available until now. It looks as if this all comes out of the quantum nature of matter, particularly biomatter. These wonderfully mysterious, exotic experiences that go with religion and the paranormal seem to be fully rooted in the quantum connectedness of nature itself. Many mainstream scientists will dispute that, but I think they're wrong and I think in due course that point of view will prevail.

In light of all this, what is your image of God or whatever that is?

Mitchell: I don't see God as an anthropomorphic being, a grandfather figure. That's old hat. That's just ancient stuff. Hardly anybody who has studied the issue really thinks that way anymore. We are in a universal process and we're even getting to the point of being able, very shortly I believe, to create a quantum cosmology that shows exactly how this came to be.