The Way of the Explorer; An Apollo Astronaut's Journey Through the Material and Mystical Worlds

New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1996. First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. [10], 230 pages. Footnotes. Bibliography. Index. Edgar Dean "Ed" Mitchell (September 17, 1930 - February 4, 2016) was a United States Navy officer and aviator, test pilot, aeronautical engineer, ufologist and NASA astronaut. As the Lunar Module Pilot of Apollo 14, he spent nine hours working on the lunar surface in the Fra Mauro Highlands region, making him the sixth person to walk on the Moon. The legacy of his post-NASA scientific work is carried on through the Institute of Noetic Sciences. Mitchell was selected in 1966 as part of NASA's fifth astronaut group. He was assigned to the support crew for Apollo 9, then was designated as backup Lunar Module Pilot for Apollo 10. He then went to serve as Lunar Module Pilot on Apollo 14, landing with Shepard aboard the Lunar Module "Antares" on February 5, 1971, in the hilly upland Fra Mauro Highlands region of the Moon. They stayed on the Moon for 33 hours. In February 1971, as Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell hurtled Earthward through space, he was engulfed by a profound sense of universal connectedness. He intuitively sensed that his presence and that of the planet in the window were all part of a deliberate, universal process and that the glittering cosmos itself was in some way conscious. The experience was so overwhelming, Mitchell knew his life would never be the same. Edgar Mitchell traces the progress of two remarkable journeys: his life-changing space flight and his exploration of the ineffable mystery of consciousness and being.