I was saddened to read the news that American astronaut Edgar Mitchell, the sixth man to walk on the moon, has died on Feb. 4 in Florida at the age of 85, after a short illness which was not specified.

 

Although I did not have the chance to meet Doctor Mitchell, I have met several individuals who were associated or worked closely with him.

 

Although he had a highly technical and scientific background (he was an aeronautical engineer and had a Ph.D in Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology), he firmly and passionately believed in extraterrestrials and ESP, and was very vocal about them. He must have been an embarrassment to Nasa, because the space agency tried to silence him.

 

When he was aboard the Apollo 14 spacecraft bound for the moon in 1971, he noticed an unidentified spacecraft following them. He radioed Nasa and asked if it was one of theirs or the Russians’. The answer, according to what I read, was that Nasa replied it was neither but asked him to shut up. That unknown spacecraft followed Apollo 14 up to the moon.

 

Mitchell was also reported to have conducted an unauthorized experiment on ESP. While in outer space, he transmitted a secret telepathic message to three individuals on Earth. The secret message was written inside a sealed envelope and left by Mitchell with a friend for safekeeping, with strict instructions not to open it until he returned to Earth from the moon.

 

Message to a psychic

 

One of those to whom Mitchell sent the message was the Swedish psychic Olof Jonsson, who got it correctly when compared to the contents of the sealed envelope.

 

I met Jonsson in the Philippines sometime in 1987 or 1988, during the administration of President Cory Aquino.

 

When I asked what the message was, Jonsson told me it contained the five symbols of the Zener Cards used by Dr. J. B. Rhine of Duke University in his experiments with telepathy, namely, a square, a triangle, a cross, a wave and a circle.

 

After Mitchell left Nasa in 1972, he established the Institute of Noetic Sciences in Sausalito, California. Its objective was to support and encourage research in higher consciousness, healing, ESP and other phenomena which are ignored by mainstream science.

 

In the mid-’80s, I was invited by the institute’s president, Dr. Willis Harman, to present my research findings on the controversial Philippine faith healers and psychic surgeons, and I flew to Sausalito for that purpose.

 

Mitchell believed that there was indeed an alien spacecraft or UFO that crashed in Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947, and that the military imposed a cover-up. It declared that what crashed in Roswell was a military experimental balloon, not an alien spacecraft.

 

However, in an interview with The Observer on Aug. 25, 2015, Mitchell said that he had talked with those working at the nuclear testing facility near Roswell, who admitted to him that there had been sightings of UFO activities there.

 

Mitchell’s view about the Roswell crash and subsequent military cover-ups was corroborated by Philip James Corro, then chief of the US Counter Intelligence Corps. In his book “The Day After Roswell,” Corro confessed to having retrieved “alien artifacts from the Roswell crash and later reverse-engineered them to develop US advanced technology.” All these are, of course, vehemently denied by the US government and the military establishment.

 

Mitchell revealed that he had experienced cosmic consciousness or enlightenment while in outer space. He said, in his book, “My experience in space is what people call a samadhi experience. I think that back in time, people were having those kinds of experiences and being overwhelmed by them. Seeing the big picture. That seems to go back in history. You’ll find that these kinds of experiences have been around a long time.”

 

With Mitchell’s death, parapsychology has lost a courageous, powerful and credible advocate. But I am not worried. The new breed of theoretical and quantum physicists will eventually come to the rescue.

 

The next Inner Mind Development seminar will be on March 12-13, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Interested parties may call 8107245 or 0998-988-6292; e-mail: [email protected].