The billionaire Jared Isaacson recently travelled to space and remarked, "Earth sure did look like the perfect world." Similarily, in 1971, the Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell reflected on his space voyage by saying, "on that fragile little sphere – was all I had ever known, all I had ever loved and hated, longed for, all that I once thought had ever been and ever would be.
"This experience is described in science as "The Overview Effect," a term coined to describe the epiphany astronauts feel when asked how they see Earth from space.
Every space voyage has left astronauts completely in awe at the beauty and interconnectedness on a universal level. Politics, war, and economic worries that divide people and nations seem trivial against the backdrop of the vastness of space.
Astronauts are considered to have a sound, rational mind. They have spent years studying at prestigious colleges such as MIT, Harvard, or Caltech, and spent more time researching their space mission. NASA makes a critical selection on who it sends out there to report back to the rest of us on their scientific findings.
So, what do we make of these observations as they sound more spiritual than scientific?
The Indian Traditional medicine, "Ayur Veda" translates from Sanskrit as "science of life". One of the philosophies Ayurveda draws on is, Jnana Yoga, a branch of Yoga that invites self-enquiry about our existence on Earth and our relationship with all that surrounds us. It offers a pathway away from suffering and the attachment to our ego which is consumed by "I" and "me" and instead we contemplate our unique collectivism as "us" and "we" coming from one source of higher consciousness. The Vedas say "all infinity exists from one."
Could it be that when we practice Yoga and meditate we feel this immense sense of love, clarity and dependance for one another? Hatred and division seem irrelevant.
"It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied together into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. We are made to live together because of the interrelated structure of reality . . . Before you finish eating breakfast in the morning, you’ve depended on more than half the world. This is the way our universe is structured; this is its interrelated quality. We aren’t going to have peace on Earth until we recognize the basic fact of the interrelated structure of all reality."
~Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
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