edgar-mitchell

104
The Way of the Explorer
being of another faith, must be an instrument of evil. No matter what I
said to her, no matter how I explained my own secular understanding of
such phenomena, she would not be convinced. Her vastly improved eyesight
was the work of Satan. Hours later, the gift slipped away and thick
new glasses were required. 1
I was both distressed and intrigued by this incident—distressed that
such an incredible healing would be dismissed, and by my mother’s agony
in making this personal decision. But the intrigue, the fact that the sequence
of events could occur at all, left an overriding impression. How
could I have been so ignorant of something so important It set me on the
search for other persons similar to Norbu, and gave me clear indication
that I needed to learn something more about the role and power of belief
in our lives. Whatever the clinical implications, it was clear to me that
one’s internal life, the subjective life, had fundamental importance. This
was something science didn’t address; I had paid little attention myself.
But at the same time I recognized a need for caution. Though I subsequently
encountered many healers with similar capabilities, I also encountered
many frauds. I’ve learned through years of experience that health
and well-being are a product of total lifestyle. There is no panacea for
illness in healers, allopathic medicine, naturopathic medicine, chiropractic,
nutrition, and the like, though all can help. 2
Looking back on these times, I see how naïve I was. For several years I
would continue to underestimate the power of belief in our lives because
of the pervasiveness of my classical scientific training. It still puzzled me
that belief could affect anything at all. But I suppose naïveté was also in
large measure the impetus behind my founding an institution where research
I thought important could be carried out. I believed that if other
scientists witnessed such legitimate phenomena in controlled environments,
they would see that it was at least worthy of further study and become
excited by the prospects. But there were invisible veils that such unbridled
idealism could not see. As it turned out, disbelief was one of them.
It was my opinion then and it is my opinion today that disbelief prevents
one from seeing what one wishes not to. My belief in the rationality
of science blinded me to the equally rational consequences of disbelief. At
the time I still suspected there might be a nonphysical component to consciousness,
capabilities that cannot be attributed to physical laws. But more
likely there were physical principles yet to be discovered. Whatever the
answers, they would surely be revealed one day by a rational, thorough
approach to the issues. These were natural, not supernatural events, well
within the domain of scientific inquiry, and when validated, the impact on
science would be revolutionary. But it should also change the way we addressed
religion, philosophy, government, the way we saw ourselves in the
universe, and the values we adhered to in daily life. Unfortunately, there