Scientist, test pilot, naval officer, astronaut, entrepreneur, visionary, author and lecturer, Dr. Mitchell’s extraordinary and varied career personifies humankind’s eternal quest to widen its horizons as well as explore its inner soul.

His academic background includes a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Management from Carnegie Mellon University in 1952, a Bachelor of Science in Aeronautics from the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School in 1961, and a Doctor of Science degree in Aeronautics and Astronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1964.

In addition, he has received four honorary doctorates from New Mexico State University, The University of Akron, Carnegie Mellon University and Embry-Riddle University. 

In 1973, a year after retiring from the U.S. Navy and the Astronaut programme, Dr. Mitchell founded the Institute of Noetic Sciences. It is a foundation organized to sponsor research into the nature of consciousness. He is co-founder of the Association of Space Explorers, an international organization founded in 1984 for all who share the experience of space travel. Both organizations are educational organizations developed to provide new understanding of the human condition resulting from the epoch of space exploration.

He is the author of Psychic Exploration; A Challenge for Science, G.P. Putnam & Sons, 1974, a major reference book and the critically acclaimed The Way of the Explorer, Putnam, 1996. He is also author and interviewee in dozens of articles in both professional and popular periodicals.

As a lecturer, he delivers 25 to 50 addresses annually on cosmology, human potential and topics relating to the evolving future of our species on planet Earth. His most current lecture series discusses the implications of recent discoveries in science as they affect our individual lives in the home, workplace and society at large. He is a frequent guest on radio and television talk shows and has been featured in several documentary films relative to his interests.

Retiring from the government in 1972, Dr. Mitchell continues to write, speak and do research for a number of new books. He is a consultant to a limited number of corporations and foundations.

Dr Mitchell was interviewed at his Florida home by Dr. Bruce Fox.
 

Question: Dr. Mitchell, you obviously made a quantum leap when you elected to study altered states of awareness and its impact regarding how we perceive reality. What transformational event in your life propelled you to study consciousness and paranormal phenomena?

Answer: Well, Bruce, my interest goes back to 
adolescence when I found a growing disparity between the teachings of my church and my science. In retrospect, it really has been a long-term interest. However, the significant trigger event was being in deep space, in the vicinity of the moon, looking at the earth and suddenly having an insight of connectedness - a “Wow,” if you will, that cosmology as given to us by science and another cosmology as given to us by our mystical and religious traditions were vastly different and that they were both incomplete and, perhaps, flawed.

But this insight was one of the personal connectedness with the universe - a universe where I studied stellar formation and galactic formation in the course of doing my doctoral studies at M.I.T. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). During the solitude of the return phase of our Apollo mission, I realized that the molecules of my body and the molecules forming the structure of our spacecraft had been prototyped in an ancient generation of stars and that became very personal. 

It wasn’t intellectual anymore, and I recognized that the governing process was a more intelligent and complex process than we had given it credit for - and this was accompanied by an ecstasy and an indescribable feeling of total exhilaration. 

Suddenly I asked myself, what is the nature of this brain-body that allows this re-organization of information to produce this ‘Ah ha’, this ‘Wow’, and to be accompanied by an exhilaration and ecstasy that was experienced at the deepest level of awareness? What type of being am I? That started me looking and recognizing that the different stories about the nature of consciousness as told by science and told by the mystical experiences had to be modernized. We had to find a new story about ourselves since we had obviously become a space-faring civilization.