Plato once said, “If, like fishes who now and then put their heads out of the water, we could rise to the top of the atmosphere, we should behold the true heaven and the true earth” (Plato, Phaedo), and as it turns out, he was absolutely right: Many astronauts said that something unique happened to them while they were out there, in space.
Many of them reported that the sight of the Earth from above, viewed as a whole and without any visible artificial borders, our home and the only home we have, caused a certain psychological effect, a cognitive shift in awareness that is expressed in feelings like a connection to the Earth or the whole universe, awe, care and responsibility to protect the Earth, mental and consciousness expansion, unity with the planet. The conflicts that divide people become less important, and the need to create a planetary society with the united will to protect this planet becomes both obvious and imperative.
The term and concept were coined in 1987 by Frank White, who explored the theme in his book “The Overview Effect — Space Exploration and Human Evolution” (Houghton-Mifflin, 1987; AIAA, 1998). The effect is studied since the first flights to space by psychologists, neuroscientists, philosophers, and more.
We know that here on Earth, the moment photos of Earth from space started to appear, they influenced and accelerated the start of environmental movements. If that’s what we experience here on Earth, imagine what it is like to see our planet with your own eyes…
Here are just a few quotes of astronauts describing their experience and the following thoughts:
Cosmonauts don’t say much, especially when we’re on a mission. Usually some five to seven seconds are enough for us to express the most complicated thought. Or so I thought; but then a while ago I was asked to listen to recordings of the cosmonauts in space. To tell you the truth, I was amazed. Within seconds of attaining Earth orbit, every cosmonaut, without exception, be they a dry, reserved flight engineer or a more emotional pilot, uttered the same sort of confused expression of delight and wonder.
Curious, I analysed the initial conversations for a variety of missions and discovered an interesting pattern… no one has been able to restrain his heartfelt wonder at the sight of the enthralling panorama of the Earth. The emotional outbursts lasted forty-two seconds on average.
Anyone who has ever seen the Earth from space knows that this sight is incomparable to anything else… It’s not only the astounding beauty of the planet when it’s seen “from the outside”, but also the unexpectedness of this sight, its incompatibility with anything we have ever experienced on earth, all our knowledge and capabilities. Everyone has this moment of emotional shock, and at the same time, everyone experiences and expresses it in their own way. Everybody has it, because we are all human. But everyone experiences it in their own way, because all people are different.
Anyone who has been in space knows that the impatiently awaited unearthliness quickly loses its charm. It is not the boring uniform blackness of the cosmic abyss that engages your attention, but the spectacle of our small planet haloed in blue. Suddenly, you get a feeling you’ve never had before, that you are an inhabitant of Earth.
People who have been in space realized that, despite all the differences between us, they are united in one main thing – in the intense feeling of “being an Earthling”, a sense of personal responsibility for the safety of our only planet, and realization that any difficulties, disagreements and obstacles must be overcome.
— Oleg Makarov, a cosmonaut who spent 20 days in space in various Soyuz missions. A ‘Preface’ in Kevin W. Kelley, ed., The Home Planet, 1988.
You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty.
— Edgar Dean Mitchell, an Apollo 14 astronaut, on seeing the Earth from the Moon.
We all have moments like this in our lives, where something shifts, clicks into place. For me it was in June 2008, when I clamped my feet to the end of the robotic Canadarm2 on the International Space Station (ISS) and was flown through a maneuver that we called the Windshield Wiper, which took me in a long arc above the space station and back. As I approached the top of this arc, it was as if time stood still, and I was flooded with both emotion and awareness. But as I looked down at the Earth — this stunning, fragile oasis, this island that has been given to us, and that has protected all life from the harshness of space — a sadness came over me, and I was hit in the gut with an undeniable, sobering contradiction. In spite of the overwhelming beauty of this scene, serious inequity exists on the apparent paradise we have been given. I couldn’t help thinking of the nearly one billion people who don’t have clean water to drink, the countless number who go to bed hungry every night, the social injustice, conflicts, and poverty that remain pervasive across the planet.
Seeing Earth from this vantage point gave me a unique perspective — something I’ve come to call the orbital perspective. Part of this is the realization that we are all traveling together on the planet and that if we all looked at the world from that perspective we would see that nothing is impossible.
— Ronald John Garan Jr., an astronaut who flew to space in 2008 and again in 2011, and spent nearly 200 days in space. A quote from his book, “The Orbital Perspective.”
The first day or so we all pointed to our countries. The third or fourth day we were pointing to our continents. By the fifth day, we were aware of only one Earth.
— Sultan bin Salman Al Saud, a Saudi prince and an astronaut on the Space Shuttle Discovery, orbited the Earth for seven days on June 17-24, 1985, on the STS-51-G mission.
We have this connection to Earth. I mean it’s our home. And I don’t know how you can come back and not in some way be changed. It may be subtle. You see differences in different people in just general response when they come back from space. But I think collectively everybody has that emblazoned on their memories the way the planet looks. You can’t take that lightly. You realize that you’ve been blessed by the opportunity to see that.
— Nicole Stott, an astronaut, spent 103 days in space, on missions STS-128, Expedition 20, Expedition 21, STS-129, STS-133. A quote from the movie “Overview“.
Orbiting Earth in the spaceship, I saw how beautiful our planet is. People, let us preserve and increase this beauty, not destroy it!
― Yuri Gagarin, a cosmonaut who became the first human to journey into outer space.
My mental boundaries expanded when I viewed the Earth against a black and uninviting vacuum, yet my country’s rich traditions had conditioned me to look beyond man-made boundaries and prejudices. One does not have to undertake a space flight to come by this feeling.
— Rakesh Sharma, the first man from India to go into space. A cosmonaut on the Soyuz T-11 missions, 3 April 1984, spent 7 days in space.
When I read The Overview Effect, people started talking about their hearts connected to this planet. But my response when I went into space is that I was connected to everything. I felt much more connected to everything else in the universe, and sometimes on Earth I felt much more separate from the rest of the universe. I felt like I had as much right to be in space or in this universe as any speck of stardust. I was as eternal as that.
— Mae Jemison, an astronaut on the Space Shuttle Endeavour, orbited the Earth for nearly eight days on September 12–20, 1992 on the STS-47 mission.
Are these experiences unique only to space explorers? Maybe, however, some scientists claim that through meditation and prayer a similar effect can be experienced – good news for us since most of us are unable to fly to space in the near future. On a personal note, while I don’t have the tools to compare the two experiences (since I have never been in space), I must say that I’m sure that these experiences can indeed be very similar. Frank White expressed it in the following way:
“I definitely think meditation can bring it about. The difference might be it takes a long period of time of, at meditation. It may take longer to have that shift than it does if you go into orbit, or go to the moon. But definitely we do see that kind of change in awareness that happens.”
So, whenever you are able to fly to space, or experience something similar through meditation, prayer, running, or while walking through the park, do it, because a change in perspective can be exactly what we need.
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