On his way back to Earth after his pioneering moonwalk, Apollo 14 astronaut and IONS founder Dr. Edgar Mitchell had the profound experience of feeling interconnected to everything he was observing from the window of his space capsule: the stars, the moon, our blue planet, and the vastness of the cosmos. He realized quickly that in order to explain such an extraordinary experience (and others like it), there would need to be a rapprochement between the scientific and spiritual interpretations of reality.

As a scientist and visionary, Dr. Mitchell saw a need to reconcile his training as an engineer and astrophysicist with the wisdom of the ages to transcend the limitations of what he saw as an outdated materialist worldview. A new framework would be needed: one that could help explain the unexplainable—and spark transformation.

Despite humanity’s ever-expanding knowledge about our physical world, there remains a gap in our understanding when it comes to consciousness. How does it arise from a physical system? Is it limited to our brain? How do I explain my experiences, from aha! to awe, that I know to be true, yet don’t fit any current scientific explanation?

Have you ever had a hunch, intuition, or gut feeling that seemed to come out of nowhere? How about an insight on a project you’ve been hard at work on that suddenly comes to you in a dream? Or you’ve thought of a dear friend or loved one, and they instantly called or texted?

While it may be easy to chalk up these occurrences to mere coincidence, the greatest thinkers, scientists, philosophers, and artists report that such noetic experiences have been central to their process as well as their great works of art and scientific and cultural breakthroughs.