ABSTRACT
When the great Earth Mother returned, she found the tree reduced to a rotting stump and the skeletons of all the monkeys who had died of starvation after eating their own tree. The scientific community now had to face up to the challenging fact that the Earth system as a whole may be a living, self-regulating, self-sustaining organism. Many people have become so isolated and detached from Nature that they feel numb—incapable of sensing its beauty and wonder, and insensitive to any damage they may be causing it. Edgar Mitchell, as some of you know, was one of the world's first astronauts to orbit the Earth and walk on the moon. Edgar Mitchell's accounts of the affect of these images on him are truly moving. He describes the experience as one equivalent to enlightenment or a revelation, a shift in his being which touched him on a deeply spiritual level.
