Overview Effect – Samadhi

This is a short documentary about the life-changing effect that astronauts experienced when they conducted their space missions. They are the modern pioneers to see the earth from space: a green-blue jewelry with a thin layer of atmosphere hanging in the vast space. They call it the overview effect: seeing the earth from a perspective that people living on earth cannot fathom.

They bring their experiences, pictures and videos back to the earth and share with other people. There is an important message from their overview experience: we are not separate human beings and everything in the Universe is connected. When we watch some science or nature channels and see the earth from the space or the familiar landscape from high above (a new perspective from where we are), the audience receives a second-hand overview effect. It might be indirect, but to a person who has never seen a view like that, it is still very awe-inspiring and thrilling. This may explain why people like to watch documentaries that show us the earth, moon, sun from different perspective because they inspire us.

Though these pictures and videos might be new to modern people, the overview effect is not a totally new concept. As described by an astronaut in this documentary (at 11:00), Asian philosophy calls it Samadhi. “… you see things as you see them with your eyes, but you experience them emotionally and viscerally as with ecstasy, and a sense of total unity and oneness.” Many people experience this oneness feeling in their meditation, yoga practices and the altered state through drugs, near death experience (NDE) or religious rituals.

As Apollo 14's Edgar Mitchell put it another way: "We went to the moon as technicians; we returned as humanitarians." – from NBCnews.