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In a sense, argues Thompson, the astronauts underwent a kind of temporal redemption, much like the one envisioned 34 years ago in C.S. Lewis' theological space fantasy Out of the Silent Planet. In Lewis' novel, the earth is the devil's territory and the prison of fallen man, quarantined by the powers and dominations of the divine milieu around it. But those who escape the silent planet can recover their cosmic orientation.
Another dimension of that orientation is sketched by Religion Scholar Jacob Needleman, author of The New Religions and, like Thompson, a cartographer of the revival of mysticism. Men lost a certain humility, Needleman says, when they abandoned the medieval idea of geocentrism—the belief that the earth is surrounded by ever widening spheres of planets, stars and finally God. Copernicus and Galileo dislodged the earth from the astronomical center of the universe, but Needleman argues that geocentrism "was never intended only as an astronomical theory. It was meant to communicate that human existence is but a tiny part in a vast hierarchy of conscious energies. Man could share in the full reach of these energies only by first surrendering his petty illusions of autonomy."
In Needleman's view, the optimism of modern science created instead a kind of psychological geocentrism, which misled man into believing that he could understand all reality at an ordinary level of consciousness. Earth was no longer to be at the center of the universe, but man's ego was. Now this attitude, too, has been dislodged by the wars and other depredations of the present century. The new surge of wonder that is at least partly the work of the Apollos provides men with an opportunity to recapture at last a true sense of their place in the universe.
The surge has come from many more sources than the space program. Though the Stanley Kubrick-Arthur C. Clarke spectacle 2001 was packing in aficionados at movie theaters months before Apollo 8, the film gained a prophetic impact after man reached the moon. Even among the scientific community, such astonishing celestial phenomena as supernovae and "black holes" have become a subject for metaphysical conjecture. Harvard Astronomer Charles A. Whitney, writing in his 1971 book The Discovery of Our Galaxy, suggests that black holes might be "the passageways to another universe," a possibility that throws him back on the language of religion. "When I discuss such subjects with my friends and family," Whitney writes, "I feel as though I were trying to convince them of the existence of God." Western religions themselves are seeking a renewed sense of cosmic purpose by exploring their rich but long-neglected traditions of mysticism and contemplation.