Peter Russell began his book, The Brain Book, with a quote taken from the astronomer Fred Hoyle, "Once a photograph of the Earth, taken from outside, is available...a new idea as powerful as any in history will be let loose." This quote is both true and appropriate for a book that breaks new ground in planetary perception. What is implied, of course, is that, upon seeing the photograph, we may get a feeling for the unity of the Earth and that of mankind upon it. We begin to realize that the Earth is a unified mass suspended in sidereal space. That photograph would initiate a new psychological state.
I remember that, as a child, having been exposed to dozens of representations of our planet in comics and schoolbooks, I was vaguely conscious of the fact that the Earth was a big round ball of matter suspended in space. These images were interesting but not really moving. And yet when I saw, much later, the first photograph of the Earth from space in Paris-Match, I experienced a fantastic emotion, a feeling of wonder and tenderness, and also a sense of radical contradiction; it was impossible that I was seing this and yet I was indeed seeing it. The photograph was "the real thing," at least was the most real access I could expect to the real thing. In the same way, photographs of the other side of the moon, or computerized reconstructions of the surface of Miranda give me the emotion of the real thing, of my own extension into space.
Surely, the most important effect of the photograph of the Earth is that it expands our perception of our self beyond our own body-image and enlarges our sense of identity. Indeed, from the first moment we see that photograph, we take possession of the Earth and of a new power to invest in it. It is an extension of my eyes. All that which is contained in it is 'of me' as much as I am 'of it.' It's me. With this photograph, I am given reliable evidence that I am all at once terribly big and terribly small. A paradox supported by the fact that I 'see' the Earth is that, though I am only one of five billion people, that enormous thing is part of me. The fact that I did not take that photograph myself, even the fact that it was taken by remote-control makes little difference. If something coming from this 'larger me' was sent there to make this photograph, then I also made it, along with all the people for whom it has a meaning.
In the same way, thanks to photography and television, going to the moon is now within my powers, even though I will never go there with my personal share of organic substance that I call my body. This feeling could not occur without a reliable technical extension of my very own perceptions. I could read about going to the moon in the papers, but it would be someone else's experience. Television makes it mine. The same argument goes for the telephone and other communication media that give me instant access to any point on the photograph; these extensions of my own senses seach the body of the planet and make it part of me.
Thanks to this photograph, I am the Earth and so is everybody else. This is a new psychological experience with immense implications. The best revenge against pscyhotechonologies that would turn us into extensions of themselves is to include them within our personal pscyhology. A new human is in the making.