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Key points
- One of the fundamental processes of awe is that the self deconstructs and becomes small.
- At the same time, awe opens us to our connection to greater systems—social, artistic, and ecological.
- The sacred inspires awe and brings a sense of unity with the forces we believe bring life to the world.
Dacher Keltner, Ph.D., is the founding director of the Greater Good Science Center and a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. His latest book, AWE: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life, presents a radical investigation and deeply personal inquiry into this elusive emotion. With new research into how awe transforms our brains and bodies, alongside an examination of awe across history and within his own life during a period of grief, Keltner shows us how the cultivation of awe leads to an appreciation of what is most humane in our nature. This is Part Two of our interview.
Mark Matousek: Mortality is another major theme in your book about awe. You wrote that after your brother died, “I felt small, quiet, humble, pure. The boundaries that separated me from the outside world faded.” Can you say something more about this process?
Dacher Keltner: My brother Ralph was one year younger than me and we were very close, shared everything together, from Little League to being each other’s best men, to traveling, to living in a crazy family. Then he got colon cancer, and after two years, passed away. It was horrifying up until his last day. When he started to transition to what I perceived to be some different space of existence, I could sense it directly. In that moment of knowing he was dying, I was humbled by the life cycle, almost like having a spiritual experience. I was dissolving, and I seemed to disappear.
The next day, everything seemed so meaningful and rich—the birds, the church bells—then the awe passed and I fell into a very hard state. Anxiety, panic, depression, meaninglessness. I had trouble making sense of things. That’s when this awe research saved me. I started listening to new music, spent time in the mountains, talked to ministers, spiritual leaders, artists. I started to visit cemeteries, contemplating how awe brings meaning and sacredness into our individual lives.
MM: How do you define the sacred?
DK: Something that awakens you to the source of awe and feels beyond the material world of transaction. You wouldn’t be able to put a price on it. The sacred brings you a sense of unity with the forces that you believe bring life to the world.
MM: Have you had mystical experiences in your own life?
DK: You’re the first person who’s asked me that question! It’s so interesting because when you study awe, you get to people like Emerson, William James, and Walt Whitman, as well as the Buddha, Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita, and Saint Paul on the road to Damascus. There’s all this spiritual writing about awe, which can be another portal to wonder. Watching my brother die, I had some supernatural experiences. I saw my brother a few times after he died and heard his voice on a regular basis. There were dreams that were unbelievable. Then I felt his hand on my shoulder several times. These experiences transcend the laws of neuroscience and physics and did feel almost spiritual.
MM: In the book, you cite 'big ideas' as being among the eight 'wonders of life' that are known gateways to awe. Can you give me an example?
DK: Sure. But first, why don't you tell me about a big idea that blows your mind.
MM: OK, how about Quantum Theory? How we've learned through the scientific method that reality is not what it appears to be, that there are different dimensions of reality happening simultaneously.
DK: Seventeen of them, in fact.
MM: And that an atom can appear in two places at the same time. I find that astonishing.
DK: That astonishment is a precursor of awe. We walk around with this default understanding of the world, and then suddenly we’re hit with something that doesn’t make sense. It can pertain to nature, moral beauty, a piece of music, or an idea that we can’t make sense of. Ideas are vast and mysterious and they trigger awe. I remember reading one of [biologist] E.O. Wilson’s books, written toward the end of his life, in which he’s wondering about the meaning of it all. He makes the point that it took billions of adaptations in evolutionary history for you and I to be having this conversation. When I think about that it fills me with awe.
MM: You also talk about how awe relaxes the default network in the brain. How do such experiences impact our sense of self?
DK: One of the fundamental processes of awe is that the self becomes small. You think less about yourself and your personal interests, which opens you to a fundamental truth about reality; namely, that we are part of greater systems, social, artistic, and ecological. That’s what happened to me in grieving my brother. I felt deconstructed and lost my sense of self. That’s what awe does, but it also calls on us to recognize and appreciate our connection to larger systems. We need this connection in order to survive. I have to be part of a group, part of a culture. I have to speak a language and have some kind of work discipline. So besides expanding (or dissolving) our sense of self, awe also helps us to locate and embrace these connections.
MM: One final question. Did the awe experience of losing your brother, including the dissolution of self, inform who you became afterward?
DK: Most definitely. I was reminded that science doesn’t have all the answers or even half the answers! I became more humble and open to things I don’t understand. That means I get to continue learning. What could be more awesome than that?
