Dacher Keltner: Awe is for Everyone

Elizabeth Rovere:

Hello and welcome to Wonderstruck. I am your host, Elizabeth Rovere. I’m a clinical psychologist, a yoga teacher, and a graduate of Harvard Divinity School. I’m really curious about experiences of wonder and awe, and how they transform us.

My guest on this episode is Dacher Keltner. He’s a groundbreaking scientist, a psychology professor, and is the founding director of the Greater Good Science Center at the University of California at Berkeley. He’s also the host of the Science of Happiness podcast and a bestselling author. In fact, it’s Dacher’s newest book that brings him here today. His book is called Awe: The New Science Of Everyday Wonder And How It Can Transform Your Life. And this book provides compelling evidence backed by field work, cultural survey, and autobiography about the many benefits of pursuing, encountering and embracing awe as an emotion and as a regularly occurring experience that we all have access to. Dacher also argues that this awe is truly critical to the future of social reform, urban planning and education.

But our conversation starts with Dacher himself and with what motivates him to connect others to an emotion that is so deeply personal to him. From his formative years to the more recent loss of his brother, Dacher has always turned to awe as an anchoring force and as a source of support.

Dacher Keltner:

What I was really thinking when I wrote the book is I wanted to, in some sense, make people experience awe just because it’s such a tricky phenomena to pin down and to study. I really thought I wanted them to inquire into their own lives and think about where they find awe.

Elizabeth Rovere:

I loved reading it. It was a great pleasure to read your book. And one of the things, as you’re saying that, I’m really curious about is that perhaps as early as humans have existed, we’ve been thinking about awe or having had that experience, right?

Dacher Keltner:

Yeah.

Elizabeth Rovere:

My question to you is that generally it seems like it gets pushed into religious, spiritual, maybe psychedelics, and your work in this way is bringing it into the general public. And I’m just curious, why do you think that is, that we’ve neglected it in this way or pushed it into the realm of only the religions?

Dacher Keltner:

And if I was a different kind of scholar, I would’ve written a really… a deep history of awe. And I think that’d be really interesting, because I think when you consult the indigenous traditions, awe is about so many different things. It’s about tides and the sun and the wind, and other people and basketry and patterns. And then it really gets narrow with the birth of the big God religions, in particular, and up probably until the Age of Enlightenment where it really, at least with respect to the written record, feels like a religious emotion in your relationship to the divine.

And then it broadens out again with Edmund Burke and Emerson and Margaret Fuller and others. And so, I think it got pushed into being a religious emotion or narrowed into a religious emotion because it’s so powerful. It is a transcendent state. It gets people to do radical things, it transforms them, it makes them political: it makes you want to change the world. And so religion had good reason to try to contain awe in that way, for better and for worse.

Elizabeth Rovere:

All the more reason, as you were saying that, it’s evocative of a transcendent state. It was very interesting to read. And you quote Vladimir Nabokov who talks about the shiver between the shoulder blades. How do you even define awe? And that was one of your quotations. And I was wondering, how did you come to your definition?

Dacher Keltner:

Emotions are hard to define. And in general, in the philosophical approaches to emotions and psychology, you tend to focus on, ‘What are they about?’ Or what philosophers call the intentional object of them. And I defined awe as where the feeling that arises, so it’s an emotion. And a lot of people have made that case, like Descartes and others, that this is a state of mind – an evaluative state of mind – where you are reacting to things that are really vast and big and mysterious that you can’t make sense of right away.

And that definition really has deep roots. Edmund Burke, the Irish philosopher, thought that the sublime was really about power: vastness and obscurity. ‘I don’t know what this is’-like mystery. Others have gotten close to that kind of definition as well. And so grounded in that tradition. And then reading a lot of narratives of awe from the spiritual writing, the natural writing, there is, time and time again, you see this vastness quality to it. ‘Wow, things are so big,’ and then ‘I can’t make sense of this.’ And so I arrived at the definition of, really, awe being about vast mysteries.

Elizabeth Rovere:

I just want to articulate it for the audience that it’s defined as, “Awe is the feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends your current understanding of the world.” And what a beautiful experience that is.

Dacher Keltner:

It is.

Elizabeth Rovere:

When I was reading this, and it’s like this ‘highest form of emotion’. Or the most, as you… in your research, you discovered the most universally recognized sound of emotion.

Dacher Keltner:

Yeah. No, I know.

Elizabeth Rovere:

That’s really profound. I have to tell you, I had shivers throughout reading your book. I was like, “Oh, wow, look at that. That’s amazing.” And that was one of them.

Dacher Keltner:

Thank you.

Elizabeth Rovere:

Again, it’s just the experience of this and our capacity to have this experience and to bring it into the world in this way, making recognition of it feels very important to me.

Dacher Keltner:

Yeah, it’s so striking because we associate awe with the numinous; what’s beyond the human, what’s beyond the earth, what is spiritual, our encounters with the divine. Elizabeth speaks to the historical legacy that you’ve noted of treating it as a religious emotion.

But time and time again, we just get these findings. The sound of awe is just universal, “Whoa”. You just hear that everywhere. We did another paper where we coded the faces of people from 144 countries, and just the awe expression and looking in fireworks is just part of the human repertoire. And it tells us, and we have other data that speak to this, that this is one of the most deeply human emotions, one of the most deeply embodied emotions that you can see in here, independent of religion. It tells us there’s something deep to this feeling that isn’t just about the sublime or the numinous or encountering the divine, it’s just about how humans relate to the world. I’m glad you were struck by that finding.

Elizabeth Rovere:

Yeah. No, it was fantastic. And it leads me to ask you what about you? You do talk a little bit in your book about some of your own awe experiences around, particularly Rolf, and I’m wondering if that was one of the main impetuses for writing this book.

Dacher Keltner:

Yeah. Thanks for asking that. It was interesting reading and then writing about Rachel Carson’s how to teach [Help] Your Child To Wonder, and just let kids wander, and don’t force ideas on them, and let them approach mystery and get dirty and the like.

And I had a really awe-based childhood and a wild childhood. My dad was a painter. He painted us. He loved Goya, and the horrors of his painting, and Francis Bacon. And my mom taught the romantics, who were great champions of awe, Wordsworth and Blake and Shelley, and then later Virginia Woolf and others. It was awe as a deeply personal emotion to me. And in many ways, it has, at different times in life, just changed how I relate to the world.

And then my brother passed. And my brother, Rolf, I shared all kinds of experiences with him growing up. And he and I went to the rivers together and hiked in the mountains together and went to rock concerts and down to Mexico; wild trips. And he passed. And it just was this massive, like grief does, it was this massive reflective exercise of, ‘He’s gone, what went with him?’ My capacity for awe. Why is that? Wow, I grew up in this incredible childhood that he and I shared, and now it’s gone. Literally, Elizabeth, I remember about four months after he passed, it was May, and I went by myself down to Mexico, brought all the books that mean a lot to me, Walt Whitman and Lao Tzu and others, Darwin, and just started reading and writing. Just out it poured, and it started to take shape in this book.

Elizabeth Rovere:

Oh, that’s really fantastic. I’m a clinical psychologist, so I was reading your book, and I was like, ‘Oh, look at that with your parents.’ What a phenomenal experience that you would have; with the art and the poetry. And if you’re not getting enough of that in the school, you’re getting it at home. And it made me wonder too, because you talk about, in your book, Rolf, you experience him now, right? In the warmth of the sun or the gentle breeze.

Dacher Keltner:

Yeah. Yeah.

Elizabeth Rovere:

And then you also have Wordsworth in there and The Prelude, and it talks about the blessing of the gentle breeze. And it made me think of your experience with your parents and this art, very artistic background as a conduit to that connection to Rolf and to awe.

Dacher Keltner:

Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. That’s a fascinating observation because when Rolf passed away – my younger brother, Rolf Keltner, 55… I study the nervous system, I study evolution. I’m not an agnostic. I don’t know what I am vis-à-vis, the afterlife and the soul. And I watched him go. And during my grief, I felt him vividly, and I heard him. I felt his hand on my back twice, where I literally had the sensations of him patting me on the back. I felt him present. And of course, science really can’t… The kind of science that I do; maybe if I did quantum physics, I could make sense of it. But I was just like, ‘What?’

And it was the arts that got me to a new understanding. And that’s what awe does; it generates wonder and curiosity and mystery and advances your knowledge. And it was Wordsworth hiking in the mountains, “There is a blessing in this gentle breeze”, which starts The Prelude and his radiances. And it was returning to certain painters that my dad got me interested in, and then new experiences with music and art, with the symphony in Philadelphia and Yumi Kendall, the cellist there. I was like, ‘Oh, there’s more to experience than cells and neurons,’ which is what I used to believe. ‘There is transcendent stuff that allows me to be in relation to my brother.’ Art and music got me there, and I’m grateful for it.

Elizabeth Rovere:

Yeah. And what a gift that that is. I think about that a lot. I’m a student of Lacan as well. And Lacan is by no means particularly spiritual, but Lacan talks about the real, and about arts and the arts as a conduit to the real, which of course, I was like, ‘Isn’t he a mystic? He’s a mystic.’ But it does make me wonder, and as you talk about in your book, about all deprivation and how in our world and in the schools, we cut art and music. And what a shame it is, what we’re missing out on in this way.

Dacher Keltner:

It’s outrageous. I raised two daughters through… And they did well. They graduated from UC Berkeley. And upstanding citizens, but I just saw – and I teach – hundreds of twenty year olds a year at Berkeley. And the single summary statement that I would make is that our system is knocking out their capacity to wander and wonder and feel awe. It’s so tightly constrained and test-focused and driven towards not mystery or question, but definitive answer. And then, like you said, the siloing of the humanities and the rise of big data and so forth. These students, our young people have not had the chance to do what young people have to do, which is think about mysteries, think about why did Hitler kill six million people? And just wonder about things. We’re at work on building Awe Principles For Education at the Greater Good Science Center, which I’m really excited about. And that’ll be…

Elizabeth Rovere:

Oh, I love hearing that. Please tell us more about that. That’s brilliant.

Dacher Keltner:

Well, if you read the book, Awe, what I arrive at in each of these chapters is when you look at these wonders of life that awe comes out of – of music and moral beauty and our visual design and nature and big ideas and life and death – there are pedagogical principles in each. When you look at nature and you feel awe about nature, as Emerson argued, you’re understanding all these different principles of systems; part whole relations and collaboration amongst elements. When you think about the moral beauty that has changed your life, what you’re really doing is thinking in terms of origin stories. ‘Oh, that mentor, when I was nine, gave me courage and changed my life.’ There are these deeper epistemological and pedagogical principles in awe. I focus on Darwin a bit in the book. Darwin, like a lot of people, like Newton and Descartes thinking about rainbows, people do their best work academically and intellectually with awe, obviously. And so we got to get back to it. And thanks for bringing that up.

Elizabeth Rovere:

It’s very funny to me because it is, it’s the imagination and it’s the wonder and it’s the curiosity, not like, ‘Oh, I just read this data.’ It’s like, ‘I read this data, and then I thought about this and I wondered about that.’ And it’s like, what about bringing in that, which enhances that capacity and awakens that capacity? Why would we write it off? It’s mind-blowing, in a way. And you have that beautiful quote in there by Rousseau who’s falling to his knees like, “What have we done with the Age of Enlightenment?” And you’re asking the same question with globalization and capitalism.

Dacher Keltner:

Very much so. That’s a lofty parallel, and obviously over… This is just a book. But yeah, there are just many ways in which, if you look at our world, it needs infusions of awe. I work in healthcare, and how people pass away in hospitals needs more awe. Young kids in their classrooms need more awe. Veterans, I work with veterans in some research. They’re courageous human beings, more courageous than I could ever be; they need more awe. Our young people today, thinking about spirituality: the polarizing debate between the super-harsh atheists and then the dogmatic intelligent-design people has denied a lot of young people, like my daughters, to think about their spirituality and their soul. And I think awe is a good way to get us back to some of that work. And I’m looking forward to see where it goes.

Elizabeth Rovere:

Yeah, it makes me wonder if it’s – what you’re measuring is – the metaphorical soul, the experience of the soul. What exactly is this? It’s so universal and deeply profound. Well, I don’t know, do you want to comment on that before I ask you something?

Dacher Keltner:

I love that question. And it’s interesting because I’m over here, as an evolutionary scientist that studies emotion in a Darwinian framework – and over here is, all the great writers who’ve influenced me; Walt Whitman and… And I love discovering that quote, relevant to your question, about Walt Whitman saying that the soul follows these beautiful laws of physiology. And if the soul is not in the body, where is the soul? And what he was saying is whatever your philosophical position, we have a subjective life of the soul. We feel it in sensations, in the warm chest or tears or goosebumps. And I think awe is right in the mix of that mystery.

William James wrote about this noetic quality to it, of you go out and you feel awe, and you’re like, ‘I now understand what I’m about.’ Or you feel awe when you watch somebody pass away, and you’re like, ‘Now I understand what life is.’ Awe does get as close to the soul. And young people need to be… We shouldn’t shy away from using that word in scientific discussion or other kinds of discussion.

Elizabeth Rovere:

And yet we do. And that’s…

Dacher Keltner:

We sure do.

Elizabeth Rovere:

What I do think that your book does is that you’re clearly a scientist, but then you’re evoking…

Dacher Keltner:

I hope so.

Elizabeth Rovere:

Well, I thought so when I was reading that. But for sure, you have so much art and poetry, and you’re evoking philosophers. And I love how you’re not in a silo, you’re really crossing these different disciplines. And I think that’s very impactful.

Dacher Keltner:

Thank you. Elizabeth, when I had the impetus to write the book, as you asked, watching my brother go and in grief, and then I was like, ‘Okay,’ I started writing out of the people who inspired me, and then I marshaled all my data. And I started to tell that story, and I was like, ‘Man, there is so much more to awe than a number or a figure or a little region of the brain,’ which is what I usually traffic in. And I just had to go to the humanities and to talk to ministers or go talk to a cellist about music or visual artists – Rose-Lynn Fisher capturing awe in the cells of her body. And it was really there, just with the metaphorical languages, the images, the poetry that I felt like, ‘Ah, this is getting closer to this thing that I want to write about.’ It was a privilege to be forced to do that, it really was.

Elizabeth Rovere:

One of the things I think perhaps that struck me the most, aside from your talking about your brother, was the state penitentiary, the San Quentin guys. I just loved reading that. And I felt it in my entire body. I was just like, ‘Wow.’ You were a little bit nervous about going in there to ask them about, “What is awe?” And then they blew my mind. I don’t know what your feeling was, but they’re like, “Oh yeah, awe, the light in the yard, my daughter learning how to read. Jesus.” It was right there. And correct me if I’m wrong in understanding this, but it seemed like that they were talking about this experience, and you’re like, ‘Oh, okay,’ very much, as you had surmised, awe as universal. And then it brought you to… you hugged Lewis at one point. Who’s an inmate, right?

Dacher Keltner:

Yeah, yeah.

Elizabeth Rovere:

You broke that rule, right? But it was a higher rule.

Dacher Keltner:

Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Elizabeth Rovere:

A higher law.

Dacher Keltner:

When you’re destabilized by grief or another part of life, you go into places searching for things. And my mom taught in prisons. I grew up in a place where some of the kids ended up in prison. And I went in. I’ve always thought about it in the abstract. And it was a top 10 set of awe experiences, on par with being on a panel with the Dalai Lama. Just the drama of it, walking in through the gates. And then when I gave my talk, there are only four or five volunteers, and there are 180 guys who are all big and muscular and lifting weights. And I was like, ‘Oh, wow, this is different.’

And then to hear their response… I was standing on stage. And I love just asking questions that may not seem like the right thing to ask. And I just, “I got to ask you guys, what do you feel awe about?” And you gave the accounts. There was this space in the room of, yeah, that’s the phenomenon of everyday awe. It’s always here. These guys are dealing with solitary confinement and crappy food, and being denied the ability to touch their kids and all the inhumanities of prison, and they still find it in the light – and here I am wondering how to find it. And it astounded me.

There’s such humanity in the prisons, just like there’s humanity in combat or humanity when you’re about to die. And Lewis just astounds me. He creates newspapers in prisons, he protests injustice, he’s just always trying to make things better, and in spite of being in there for life. And so that hug too, against the code, the correctional officers would’ve chastised us, but it connected me in the narrative to one of the last hugs of my brother. And again, it was this interesting way of how I keep that hug of my brother in my skin. And when I encounter people who really move me, like Lewis and my brother, it’s activated, right?

Elizabeth Rovere:

Mm-hmm.

Dacher Keltner:

And that’s the soul, in some sense. That’s transcendent and real, so thanks for bringing that up. I think every US citizen should check into prison for a half day, just to see what we do. It will change your mind most often about incarceration.

Elizabeth Rovere:

I think that’s a great idea and I believe that completely. Just the whole, like – there’s no us and them, it’s just us.

Dacher Keltner:

Yeah. Oh, yeah. For some of us, there’s six or seven times where I could have been heading towards that in some way if I had a different color skin. And also just to hear the real stories of trauma. We have an amazing capacity – and this is one of the lessons of the book, I hope – is awe isn’t just this thing you find at spas. In fact, I don’t think people feel much awe at spas at all.

Elizabeth Rovere:

Probably not, probably not.

Dacher Keltner:

Yeah. We find it when we encounter hardship and trauma and death and suffering. And we’re like, ‘Wow, that is so unbelievable that this would happen. How do I make sense of it? What do I do to make it better?’ I hope that’s a lesson of the book, too. Go in search of mysteries to find awe, and often hardship.

Elizabeth Rovere:

Yeah. And like you said, it comes often out of hardship. It’s that beauty that arises that you experience or see in those moments. It makes me wonder about how that could or would be a way to impact perhaps something like the prison system or our schools. Awe is for everybody. Awe allows you to feel that you’re part of something greater, and it produces this sense of interdependence, and we’re all in it together. And wouldn’t that be a good idea to be talking about and teaching?

Dacher Keltner:

Yeah. It’s so striking to me that I’ve studied certain emotions for a couple decades and some of our most noble emotions, that are often in short supply in educational context or work context, come out of our grappling with trauma, hardship, suffering. Karen Armstrong, the religious historian, this is the singular common DNA to the great ethical spiritual traditions. Compassion’s about appreciating suffering. Oh, that person is really suffering. I will tend to them.

Awe, evolutionarily – I make the case in this book, Awe – is… emerges as certain kinds of social mammals bond together to face peril, like cold, like food scarcity. We bond together in defending ourselves against invaders or intruders. And so that tells us that, like you’re saying, Elizabeth, we need, you know, this emotion is ready to ennoble us if we get people to contemplate it in the right context – of not shying away from the hard stuff of life in education, but getting kids to contemplate it. We’ll see. It’s a tough sell for certain American audiences; they want all good news. But awe…

Elizabeth Rovere:

But what is good news?

Dacher Keltner:

Yeah, it is good news.

Elizabeth Rovere:

It is good news. I would love to have you talk a little bit about – because I think it’s not surprising, but it’s also funny – I think we need to share it with the audience about how awe isn’t really related to wealth or materialism or your fancy new car.

Dacher Keltner:

Yeah. That’s so important, though. When people, when I ask them… And I’ve asked thousands of people this question, “What gives you awe?” And they generate images, and they’re like, “Okay, I’m hopping on a plane and I’m going to the Cascade Mountains,” and “I was ice picking my way up to a peak,” or whatever. And there’s this notion… Or I heard about somebody on Instagram who went to the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, and they were in this resort, and that’s awesome. And it’s not. In point of fact, you know, maybe it is, but in actuality – nice study, nationally representative sample of participants – poorer people feel more awe on a regular basis than wealthy people. And that tells us that wealth gets in the way of awe, right?

Elizabeth Rovere:

Mm-hmm.

Dacher Keltner:

And I think that’s a very important notion to explore. But part of the lesson for me is it’s another acknowledgement of everyday awe, that there’s awe in kindness of other people, there’s awe in singing with people, there’s awe in sharing food with someone, there’s awe in contemplative practice that often we lose sight of as we rise in class.

Elizabeth Rovere:

Yeah, isn’t that odd? I find. In some ways, it’s almost like the wealthier you get, the less sense of a community that you experience.

Dacher Keltner:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and that’s a robust finding. Wealthier people tend to have more space or more time alone; they don’t have the sense of community. They have a lot of opportunities for community. And that’s, I think, part of the puzzle. And it makes one worry when it’s the wealthy people making decisions about should we have music programs in schools? Or should this be part of a hospital’s budget to build in more opportunities for art? Or what have you. It’s concerning.

Elizabeth Rovere:

Yeah, the idea of everyday awe could be as simple as putting a painting up on a wall in a hospital. Please, let’s do it.

Dacher Keltner:

Yeah. No, I know. And I’m hopeful. I was part of the gratitude movement, if you will, and you go to schools and hospitals and you see little gratitude exercises, and let’s hope that awe has a similar momentum. And I’m seeing it where it’s like, yeah, we should… Gardens should be mandatory. In California, they are working on making sure everybody has public transportation to make regional parks within 10 or 20 minutes. There are ways to think about awe design of making sure everybody gets a shot at some everyday awe to enjoy its benefits, because I don’t think it’s that expensive, I don’t think; it’s  environmentally friendly. There’s a lot of wisdom around that, too, how people can build for awe for the citizenry.

Elizabeth Rovere:

It makes me think of this idea that you bring up of traditional ecological knowledge and why do we forget that or lose that capacity? And I’m wondering if you could talk a little bit about what that is and…

Dacher Keltner:

Yeah. Yeah, one of the big sources of awe is nature. And we westerners think that… And I chart this brief history of when they ascended Mont Blanc in 17… I forgot what it was, 58 or so, Europe went crazy for hiking and we started backpacking. And there’s Emerson Outdoors and all the great environmentalists. But in fact, indigenous cultures have had a very deep awe-based relationship to nature for millennia; 10,000 years, 20,000 years. And it is written about in terms of ecological belonging.

Or I like Dr Yuria Celidwen’s phrase of… She uses the phrase ecological belonging or traditional ecological knowledge. And it’s very deep, which is the idea that your relationship to nature, nature is a system that you’re part of. There are many different processes in a… ecosystem or a part of nature that you’re perceiving, that are collaborating; that they are generating resources in this life cycle that you benefit from that you treat with reverence; and then, in fact, that you are deeply part of as a one species among many. And Dr Celidwen’s written about it, just this sense of feeling kin relationality to other species. And awe, when people feel awe in nature, they – that is their mind. They’re like, ‘Oh my goodness, I’m part of these trees. I feel them breathing. They are alive. Oh, I get it; what I do is affecting these members of this ecosystem. And look at it; it’s all working together as Darwin saw in this process of natural selection and evolution.’ It is a deep idea, ecological belonging, Dr Yuria Celidwen, or traditional ecological knowledge… It’s a deep insight. It’s a big idea of nature. And it’s interesting, sorry to go on about this, but as I studied Emerson, who’s such a… awe champion, in his longer version of nature, he writes about it in much the same way, that the mind’s best ideas come from observing and feeling nature.

Elizabeth Rovere:

I… makes a lot of sense. It just feels so commonsensical, in a way, and yet we’ve forgotten it. We are in nature.

Dacher Keltner:

We are nature.

Elizabeth Rovere:

And this ecological belonging, it’s like, of course, let’s embrace it. Because the only way to go from embracing it is to really grow and thrive. And I think in my own experience, where I feel most alive is when I actually feel connected to nature or that tree or other people. It’s an incredible experience.

Dacher Keltner:

It is. And it was fascinating to me in grief to, like you said earlier, Elizabeth… And thanks for calling out those experiences. I just kept, time and time again – it was nature that was providing the ideas, the wisdom of how to handle loss; that, ‘Oh, my brother’s warmth is still in the warmth of the sun.’ Or I spent a lot of time in the ocean, and just the regularity of the waves and knowing that they’re there, I was like, ‘Oh, I get it. Things go on.’ There is a lot of reorienting to nature right now for a lot of good reasons, and I hope awe is part of that.

Elizabeth Rovere:

I hope so, too. When you were describing that, I was thinking about this study that you did with Yang Bai, if I’m pronouncing it correctly…

Dacher Keltner:

Yeah. Yeah.

Elizabeth Rovere:

…with the folks out at Yosemite, where they were to draw a picture of themselves in relationship. Could you tell us about that? I just loved that. I love looking at the picture. Thank you for providing that in your book.

Dacher Keltner:

Thank you. I know. Yeah, that really, that’s all you need to see. Yeah, it’s so funny, Elizabeth, across domains of awe, like nature, Emerson says, “All mean egotism vanishes.” In this psychedelic world, they talk about ego death.

I read a bunch of spiritual writings, just to learn about mystical awe, and Julian of Norwich and her great experiences says, “I am nothing.” We would ask people about their experience of awe, and they’d be like, “Well, I just feel like I disappear.” And so then the challenge is, ‘Okay, how do I get that in the lab? Do I have people… I measure their sense of disappearance?’

And what Yang did, and I’ll never forget, she’s like, “I’m going to go do a study.” We started doing studies of awe everywhere; at the Great Wall of China, at the Sagrada Família, in mosh pits and dance raves, and just all over. And Yang said, “I’m going to go do a study at Yosemite.” I was like, “All right, go do it.” She goes out to Yosemite with a bunch of assistants. They’re at this outlook in the road, where it’s really the first time you see the El Capitan and the great rocks of Yosemite. And it’s awe inspiring, and so she gets people there, and then she says, “This is part of a study; draw yourself.” They draw themselves. She has a nice control condition, which is Fisherman’s Wharf, which is fun and lighthearted. And sure enough, man, at Yosemite, they draw really small selves, giant context.

My other favorite finding on that, though, is the awe walk study we did – where people go out for awe walk once a week for eight weeks. “Go find awe.” And we ask them to take a picture of themselves. And very similarly, the picture gets smaller and it starts to drift off to the side of the selfie. There is this sense that, thank God, man, I’m so tired of thinking about the self. And it vanishes during awe. And that’s good news for a lot of people because self-focus is not what we’re meant to do around the clock.

Elizabeth Rovere:

Oh, we could all use it. I love how you describe it as, quote, unquote, “The interfering neurotic.” It’s like, yes, get out of the way, please.

Dacher Keltner:

Yeah. Yeah. Tired of that voice.

Elizabeth Rovere:

That’s so funny. It’s funny, as you’re describing, people are going out there looking at Yosemite, and they’re like, ‘It’s the greatest experience of my life, and I am nothing.’ What a wonderful juxtaposition, you know?

Dacher Keltner:

It is. That’s so interesting. It’s also interesting to pair that with, ‘Now I understand the point of life,’ and the point of life is just to disappear. Yeah, so lots of paradoxes in this study at awe.

Elizabeth Rovere:

Isn’t that the best? I love it. It’s like, ‘I’m disappearing and I’m nothing, but I’m a part of something even greater.’

Dacher Keltner:

Yeah. Thank goodness.

Elizabeth Rovere:

Maybe that’s the catch. When you were talking about reading about Julian of Norwich and so forth, is that what you were doing with… Because one of the questions I was going to ask you was, you did some studies with Jonathan Haidt at NYU, and you were reading about all of these mystics and flow states – and I was curious about what was one of the most compelling stories that you read in that research?

Dacher Keltner:

I worked with Jonathan Haidt, and we published really one of the first conceptual papers on awe, on the social sciences – 2003, believe it or not. He really taught me, “Get beyond the data, go read different disciplines, traditions, and just look, and look at what the prose is like.” And in fact, that’s what William James did in Varieties Of Religious Experience, which is he, he was going to give these lectures in Scotland about the religious experience – with the thesis being that our sense of religion is grounded in feeling, which is a very James, Durkheim, Emerson, et cetera.

And so while writing Awe, I not only gathered all these stories of awe and read those, I interviewed people about awe, and those were incredible, and then I consulted the great traditions of awe writing, Julian of Norwich was definitely of one. Feels a little bit more like bliss; she just dissolves in love in relationship to Jesus. The Prelude… Walt Whitman is – and you can almost think of awe writers – Whitman, a lot of his writing is just like suddenly, it’s getting expansive and vast, and he’s merging and he’s feeling he’s leaving the self behind and dissolving. The Prelude of Wordsworth my mom taught, and she gave to me; big awe writing. Margaret Fuller, great awe passages.

And in some ways, Elizabeth, I was most moved by the people I interviewed, like Yumi Kendall saying that the awe of music feels like a cashmere blanket of sound. I was like, “Wow.” And then Reverend Jen Bailey, awe within religion is always composting, it’s always evolving and churning. It was stunning to read all these different accounts of what awe feels like out there in the written word. And it taught me a lot. It taught me about the real phenomenology of awe.

Elizabeth Rovere:

Yeah, I love that you crossed all these disciplines and did all these interviews to learn about this, which I think awe encompasses all of it. One of the questions that I had about that, particularly with thinking about Reverend Jen and how she describes it as, “I feel the love of God.” That’s awe. And then you have another time you’re mentioning that famous statue by Bernini, the St Teresa de Ávila. And it made me wonder, because I wanted to… if you would share also, what is the neurobiology, the impact of these awe experiences? And is there an increase in the love hormone, even if it’s just generated through this imaginative feeling-based experience?

Dacher Keltner:

And the reader will learn about the neurophysiology of self-transcendence, which we’re starting to really understand. The big story right now in meditation and awe and psychedelics is the deactivation of the default mode network, big chunks of the cortex that are about the self. You got to look at the body. But what we don’t know neurophysiologically – and I think it’ll take a next wave of science – is, and just like you said, yeah, the self disappears, but then you have all this oceanic sense of connectivity and merging. That’s got to be in, as you rightly anticipate, regions of the brain where oxytocin is a neurotransmitter, like the periaqueductal gray regions of the brain that have a sense of boundaries dissolving. And we don’t know. That hasn’t been discovered yet. And I think it’s a major shortcoming of the neurophysiological study of awe and psychedelics.

But the body is really interesting. And the chills… Well, you start with the tears of awe, which is a parasympathetic autonomic response. The parasympathetic nervous system: big branches in your body that help you connect to others. We have a finding on the vagus nerve, which connects with oxytocin. Awe elevates vagus nerve activation, which is about really merging with others. And then the goosebumps are wild. They are in a lot of spiritual writings, Kundalini and the like. And goosebumps are a distinct response when mammals merge or join with others. It tells us at its core, this diminishing of the self and then the merging with others has neurophysiological grounding and has evolved, which becomes interesting for those who care about evolution.

Elizabeth Rovere:

Well, what does it mean, though, with evolution, right? It’s evolved. And yet then we forgot about it a little bit, or did we? And then we’re coming back to it, the importance of it.

Dacher Keltner:

Yeah. Well, I think that how I approach it is that our mammalian, particularly social mammals, our evolution built up this very basic structure of awe, which is: merge with others when facing peril, forget about self-interest, and explore, right?

Elizabeth Rovere:

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Dacher Keltner:

Open your mind and figure things out. And that probably primates have and others. And then that becomes our sense of awe as an experience as we become these symbolic hominids. And then culture moves it around, you know?

Elizabeth Rovere:

Yes, yes. Yes.

Dacher Keltner:

It just turns it into different things. It’s like we can take that and you can feel that when you’re cheering for the Pittsburgh Steelers or when you’re eating…

Elizabeth Rovere:

And you do, you do.

Dacher Keltner:

…a chocolate truffle. And so that’s this magic interplay between the deep structures that evolution gives us and then what culture does to it.

Elizabeth Rovere:

When we’re talking about the word awe, you talk about it in your book about the etymology of awe, awesome, awful, where there’s this taint or sprinkling of fear or horror. It’s definitely not that, but you are dealing with the unknown, so it would make sense, in some ways, that it’s a little tiny bit scary.

Dacher Keltner:

Yeah. And about a quarter of awe experiences today have fear, deep, significant fear and the feeling of threat and uncertainty. But I think it’s, again, back to what we’ve been a subtext of our conversation, which is that humans are really interesting, which is that our best tendencies emerge in response to threat.

And Shelley Taylor, an early neurophysiologist, made this point, that oxytocin is about binding in response to threat. Three examples… Compassion and suffering: we have this huge pro-social, almost spiritual response to other people’s suffering. That’s interesting. Gratitude: ‘I feel so reverent, I feel so much appreciation and reverence for what you’ve given to me, I will thank you and appreciate you’ comes out of food-sharing processes. Oh, there’s food scarcity; you give me food, I just expressed my deep gratitude. And then awe: we bind with others, we merge with others to face perils. It tells us there is this deep evolutionary origin, if you will, to these tendencies that help us handle the hard stuff of life.

Elizabeth Rovere:

That’s actually very hopeful in regard to the idea of trauma, or the experience of trauma, that this can come out of it and often does.

Dacher Keltner:

Yeah. And you learn that to some extent with the prisoners. That was Stacy Bare’s thesis with veterans who have twice the rates of depression and anxiety because of the trauma they experience. And Stacy, who I work with, his idea was what these people need is awe. They need to get outdoors and just get wild and face peril, and face chaos, in river rafting or rock climbing, to get that sense of self-transcendence. I think that’s part of the power of psychedelics, which… they are proving to be pretty effective in dealing with trauma. And I think, as I argue in the book, and others are, it’s awe: ‘Oh, there are bigger things I can be part of than just this trauma that I’m facing.’

Elizabeth Rovere:

Right. The diminishing of the self and this something that is greater and how important that is. And then how do we promote? And I think I understand that you already are by virtue of writing this book, but promote that in our narcissistic culture, which I love that you have this, you’re like, “Oh, but we’re a little bit less narcissistic than we were, what, 10 years ago. Doing a little bit better.”

Dacher Keltner:

We’re making progress. Yeah. I think conversations like this, obviously, there are a lot of awe practices that you can pick up in the book like the awe walk, telling awe stories, thinking about a mentor, telling origin stories about where your sense of moral beauty came from. There are awe practices to do, so that’s encouraging, that are increasingly tested by science.

And then importantly – and you raised this question earlier, Elizabeth – which is, I think we need to be… Whatever context you’re working in, you need to be thinking about the role of awe in transformation. I recently taught about awe and this guy at Kaiser Permanente – who leads a lot of their grief projects and people who have lost loved ones, like I lost my brother – and in digging into the power of awe, he’s like, “I’m going to start having awe be a central focus in grieving. ‘Where are you finding awe? What was awesome about the person you lost?’”

A second example is I’ve recently spoken to people who help design large scale housing projects and housing communities. Why not look at them through the lens of awe? Where are the features of awe design, access to nature, awe stories and the like? I think there is a lot to do in this hard time.

I work with hospitals, and they have taken a lot of awe out of the care of people; let’s build it back in, through simple means. And then we’ve talked about classrooms, so I think it’s coming. I think there’s going to be good awe design work to do.

Elizabeth Rovere:

Yeah. I love that. It’s like we’ve been all deprived, and coming out of the deprivation is this rise of recognition and implementation of it through these exercises or what you’re talking about with hospitals and housing complexes. That’s awesome. That’s awesome.

You also talk about William James, and he wrote The Varieties Of Religious Experience in, I guess, 1904 or… it came out of his lectures, right?

Dacher Keltner:

Yeah.

Elizabeth Rovere:

But 100 or so years ago. And you’re writing the book Awe now. Well, it seems like psychology, at least, ignored him. And science ignored him for 100 years or so. And I really appreciate that you’re bringing it back and embellishing upon it and talking about it more, and saying, “Hello. Do we have to wait 120 years to talk about this again and bring it, and use it and embrace it, and how beneficial it is for our humanity?”

Dacher Keltner:

Thank you. There were certain people who really inspired me in this book at many levels – Darwin, but William James probably was the central one, just in his method of talking to people, getting stories, letting stories reveal the phenomenon, and also his pluralism. And so, when he wrote Varieties Of Religious Experience, he said, ‘It’s the feeling of being in relation to the divine, what’s primary and good in the world’ – no matter what, whether it’s laughing gas or Hinduism. And I really found that, in our work, ‘awes’ can come out of anything. And why not surface that idea of pluralism? We’re all different, we all have different life histories, cultures, we should honor that and also arrive at this notion that how I find awe in my own pluralistic and individualistic way connects me to humanity. James was really… I’m glad you brought him up. You hear the word sublime and you think high-level literary studies. You hear the word numinous, you think arcane spiritual writings, but awe is the same thing in some ways, and it’s for everybody, as you said.

Elizabeth Rovere:

Yeah, it’s for everybody. People have used the word awesome so many times, it’s about time they start looking at what awe is.

Dacher Keltner:

Yeah. Thank you.

Elizabeth Rovere:

I just have to say this because when I saw the movie Inside Out, it’s absolutely brilliant. And I want our audience to know that you’re the genius behind how real that movie and the characters are and what they go through. And it’s brilliant. I’m hoping that you will do a part two with a character talking about… or you’re experiencing awe.

Dacher Keltner:

There is a part two coming. And I’ve been talking to them about it. And I push so hard on awe. And I think there may be some, they may… We’ll see what they come up… It may surface, but I’m not sure.

Elizabeth Rovere:

Well, I sure hope so. I look forward to it.

Dacher Keltner:

Me too.

Elizabeth Rovere:

Thank you so much.

Dacher Keltner:

Thank you, Elizabeth. This was a great interview.

Elizabeth Rovere:

It was really a pleasure. And I’m very grateful. And thank you so much.

Dacher Keltner:

To be continued.

Elizabeth Rovere:

To be continued. Take care.

That was Dacher Keltner. Thank you so much, Dacher. You can pick up a copy of Dacher’s new book, Awe, wherever books are sold. And to learn more about the Greater Good Science Center, visit www.greatergood.berkeley.edu.

Please come back next time on Wonderstruck, recorded on location at last summer’s Embodiment Symposium in Buonconvento, Italy. I’ll be talking about the relationship between sacred movement and personal empowerment through dance with performer, teacher, and Indian temple dance expert, Daniela Riva.

For more information about Wonderstruck, our guests, and some really exciting upcoming events, check out wonderstruck.org. And please follow the show on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and subscribe on YouTube. We truly want to hear from you with your feedback, reviews and ratings. You can also follow us on Instagram, Twitter, TikTok and Facebook at WonderstruckPod.

Wonderstruck is produced by Wonderstruck Productions with the teams at Baillie Newman and FreeTime Media. Special thanks to Brian O’Kelley, Eliana Eleftheriou, Travis Reece, Juliana Kiyan, Topher Routh and Tom Camuso. Thank you for listening. And remember, be open to the wonder in your own life.