IN JANUARY 2019, when Dacher Keltner was present at his younger brother Rolf鈥檚 bedside during the last moments of his life, he felt many things. Perhaps the most surprising was awe: 鈥淚 felt small. Quiet. Humble. Pure. The boundaries that separated me from the outside world faded.鈥�
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Awe is something that Keltner, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, has now considered extensively. In 1988, when he asked his mentor Paul Ekman 鈥� renowned for his pioneering work on facial expressions 鈥� what he should research, Ekman answered 鈥渁飞别鈥�.
He rose to the challenge and Keltner鈥檚 latest book, Awe: The transformative power of everyday wonder, takes on this under-appreciated human experience, documenting his own inquiries alongside a wider context for awe, including the work of Charles Darwin, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and William Wordsworth.
Keltner defines awe as 鈥渂eing in the presence of something vast and mysterious that transcends your current understanding of the world鈥�. With social psychologist Yang Bai, also at the University of California, Berkeley, Keltner asked 2764 people in 26 countries to respond to his definition by documenting their own encounters with awe.
These varied wildly, from first seeing the ocean to admiring someone鈥檚 strength in adversity. Keltner and Bai categorised their findings into 鈥淓ight Wonders of Life鈥� that trigger us to experience awe: moral beauty, collective effervescence, nature, music, visual design, spirituality and religion, life and death, and epiphany. Each chapter of Awe is devoted to one strand.
Strikingly, Keltner finds that money, gadgets and social media didn鈥檛 arouse such strong feelings of awe among the interviewees. Instead, other people鈥檚 courage is its most common trigger.
Keltner speaks to artists, prisoners, sportspeople, musicians, scientists and spiritualists in search of awe and why it matters. It is especially important, Keltner argues, because of its power to create a sense of community around our appreciation of it.
As director Steven Spielberg tells Keltner when he explains his focus on film-making as a means to convey wonder, 鈥渨e are all equal in awe鈥�. For me, if there is one downside to this thesis, it is the fact that people will be unequally exposed to awe because they have less access to the experiences that induce it, such as geographical wonders, stunning nature or transformative culture.
Contemplating how his grief for Rolf left him 鈥渁weless鈥�, as his 鈥渃ompanion in awe was no longer around鈥�, Keltner revisits the American River, which winds its way from the Sierra Nevada mountains to Sacramento. It was where the pair rafted as children. On this trip to experience 鈥渨ild awe鈥� 鈥� the fine line between fear and wonder 鈥� Keltner was accompanied by students and military veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). A week later, they still felt its benefits: a reduction in stress generally and in symptoms linked to PTSD.
The descriptions of the brothers鈥� youthful experiments with psychedelics together are particularly vivid. Keltner classes these under spirituality in his eight categories, writing that nothing (apart from birth and death) is guaranteed to induce awe quite as much as those drugs.
In essence, Keltner has produced a workbook for living a more awe-filled life. One of his big ideas is 鈥渆veryday awe鈥�. An 鈥� is an ideal start.
He cites studies where David Attenborough鈥檚 TV series Blue Planet was used to show people awe-inducing landscapes and gauge their reactions. Perhaps the great challenge of encouraging people to engage and take action on climate change could be overcome by harnessing awe.
Keltner also describes being consulted by the makers of the animated film Inside Out to inform its exploration of the workings of our feelings. Awe didn鈥檛 make the cut, but Keltner believes the time is ripe for it to feature in a sequel.
Overall, Awe makes a persuasive case for this neglected feeling and for a more meaningful existence with it at the helm.
Sarah Phillips is a journalist based in Norfolk, UK
