Advance Praise for Awe
“Twenty years of insight about awe. Whoa! On every continent and in every imaginable religion. Wow. Intensely personal, recognizably collective, and utterly universal, Keltner’s stories and science of awe are inspired. Awe merges us with systems larger than self—nature, music, art, spirit, morality, collectives, life, and death. We are better for Keltner’s account. Read it. Aahhh.”
—Susan T. Fiske, coauthor of Social Cognition: From Brains to Culture and author of Envy Up, Scorn Down: How Status Divides Us
“A researcher who has taught us new ways to think about generosity and cooperation has turned his attention to one of the most understudied emotions of all, Awe. Eye-opening and mind-expanding.”
—Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, author of Mother Nature and Mothers and Others: The Origins of Mutual Understanding
“Our troubling times, our clickbait media, even our own habits of mind, blanket our consciousness with the negative and threatening in life. This book is a counterforce. Powerful, erudite, rooted in brilliant research, but always fascinatingly accessible, it uplifts the wonderful in life. From the beauty of movement in sports to the moral courage of a friend, it’s a guide to how to see and experience the wonder that is always all around us. It balances consciousness. It has been a long time since I’ve read anything as inspiring. I’d say race to read it. You won’t be disappointed.”
—Claude M. Steele, Lucie Stern Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Stanford University
“Dacher Keltner has written a deeply personal, scientifically brilliant treatise on an emotion he convinces us we need to experience more often in our daily lives.”
—Richard E. Nisbett, author of Mindware: Tools for Smart Thinking
ALSO BY DACHER KELTNER
The Power Paradox
Born to Be Good
PENGUIN PRESS
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
Copyright © 2023 by Dacher Keltner
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“There’s a certain Slant of light” from EMILY DICKINSON’S POEMS: AS SHE PRESERVED THEM, edited by Cristanne Miller, Copyright © 2016 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Copyright © 1998 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Copyright © 1951, 1955 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Copyright © renewed 1979, 1983 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Copyright © 1914, 1918, 1919, 1924, 1929, 1930, 1932, 1935, 1937, 1942 by Martha Dickinson Bianchi. Copyright © 1952, 1957, 1958, 1963, 1965 by Mary L. Hampson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
“Letter of gratitude,” copyright © Yuyi Morales, on this page is reprinted courtesy of Yuyi Morales.
“Poem of awe” on this page is reprinted courtesy of Yuria Celidwen.
Illustration credits appear on this page.
library of congress cataloging-in-publication data
Names: Keltner, Dacher, author.
Title: Awe: the new science of everyday wonder and how it can transform your life / Dacher Keltner.
Description: New York: Penguin Press, 2022. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022002707 (print) | LCCN 2022002708 (ebook) | ISBN 9781984879684 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781984879691 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593653012 (international edition)
Subjects: LCSH: Awe. | Wonder.
Classification: LCC BF575.A9 K45 2022 (print) | LCC BF575.A9 (ebook) | DDC 152.4—dc23/eng/20220921
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022002707
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022002708
Cover design: Christopher Brian King
Cover photograph: Annapurna Mellor
Designed by Amanda Dewey, adapted for ebook by Cora Wigen
pid_prh_6.0_142201953_c0_r0
For Rolf Keltner
From wonder into wonder, existence opens.
• Lao Tzu
Contents
Introduction
SECTION I
A Science of Awe
One. EIGHT WONDERS OF LIFE
Two. AWE INSIDE OUT
Three. EVOLUTION OF THE SOUL
SECTION II
Stories of Transformative Awe
Four. MORAL BEAUTY
Five. COLLECTIVE EFFERVESCENCE
Six. WILD AWE
SECTION III
Cultural Archives of Awe
Seven. MUSICAL AWE
Eight. SACRED GEOMETRIES
Nine. THE FUNDAMENTAL IT
SECTION IV
Living a Life of Awe
Ten. LIFE AND DEATH
Eleven. EPIPHANY
Acknowledgments
Credits
Notes
Index
_142201953_
Introduction
I have taught happiness to hundreds of thousands of people around the world. It is not obvious why I ended up doing this work: I have been a pretty wound-up, anxious person for significant chunks of my life and was thrown out of my first meditation class (for laughing while we chanted “I am a being of purple fire”). Life can surprise us, though, in giving us the work we are here to do. So nearly every day in classrooms of different kinds, from kindergarten circle rugs to lecture halls in Berkeley, from the apses of churches to inside prisons, from sterile conference rooms in hospitals to gatherings in nature, I’ve taught people about finding the good life.
What we are seeking in such inquiry is an answer to a perennial question, one we have been asking in different ways for tens of thousands of years: How can we live the good life? One enlivened by joy and community and meaning, that brings us a sense of worth and belonging and strengthens the people and natural environments around us? Now, twenty years into teaching happiness, I have an answer:
FIND AWE.
Awe is the emotion we experience when we encounter vast mysteries that we don’t understand. Why would I recommend that you find happiness in an emotion that is so fleeting and evanescent? A feeling so elusive that it resists simple description? That requires the unexpected, and moves us toward mystery and the unknown rather than what is certain and easy?