Awe

Barbara Jeanette Brown
Nov 9, 2020
3 min read

What is awe? It is a feeling that we get when we are in the presence of something greater than ourselves that allows us to see the world in a different way. We feel a sense of unity with all things. It can be perceptual, stimulated by a great work of art such as Michaelangelo’s David, Cafe Terrace at Night by Vincent VanGough, Water Lillies by Claude Monet, and The Thinker by Rodin. And it can also be evoked by seeing natural scenery that is breathtaking, witnessing great skill at something, having feelings of spiritual connection, or having physical experiences like childbirth or near-death experiences. It can also be conceptual, such as contemplating infinity or eternity, or seeing the solution to a complicated puzzle.

When awe occurs, it can take your breath away, and you can enter a transcendent state of consciousness. In this state, time changes and can appear to stop as you become totally connected with something greater than yourself. In experiencing awe, we can feel as if we have been taken out of ourselves. Awe is a deeply personal experience. Different people are affected by different stimuli. One person can have a powerful experience, while another may not be affected by the same stimuli. The stimuli can include art, music, incredible leadership, a depth of love for your partner or child, a beautiful sunset or the vast stars and galaxies above, an intellectual idea, or an act of moral beauty. The stimuli can also exist in simple everyday places, like in the way that a leaf can be blown by the wind. As we have more experiences of awe, we can open our mind to having a deeper level of understanding and can open ourselves to more experiences of awe. We can have awakenings where our mind softens to allow us to embody our experiences and understand ourselves better. We can experience a state of integration that can provide us with a new perspective about life and our purpose.

Research shows that having experiences of awe promotes positive mental health and motivates “increased altruism and prosocial behaviors.” (Kaufman, Scott Barry. Transcend: The new Science of Self-Actualization, Penguin Random House, LLC, 2020. p. 203). It shows that the experience of awe deemphasizes the individual self and reorients the self as connected to humanity and part of a greater whole. Awe has been associated with greater life satisfaction, spirituality and improved physical health, including reduced markers of inflammation. (Sophie Janicke-Bowles, Rebecca de Leeus and Mary Beth Oliver. Media Psychology, “The melody to inspiration: The effects of awe-eliciting music on approach motivation and positive well-being” November 2019. Note: this online journal may be found at https://www/tandfonline.com/loi/hmep20.)

In a 2003 paper entitled “Approaching Awe, a Moral, Spiritual, and Aesthetic Emotion,” Dacher Keltner and Jonathan Haidt found that “awe is an emotional response characterized by the appraisal of vastness and the need for (mental) accommodation.” Typical stimuli of such emotion include powerful leaders, grand scenery, exceptional talent/esthetic beauty, and supernatural causality.

In Kaufman’s book Transcend, he describes six facets of the awe experience. A group of psychologists created an awe scale to measure experiences of awe. The six areas that are measured are:

Vastness (“I experienced something greater than myself”)
Need for Accommodation (“I found it hard to comprehend the experience in full”)
Time (“I sensed things momentarily slow down”)
Self-Diminishment (“I felt that my sense of self was diminished”)
Connectedness (“I felt closely connected to humanity”)
Physical Sensations (“I had chills” goosebumps or even had tears)

These six facets are related to one another and seem to occur together during an awe experience. Become an awe-seeker. You may learn more about the scale on Scott Barry Kaufman’s website (www.scottbarrykaufman.com) or by reading the 2018 article by Yaden, D.B., Kaufman, S.B., Hyde, E., Chirico, A., Gaggioli, A., Wei Zhang, J., & Keltner, D. entitled “The development of the Awe Experience Scale (AWE-S): A multifactorial measure for a complex emotion” in The Journal of Positive Psychology.

Some examples of experiences that have induced awe in others include:

Taking early morning walks where one is surrounded by nature.
Peering into the inside of a flower.
Holding a baby for the first time.
Hearing harmonies in music.
Experiencing everyday natural occurrences that exhibit spectacular beauty, like seeing sunlight and the patterns it forms on water, or seeing the wind blow a leaf like it is dancing.
Gazing at the stars on a clear night.
Feeling a sense of intuition about the exact right thing to do in a situation.
Creating an object of art from conception to completion.

Anyone can experience this quality of harmony and letting go of thoughts to fully experience something greater than oneself. Here are some images, a piece of music, and a video that have induced awe in others. Enjoy!