Awe

spiritual and religious awe (mystical awe), 6, 7, 9–11, 16–18, 25, 37, 64, 193–219, 232

awe walk in India, 216–19

chimpanzees and, xxiii, 42

community and, 210

composting, 195–96, 199, 211, 216, 244, 246

intelligent design in, 204–11

James’s definition of, 287n

nature and, 197–98

psychedelic, 9, 32–33, 37, 181, 211–16

saintly tendencies and, 40–41

science and, 202, 204

spiritual journaling, 31

sports, 108–13

Stancato, Daniel, 136

Star Wars, 168

Steen, Jan, 169, 176

Stellar, Jennifer, 35–36, 117

Stevenson, Bryan, 70

stigmata, 204

Stimmung, 181

Stone, Rebecca, 181–83

stress, 118, 127, 128, 130–32

Sturm, Virginia, 104–5

sublime, 122, 148

suffering, 12, 234

suicide, 120–21

Sulloway, Frank, 238–41

Sun Yang, 78

surrender, 203

Sutton, Peter, 169

Suzuki, Shunryu, 26

symbolic gestures, 85

symbolization, 58

synchrony, 97, 99–100, 110, 111, 115, 131

music and, 146, 152–53, 159, 246, 282n

synesthesia, 154

systems, 40, 244–50

T

Taiwan, 160

talents, 78

talking circle, 88

Tao, 63, 195

Taylor, Shelley E., 266n

tears, 44–48, 54–55, 65, 83, 152, 249, 263n

teleological reasoning, 262n

ter Kuile, Casper, 289n

terror, 9, 19, 52

terrorist attacks, 100

Thaler, Richard, 255n

Thinking, Fast and Slow (Kahneman), 4, 255n

Thoreau, Henry David, 31, 244, 248

thought

body and, 50

rigorous, 39–40

threat, 54, 117, 118, 215, 226, 257n, 266n

awe and, 9, 10, 25, 37, 129, 257n

Tolan, Claire, 48–50, 63, 244

Tolstoy, Leo, 200, 213

Tomasello, Michael, 100

Topography of Tears, The (Fisher), 175

To the Lighthouse (Woolf), 212, 243

traditional ecological knowledge (TEK), 137

transcendentalists, 31, 64

traumatic events, 100

“Tristan and Iseult” (Updike), 264n

Trump, Donald, 47

truth, 148

Tubman, Harriet, 193, 195

Tutu, Desmond, 81

Twain, Mark, 201

2001: A Space Odyssey, 267n

U

ullamaliztli, 110–11

Underground Scholars Initiative (USI), 79

United Farm Workers of America, 188

United Nations, 208

United Negro College Fund, 82

University of California, Berkeley, 79, 130, 134–35

University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), 109

Up, 29

Upaya Zen Center, 233

Updike, John, 264n

Upu, 71, 114

U’Ren, Nick, 108–9

V

vagus nerve, 46, 54, 85, 126, 127, 152, 156, 249

van Eyck, Jan, 173

van Gogh, Vincent, 180

vanishing self, 32–38, 107, 139, 174, 215

Varieties of Religious Experience, The (James), 199–201

Vasquez, Paul “Bear,” 55, 57

vastness, 7–8, 38, 54, 55, 124, 154, 231

Vermeer, Johannes, 169

veterans, 120–21, 129–32

virtue, 8–11

visual design, 15–16, 18, 166–92, 209

brain and, 171–72

collective health and well-being promoted by, 184

direct perception and, 180–84

expectations and, 179, 180

patterns in, 171

profusion in, 179

repetition in, 179–80

sacred geometries in, 172–78, 209, 244, 275n

shock and, 184–90

vast mysteries and, 178–80

see also art

voice, 156–58, 209

chanting, 14, 158, 183, 209, 258n

singing, 158

vocal bursts, 57–58

W

wabi-sabi, 235

walking, 102–8

in nature, 127–29

Walk on the Wild Side, 41

walks, awe, 105–7, 233

in India, 216–19

Wanderlust (Solnit), 104

Washington Post, 51

water, 127

Watergate, 51

waves, human, 98–102, 272n

Ways of Seeing (Berger), 285n

wealth, 74, 268n

Weber, Max, 7

Weird and the Eerie, The (Fisher), 265n

WEIRD bias, 10–11

West Side Story, 191

Whitman, Walt, 26, 37, 43, 45, 49, 52, 54, 55, 64, 173, 200, 213, 223, 244

whoas, 44, 55–59, 98, 131, 157, 158

wild awe, see nature

Williams, William Carlos, 48

Wilson, E. O., 125

Winfrey, Oprah, 96

Woman in the Nineteenth Century (Fuller), 31

Woman’s Home Companion, 230

wonder, 37–40, 63–64, 115, 116, 231–32

in children, 105, 126–27, 229–31

in awe walk, 105

“wander” and, 279n

wonders of life, see eight wonders of life

wonders of others, 74–79, 83

Wooden, John, 109

Woodward, Bob, 51

Woolf, Virginia, 3, 4, 212, 234, 243

Wordsworth, Dorothy, 139

Wordsworth, William, 31, 64, 123, 248

The Prelude, 139, 140

World War II, 119

Wulf, Andrea, 247

Y

Yaden, David, 215

Year of Magical Thinking, The (Didion), xxii

yoga, 52, 209

yōkai, 202

Yosemite National Park, 33–34

Young, Malcolm Clemens, 196–99, 202, 210, 244

Z

Zhang, Jia Wei, 41

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

About the Author

Dacher Keltner is a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, and the faculty director of UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center. A renowned expert in the science of human emotion, Dr. Keltner studies compassion and awe, how we express emotion, and how emotions guide our moral identities and search for meaning. His research interests also span issues of power, status, inequality, and social class. He is the author of The Power Paradox and the bestselling book Born to Be Good, and the coeditor of The Compassionate Instinct.

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