The Psychology of Awe

Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life.  By Dacher Keltner.  Penguin 2023.  Excellent overview, well researched, practical advice.  Notes, bibliography, index, 309 pages. FVR Library.

After extensive international surveys and interviews, as well as careful research, Dacher Keltner outlines the "Eight Wonders of Life."  These experiences are what most commonly led people around the world to feel awe:

1. Other people's courage, kindness, strength, or overcoming.

2. Collective effervescence: group rituals and ceremonies and events

3. Nature, outdoors, dramatic scenery, gardens, fearsome events

4. Music, dancing, singing

5. Visual Design, Art, Architecture, Beauty

6. Stories of spiritual and religious awe, poetry, fiction, non-fiction, films

7. Stories of life and death, poetry, fiction, non-fiction, films

8. Epiphany, Mystical Experience, Altered Consciousness

"We can find awe, then, in eight wonders of life: moral beauty, collective effervescence, nature, music, visual design, spirituality and religion, life and death, and epiphany."
- Dach Keltner, "Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder," p. 18

Mystical Experience and Nature

Common Characteristics of Extrovertive Mystical States
From Mysticism and Philosophy, W. T. Stace (Jeremy P. Tarcher, Inc., 1960), p. 79

"1.  The unifying vision, expressed abstractly by the formula "All is One."  The One is, in extrovertive 
mysticism, perceived through the physical senses, in or through the multiciplicity of objects.
2.  The more concrete apprehension of the One as being an inner subjectivity in all things, described 
variously as life, or consciousness, or a living Presence.  The discovery that nothing is "really" dead.
3.  Sense of objectivity or reality.
4.  Feeling of blessedness, joy, happiness, satisfaction, etc.
5.  Feeling that what is apprehended is holy, or sacred, or divine.  This is the quality that gives rise 
to the interpretation of the experience as being an experience of "God."  It is the specifically religious 
element in the experience.  It is closely intertwined with, but not identical with, the previously listed
characteristic of blessedness and joy.
6.  Paradoxicality.
7.  Alleged by mystics to be ineffable, incapable of being described in words, etc."

"Crape myrtle, brilliant red, bursting forth;
Hiding the garden.
Some days, only the Garden, entire, serene;
Yet, hiding from sight, shy, single plants.  
Seeing Both, seldom, but as One: 
Sweat poured from my startled brow,
Dripping on the dry earth,
And all became Sunshine
And shadows of surprise unraveling."    
-   Michael P. Garofalo, Above the Fog

"What is divinity if it can come
Only in silent shadows and in dreams?
Shall she not find in comforts of the sun,
In pungent fruit and bright, green wings, or else
In any balm or beauty of the earth,
Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven?
Divinity must live within herself:
Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow;
Grieving's in loneliness, or unsubdued
Elations when the forest blooms; gusty
Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights;
All pleasures and all pains, remembering
The bough of summer and the winter branch,
These are the measures destined for her soul."
-    Wallace Stevens, Sunday Morning, 1915

 

"Speaking of today, I do not consider it intellectually respectable to be a partisan in matters of religion.  I see religion as I see other basic fascinations as art and science, in which there is room for many different approaches, styles, techniques, and opinions.  Thus I am not formally a committed member of any creed or sect and hold no particular religious view or doctrine as absolute.  I deplore missionary zeal, and consider exclusive dedication to and advocacy of any particular religion, as either the best or the only true way, as almost irreligious arrogance.  Yet my work and life are fully concerned with religion, and the mystery of being is my supreme fascination, though, as a shameless mystic, I am more interested in religion as feeling and experience that as conception and theory."
-  Alan Watts, In My Own Way, p. 61, 1972

Nature Mysticism: Quotations, Links, Books, Resources
Compiled by Michael P. Garofalo

 

The Future Does Not Exist?

   "Whitehead's Process and Reality is a very tough book, so as a graduate student thirty years ago, I took a break and walked over to Lake Michigan, trying to understand what "process" was all about.  The weather was gray and the lake, choppy.  "What is the alternative?" I asked myself.  What if the world were not in process?  Would Lake Michigan somehow be sitting there waveless in the future, waiting for waves to break on it?  Suddenly, the world jolted, as if it had been ajar and unexpectedly dropped into place with a snap.

      The future does not exist.  There is no future Lake Michigan waiting for water to fill it or waves to lap at its shores.  The future does not exist, the future is not actual.  I looked at the world around me with wide amazed eyes.  My eyes did not exist in the future.  The sidewalk did not exist in the future.  The foot that I was going to set down on the sidewalk in a moment did not exist yet.  Only the foot in the present existed.  I practically skipped home, watching the sidewalk and my feet (and my watching itself) become.  At Morry's Deli, I looked in the window (becoming) and watched the pastrami becoming, and the people becoming.

      When I returned to my third-floor apartment, I looked down into the yard next door and had a sense of vertigo.  Time is like falling, I thought.  We are always on the verge of falling forward into nothingness; but, in each moment the world becomes anew, and the creative advance continues.

     How could I explain this to my wife?"

 -  C. Robert Mesle, Process-Relational Philosophy, 2008, p.5

  

Awe, Wonder, Befuddlement

Process Philosophy

Spirituality, Gardening, Time

"I am the dust in the sunlight, I am the ball of the sun . . .
I am the mist of morning, the breath of evening . . . .
I am the spark in the stone, the gleam of gold in the metal . . . .
The rose and the nightingale drunk with its fragrance.
I am the chain of being, the circle of the spheres,
The scale of creation, the rise and the fall.
I am what is and is not . . .
I am the soul in all."
- Rumi

"I think this is what hooks one to gardening:
it is the closest one can come to being present at creation."

-  Phyllis Theroux

The Marvelous Spirit of Nature

 "What is divinity if it can come
Only in silent shadows and in dreams?
Shall she not find in comforts of the sun,
In pungent fruit and bright, green wings, or else
In any balm or beauty of the earth,

Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven?
Divinity must live within herself:
Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow;
Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued
Elations when the forest blooms; gusty
Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights;
All pleasures and all pains, remembering
The bough of summer and the winter branch,
These are the measures destined for her soul."    
-  Wallace Stevens, Sunday Morning, 1915  

"Even before I could speak, I remember crawling through blueberry patches in the wild meadows on our hillsides.  I quickly discovered Nature was filled with Spirit; I never saw any separation between Spirit and Nature.  Much later I discovered our culture taught there was supposed to be some kind of separation - that God, Spirit and Nature were supposed to be divided and different.  However, at my early age it seemed absolutely obvious that the church of the Earth was the greatest church of all; that the temple of the forest was the supreme temple.  When I went to the sanctuary of the mountain, I found Earth's natural altar - Great Spirit's real shrine.  Years later I discovered that this path of going into Nature, bonding deeply with it, and seeing Spirit within Nature - God, Goddess, and Great Spirit - was humanity's most ancient, most primordial path of spiritual cultivation and realization."
-  John P. Milton, Sky Above, Earth Below
  

"In all things of nature there is something marvelous."   
-  Aristotle


"The first act of awe, when man was struck with the beauty or wonder of Nature, was the first spiritual experience."
-  Henryk Skolimowski  


"When the healthy nature of man acts as a whole, when he feels himself to be in the world as in a great, beautiful, noble, and valued whole, when harmonious ease affords him a pure and free delight, then the universe, if it could experience itself, would exult, as having attained its goal, and admire the climax of its own becoming and essence."
-  Goethe  

Spirituality and Nature

Awe and Wonder 

How to Live a Good Life: Advice From Wise Persons

Religion, Gods, Theology and Such Matters

Quotes from Pulling Onions by Michael P. Garofalo

Absolutes squirm beneath realities.  9
It is better to cultivate spiritual fruits than religious nuts.  523
I believe in "God"; I just spell It "Fiction."  756   
When the Divine knocks, don't send a prophet to the door.  48
Dogmatists are less useful than dogs.  711
Gardens are more useful than churches.  787 
The City of God does not meet any of our current building codes.  890 
God and I get along quite well, he ignores me all the time and I ignore him.  845
Perfection can be the opponent of betterment.  788
We did not come from dust, nor shall we return to dust, nor are we dust in the wind.  23
There is not much to say about the "Unknown."  3  
R. Buckminster-Fuller once suggested that "God is a verb, not a noun."  Which verb?  Pretending?  Storytelling?  Fantasizing?  Believing?  833
In general, be more specific.  79 
If the first man was created in the image of God, then it is obvious that God is mediocre and prone to evil.  786
Nothing grows in Hell.  134
The fear of the Lord is a corner stone of indoctrination and the beginning of the end of wisdom.  850 
After understanding thousands of the details, a common variety god is really quite superfluous.  725 
The root illusion is a belief in that which does not change.  451 
Roundness is the Holy Shape.  629
God may be very smart, but he is a poor communicator.  779
There is absolutely a place for Absolutes and Ideals in our rational/logical way of choosing to think about our experiences.  982
We already live in the Garden of Eden, but we now have to work to keep it growing.  136
God may have created the first garden, but, typical of Him, He got bored with trying to keep it up and make it better.  149
Say a prayer for a good harvest; but don't forget to weed and water.  288
The Bible is morally inconsistent and often morally reprehensible.  842
I never found God in my garden, but goddesses and gods and faeries dance everywhere.  492
Yes, God and Allah are both still dead, yet plenty is still not permitted and virtues and ideals still persist.  330   
Before you swear at the overgrown ivy, beware of Dionysus.  602 
The Garden of Eden is a badly painted backdrop to a lousy stage play.  860 
Even a god cannot listen to a billion prayers a day.  412
Beware of the man who speaks of God only as a father or a son.  573 
The real "miracle" is cause and effect.  584
Christians and Moslems love to lie about their own righteousness, and rant about the immorality of the non-believers in their fantasies.  986
The "eternal truths" are sometimes clearly false.  430
Have you noticed that people praying close their eyes?  People, please open your eyes and think instead.  444
If God existed it would be necessary to have a Goddess because God is just to lazy and incompetent.  471
If God gave us technology, why did he wait so long to give us a box of matches or solar power panels.  454 
What?   Another damn Garden of Eden analogy!  476
The seed idea for "God" is springtime.  596 
A God who is understood is really misunderstood ... actually no God at all.  598 
Variety, Creativity and Fertility are the Songs of the Great Goddess.  509
Hell is a silent dark world where nothing grows.  512  
Even Allah cannot alter the past; but our knowledge of the past changes each year.  549   
Is the the God of scriptures the Absolute?  Absolutely not!  996
Stop looking for the Green Man and He will appear.  601 
The gardener is a priestess, the garden her temple and followers, gardening her liturgy.  603 
Religion is intimate with awe, anxiety, fear, danger, and death.  608 
Avoid dogmatists, they often end up treating you like a dog.   623 
What good is All Powerful and All Wise "God" or "Allah" who can supposedly count every hair on your head, but can't find
a house for a homeless family, stop terrorists, get rid of the alcoholic thief next door, or save your citrus trees from frostbite?   681
Mother Nature is always pregnant.  702
It is best to shut one's mouth in face of the sacred.  719   
Create your own garden, the god's certainly won't.  736 
That something is eternal is unverifiable; it is one premise.  746  
If there is a "Divine Lawgiver," then He/She/It seems a rather poor judge and inconsistent.  978
Ordinary reality is good enough for most sensible people; a "higher" calling is answered by few.  759 
Don't kid yourself: seeing is not necessarily believing.  761 
To many the sun is a god and the earth is a goddess; and, our imaginations are boundless.  762 
To save some time, don't let them get a foot in the door.  795 
I may not be able to precisely define religious nonsense, but I know it when I hear it.  791 
I think, therefore I am a living person; dead bodies don't display thinking, just stinking.  826 
Disrespect and contempt for the body is a common trump card for spiritualists; but, our game of life does not use trump cards.  829 
Is the the God of scriptures the Absolute?  Absolutely not!  996 
A sure path to the perversion of truth is to make it a belief.  841 
The Bible is morally inconsistent and often morally reprehensible.  842
God is not dead─ he never existed in the first place.  887 
"Just believe" is the weakest argument for adopting an opinion.  888 
Seeing the "Big Picture" is just viewing a pleasant painting created by your imagination.  846
I have faith that science will help explain our world; but, I don't "believe in" or worship science.  908
Some questions just dissolve─when our spell is broken.  921 
Spinoza's God was Nature─by definition.  937 
Rather than seeking an answer we sometimes need to stop asking the question.  938 
I am not a marionette in the Hands of Deus (or Zeus, Yahweh, Allah, God, Shiva, Coyote, Great Father, etc.)  940 
Beliefs tend to channel the mind, wonder opens it up.  953 
If you are seeking certainty, the search will likely be tiresome and futile.  955 

"Mas o menos" is often quite sufficient.  989
Be content with the probable and hope for the best.  956 

-  Michael P. Garofalo, Pulling Onions   Over 1,000 Sayings, Quips, Reflections

Michael P. Garofalo's Religious Views

 

"I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own─a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty.  Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotisms.  the idea is a personal God is quite alien to me and seems even naive.  I believe in Spinoza's God, revealed in the orderly harmony of what exists.
-  Albert Einstein, 1955, found in "The Portable Atheist."  

Free Thought, Atheism, Secularism, Humanism:  A Brief Bibliography, Links, Resources

 

Michael P. Garofalo, Pulling Onions

Over 1,000 Sayings, Quips, Reflections

Trying to Remember That

     I made this post back in 2015.  I think the old photo of my home Neo-Pagan altar display reflects my readings and studies from around 2005.  I do seasonal, holiday, and personal interest displays in my current home office room [my study, library, computer den, hang out space, man cave, sunny room, yoga space.]  In 2019, I am now reading Meister Eckart from 1305 CE., and his metaphysical poetry.  Oneness, Beauty and Beings ... the wonder of it all.      


"Straight up from this road
Away from the fitted particles of frost
Coating the hull of each chick pea,
And the stiff archer bug making its way
In the morning dark, toe hair by toe hair,
Up the stem of the trillium,
Straight up through the sky above this road right now,
The galaxies of the Cygnus A cluster
Are colliding with each other in a massive swarm
Of interpenetrating and exploding catastrophes.
I try to remember that."
-  Pattiann Rogers, Firekeeper


"God is the experience of looking at a tree and saying, "Ah!""
-  Joseph Campbell  


“The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.”
-  William Butler Yeats


Awe, Wonder, Amazement: Quotations, Sayings, Poems

Ours is the Stuff Sublime

"We men of Earth have here the stuff
Of Paradise - we have enough!
We need no other stones to build
The Temple of the Unfulfilled -
No other ivory for the doors -
No other marble for the floors -
No other cedar for the beam
And dome of man's immortal dream.

Here on the paths of every-day -
Here on the common human way
Is all the stuff the gods would take
To build a Heaven, to mold and make
New Edens. Ours is the stuff sublime
To build Eternity in time!" 
-  Edwin Markham, Earth is Enough

Awe: Quotes, Sayings 

One Old Druid's Final Journey

"Wonder is the beginning of wisdom."
-  Socrates

"Subject is known by what she sees."
-   Allen Ginsberg, Mind Writing Slogans  

Raining in Red Bluff, California, today 11/28/2014

Measures Destined for Her Soul

"What is divinity if it can come
Only in silent shadows and in dreams?
Shall she not find in comforts of the sun,
In pungent fruit and bright, green wings, or else
In any balm or beauty of the earth,
Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven?
Divinity must live within herself:
Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow;
Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued
Elations when the forest blooms; gusty
Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights;
All pleasures and all pains, remembering
The bough of summer and the winter branch,
These are the measures destined for her soul."   
-  Wallace Stevens, Sunday Morning, 1915 

"Even before I could speak, I remember crawling through blueberry patches in the wild meadows on our hillsides.  I quickly discovered Nature was filled with Spirit; I never saw any separation between Spirit and Nature.  Much later I discovered our culture taught there was supposed to be some kind of separation - that God, Spirit and Nature were supposed to be divided and different.  However, at my early age it seemed absolutely obvious that the church of the Earth was the greatest church of all; that the temple of the forest was the supreme temple.  When I went to the sanctuary of the mountain, I found Earth's natural altar - Great Spirit's real shrine.  Years later I discovered that this path of going into Nature, bonding deeply with it, and seeing Spirit within Nature - God, Goddess, and Great Spirit - was humanity's most ancient, most primordial path of spiritual cultivation and realization."
-  John P. Milton, Sky Above, Earth Below
 
"In all things of nature there is something marvelous."  
-  Aristotle 

"The first act of awe, when man was struck with the beauty or wonder of Nature, was the first spiritual experience."
-  Henryk Skolimowski  

"When the healthy nature of man acts as a whole, when he feels himself to be in the world as in a great, beautiful, noble, and valued whole, when harmonious ease affords him a pure and free delight, then the universe, if it could experience itself, would exult, as having attained its goal, and admire the climax of its own becoming and essence."
-  Goethe 

Spirituality and Nature

Awe and Wonder

The Fourth Act of Awe

"What is divinity if it can come
Only in silent shadows and in dreams?
Shall she not find in comforts of the sun,
In pungent fruit and bright, green wings, or else
In any balm or beauty of the earth,
Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven?
Divinity must live within herself:
Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow;
Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued
Elations when the forest blooms; gusty
Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights;
All pleasures and all pains, remembering
The bough of summer and the winter branch,
These are the measures destined for her soul."   
-  Wallace Stevens, Sunday Morning, 1915 

"Even before I could speak, I remember crawling through blueberry patches in the wild meadows on our hillsides.  I quickly discovered Nature was filled with Spirit; I never saw any separation between Spirit and Nature.  Much later I discovered our culture taught there was supposed to be some kind of separation - that God, Spirit and Nature were supposed to be divided and different.  However, at my early age it seemed absolutely obvious that the church of the Earth was the greatest church of all; that the temple of the forest was the supreme temple.  When I went to the sanctuary of the mountain, I found Earth's natural altar - Great Spirit's real shrine.  Years later I discovered that this path of going into Nature, bonding deeply with it, and seeing Spirit within Nature - God, Goddess, and Great Spirit - was humanity's most ancient, most primordial path of spiritual cultivation and realization."
-  John P. Milton, Sky Above, Earth Below
 
"In all things of nature there is something marvelous."  
-  Aristotle

"The first act of awe, when man was struck with the beauty or wonder of Nature, was the first spiritual experience."
-  Henryk Skolimowski  

"When the healthy nature of man acts as a whole, when he feels himself to be in the world as in a great, beautiful, noble, and valued whole, when harmonious ease affords him a pure and free delight, then the universe, if it could experience itself, would exult, as having attained its goal, and admire the climax of its own becoming and essence."
-  Goethe 

Spirituality and Nature

Awe and Wonder

In Any Balm or Beauty of the Earth

"What is divinity if it can come
Only in silent shadows and in dreams?
Shall she not find in comforts of the sun,
In pungent fruit and bright, green wings, or else
In any balm or beauty of the earth,
Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven?
Divinity must live within herself:
Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow;
Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued
Elations when the forest blooms; gusty
Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights;
All pleasures and all pains, remembering
The bough of summer and the winter branch,
These are the measures destined for her soul."   
-  Wallace Stevens, Sunday Morning, 1915 

"Even before I could speak, I remember crawling through blueberry patches in the wild meadows on our hillsides.  I quickly discovered Nature was filled with Spirit; I never saw any separation between Spirit and Nature.  Much later I discovered our culture taught there was supposed to be some kind of separation - that God, Spirit and Nature were supposed to be divided and different.  However, at my early age it seemed absolutely obvious that the church of the Earth was the greatest church of all; that the temple of the forest was the supreme temple.  When I went to the sanctuary of the mountain, I found Earth's natural altar - Great Spirit's real shrine.  Years later I discovered that this path of going into Nature, bonding deeply with it, and seeing Spirit within Nature - God, Goddess, and Great Spirit - was humanity's most ancient, most primordial path of spiritual cultivation and realization."
-  John P. Milton, Sky Above, Earth Below
 
"In all things of nature there is something marvelous."  
-  Aristotle  

"The first act of awe, when man was struck with the beauty or wonder of Nature, was the first spiritual experience."
-  Henryk Skolimowski  

"When the healthy nature of man acts as a whole, when he feels himself to be in the world as in a great, beautiful, noble, and valued whole, when harmonious ease affords him a pure and free delight, then the universe, if it could experience itself, would exult, as having attained its goal, and admire the climax of its own becoming and essence."
-  Goethe 

Spirituality and Nature

Awe and Wonder