Tara Brach - Basic Goodness and Awe: A conversation between Tara Brach and Dacher Keltner

Episode Date: December 7, 2023

Basic Goodness and Awe: A conversation between Tara Brach and Dacher Keltner - Our conversation covers the biological, evolutionary and cultural bases of human goodness and the centrality of awe in the human experience. We explore the blocks to experiencing our full potential, and ways we can cultivate our innate capacity for finding wonder, love, creativity and beauty in our daily lives.  Dacher Keltner, Ph.D. is a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, a scientist and the co-director of the Greater Good Science Center. He has authored a number of books, including bestselling "Born to be Good" and most recently "Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How it Can Transform Your Life". Learn more about Dacher's latest book at: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/622175/awe-by-dacher-keltner/

Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely, and your support really makes a difference. To make a donation, please visit tarabrock.com. Namaste, my friends. Our main focus today is the subject of awe. And my guest, Dacker Keltner, professor, psychology at Berkeley, a scientist, co-director of the Greater Good Science Center, also author of a number of books, including best-selling, born to be good, and then his most recent book on awe. So our conversation, I know you're going to love this. It covers the roots of human goodness and awe, biological, evolutionary, cultural bases, and also the blocks to experiencing our full potential and the ways that we can directly cultivate our capacity for finding wonder, love, creativity,

beauty in our daily life. And I just want to say I recently read this book on awe, and it's a transmission. It's got wonderful stories, and it really brings alive the precious experience of awe. May you enjoy. So, Dak or Keltner, my friend, welcome. I'm so glad we're getting to do this together. Right. It's very nice to be with you, Tara. I thought I'd start with, you know, one of my favorite referring back to Einstein kind of quotes, which where he frames the most important question for any of us to decide is, you know, is this universe a friendly place? I mean, is there a fundamental benevolence in existence? And so I'm just so aware with so much fixation right now on the suffering, our world in trouble. Just where do you land on this question and how

How do you hold it? Yeah, you know, so I approach things from an evolutionary perspective and think about, you know, what are our signature adaptations in this universe? And I think that the, you know, there's no doubt that raw self-interest and competitiveness and adversarialism and violence is part of the story, you know, and you just observe that in all species. and it is this struggle for life that Darwin wrote about, and Einstein is reflecting upon it within the realm of physics.

But in human evolution, you know, the last 30 years of scholarship have just moved away from the selfish gene to the cooperative gene, to the sharing gene, to the forces that are in our minds and our souls that help us form strong groups. And one way to summarize a lot of those tenets, He's like tending to people who suffer, sharing resources with others, even though you may not have much.

Cooperating, forgiving is benevolence that we're, you know, we have a lot, very strong capacities for benevolence that are part of this, our little vector trajectory in the evolutionary story. And then, you know, stepping back, you know, is the universe, does it have that direction to it? In some sense, I think it does because I think that life, which is what we're part of in the big story of the universe, has a lot of benevolence to it. And so I see that as part of the mission of our science is to reveal how that works. I love that because I'm with you. I sense that all life loves life and wants to live and that the survival drives. that we talk about that people would say, well, this is our badness. It's not bad. It's just the more primitive expressions of life, loving life. So, you know, and it is, life is a very powerful concept to,

for people to be thinking about as they think about these bigger questions that you just posed, Tara, like, what is the, where am I going? What's the point of this, you know, this society that I'm part of or this moment? And it is the generation and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and sanctification of life is right at the core. It needs to be what the core in a more and more conscious way for us to survive and have other life systems do well. And that's hopefully the direction. Maybe you could speak a little more to some of the evolutionary and biological roots

of positive emotion. pro-social behavior because, you know, as I introduced you, I mean, born to be good, you know, you're really a leading voice in this. And it's so powerful to start seeing the science on it. It is. It's changed my life, you know. Yeah, I've been in this science of emotion and neurophysiology and from an evolutionary perspective and a cultural perspective for 30 years. And, you know, 30 years ago, the story was sort of a almost a Freudian story of fight or flight or reproduce. That was human nature, right? We knew a lot about cortisol, stress, the amygdala, the threat region of the brain, the emotions of anger and fear and disgust and all these emotions of self-preservation. And we had developed the scientific

tools to start to understand the more benevolent side of human nature. No one had really touched it. And And then findings started to sort of congeal or accumulate to tell a really different story about who we are that the vagus nerve from the 1990s, which we've studied in my lab, a big bundle of nerves in your body helps you slow down, breathe deeply, vocalize, make eye contact. And it's part of compassion, right? compassion activates the periaquoductal gray, which is an old region of the brain in the midbrain. So compassion is old in mammalian and human evolution. You know, then you get to the oxytocin story of just here's a little neuropeptide that mammals share that gets into your brain distributed through your blood and it shifts your body and your mind to want to connect with people and cooperate and share. Wow, there's a little chemical that does that.

And then you get to the amazing research of touch and gratitude, you know, in our lab that just simple touches to people can express deep reverence or gratitude. And that system and all the amazing cells in your skin, parts of it probably evolved to receive friendly social information from other people. And then awe, you know, and so that suite of emotions of love and compassion and gratitude and awe. and others are deeply evolved. And they tell it, and then they're being registered in parts of our nervous system. They're really different than fight or flight physiology that tell us we also have evolved to care and connect

and tend to people who suffer and to share things. So alongside that is all the amazing work by people like Thomas Sello showing, and little kids 18 months old will help people, they'll share stuff, they cry when someone else is suffering. So it's a deep part of who we are. And we're in a new era of thinking about, you know, those basic states of mind that we try to cultivate with meditation and study scientifically.

And you write so beautifully about how, you know, they further survival. That pro-social behavior actually is what's allowed us to flourish in so many ways. And I sometimes wonder, you know, what would, I mean, it seems that pro-social expanding our sense of belonging, you know, we start, we come into existence and there's that sense of separation. And yet we have this built-in capacity to perceive a larger belonging. I mean, that's the magic juice, you know, magic sauce. And I sometimes wonder, well, why aren't all species if this is pro-social is such the recipe for, you know, benefiting survival?

why wouldn't we see it more and more in like all species? And I'm just curious about what you notice about other pro-social species and how it works for them. Yeah, you know, and you're asking exactly the right question. And, you know, I really encourage our audience to read Franz de Valle, who's one of my heroes, a primatologist, his book Good Natured as an example, where, you know, he looks at our close relatives in the primate world. And they do, they show certain pro-social tendencies like us, right? They take care of their young.

They cooperate. They groom each other and trade food and share food. They protect each other. But they don't have the depth of the pro-sociality that humans do. You know, they don't mimic each other. They don't synchronize as much as we do. They, you know, and then they don't have all the cultural practices like rituals and and storytelling and music that bring people together.

But there are early traces of it. You know, it's really interesting with respect to awe. You know, Jane Goodall really felt that the chimpanzee she was studying would show this early response of awe, fluffing up the fur and sort of being quiet around really big, vast things, showing reverence, almost bowing, you know, as a form of awe. So she felt it was there in the, the kind of the rudiments, if you will. But humans, you know, as Deval and others have argued, and I think it's true that we, we are defining strength is to be to get, is to belong. Like you nicely chose the word. And if we don't, we don't survive as an infant.

parents don't raise their their offspring to the age of viability. We don't do well during famine, which was very common in our evolutionary history. We don't do well during periods of real cold, right? We don't do well when we're facing predators. Our signature strength is just belonging. And they're just a whole new set of dimensions to the mind and our social behavior that speak to that, that are good things to study these days. Yeah. And so your recent book on awe, and as I shared about it a bit, I just read it. And it's a

transmission in deepening attention to awe. You know, it's like I feel like I'm walking through the world more available. And since you just mentioned, not just in humans, but in other species, you have a piece on Jane Goodall that just really struck me where you, you know, you described, well, first of all, let me back up and say, I sent you just recently a little clip. And it was great. It's a magician for all those you listening. This is a magician who's showing a magic trick to a monkey.

And the monkey is clearly amazed. He's going, you know, it's like, what? This couldn't be. No, it's so cool. And then you describe Jane Goodall, who is talking about the waterfall display that she observes in chimps. And I have, first of all, this is all. And I just want to, I want to read you so everybody hears and then ask you to comment. And she's describing, you know, a chimp approaching a roaring waterfall.

and as you just described, fluffing up the fur, and then these swaying rhythmic motions, swinging from a branch to another near the river, and finally sitting quietly absorbed in the flow of water. And this is how she puts it. She says, I can't help feeling that this waterfall display, our dance, is perhaps triggered by feelings of awe, wonder, that we feel. So why wouldn't they also have feelings of some kind of spirituality, which is really being amazed at things outside yourself. You just gave me goosebumps, just thinking about those words that Jane Goodall wrote. You know, in studying awe, one of the real privileges of writing this book was, you know, we can only get so far with measures and, you know, that I tend to traffic in in my career.

and you just have to see what people write, you know. And I love that quote because it, for a couple of reasons, which is, you know, good all really makes the bold idea or advances the bold idea that, that awe, like William James said and Emerson and a lot of people, you know, that awe is really this feeling of just being struck by vast mysteries and wanting to explore them. is at the core of spirituality. And I think that's true. And then, you know, the idea that, well, what is that?

What is the, like from a, just a, a scientific perspective, how would we start to think about this sense of spirit and connecting to things that are transcendent? And it's being amazed at things outside of yourself. And I just love that phrase because that is the core of awe. It opens our minds to systems around us, to phenomena that we're part of that we don't realize in our ordinary consciousness. And I know you've accessed these things. You use the word available. It's fundamental to meditation.

And Goodall is making this bold claim that this is mammalian, you know, that we all have this sense of reverence for things that are part of that are vast. For the chimpanzee, it's, you know, the waterfall and loud storm. forms coming through ravines and thunder, you know. And there it begins in our mammalian evolution. And then what's striking about the literature on other mammals is that fluffing up of the fur tends to bring primates together, rats together. So we become a collective entity, which is interesting. And I love her like that she used the word dance, you know, that this is sort of the

maybe the first mammalian dance. that, you know, birds dance. They have lots of dances. But, you know, here's where we start our rituals in reverence. And just the word dance has me thinking that, you know, in the moments that we're dancing, are singing together, are connecting with something that somebody else, some beauty that somebody else created artistically,

there is a going beyond our self-centeredness. There's a kind of a dissolving of that, self-centeredness and a belonging to something larger. And so that awe almost equals that sense of, in some way, we're part of something larger. Yeah, you know, I, as I wrote this book and what a nice summary, Tara, I, you know, I was like, well, what is the core semantics of awe, you know, and I know vast mysteries get it going, the feeling that we have of awe. We did a lot of nice work showing, it really happens when we listen to music or in nature, thinking about big ideas or moral beauty and so on.

But what's the core kind of epiphany or semantic structure to awe? And it really is the recognition you're part of large things, large processes, right? Or what I eventually called systems, like in the indigenous traditions that people like Dr. Yurya Salidwin write about, when you have these ecstatic awe,

experiences often you realize like I'm I'm a species in an ecosystem I'm just part of this natural phenomenon not observing it I'm not studying it I'm part of it people you me Kendall whom I interviewed in the book who's a cellist you know she just said I you know for the Philadelphia Symphony like when I play music and I start to feel the vibrations of the cello in my body and hear the notes and tear up I realize like I'm part of this musical tradition of thousands of years right And that's the core structure of all. It's like we're part of these large things that we forget we're part of. And as you're just alluding to, there are countless pathways of human experience.

I mean, you were just talking about music and I happened to be reading something that was going on at Carnegie Hall. And I found out, well, you're researching it because they're offering now at Carnegie Hall a whole different setup. You don't sit in that formal audience structure. it's circular and people are connecting with each other and listening and it creates it creates communing with others, the music itself. So maybe speak a little to that. Yeah, you know, this is one of my, and I would love your thoughts on this, Tara, because one of the things that strikes me, you know, in the contemplative world is, you know, we, we often are isolated and reflecting on our mind and in the quiet of seclusion.

And that's important. And I do that in nature and so forth. But there, you know, what the science of awe started to reveal is there are these incredible cultural sources of awe that are really, to use your word, available. Visual design and art. I was raised by a visual artist. So that really spoke to me. And then music, you know, and dance and sports. And so, you know, so I.

started to think like, you know, people use music to contemplate. And it's one of these deep structures whose meaning we're still figuring out, you know, just really to understand why we're drawn to certain kinds of music. But why not curate experiences of music like people do intuitively at a place like Carnegie Hall where it's more contemplative where they're thinking about like, why does this, why do I cry when I hear this part of this song? What is going on? What's it means? What's it to me, that's a contemplative moment. And so we're doing that with Carnegie Hall and are in conversations with, you know, the National Gallery with respect to visual art. And I think it's this expanding of the contemplative mission that you're part of, of like, let's all make these transcendent moments

and meaning moments more available. Well, I love the way you're framing it. Because if I think of it culturally, all those expressions arose out of a sense of awe and they create awe. And if we become more conscious in our way of participating, it wakes us up. I mean, it's so, and so you talk about all the different, many different major pathways to awe. One of the ones you just started mentioning a bit is sensing the moral beauty of others. And I think you said 95% was that what it was of, you know, acts taken on behalf of others is what really accounts for our sense of awe. And I so resonated. I was thinking about how whenever I read a story or hear a story about reconciliation, I cry.

Yeah. You have an example in mind that. Well, you actually have a story. you have some wonderful stories. You know, I'm very into restorative justice. I mean, I'm a deep believer. And you have some wonderful stories about it. And I wanted you to share, if you would, the story about Ashkar, the inmate who organized

that. He was in solitary for a really long time. He organized a hunger strike. Yeah. And oh, my gosh. How beautiful was that? Yeah. No, it's astounding.

And to me, Tara, you know, and I know. you've been involved in restorative justice and, you know, which traces back, as you know, to indigenous traditions, being in a circle and talking about wrongdoing and forgiving. It actually traces back. Franz de Val did amazing work on reconciliation in non-human primates. They, they instinctively will reconcile in the face of conflict, because we have to. Otherwise, we kill each other, as we do, as we're seeing, you know, in the Middle East and the like. And, you know, the, yeah, I, you know, it's so interesting, Tara, and I know you've been involved in a lot of activism. We can't explain why we find our moral calling in often, you know.

And I got asked to go into San Quentin as part of restorative justice because I used to teach restorative justice, which is a powerful way to remedy harm and sort of countervail mass incarceration. And so I go in and I was in there and, you know, you just start, and in the Restortive Justice program, the whole process is about, you know, prisoners coming to terms and acknowledging their wrongdoing, stating it publicly in this venue in front of 180 other prisoners. One of the incidences that I was present for was a former white supremacist to a largely person of color audience describing how it used to put hurt on people of color. And that's why he landed in prison.

You know, I mean, this is just raw reconciliation. And you're right, every time I would see it, I'd cry. And that's a mystery why that is. is. And as I was doing that work and starting to see the power of restorative justice, I got asked to be part of a case to write an amicus brief against solitary confinement. And that movement, I was writing that brief because of Todd Ashker, whom you mentioned, who at Pelican Bay, they would just throw his gang leaders into solitary for 20 years. And Todd Asker was not a, you know, he was a white supremacist, he was a tough guy.

We would feel morally repulsed by him, but he was there. He called a truce, got the gang leaders together, and led eventually through a really complicated process, a food strike of 30,000 prisoners against solitary confinement. And I got to write on, as a scientist, about what happens when you deprive people as in solitary of touch. You know, they don't get to touch their kids. the mechanisms in Pelican Bay are such that you can go 20 years without touching a human being, you know, and they go crazy. And it is torture and the case won.

And then I got to be around people in San Quentin who had been part of that hunger strike. I don't think I've ever had a moment in my career where I'm like, this is what I should be doing. And it is this sense of the moral beauty of political movement. that can, you know, reconcile harm and bridge people who aren't connected. So it was a transcendent moment. And, you know, every American should really go into an American prison because we are the state that creates that and see what we do, see what the food is like, see why their life expectancy is 55, 58 years. and be part of it. And for me, it means we've got to get to other pathways to healing.

Well, we're on the same page. And part of what really struck me in telling the story of Ashkar and solitary and the other gang leaders was that they started a system of tapping on the wall and telling their stories to each other. So here you have these people in. solitary, sharing their life stories with themselves, that's moral beauty, because you see the coming together, and then together calling a truce of their gangs. I know. Yeah. And, you know, and this is like, I've, you know, spent a good amount of time inside San Quentin, talked to the guys, now working with people who are just released, and, and moral beauty, just the feeling of reverence for

as you know for human character and kindness and the ability to overcome hardship which prisoners face a lot of is just this deep response that produces crying and a desire to assist and be good and once you get close to the prisoners and they are allowed the opportunity like in restorative justice circles you see that's what they care about they're just talking about you know they want to be good to the kids outside. You know, they want to tell their story of how they went awry. They want to, you know, they want to get out like Darnell Washington, who I'm working with, who just got out of San Quentin. And he just wanted, he's like, his single mission is to get back to the L.A. and teach kids where he grew up, how to meditate. So, so it's a, it's something we need to surface in many places.

You know, I often think if there were, you know, a few people standing by a pond and they weren't in the grip of their own stress or fear, if a child fell in, who would not intuitively want to save a life? I think reverence for life is so intrinsic and it just gets covered over by our stress and our fear. And so when we have enough space to begin to get in touch with ourselves, it's right there. And again, I think of your stories because they really struck me. You were talking when you described about the Nazi skinhead who was talking about his past and that he blushed. Yeah. And then you described some of the research on blushing and how blushing actually is our physical body's way of bringing out in others the possibility of forgiveness.

Yeah. Yeah, you know, and this traces back again to our primate relatives that they have these deep ways of short-circuiting conflict in the heat of the moment and then bringing about embrace and grooming and peaceful tendencies. And, you know, obviously you're not going to go groom your adversaries as humans, but that's how non-human primates do it. But, and one of them is, you know, their face will redden. They will show this smaller posture. They'll get small. They'll expose areas of vulnerability, like the neck or the body or dogs will show their stomachs. And it brings, it's like an instinct where it just brings about peace.

And in humans, I did a lot of work on the blush and embarrassment and modesty. And that's what we do. And here was this, you know, this former skinhead. who was up in front of 180 people talking about putting hurt on people of color, and he just like he had that response of, you know, blushing and head down and his eyes were cast down. And you could just feel in the audience, 180 guys, like people were ready to forgive him, which they did. We need more of it. We need more of it. And, you know, when I'm sticking with this because I feel

like it's such an expression of moral beauty, our capacity to forgive, to not want to armor our hearts. And, you know, when I brought up crying at reconciliation, my sense is that we love goodness. We love anything that has to do with the possibility of coming together in love. We love, and that reconciliation is this courageous willingness to be with the rawness for the sake of love. It's like you can't reconcile unless you've actually touched into rawness and vulnerability and then been willing to, you know, go beyond feeling safe and defended. Yeah, that's what's required. So it really is moral beauty. Yeah, so beautifully stated. Yeah, I think, I think, you know, and, and, you know, again, it's, this was part of the real

of this book was to, you know, moral beauty when we see, and I love how you phrase that, Tara, that, and it's really striking to me. And in fact, philosophers have just been astounded by it, that, you know, we see these little moments of human goodness of reconciling or two adversaries hugging or somebody speaking truth to power like, you know, the whistleblowers or a child sharing resources. And we start crying, you know, and And it has the power of love. And in the philosophical tradition, while I use the word beauty,

it's like this aesthetic response. It's like seeing the best film or hearing the best piece of music. And you're like, this is so beautiful. And I think you're right. I think that there's early thinking now in the literature on beauty that at the core of beauty, the deep roots is loving life, like you said, that things that we really say, God, that's so beautiful.

are about moments of real life. And in the case of moral beauty, it's like, this is humanity. This is how we can be. This is what makes our species live well is reconciliation. And then we cry, which is still a mystery to me.

Yeah. And of course, we are human, we're nature's expression as humans. And then when we're in non-human nature, the outdoors, it sometimes comes up even more easily, that sense of awe because there's not the complications of, you know, personality. And you talk about Rachel Carson and started with, and I'm going to read the quote

you had because it's so beautiful. It says, those who dwell as scientists or laymen among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life. Yeah, you know, Man, these quotes are getting me, Tara. And you've picked out my favorites, Jane Goodalls, and then Rachel Carson is, you know, she is an American, righteous heroine or hero, whatever the appropriate term is, you know. Yeah, seriously, like, you know,

she was a poor journalist writing about nature, you know, suffered physically. I think she had cancer. Her sister dies. She takes care of her sister's son. And, you know, in the 1940s and 50s, sexism was everywhere. And, you know, she is, she's a righteous person. And it was all about awe and wonder.

You know, she just was, and it was so fascinating just to follow the trails of this book. It just like, what is awe? How do I learn about it? Who are the awe pioneers, you know, and the obvious ones are, you know, the Bhagavid Gita and the Buddha. And, you know, and those are great, you know. But, you know, there's Jane Goodall. and John Jacques Rousseau and then Rachel Carson. And for her, she saw the environmental destruction early,

obviously writing about pesticides and Silent Spring. And then she starts to realize that the counter to that and the counter to the 50s of conventionality and like was all and wonder. And her essay, teach a child to wonder, It's published, I think, in Ladies Home Companion. And I found it online. I'm like, oh, my God.

There are like pictures of women with buffoon hairdos and mayonnaise and, you know, suburban homes. And then there's teacher child to wonder. I'm like, this is radical. You know, and it is. And that's her message is civilization will wear you down. You know, sexist ideas will wear you down at that era, et cetera. Racism will wear you down. But find awe.

And it's a great statement. And we will not. Thank you for the quote. I forgot how amazing that is. And we won't act to save this precious earth unless we're in love with Earth. You know, you talk about awe, you know, this wild awe, awe of the wildness, diffusing polarization.

I mean, it connects us. to ourselves, to life, to each other. Just maybe speak to that a little. Yeah, you know, I, we started to do these studies in the lab. And, you know, I'm really proud. Like, we really know how to measure awe now. And we can go, there are people working on whether awe is one of the first emotions that young infants will show. What a striking idea that this is one of the most basic emotions.

You know, we can measure it in the brain and in the body as we've, talked about with fluffing up of the fur. And we started to do these lab studies just to look at like, what is all due to your mind and one of our, and body, and one of our best techniques was to use video portrayals of BBC Earth and nature, right? And on occasion, we would take people out in nature and be around trees or look at big views

or rafting on rivers. So we really turned to you. to nature, which obviously in Western European cultures, as we've learned, it's a very powerful source of all and part of our many traditions. And it's amazing, you know, just a brief dose of all through nature makes you less self-focused, more humble, activates the vagus nerve, this amazing bundle of nerves that we've talked about, makes you share more. This is where it it's really interesting. It makes you have a sense that you are part of a more integrated into a social community. So even though it's nature, you come out of it like, I have a lot of good friends,

you know. And then my student Daniel Stencato was like, I bet this could help with polarization, one of the big problems of our era. And sure enough, you know, big dose of nature. And you feel like, you know, those people over there that we share certain values that really unite us, which I think we need to return to. So yeah, it is, nature is powerful. And for the interested audience member, I've just published an article with Dr. Yeris Selidwin on what she calls ecological belonging.

And she led this research on just like, why is nature so powerful? Because we're part of nature. And we feel the sense of belonging in nature. And it brings about a lot of good. Well, I mean, it completely resonates intuitively that we are nature. And when we're in the wilds, I'm going to ask you more about this, but the parts of our brain that keep resurrecting a sense of a separate

self are quieted. And I'll just share this that years ago, I was what I was seeing on TV, this magic show on primetime TV. And they had the best acts from all around the world. And so, in the middle, and this is like following swords through sexy women and releasing 50 birds from seemingly empty hands in the middle of this. Okay, you get this pair of men and they're slick, fast-talking guys. And they say, okay, we're going to teach you how to vanish, how to disappear in thin air. And they said, are you ready? And there's all this, you know, hoopla. And then they get very quiet and they say, don't think about the future. Don't think about the past. Don't think about anything, vosh, you've made yourself vanish. And then next, and next, it was showing somebody

chewing a thousand things of gum or something. But anyway, but when I, you know, read about what you write about the impacts on the brain of being in nature, it's like you vanish. Your self-centeredness vanishes, which means you're part of the whole. So talk a little. bit about what happens in the brain when when we stop thinking about self so much. Yeah. No, you know, this is again, you know, if we return to this older neuroscientific understanding of the human condition of like, you know, fight or flight physiology, it's all fighter flight or maximizing rewards, right, like delights in food and sex and so forth. You know, and that's kind of where neuroscience was 30 or 40 years ago, with some exceptions.

And the really powerful opportunity in studying the prosocial of charity and giving and meditation and loving kindness. And that's part of the story. And then all is we get a new look at what our nervous system really is. You know, these 80 billion neurons in the brain, each connected to 15,000 neurons, you know, incredible. complexity and you know the science of awe in some sense I think the neuroscience of all is the in some sense it is our best shot at really measuring you know in in the scientific Western scientific perspective something that people have been thinking about in contemplative experience and nature and spirituality and music

for a long time which is like God I just feel like the self sort of dissolves and I become open to being part of something larger, you know, a spiritual force or whatever it is. And lo and behold, that's what the neurophysiology is, which is if you just follow experiences of awe through the brain and body, you know, and this has been replicated in Holland, U.S., Japan, other cultures. The first thing that happens is what's called the default mode network, which is your ego, yourself. the medial prefrontal cortex in the front of the brain, posterior cingulate cortex on the side,

big chunks of the brain that are really kind of always running and ruminating about yourself, right? Like, what am I doing? And what's my goal? And what's my status in this situation? How much money do I have? You know, that's the default mode network. And experiences of awe and meditation,

quiet it down. And so suddenly the voice of the self is quieter. And then, you know, you follow it through and there's select studies showing awe deactivates the amygdala. So you start to, things don't seem as threatening. You're not as judgmental of everything in terms of threat. One study, it activates the sort of regions of reward circuitry. So you're like, oh, this kind of feels good.

And then it gets really interesting when you get to the neuropeptides in the body, which is a few studies, release of oxytocin, this amazing neuropeptiles. involved in birth, an early attachment where you're connecting. The vagus nerve is activated where you're open and connecting. You know, the tears that are released are a parasympathetic, that you talked about with reconciliation. That's a parasympathetic autonomic nervous system response about being open and merging with others. So it's, to me, it's like, it's hard, you know, if you're a scientist like I am

and you want to measure mystical states like I do, you know, and you ask people like, well, what happened? Oh, I dissolved and I became part of the one, you know, I'm just like, okay, great, you know. But guess what? That's happening in your body too, which to me is really exciting. It is. And it's exciting. It's beautiful. And there's something reassuring about it, that it's part of our nature to wake up. It's, it's, built in. It's part of our nature. And so I want to ask you a little bit about the blocks, you know, what stops us from accessing, you know, that more integrated brain and the quieting the amygdala and all the, you know, all the biochemicals. What keeps us from feeling that,

you know, include in a bit the, when we're stressed, it's hard to be a law. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, you know, that this is why the neuroscience is useful because it really tells us, as we would confirm with our own experience, that the physiology of awe is really the almost the opposite of stress, right? And stress narrows the mind, focuses on the self, you know, thinks about peril or, you know, your competitive advantage over other people, compares yourself to others. that's that package, cortisol, amygdala, etc. And then all is the opposite. And so then it raises these questions, you know, with that understanding of like, well, what gets in the way of this? And, you know, I think the central discovery for me in the science of awe and writing this book

is what you said at the outset, Tara, which is it's available. You know, it, you know, people in our research, you know, we've done this in 10 different cultures and we asked them every night, hey, did you have an experience of awe? You know, and we rigorously coded their responses to ascertain that they did. And people around the world are having two to three and sometimes more experiences of awe a week. You know, so they're really, it's part of their regular experience. So what gets in the way of that?

And, and I think that, you know, one is just not, is, is you use the word, you know, with the magician's account, like pausing and just not thinking about where you're going and the like. And Rachel Carson, you know, writes so beautifully about this. And I bet it you found sort of kindred spirit in it, which he says, how do you teach your child to wonder? She's like, just go wander somewhere. Put away all your ordinary goals and concerns, pause. Think about the vast things that are around you. You know, she takes her nephew out in this big storm and she's like, listen to the rain, you know, where is that rain? You hear a sound of it. Try to locate it and you start to hear the whole pattern of rain. So I think, you know, to the blocks are our cultural

mindset of always moving forward, goals and, you know, looking at our smartphone to tell us what to do and not pausing. And I think there, we've started to do, we just published a paper. If If you just teach medical doctors and nurses during the heat of the pandemic to like pause, open your mind, and just as the magician suggested, like, put away all your demands just for a minute and just think about things around you. You'll find all and it helped those healthcare providers with anxiety, right? So that's one. And then the other block I think has surfaced in our conversation, which is we need to

return to the roots of the things that are meaningful around us, right? Like music and just listen to music for awe. Look for it in your visual life and where you're walking. So, and we've forgotten that. You know, we put utilitarian frames on things and, you know, we think it should all be about reducing stress when a lot of these things open us up to the deeper wonders and mysteries that were part of. Hmm.

You know, as you speak and the quote from Rachel, I sometimes think the big inquiry is not how do we bring out awe on our children, but how do we cease to block the awe that's natural in them? Because I think we as the culture and parents as the messenger send these cues on, you know, I think of John O'Donni, who said, we're so busy managing our life so as to just miss the misdemeanor. we're involved with, well, parents in the culture are very busy speeding along, controlling things. And so we've got a culture that kind of obliterates the capacity for awe as we get to be a certain age or separates. Not obliterates. It separates. And then we have a culture that sends

messages that we're not enough and we should be more. And so anybody who grows up with what I call the trance of unworthiness, that fear closes the aperture. And a story that I read that I think you'll relate to, and I'd love to hear your comments, was about William James, who you talk about beautifully, because he really brought alive the different kinds of experiences we can have. Yeah. And it's just so interesting that, you know, when he was young, he was a very troubled person, as you know. Very much so, yeah. Yeah, I mean, his brother was being. missing successful and, you know, he tried to be a painter failed, tried to go to medical school failed, went on an expedition down the Amazon failed. So he was in this real rut and he actually

questioned whether he should be alive. And in that rut, totally separate, isolated, cut off. So he did this experiment and he was brilliant at experiments that could change his, you know, inner state. And he decided he wouldn't do anything rash, but for a whole year, that no matter what thought arose, he would basically keep turning to the assumption that change was possible. It was possible to connect to the more full sense of his potential. And he did that for a year. And this just created this energy in him by questioning the beliefs, because we all have beliefs that keep us small, that, you know, he ended up marrying, going, you know, teaching it hard. and so on. He wrote, I want to read what he wrote, which is so cool. He said, I possess for the first time an intelligible and reasonable conception of freedom.

Free to manifest potential hope, possibility. So I'm bringing this up because I think we all have very limiting beliefs to keep us feeling like we're not okay and prevent us from feeling awe. And I'm wondering if you've done studies that correlate, the belief systems with the possibility for awe and yeah yeah no and thank you for I didn't know that about William James the that experiment and yeah you know the and in some sense you know the you know and I've seen this in the students that I teach at Berkeley would you know I've taught young people for 33 years first at Wisconsin Madison then Berkeley and and And there has been this kind of over sort of shift in culture that's been well documented by sociologists, which is this, this culture because of technologies and ideologies, and

in particular, I think the ideology of individualism is too self-focused. And they focus on the self and advancing. And then as you said, comparing to the other people where you come out of this feeling, this feeling of unworthiness, which, you know, so many young people feel so self-critical and perfectionistic. And those are all beliefs and I think illusions. In many ways, the young people today are some of the most remarkable humans that have walked the earth, you know. And, and so those get in the way of awe because awe fundamentally is about breaking out of this narrow self-focused mindset. sort of having a sense of common humanity with the others rather than comparing to oneself.

And I think, you know, I was forced into doing almost a William James-like experiment, which is, you know, my brother died. I was very close to him. It blew me off the map. He died of colon cancer. It was horrible. And I was in this, you know, after the mystery of watching him pass away, which blew my mind, I was in a state. state like William James was in of anxiety and panic and alienation and meaninglessness and I just what I did is I just like just as you have been suggesting through our conversation like just make all more available you know I knew about its benefits and it's like come walking to work well let me look at the

trees and touch the bark or you know I'm walking past the childcare center just pause for a moment and just marvel at how much they, you know, they create little societies, even though they're three years old and play and so forth. And, you know, go walk past a stream in Berkeley and listen to the water, look at, you know. So I think it's part of our, the moment is to figure out the blocks for young people, for people in work, and open it up a little, right? Give people a chance to feel awe and its mysteries. It's so needed and we're talking a little bit on still on the individual level of how you or William James worked with it, which is so, it's so healing and comes from your love for life to reembrace life. I want to widen a question for you that I think is completely hard to answer.

I think we're all just mulling this one. But, okay, so we're in an existential crisis as a globe. And existential crises of this kind get people fearful and it narrows the aperture. And it tends to have us go towards authoritarian governments for more safety and security. It does the opposite of the kind of trust that we need. need and sense of belonging that promotes democracy. And I don't think of democracy as just a political system. You know, I think of democracy as this expression of our species potential to recognize collective belonging and operate, you know, and care about the greater world. So it's not

just a political idea. Yeah. So given that we're in the survival fear, Dacker, what what you sense as a society will help us evolve toward these capacities for democracy and ultimately to really live from love in our true belonging. Yeah. You know, it's, we are in this crisis and, you know, I think it's a crisis of meaning that we've lost the stories that really unite us. You know, it's a crisis of self-focus in our young people, which directly links to anxiety depression, rumination, which are way up, you know, statistically.

Yeah, I, you know, and it's interesting, you know, you bring up, you know, the fading or the surfacing of authoritarianism. And one of the findings on awe that is counterintuitive, a lot of people think that, you know, oh, awe is the engine of authoritarianism and it's not. There's, most of the studies suggest that, you know, bridges, divides, makes you see common cause between adversaries, as we've talked about, makes you more pro-social, not self-focused. So it's, it is this pathway toward, you know, more democratic, egalitarian structure, social structures, which is a first thing that we need to be thinking about. And for me, you know, it's been fascinating in, in, in, in, the, you know, you know, the, you know, the conversations around awe, which is in particular people who are working in the great institutions that give us a sense of the democratic spirit are really interested in bringing awe into those experiences.

So we've talked about Carnegie Hall, like, wait a minute, musical experiences are a way in which we sense our democratic spirit, right, together. We're in conversation, probably going to do work with the National Parks. You know, it is this great moment of democracy, 360 million visits a year. Where we, you know, yes, the National Parks displaced indigenous peoples. It's a horrifying story. They're trying to remedy that. And then, but what we know, really diverse people going to the National Parks, feeling the wonders of nature, and how do we reimagine?

that experience where it's that it brings in the benefits of awe, you know, talking to people in museums, National Gallery, which is like, here's this, here's this thing that we all share, um, art and then music. And how do we, uh, engage in those shared experiences as a culture that, that surface this sense of wonder and awe. So I think, um, uh, part of the resonance of the conversation around it right now is exactly what you're saying. Like, maybe. you know are we heading towards this mad max world of libertarian dog eat dog you know um self-serving lives or can we return to a sense of you know of egal with more egalitarianism and and democracy so you know we let's hope and uh and i and i i feel like awe is is a counter to that fear that leads to authoritarianism and we'll see what we can do. Well, in a way you just, my only other question was about hope and what gives you hope and you're naming it. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, I, you know, I am hopeful, you know, part of the, one of the individuals we're working with on work with Parks is Patrick Gonzalez, a climate scientist. part of the Nobel Prize winning reports on climate crises, which are real, but we are also in this incredible energy revolution right now. That is the most incredible energy shift in human history away from fossil fuels. So, you know, we need the, we need the experiences to bring about the imagination that leads to those things. So that gives me hope. And then young people give me hope. They're really, they are tough. they kind of have your spirit of like, I don't believe in authority and let's change things. And maybe these old institutions, you know, like dogmatic religion or marriage,

maybe we should think of something new. And I think they're right. I think they're part of the reimagining. So that gives me hope too. And do you, I'm adding another question. Do you feel like the, you know, because I think of evolution, part of our evolution is being able to facilitate our own evolution. Yeah. And it feels like so much of what you're sharing are conscious ways that we actually evolve our consciousness. Just give me goosebumps. Thank you, Tara. Yeah. And you know, you've used this word a lot in your own work, which is mystery. And I, you know, at the end of writing this book, there, you know, there was the word mystery kept, it just,

kept returning and the amazing thing about awe to me is you're awestruck by vast mysteries you're catapulted into the state of wonder and creation and what what that does and that's why Einstein said that awe and mystery are the the cradles of art and science and civilization is it just gets us to recreate new forms of consciousness you know and and and that's that's the task is to take this mysterious emotion that actually is much more available than we might imagine and then surface it in many places may it be so again i just want to say that this is an amazing tool for anyone that wants to wake up this capacity and thank you for the research and all the 10 000 ways you served accurate it's just an inspiration for me oh thank you tarah you're one of my favorite

voices out in the world and so it's great to be in conversation with you.