Bringing back the sense of awe

By Peter Brown

I was getting my hair cut the other day and somehow the conversation with the hairdresser got onto the
subject of Ayurveda, the traditional Indian system of medicine. During the discussion, I told a story about
the son of a famous Ayurvedic doctor who was said to have remarkable healing powers. While playing
games at school, the son broke his arm. The teacher, knowing that the boy’s father was a doctor, sent
him home for treatment. The Ayurvedic doctor held one hand around the broken arm for some time and
then told his son to go back to school. The break had fully healed and the son suffered no after-effects.

The immediate reaction from the hairdresser was that the boy could not have had a broken arm in the
first place. It must have been a slight sprain and a little massage had eased the discomfort. I had no
reply to this as the hairdresser might have been right. It was just a story I had heard from someone who
had been treated by the doctor in question and I could not judge its veracity.

Yet I was interested in the hairdresser’s reactions. It’s a reaction that many of us would have to such a
story. Such strange information can make us feel uncomfortable. It can create a sense of imbalance as
our carefully crafted worldview has temporarily lost its sense of order. Because of this discomfort, we can
too quickly dismiss that which is unbelievable or beyond our normal experience and understanding and
favour an explanation that more closely agrees with our preconceptions. In the dismissal we recover our
sense of order in the universe and bring back the feeling of comfort we cherish.

Yet perhaps we have lost something in this comforting process. That something may be the sense of awe.
Researchers Dacker Keltner and Jonathan Haidt characterise awe as an experience of vastness and
accommodation. Vastness, they argued, refers to “anything that is experienced as being much larger
than the self, or the self’s ordinary level of experience or frame of reference”. Accommodation refers to
the adjustments we have to make when faced with the challenge of new experiences.

According to Keltner and Haidt, the sense of awe:

involves a challenge to or negation of mental structures when they fail to make sense of an
experience of something vast. Such experiences can be disorientating and even frightening . . .
They also often involve feelings of enlightenment and even rebirth, when mental structures
expand to accommodate truths never before known. We stress that awe involves a need for
accommodation, which may or not be satisfied. The success of one’s attempt at accommodation
may partially explain why awe can be both terrifying (when one fails to understand) and
enlightening (when one succeeds).

Taking on new information is a challenge and can be quite stressful at any stage of life, yet in this age of
information, we are bombarded by vast quantities of the stuff. Keltner and Haidt imply that taking aboard
new ideas that are far beyond one’s present frame of reference (such as the seemingly miraculous
healing of a broken arm) is much more of a challenge and potentially much more stressful. Previous
mental structure, or world views, may be challenged and may have to be expanded or broken apart in
order to accommodate these new ideas. Or we may find the whole thing too much and put up barriers to
the information coming in. We may even find ourselves dismissing new experiences that can help us
progress and grow.

In my view, Transcendental Meditation helps restore a person’s sense of awe and wonder, making new
experiences a source of joy rather than stress.
Troy van Beek studied Sustainable Living at Maharishi University of Management in Fairfield, USA and
practised Transcendental Meditation as part of his course. He said of his meditation practice,

I started experiencing a sense of wonder. You open up a whole new envelope of understanding. You feel
it in how you interact with people. I hate to say magic, but you feel it. There’s a sparkle in the air when
and after you’ve meditated, in how you perceive people and how you understand things.

Study after study has shown that Transcendental Meditation is the most effective way of reducing stress.
It helps us digest new information without compromising our health and well being.

Another way in which the practice helps is in the actual experience of transcending. In the process of
Transcendental Meditation the mind progressively experiences quieter, more sublime and more expanded
states of thought. Finally the mind transcends or goes beyond thought altogether, to the source of
thought, an infinitely expanded state of pure silence. The mind is totally still, experiencing nothing but its
own nature – infinite intelligence, creativity, and bliss. This is the most fundamental experience a human
being can have and it helps break up ridged mental structures, making us more open to new ideas,
feelings and experience.

After learning Transcendental Meditation, people report a mental clarity and order they have never
previously experienced. The senses become heightened, things take on greater meaning, and one gains
greater insight. That childhood sense of awe and wonder returns but with an accompanying inner
strength and silence that militates against stress and anxiety that the experience of the “new” can often
bring.

The message: if you want to bring back that sense of awe, learn Transcendental Meditation.