Adam Blatner
Words and Images from the Mind of Adam Blatner
Awe: Another Viewpoint
Originally posted on May 13, 2016
Stimulated by a recent article a friend sent me about awe, and building on my theory of levels of consciousness, awe emerges as our minds perceive that which is far greater than us. We open to not just the bigness or whatever, but that such realms exist. It is not only nature. In milder terms it could be mixed in with being the audience of an impressive magic trick. Other inexplicable skills, impressive skills, evoke awe, too. My hypothesis, in contrast to the one on the Greater Good website, is that awe is a property of the mind to perceive vistas greater than it can comprehend. Mind thinks about things (3-D) and change (4-D), and sometimes even about alternative realities, about mind (5-D). On occasion it perceives the true nature of reality as genuinely transcendent. There may be more 7th, 8th, and 9th dimensional stuff that we get a glimpse of, and when we do—voila! Awe!
Maybe awe has to do with unusual-ness, a really big distance between what we know and what we perceive? Maybe we need to add even more dimensions with every human generation to feel awe again and again.
I propose that there is some kind of habituation to awe-inspiring stimuli. Or some kind of adaptation, growth or whatever. I do think highly skilled people are much less interesting than when I first observed them.