In his previous work, leading Existential Psychologist Kirk Schneider has put the experience of "awe" at the center of human psychology. Without experiencing awe, life tends to become flat, mechanical, and unhealthy — a prison to be broken out of, rather than a possibility to grow into.
In his new book, The Spirituality of Awe: Challenges to the Robotic Revolution, Schneider points out that awe itself is paradoxical: it generates fear and hope, a sense of grandeur and insignificance, of strength and weakness, the imminent and the transcendent ... not one right after the other, but all at once. And it is our ability to have these simultaneous experiences, these experiential paradoxes that cannot be resolved rationally, and be present to them, and integrate them into our lives, that is the essence of our humanity.
