Vastness occupies a structurally decisive position in depth-psychological and transpersonal literature, functioning as both an empirical precipitant of specific emotional states and an ontological horizon against which the self must be measured and re-calibrated. The most rigorous scientific treatment appears in Keltner and Haidt’s awe research, where vastness is formalized as one of two core appraisal dimensions of awe — the encounter with something that exceeds the current scope of one’s mental frameworks. Piff and colleagues extend this framework experimentally, demonstrating that perceived vastness vis-à-vis the self mediates the prosocial consequences of awe, and that it is empirically distinguishable from, yet highly correlated with, self-diminishment. In contemplative and cosmological literature, vastness carries a different valence: Easwaran’s commentary on the Bhagavad Gita deploys cosmic spatial scale as a pedagogical instrument for dissolving the individual ego into the infinite body of the divine, while Cooper’s Zen-inflected psychoanalytic case material treats vastness as an interior phenomenological state that dissolves temporality and linguistic structure alike. Across these traditions a productive tension persists: is vastness primarily a stimulus property of the external world, a relational appraisal of self-against-world, or an intrinsic quality of deep psychic space? That tension — between measurable trigger and ineffable interior — constitutes the central problem that any serious account of vastness in depth psychology must address.
Awe, Vastness, Accommodation, and the Small Self… a relatively diminished sense of self (i.e., feeling one’s being and goals to be less significant) vis-à-vis something deemed vaster than the individual.
Piff et al. establish vastness as one of the two constitutive appraisal dimensions of awe, arguing that the encounter with something vaster than the individual self generates self-diminishment and, through it, prosocial behavior.
, Awe, the Small Self, and Prosocial Behavior, 2015thesis
The first rotated factor consisted of the five perceived vastness items, and it accounted for 41.6% of the variance… vastness vis-à-vis the self and self-diminishment are overlapping. Nonetheless, the results of the factor analysis indicate that the two facets are empirically distinguishable.
Factor-analytic evidence confirms that perceived vastness is an empirically separable construct from self-diminishment, though the two are highly intercorrelated components of the small-self experience.
, Awe, the Small Self, and Prosocial Behavior, 2015thesis
He has no words to express the vastness of his internal world. Vastness dissolves everything. All that remains is silence… Vastness dissolves both time and space.
Cooper treats vastness as an interior phenomenological condition encountered in Zen-informed psychoanalytic work, one that dissolves temporal and spatial coordinates and resists linguistic articulation.
, Zen Insight, Psychoanalytic Action: Two Arrows Meeting, 2019thesis
awe is elicited by the need to accommodate a perception of vastness and may have certain themes associated with it, depending on the nature of the elicitor.
Lench synthesizes the Keltner-Haidt model, identifying the perception of vastness and the cognitive demand to accommodate it as the functional core of the emotion of awe.
, The Function of Emotions: When and Why Emotions Help Us, 2018supporting
vastness vis-à-vis the self was pitted against self-diminishment… self-diminishment and vastness vis-à-vis the self differentially relate to different forms of prosociality — a promising avenue for future research.
Piff et al. raise the possibility that vastness and self-diminishment, though correlated, may predict distinct prosocial outcomes, opening an important empirical question about the specificity of each construct.
, Awe, the Small Self, and Prosocial Behavior, 2015supporting
Vastness Vis-à-vis the Self… specific indirect effects of the two facets of the small self — vastness vis-à-vis the self and self-diminishment — on prosociality.
The mediation model quantifies vastness vis-à-vis the self as a significant indirect pathway through which awe influences prosocial tendencies, with distinct path coefficients from self-diminishment.
, Awe, the Small Self, and Prosocial Behavior, 2015supporting
body is really the infinite vastness of space and time. To get some idea of the scale of this vision, look at the sheer vastness of the universe. Even at one hundred eighty-six thousand miles per second, it takes four years for light to reach us from the nearest star.
Easwaran employs cosmic spatial scale as contemplative pedagogy, using the literal vastness of the universe to dissolve the reader’s identification with the bounded physical body and open perception toward the infinite divine.
, The Bhagavad Gita for Daily Living: A Verse-by-Verse Commentary, 1975supporting
Sri Krishna is stirring up Arjuna’s love for him until finally… Here the Lord begins by giving us a glimpse of the vastness of his glory. Everything in the cosmos, he tells Arjuna, takes its rise from him.
Easwaran frames divine vastness in the Bhagavad Gita as a theophanic revelation designed to dissolve the devotee’s sense of separation, positioning cosmic scale as an instrument of spiritual union.
, The Bhagavad Gita for Daily Living: A Verse-by-Verse Commentary, 1975supporting
widening the individual’s perspective to include entities vaster and more powerful than oneself and diminishing the salience of the individual self.
Piff et al. characterize the psychological function of vastness as a perspectival expansion that relativizes the individual self against a larger frame, constituting the mechanism linking awe to prosociality.
, Awe, the Small Self, and Prosocial Behavior, 2015supporting
A principal-axis factor analysis using Varimax rotation of the 10… analysis of the vastness and self-diminishment items to explore whether we would be justified in treating these facets separately.
This passage details the methodological procedure by which vastness is isolated as a distinct measurable facet of the small self, supporting the construct validity of the term within awe research.
, Awe, the Small Self, and Prosocial Behavior, 2015supporting
I feel like I am a part of a greater whole… I feel the existence of things more powerful than myself.
These operationalizing items for the vastness subscale reveal that the construct is phenomenologically defined by felt participation in something greater, providing the measurement basis for the empirical program.
, Awe, the Small Self, and Prosocial Behavior, 2015supporting
It is self-evident that the vastness of the problem requires far more than three lectures, as the necessary elaboration of concrete detail takes a great deal of time and explanation.
Jung invokes vastness here as a rhetorical acknowledgment of the scope of the psychology-religion problem rather than as a theoretical term, making it a contextual rather than conceptual usage.
, Psychology and Religion: West and East, 1958aside
awe… and something larger than the self, 31–37, 52… systems and, 244–50
This index entry situates ‘something larger than the self’ — the experiential correlate of vastness — as a recurring structural theme throughout Keltner’s taxonomy of awe, without elaborating the term directly.
, Awe The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can, 2023aside