• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Tracking Health and Wellness Applications of Brain Science

Spanish
sb-logo-with-brain
  • Resources
    • Monthly eNewsletter
    • Solving the Brain Fitness Puzzle
    • The SharpBrains Guide to Brain Fitness
    • How to evaluate brain training claims
    • Resources at a Glance
  • Brain Teasers
    • Top 25 Brain Teasers & Games for Teens and Adults
    • Brain Teasers for each Cognitive Ability
    • More Mind Teasers & Games for Adults of any Age
  • Virtual Summits
    • 2019 SharpBrains Virtual Summit
    • Speaker Roster
    • Brainnovations Pitch Contest
    • 2017 SharpBrains Virtual Summit
    • 2016 SharpBrains Virtual Summit
    • 2015 SharpBrains Virtual Summit
    • 2014 SharpBrains Virtual Summit
  • Report: Pervasive Neurotechnology
  • Report: Digital Brain Health
  • About
    • Mission & Team
    • Endorsements
    • Public Speaking
    • In the News
    • Contact Us

Transcending Maslow’s famous “hierarchy of needs” through Maslow’s own research on Peak Experiences

April 8, 2020 by Scott Barry Kaufman

Heav­en, so to speak, lies wait­ing for us through life, ready to step into for a
time and to enjoy before we have to come back to our ordi­nary life of striving.
And once we have been in it, we can remem­ber it for­ev­er, and feed ourselves
on this mem­o­ry and be sus­tained in times of stress.

—Abra­ham Maslow, Toward a Psy­chol­o­gy of Being (1962)

After com­plet­ing Moti­va­tion and Per­son­al­i­ty in 1954, Maslow turned his atten­tion to a par­tic­u­lar char­ac­ter­is­tic of self-actu­al­iz­ing peo­ple that long fas­ci­nat­ed him. Many of the self-actu­al­iz­ing peo­ple he stud­ied tend­ed to sound like tra­di­tion­al mys­tics, describ­ing unusu­al moments of height­ened joy, seren­i­ty, beau­ty, or won­der. He was sur­prised, hav­ing begun his research under the impres­sion that mys­ti­cal expe­ri­ences were rare, some­thing that per­haps “hap­pened to one saint every century.”

Instead, Maslow observed that peak expe­ri­ences occurred in a wide range of peo­ple and seemed to have many triggers—whether an excel­lent ath­let­ic or music per­for­mance, cre­ative expe­ri­ence, aes­thet­ic per­cep­tion, the love expe­ri­ence, sex­u­al expe­ri­ence, child­birth, moments of insight and under­stand­ing, reli­gious or mys­ti­cal expe­ri­ence, or over­com­ing a pro­found challenge—“any expe­ri­ence that comes close to per­fec­tion.” What’s more, it seemed that the greater a person’s psy­cho­log­i­cal health, the greater the fre­quen­cy of such expe­ri­ences, the high­er their height, and the greater the inten­si­ty and the illu­mi­na­tion. Such obser­va­tions inspired Maslow to gen­er­al­ize the expe­ri­ence and “strip it of its tra­di­tion­al­ly reli­gious mean­ing.” In 1954, he was final­ly ready to take a deep dive into under­stand­ing these fas­ci­nat­ing human experiences.

It wasn’t an easy path of inquiry. A life­long athe­ist, Maslow asso­ci­at­ed orga­nized reli­gion with dog­ma and super­sti­tion. And although William James treat­ed mys­tic expe­ri­ences as a pos­i­tive expe­ri­ence in his epic 1902 book The Vari­eties of Reli­gious Expe­ri­ence, James dis­cussed such expe­ri­ences large­ly in a reli­gious con­text. When Maslow announced his inten­tions to for­mal­ly study such expe­ri­ences, he was greet­ed with skep­ti­cism by many of his col­leagues. How­ev­er, as Edward Hoff­man put it, “Brav­ing their good-natured sneers, [Maslow] ven­tured into this ter­ri­to­ry alone.”

Maslow read widely—from East­ern reli­gious thought, includ­ing The First and Last Free­dom by Indi­an philoso­pher J. Krish­na­mur­ti and The Wis­dom of Inse­cu­ri­ty by Alan Watts, to the lit­er­a­tures of mys­ti­cism, reli­gion, art, cre­ativ­i­ty, and roman­tic love. He looked at descrip­tions of the yog­ic esta­t­ic state known as samad­hi. He also plumbed Carl Jung’s writ­ings on reli­gion, just then appear­ing in Eng­lish trans­la­tion. Maslow brain­stormed exam­ples of the mys­tic expe­ri­ence under the head­ing “time-less­ness” in his unpub­lished notes from the sum­mer of 1954. He not­ed exam­ples of the mys­tic state, hyp­not­ic trance, aes­thet­ic absorp­tion, and tran­scen­dent sex.

Ready to for­mal­ly study the top­ic, Maslow designed a phe­nom­e­no­log­i­cal approach. He gave the fol­low­ing prompt to 190 col­lege students:

I would like you to think of the most won­der­ful expe­ri­ence or expe­ri­ences in your life; hap­pi­est moments, ecsta­t­ic moments, moments of rap­ture, per­haps from being in love, or from lis­ten­ing to music or sud­den­ly “being hit” by a book or a paint­ing, or from some great cre­ative moment. First list these. And then try to tell me how you feel in such acute moments, how you feel dif­fer­ent­ly from the way you feel at oth­er times, how you are at the moment a dif­fer­ent per­son in some ways.

Maslow also received reports from self-actu­al­iz­ing peo­ple whom he knew as well as unso­licit­ed let­ters from peo­ple who had learned of his new research. Soon, he had accu­mu­lat­ed more sub­jec­tive reports on the mys­ti­cal expe­ri­ence than any oth­er major psy­chol­o­gist since William James. Just as he had done with his self-actu­al­iza­tion research, he used the reports and his wide read­ing of the lit­er­a­ture to cre­ate “an impres­sion­is­tic, ide­al, ‘com­pos­ite pho­to­graph’” of the “peak experience”—a term he set­tled on as less reli­gious and more gen­er­al­iz­able to the pop­u­la­tion at large.

By the spring of 1956, Maslow was so excit­ed by his pre­lim­i­nary find­ings that he decid­ed to share them with his col­leagues. To his shock, the paper was reject­ed by one top jour­nal after anoth­er: Psy­cho­log­i­cal Review, Amer­i­can Psy­chol­o­gist, Psy­chi­a­try. He was sud­den­ly aware of how far his research and think­ing had gone from main­stream psy­chol­o­gy. Unde­feat­ed, Maslow offered the arti­cle as his address at the 1956 con­ven­tion of the APA, which had just elect­ed him pres­i­dent of its pres­ti­gious Soci­ety for Per­son­al­i­ty and Social Psy­chol­o­gy. As the keynote speak­er, he was giv­en the free­dom to present on what­ev­er top­ic he wanted.

Pre­sent­ed on Sep­tem­ber 1, 1956, Maslow’s lec­ture was called “Cog­ni­tion of Being in the Peak Expe­ri­ences.” He began: “Self-actu­al­iz­ing peo­ple, those who have come to a high lev­el of mat­u­ra­tion, health, and self-ful­fill­ment, have so much to teach us that some­times they seem almost like a dif­fer­ent breed of human beings. But because it is so new, the explo­ration of the high­est reach­es of human nature and of its ulti­mate pos­si­bil­i­ties and aspi­ra­tions is a dif­fi­cult and tor­tu­ous task.”

What was cog­ni­tion like in the throes of the peak expe­ri­ence, these “tran­sient states of absolute Being”? Maslow out­lined sev­en­teen char­ac­ter­is­tics, including:

• Com­plete absorption
• Rich­er perception
• Dis­ori­en­ta­tion in phys­i­cal time and space
• Intrin­sic reward of the experience
• Ego transcendence
• Dichoto­my transcendence
• Momen­tary loss of fears, anx­i­eties, and inhibitions
• Greater accep­tance and for­give­ness of one­self and others
• Height­ened aes­theti­cism, won­der, awe, and surrender
• Fusion of the per­son and the world

Maslow noticed that for peo­ple in their high­est moments, the true, the good, and the beau­ti­ful “are so high­ly cor­re­lat­ed that for all prac­ti­cal pur­pos­es they are said to fuse into a uni­ty.” Maslow believed that if this turned out to be cor­rect, then it would be in direct con­tra­dic­tion to the com­mon assump­tion in sci­ence that the more objec­tive per­cep­tion becomes, the more detached it becomes from val­ues. “Fact and val­ue have almost always (by intel­lec­tu­als) been con­sid­ered to be antonyms and mutu­al­ly exclu­sive,” Maslow wrote. “But per­haps the oppo­site is true, for when we exam­ine the most ego-detached, objec­tive, moti­va­tion­less, pas­sive cog­ni­tion, we find that it claims to per­ceive val­ues direct­ly, that val­ues can­not be shorn away from real­i­ty and that the most pro­found per­cep­tions of ‘facts’ are tinged with won­der, admi­ra­tion, awe and approval, i.e., with value.”

Maslow believed that peak expe­ri­ences offer the oppor­tu­ni­ty to see more of the whole truth, unim­ped­ed by the many cog­ni­tive dis­tor­tions evolved to pro­tect us from psy­chic pain. In his address, Maslow point­ed out an impli­ca­tion: “If self-actu­al­iz­ing peo­ple can and do per­ceive real­i­ty more effi­cient­ly, ful­ly, and with less moti­va­tion­al con­t­a­m­i­na­tion than oth­ers do, then we may pos­si­bly use them as bio­log­i­cal assays. Through their greater sen­si­tiv­i­ty and per­cep­tion, we may get a bet­ter report of what real­i­ty is like … just as canaries can be used to detect gas in mines before less sen­si­tive crea­tures can.”

To be sure, Maslow didn’t believe that peak expe­ri­ences nec­es­sar­i­ly lead to a more accu­rate per­cep­tion of real­i­ty, and he point­ed out that fur­ther real­i­ty test­ing is nec­es­sary. Nev­er­the­less, Maslow not­ed that peak expe­ri­ences are often pro­found and trans­for­ma­tive for the per­son expe­ri­enc­ing them. Maslow cit­ed two reports, one from a psy­chol­o­gist and one from an anthro­pol­o­gist, of expe­ri­ences so intense “as to remove cer­tain neu­rot­ic symp­toms for­ev­er after.” Maslow com­ment­ed that “the per­son is more apt to feel that life … is worth­while, even if it is usu­al­ly drab, pedes­tri­an, painful, or ungrat­i­fy­ing, since beau­ty, truth, and mean­ing­ful­ness have been demon­strat­ed to exist.… I think these after­ef­fects can all be gen­er­al­ized and a feel­ing of them com­mu­ni­cat­ed if the peak-expe­ri­ence could be likened to a vis­it to a per­son­al­ly defined Heav­en from which the per­son then returns to earth.”

Maslow end­ed his riv­et­ing address by not­ing that any per­son in any of the peak expe­ri­ences can tem­porar­i­ly take on many of the char­ac­ter­is­tics of self-actu­al­iz­ing peo­ple. “For the time they become self-actu­al­iz­ers,” he wrote, “not only are these [their] hap­pi­est and most thrilling moments, but they are also moments of great­est matu­ri­ty, indi­vid­u­a­tion, fulfillment—in a word, [their] health­i­est moments.” What real­ly dis­tin­guish­es self-actu­al­iz­ing peo­ple, Maslow argued, is that peak expe­ri­ences come much more fre­quent­ly and intense­ly. “This makes self-actu­al­iza­tion a mat­ter of degree and of fre­quen­cy rather than an all- or- none affair, and there­by makes it more amenable to avail­able research procedures.”

Maslow’s talk was well received, but unfor­tu­nate­ly it wasn’t pub­lished until 1959, so its broad­ened recep­tion was delayed. Still, Maslow lec­tured wide­ly on peak expe­ri­ences and worked on a book called Reli­gions, Val­ues, and Peak Expe­ri­ences, which was pub­lished in 1964. In that book, Maslow wrote: “The very begin­ning, the intrin­sic core, the essence, the uni­ver­sal nucle­us of every known high reli­gion … has been the pri­vate, lone­ly, per­son­al illu­mi­na­tion, rev­e­la­tion or ecsta­sy of some acute­ly sen­si­tive prophet or seer.… But it has recent­ly begun to appear that these ‘rev­e­la­tions’ or mys­ti­cal illu­mi­na­tions can be sub­sumed under the head of the ‘peak-expe­ri­ences’ or ‘ecstasies’ or ‘tran­scen­dent’ expe­ri­ences which are now being eager­ly inves­ti­gat­ed by many psychologists.”

Today, the sci­en­tif­ic inves­ti­ga­tion of tran­scen­dent expe­ri­ences is, in my view, one of the most excit­ing fron­tiers in the sci­ence of well-being.

– Adapt­ed from the new book Tran­scend: The New Sci­ence of Self-Actu­al­iza­tion by Scott Bar­ry Kauf­man, with per­mis­sion of Tarcher­Perigee, an imprint of Pen­guin Pub­lish­ing Group, a divi­sion of Pen­guin Ran­dom House LLC. Scott Bar­ry Kauf­man is a cog­ni­tive sci­en­tist inter­est­ed in the devel­op­ment of intel­li­gence, cre­ativ­i­ty, and per­son­al­i­ty. Copy­right © Scott Bar­ry Kauf­man, 2020. You can order the book HERE.

Share this:

  • Tweet
  • Email
  • Print
  • More
  • Share on Tumblr
  • Pock­et

Filed Under: Education & Lifelong Learning, Peak Performance Tagged With: hierarchy of needs, Maslow, Peak Experiences, self-actualization, Transcend

Primary Sidebar

Top Articles on Brain Health and Neuroplasticity

  1. Can you grow your hippocampus? Yes. Here’s how, and why it matters
  2. How learning changes your brain
  3. To harness neuroplasticity, start with enthusiasm
  4. Three ways to protect your mental health during –and after– COVID-19
  5. Why you turn down the radio when you're lost
  6. Solving the Brain Fitness Puzzle Is the Key to Self-Empowered Aging
  7. Ten neu­rotech­nolo­gies about to trans­form brain enhance­ment & health
  8. Five reasons the future of brain enhancement is digital, pervasive and (hopefully) bright
  9. What Educators and Parents Should Know About Neuroplasticity and Dance
  10. The Ten Habits of Highly Effective Brains
  11. Six tips to build resilience and prevent brain-damaging stress
  12. Can brain training work? Yes, if it meets these 5 conditions
  13. What are cognitive abilities and how to boost them?
  14. Eight Tips To Remember What You Read
  15. Twenty Must-Know Facts to Harness Neuroplasticity and Improve Brain Health

Top 10 Brain Teasers and Illusions

  1. You think you know the colors? Try the Stroop Test
  2. Check out this brief attention experiment
  3. Test your stress level
  4. Guess: Are there more brain connections or leaves in the Amazon?
  5. Quick brain teasers to flex two key men­tal mus­cles
  6. Count the Fs in this sentence
  7. Can you iden­tify Apple’s logo?
  8. Ten classic optical illu­sions to trick your mind
  9. What do you see?
  10. Fun Mental Rotation challenge
  • Check our Top 25 Brain Teasers, Games and Illusions

Join 35,214 readers exploring, at no cost, the latest in neuroplasticity and brain health.

By subscribing you agree to receive our free, monthly eNewsletter. We don't rent or sell emails collected, and you may unsubscribe at any time.

IMPORTANT: Please check your inbox or spam folder in a couple minutes and confirm your subscription.

Get In Touch!

Contact Us

660 4th Street, Suite 205,
San Francisco, CA 94107 USA

About Us

SharpBrains is an independent market research firm tracking health and performance applications of brain science. We prepare general and tailored market reports, publish consumer guides, produce an annual global and virtual conference, and provide strategic advisory services.

© 2022 SharpBrains. All Rights Reserved - Privacy Policy