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

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.

About SharpBrains

SHARPBRAINS is an independent think-tank and consulting firm providing services at the frontier of applied neuroscience, health, leadership and innovation.
SHARPBRAINS es un think-tank y consultoría independiente proporcionando servicios para la neurociencia aplicada, salud, liderazgo e innovación.

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