Peak Experiences

Transcript

I’ve been reading Abraham Maslow’s book Toward a Psychology of Being. You can pick this up on Amazon for a 2.88 which is a bargain any way you slice it to get ahold of this beautiful poetic description of positive or humanist psychology.

I remember many years ago first hearing about this concept of peak experiences and self actualization. I don’t think I grasped the entire concept. Of course people have heard of the hierarchy of needs and often pitch it as a pyramid which is not how Maslow describes it.

When it’s pitched as a pyramid people get this idea that I guess I have to climb from one step to the next. At the bottom we have these base needs like air, water, food, sleep and you have higher needs like self esteem, respect of peers. At the top you have self actualization or transcendence depending on the version.

With certain exceptions it’s not like you need to take every step in the ladder or every step in the pyramid to start achieving self actualization.

He determined later it’s not that self actualized people only they have these peak experiences. Actually these are available to anyone but self actualized people have more of them.

And when I heard this I thought “Ok, these peak experiences before Maslow were probably considered spiritual or religious experiences. An experience of transcendence of being unified or having a sense of union with the world or object you are perceiving in meditation.

Or as Maslow says here creativeness, love, insight, mystic experience and aesthetic experience. This is an example many of you will understand of being at a concert and seeing a band you really love. You have this intense aesthetic experience because you really love those feelings associated with the music.

You’re also with a bunch of people who you know share the same taste as you, so you feel this sense of unity with the people there with you.

Of course this is an intense emotional experience for you and you might say “Wow, life can be like that. I didn’t realize life could be like that.”

Mystic experiences like with meditation or the use of plant medicines and he’s got this list here in Towards a Psychology of Being.

After effects of peak experiences is the chapter.

1) Peak experiences may and do have some therapeutic effect in the strict sense of removing the symptoms. I have at least 2 reports, one from a psychologist and one from an anthropologist.

Mystic or oceanic experiences so profound they seem to remove symptoms forever. Such conversion experiences of course are much recorded through human history. So far as I know, I’ve never received the attention of psychologists or psychiatrists.

Of course a lot of people talk about scientism. There’s a limit to what scientists can study in the laboratory.

Generally those wonderful things that happen in the wild cannot be repeated in a clinical setting.

This one reminds me of the mycologist Paul Stamets. If you go onto one of the episodes of the Joe Rogan experience where he interviews Stamets, he describes this experience where he had for many years until he was 24 years old he had this stutter for many years.

It was very difficult for him to get out the words in just about any context but well he’s a mycologist and he did experimenting with mushrooms.

He happened to get caught in a storm and almost like a myth he was trapped in this tree, tried to climb up the tree to escape the natural hazards. He’s just there clinging to this tree with wild winds and rains.

And he thinks “Oh well, I guess I’ll be here for awhile, maybe I can figure out what’s goin on within me?”

With that deep introspection he gained from psilocybin mushrooms he never had a stammer after that day.

Back to the list.

2) They can change the persons view of himself in a healthy direction.

3 They can change the view of other people in relations to them in many ways.
4 They can change more or less his view of the world or of aspects of parts of it.
5 They can release him for greater creativity and spontaneity, expressing this idiosincricy.

This one definitely reminds me of Kieth Johnstone’s amazing book Impro.

If you read this book it is so revealing, the kind of exercises he has in this book for creativity and spontaneity for improvisation. That is useful for any creative pursuit basically.

The kind of techniques he has in there will help a person reveal what’s going on them and find a very different side to the mind that we normally put on in our regular life to help a person be more authentic.

There’s a very interesting paradox often of pretending to be something else or someone else starts to help you reveal to yourself what you actually are maybe you’re not just the mask or the person you normally act as during your every day life.

Highly recommend that book.

6) He remembers the experience as a very important and desirable happening and seeks to repeat it. I’d certainly say that’s true.

7) This person is more apt to feel life in general is worthwhile even if it is usually drab, pedestrian, painful or ungratifying since beauty, excitement, honesty, truth, play, and meaningfulness have been demonstrated to exist.

That definitely reminds me of that passage in Robert Waggoner’s Lucid Dreaming: Gateway to the Inner Self. I’ve talked about this in an episode before he realizes he’s in a lucid dream. He’s having a great time drawing a sketch of this asian woman. Everyone is singing and dancing and playing and he says he gets bogged down by the cold and snow of the regular world but when I’m here I’m overwhelmed by the beauty of this world.

That is the kind of experience and intense emotion transcended joyful experience that makes you say “Wow, I guess life is worth living. Maybe everything else is in the context of these experiences so its not just that we have a peak experience and that’s it.

But in a sense these things stay with us.

I used to think was like this. Say someone is an alcoholic or have some bad habit and they have a moment of clarity or peak experience and they think “what if I could be something different? Kinder, more patient with myself? What if I could treat myself and others better.

It comes in an instant that this vision of what they could be and this is very unusual. A self fulfilling prophecy I guess.

They say I believe I could be that but I don’t know how but I think I can do it.

Based on that inspiration and subsequent action they begin to become the kind of person they imagined. That is just a small fraction of the power of the peak experience.

Now I’ve recommended this book Towards a Psychology of Being. I’m reading and I’m going to keep reading Maslow. I regret waiting so long.

Thank you for listening and thanks for enjoying your day. Find moments of transcendence in the mundane.