Peak-Experiences

[Reefs]

There’s always a lot of talk about spiritual experiences, mystical experiences etc. and entire belief systems have been built around those. People classify them, catalog them, compare them, develop maps and progress charts and grade both students and teachers based on those maps. And while it is certainly true that basically all sages report of at least one (often several) such ‘peak-experiences’, the point many keep missing is that liberation is not about experiences but realization(s).

In psychology, there is a term called ‘self-actualization’, which basically means becoming a true, autonomous individual and therefore being able to live one’s full potential. It’s a term coined by Maslow. And it is linked to ‘peak-experiences’, another term coined by Maslow, which, at least on the surface, does seem to have some relevance to what we here tend to talk about.

Maslow, in his work, makes a clear distinction between a motivation or perception that is a) centered in being and b) centered in deficiency. And he calls these B-motivation, B-cognition or D-motivation, D-cognition. Now, this basically corresponds to what I tend to call alignment vs. misalignment, i.e. alignment coming from a perspective if being and misalignment coming from perspective of deficiency.

So with Maslow, there seem to be an interesting number of overlaps with what we are usually pointing to, both in the deliberate creation context (practice, purification) as well as in the liberation context (non-doing, presence of mind, peace of mind etc.)

However, despite all the seeming similarities, Maslow’s ‘self-actualization’ should not be confused with ‘self-realization’ the way we use this term. The main reason is that Maslow’s work is mostly concerned with experiences. And understandably so, because he was a psychologist and had to test, qualify, quantify and validate his theories. So a theory that consists purely of pointers, as is the case with non-duality, was not an option for Maslow, even though Maslow had to concede that words and methods fail him when trying to get to the heart of the matter.

This is especially true in the case of what Maslow calls ‘peak-experiences’. Those are exceptional experiences that people will remember for the rest of their lives, which usually also change their lives or at least their outlook on life dramatically, in a very positive way because they feel more integrated, at one with life in the aftermath.

But again, a peak-experience shouldn’t be confused with a realization, and self-actualization shouldn’t be confused with self-realization. The former belongs to the realm of psychology, the latter is far beyond that. So in our context, these peak-experiences are maybe better called peek-experiences.

I am going to quote from one of Maslow’s books, Towards a Psychology of Being, which is actually a collection of essays and a good reference book. IMO, he does an excellent job in describing, analyzing and classifying those extraordinary experiences.

[Reefs]

Maslow worked out 16 characteristics of peak-experiences, which he describes in his book mentioned above, from which I am going to quote now:


1. Integration and Unity:

The person in the peak-experiences feels more integrated (unified, whole, all-of-a-piece), than at other times. He also looks (to the observer) more integrated in various ways (described below), e.g., less split or dissociated, less fighting against himself, more at peace with himself, less split between an experiencing-self and an observing-self, more one-pointed, more harmoniously organized, more efficiently organized with all his parts functioning very nicely with each other, more synergic, with less internal friction, etc.

2. Fusion with the World:

As he gets to be more purely and singly himself he is more able to fuse with the world, with what was formerly not-self, e.g., the lovers come closer to forming a unit rather than two people, the I-Thou monism becomes more possible, the creator becomes one with his work being created, the mother feels one with her child, the appreciator becomes the music (and it becomes him) or the painting, or the dance, the astronomer is “out there” with the stars (rather than a separateness peering across an abyss at another separateness through a telescope-keyhole).

That is, the greatest attainment of identity, autonomy, or selfhood is itself simultaneously a transcending of itself, a going beyond and above selfhood. The person can then become relatively egoless. This meaning can be communicated easily enough, I think, by calling it the total loss of that self-consciousness or self-awareness or self-observation which is normally with us but which we feel to lower in any absorption or interest or concentration or distraction, or being taken “out of ourselves,” whether on the high level of peak-experiences, or on the lower level of becoming so interested in a movie or a novel or a football game as to become forgetful of oneself and one’s minor pains, one’s appearance, one’s worries, etc. This is practically always felt as a pleasant state.

3. Optimal Functioning:

The person in the peak-experiences usually feels himself to be at the peak of his powers, using all his capacities at the best and fullest. He feels “fully-functioning.” He feels more intelligent, more perceptive, wittier, stronger, or more graceful than at other times. He is at his best, at concert pitch, at the top of his form. This is not only felt subjectively but can be seen by the observer. He is no longer wasting effort fighting and restraining himself; muscles are no longer fighting muscles. In the normal situation, part of our capacities are used for action, and part are wasted on restraining these same capacities. Now there is no waste; the totality of the capacities can be used for action. He becomes like a river without dams.

4. Effortlessness and Grace:

A slightly different aspect of fully-functioning is effortlessness and ease of functioning when one is at one’s best. What takes effort, straining and struggling at other times is now done without any sense of striving, of working or laboring, but “comes of itself.” Allied to this often is the feeling of grace and the look of grace that comes with smooth, easy, effortless fully-functioning, when everything “clicks,” or “is in the groove,” or is “ in overdrive.”
One sees then the appearance of calm sureness and lightness, as if they knew exactly what they were doing, and were doing it wholeheartedly, without doubts, equivocations, hesitations or partial withdrawal. There are then no glancing blows at the target or softened blows, only full hits. The great athletes, artists, creators, leaders and executives exhibit this quality of behavior when they are functioning at their best.

5. Responsibility and Self-Determination:

The person in peak-experiences feels himself, more than at other times, to be the responsible, active, creating center of his activities and of his perceptions. He feels more like a prime mover, more self-determined (rather than caused, determined, helpless, dependent, passive, weak, bossed). He feels himself to be his own boss, fully responsible, fully volitional, with more “free will” than at other times, master of his own fate.

He also looks that way to the observer, for instance, becoming more decisive, looking more strong, more single-minded, more apt to scorn or overcome opposition, more grimly sure of himself, more apt to give the impression that it would be useless to try to stop him. It is as if now he had no doubts about his worth or about his ability to do whatever he decided to do. To the observer he looks more trustworthy, more reliable, more dependable, a better bet.

[zendancer]

Interesting thread! I've gotta set up a concrete slab this morning but will add some thoughts as soon as I have some free time.

[laughter]

Aug 24, 2023 6:50:32 GMT -5 zendancer said:

Interesting thread! I've gotta set up a concrete slab this morning but will add some thoughts as soon as I have some free time.

Way to spend your 80th birth month!

[zendancer]

Aug 24, 2023 6:53:13 GMT -5 laughter said:

Aug 24, 2023 6:50:32 GMT -5 zendancer said:

Interesting thread! I've gotta set up a concrete slab this morning but will add some thoughts as soon as I have some free time.

Way to spend your 80th birth month!

So true! Yesterday I used a 90 pound jackhammer to remove a bunch of rock, and I had forgotten how demanding those suckers can be! After two hours or so, I was dead meat for the rest of the day!

I plan to celebrate my 80th by climbing a fourteener in CO in September. Carol insisted that my daughter and her husband go on the same climb so that they can haul the old guy's carcass back down to the trailhead in case I flake out or croak. I told her that they better do some training so that they can keep up with me. . Yes, that is a joke. They can go as fast as they wish, and I'll go at whatever pace feels enjoyable and fun.

[zendancer]

The Maslow characteristics of peak experiences seem totally applicable to The Natural State if self-referential reflection is absent. As noted, Maslow was interested in sr rather than SR. The only comment I'd make is that CC's are not experiences of the same kind that Maslow is pointing to. For one thing, during a CC, which E. and others have claimed should be dismissed because they have a beginning, middle, and end, there is no separate entity experiencing anything, and secondly, CC's often result in numerous realizations. A CC, which Zen people refer to as "kensho," is actually the Infinite seeing into its own true nature, and it is only thought about as a distinct experience afterwards, when one reflects upon what happened. During the CC, itself, there is no sense of time in any conventional sense.

After most CC's, people think that it happened to a SVP, and typically they actively seek to regain the sense of oneness that occurred. After Hakuin's first CC, he thought that no human could have experienced anything as deep as he had experienced, which illustrated that the sense of being a SVP was still extant and also illustrated what Zen people call "the stink of Zen." Fortunately, Hakuin was in a monastery led by a clear-eyed ZM and after presenting his understanding, the ZM just laughed at him and treated him as if he were a kindergartner. Many years later, Hakuin, as a ZM, claimed that he had had something like 16 more major kensho events and hundreds of smaller ones. He claimed that his deepest kensho (triggered by the sound of falling snow while he was meditating) occurred years after SR had occurred, which indicates that there is no end to how deeply THIS can see into Itself. Although conscious seeking usually ends after SR, insights will usually still occur as THIS sees more and more deeply into Itself.

[Reefs]

Aug 24, 2023 6:50:32 GMT -5 zendancer said:

Interesting thread! I've gotta set up a concrete slab this morning but will add some thoughts as soon as I have some free time.

There's more. I'll post all 16 points. You'll like it!

[Reefs]

Aug 24, 2023 8:21:24 GMT -5 zendancer said:

Aug 24, 2023 6:53:13 GMT -5 laughter said:

Way to spend your 80th birth month!

So true! Yesterday I used a 90 pound jackhammer to remove a bunch of rock, and I had forgotten how demanding those suckers can be! After two hours or so, I was dead meat for the rest of the day!

I plan to celebrate my 80th by climbing a fourteener in CO in September. Carol insisted that my daughter and her husband go on the same climb so that they can haul the old guy's carcass back down to the trailhead in case I flake out or croak. I told her that they better do some training so that they can keep up with me. . Yes, that is a joke. They can go as fast as they wish, and I'll go at whatever pace feels enjoyable and fun.

Ha! Well, if you shouldn't show up here posting again, let me just say it was nice knowing you and a pleasure conversing with you for so many years.

And in case you haven't seen it yet, Sharon created a special birthday thread for you in the Spiritual Teachers section:

spiritualteachers.proboards.com/thread/6037/happy-birthday-bob

[Reefs]

Continued...


6. Freedom from Inhibitions:

He is now most free of blocks, inhibitions, cautions, fears, doubts, controls, reservations, self-criticisms, brakes. These may be the negative aspects of the feeling of worth, of self-acceptance, of self-love-respect. This is both a subjective and an objective phenomenon and could be described further in both ways. Of course this is simply a different “aspect” of the characteristics already listed and those to be listed below.

7. Spontaneity and Authenticity:

He is therefore more spontaneous, more expressive, more innocently behaving (guileless, naive, honest, candid, ingenuous, childlike, artless, unguarded, defenseless), more natural (simple, relaxed, unhesitant, plain, sincere, unaffected, primitive in a particular sense, immediate), more uncontrolled and freely flowing outward (automatic, impulsive, reflexlike, “instinctive,” unrestrained, unselfconscious, thoughtless, unaware)

8. Creative Flow:

He is therefore more “creative” in a particular sense. His cognition and his behavior, out of greater self-confidence and loss of doubts, can mold itself in a non-interfering, Taoistic way, or in the flexible way that the Gestalt psychologists have described, to the problematic or unproblematic situation in its intrinsic, “out there” terms or demands (rather than in ego-centered or self-conscious terms), in terms set by the per se nature of the task, or the duty (Frankl), or the game. It therefore is more improvised, extemporized, impromptu, more created out of nothing, more unexpected, novel, fresh, not-stale, non-canting, untutored, unhabitual. It is also less prepared, planned, designed, premeditated, rehearsed, aforethought, to the extent that these words imply prior time and planning of any sort. It is therefore relatively unsought, non-desired, unneeded, purposeless, unstriven for, “unmotivated,” or undriven, since it is emergent and newly created and doesn’t come out of prior time.

9. Heightened Uniqueness:

All this can be phrased in still another way as the acme of uniqueness, individuality or idiosyncracy. If all people are different from each other in principle, they are more purely different in the peak-experiences. If in many respects (their roles), men are interchangeable, then in the peak-experiences, roles drop away and men become least interchangeable. Whatever they are at bottom, whatever the word “unique self” means, they are more that in the peak-experiences.

10. Present-Centered Awareness:

In the peak-experiences, the individual is most here-now, most free of the past and of the future in various senses, most “all there” in the experience. For instance, he can now listen better than at other times. Since he is least habitual and least expectant, he can fully listen without contamination by dragging in expectations based on past situations (which can’t be identically like the present one), or hopes or apprehensions based on planning for the future (which means taking the present only as means to the future rather than as end in itself.) Since also he is beyond desire, he needn’t rubricize in terms of fear, hate or wish. Nor does he have to compare what is here with what is not here in order to evaluate it.

[Reefs]

11. Convergence of Self and Other:

The person now becomes more a pure psyche and less a thing-of-the-world living under the laws of the world. That is, he becomes more determined by intra-psychic laws rather than by the laws of non-psychic reality insofar as they are different. B-cognition of the other is most possible when there is simultaneously a letting-be of the self and of the other. When this has happened, it turns out that the intra-psychic (me) and the extra-psychic (other) are not so terribly different after all, and certainly are not really antagonistic. It turns out that both sets of laws are very interesting and enjoyable and can even be integrated and fused.

12. Non-striving and Non-needing:

The person in the peak-experience becomes unmotivated (or un-driven), especially from the point of view of the deficiency needs. In this same realm of discourse, it makes similar sense to describe highest, most authentic identity as non-striving, non-needing, non-wishing, i.e., as having transcended needs and drives of the ordinary sort. He just is. Joy has been attained which means a temporary end to the striving for joy.

The person in the peak-experience becomes unmotivated (or un-driven), especially from the point of view of the deficiency needs. In this same realm of discourse, it makes similar sense to describe highest, most authentic identity as non-striving, non-needing, non-wishing, i.e., as having transcended needs and drives of the ordinary sort. He just is. Joy has been attained which means a temporary end to the striving for joy.

Everything now comes of its own accord, pouring out, without will, effortlessly, purposelessly. He acts now totally and without deficiency, not homeostatically or need-reductively, not to avoid pain or displeasure or death, not for the sake of a goal further on in the future, not for any other end than itself. His behavior and experience becomes per se, and self-validating, end-behavior and end-experience, rather than means-behavior or means-experience.

At this level, I have called the person godlike because most gods have been considered to have no needs or wants, no deficiencies, nothing lacking, to be gratified in all things.

13. Transcending Words into Poetic Expression:

Expression and communication in the peak-experiences tend often to become poetic, mythical and rhapsodic, as if this were the natural kind of language to express such states of being. I have only recently become aware of this in my subjects and in myself so shouldn’t say much about it. The implication for identity theory is that more authentic persons may, by that very fact, become more like poets, artists, musicians, prophets, etc. (“Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds.” P. B. Shelley)

14. Completion, Closure and Death:

All peak-experiences may be fruitfully understood as completions-of-the-act, or as the Gestalt psychologists’ closure, or on the paradigm of the Reichian type of complete orgasm, or as total discharge, catharsis, culmination, climax, consummation, emptying or finishing.

Probably the authentic person is himself complete or final in some sense; he certainly experiences subjective finality, completion or perfection at times; and he certainly perceives it in the world. It may turn out that only peakers can achieve full identity; that non-peakers must always remain incomplete, deficient, striving, lacking something, living among means rather than among ends.

Many people report their peak-experiences as if they were somehow akin to (beautiful) death, as if the most poignant living had a paradoxical something of eager or willing dying in it, too. It may be that any perfect completion or end is metaphorically, mythologically or archaically a death.

15. Playfulness and Cosmic Joy:

I very strongly feel that playfulness of a certain kind is one of the B-values. It is fairly often reported in the peak-experiences (both within the person and perceived in the world) and also can be perceived by the investigator from outside the person reporting.

It is very hard to describe this B-playfulness since the English language falls far short here (as in general it is unable to describe the “higher”subjective experiences). It has a cosmic or a godlike, good-humored quality, certainly transcending hostility of any kind. It could as easily be called happy joy, or gay exuberance or delight. It has a quality of spilling over as of richness or surplus (not D-motivated). It is existential in the sense that it is an amusement or delight with both the smallness (weakness) and the largeness (strength) of the human being, transcending the dominance-subordinance polarity. It has a certain quality of triumph in it, sometimes perhaps also of relief. It is simultaneously mature and childlike.

Intrinsically involved with it as part of its definition are ease, effortlessness, grace, good fortune, relief from inhibitions, restraints and doubts, amusement-with (not-at) B-cognition, transcendence of ego-centering and means-centering, transcendence of time and space, of history, of localism.

16. Acausality, Grace and Awe

People during and after peak-experiences characteristically feel lucky, fortunate, graced. A not uncommon reaction is “I don’t deserve this.” Peaks are not planned or brought about by design; they happen. We are “surprised by joy”. The reaction of surprise, of unexpectedness, of the sweet ”shock of recognition” are very frequent.

A common consequence is a feeling of gratitude, in religious persons to their God, in others to Fate, to Nature, to people, to the past, to parents, to the world, to everything and anything that helped to make this wonder possible. This can go over into worship, giving thanks, adoring, giving praise, oblation, and other reactions which fit very easily into a religious framework.

Very often this feeling of gratitude is expressed as or leads to an all-embracing love for everybody and everything, to a perception of the world as beautiful, and good, often to an impulse to do something good for the world, an eagerness to repay, even a sense of obligation.

[someNOTHING!]

Aug 24, 2023 8:21:24 GMT -5 zendancer said:

Aug 24, 2023 6:53:13 GMT -5 laughter said:

Way to spend your 80th birth month!

So true! Yesterday I used a 90 pound jackhammer to remove a bunch of rock, and I had forgotten how demanding those suckers can be! After two hours or so, I was dead meat for the rest of the day!

I plan to celebrate my 80th by climbing a fourteener in CO in September. Carol insisted that my daughter and her husband go on the same climb so that they can haul the old guy's carcass back down to the trailhead in case I flake out or croak. I told her that they better do some training so that they can keep up with me. . Yes, that is a joke. They can go as fast as they wish, and I'll go at whatever pace feels enjoyable and fun.

Enjoy them mountains and valleys, ole'timer!

[zendancer]

Aug 25, 2023 8:00:44 GMT -5 someNOTHING! said:

Aug 24, 2023 8:21:24 GMT -5 zendancer said:

So true! Yesterday I used a 90 pound jackhammer to remove a bunch of rock, and I had forgotten how demanding those suckers can be! After two hours or so, I was dead meat for the rest of the day!

I plan to celebrate my 80th by climbing a fourteener in CO in September. Carol insisted that my daughter and her husband go on the same climb so that they can haul the old guy's carcass back down to the trailhead in case I flake out or croak. I told her that they better do some training so that they can keep up with me. . Yes, that is a joke. They can go as fast as they wish, and I'll go at whatever pace feels enjoyable and fun.

Enjoy them mountains and valleys, ole'timer!

Haha! For sure!