El puzle

Maslow describes ‘peak experiences’ as something like mystical experiences – moments of great awe, ecstasy or unity, involving “pure positive happiness when all doubts, all fears, all inhibitions, all weaknesses, were left behind” (1962, p. 9). While the category of peak experience might bear similarities to mystical or transpersonal experiences (Privette and Bundrick, 1991), Maslow goes on to suggest: “it must by now be obvious to those who are familiar with the literature of mystical experiences that these peak experiences are very much like them, and overlap them but are not

identical with them... The total mystical experience, as classically described, is more or less approached by greater or lesser peak-experiences” (1962, p. 18).

Maslow reported that peak experiences occurred in everyday life, including “from moments of fusion with nature (in a forest, on a seashore, mountains, etc.)” (1962 p. 10), and many studies of peak experiences have highlighted a connection with experiences of the natural world. While interviewing participants about ‘peak experiences’, Wuthnow asked if interviewees had “experienced the beauty of nature

in a deeply moving way?” (1978, p. 61). This question proved to be the highest ranked question of the research and Wuthnow reported that “more than eight in ten have been moved deeply by the beauty of nature... of these, more than half in each case have had peak experiences which have had deep and lasting effects on their lives” (1978, p. 61). Many of the participants were subsequently reinterviewed about their experiences of nature, and Wuthnow suggested: “the descriptions give evidence both of the diversity of these experiences and the similarity of feelings which they elicit. It is especially important to note the intense feelings of meaning” (1978, p. 63).

At the core of peak experiences are commonalities within the experience itself, however Maslow (1970) noted that individuals tended to interpret their experiences in accordance with their personal, geographical or social situation. Maslow

considered spiritual, transcendent and peak experiences to have much in common at their core, but that they were interpreted differently depending on their context:

This something common, this something which is left over after we peel away all the localisms, all the accidents of particular languages or particular philosophies, all the ethnocentric phrasing, all those elements which are not common, we may call the ‘core-religious experience’ or the ‘transcendent experience’ (1970, p. 20).

Two further aspects of peak experiences are of interest for our purposes. Firstly, Maslow reported that more or less everyone has ‘peak experiences’ but that many chose to suppress or ignore them. Secondly, peak experiences are transient in nature:

Some of the effects or after-effects may be permanent but the high moment itself is not” (1962, p. 14).

While studying peak experiences, Maslow began to separate out a category of experience that he deemed to be less emotional. These ‘plateau’ experiences, as Maslow called them, were “a serene and calm, rather than intensely emotional, response to what we experience as miraculous or awesome. The high plateau always has a noetic and cognitive element, unlike the peak experience, which can be merely emotional” (Hoffman, 1988, p. 340). Plateau experiences are intertwined with what Maslow saw as the paradox of unitive consciousness:

I can define the unitive consciousness very simply for me as the simultaneous perception of the sacred and the ordinary, or the miraculous and the

ordinary... There is nothing excepted and nothing special, but one lives in a world of miracles all the time. There is a paradox because it is miraculous and yet it doesn’t produce an autonomic [nervous system] burst (Maslow in Krippner, 1972, p. 113).

In detecting the sacred and the miraculous, Maslow (1970) felt it was possible to transcend everyday experience and widen your perspective of the world: “There is a sense of certainty about the plateau experience. It feels very, very good to be able to see the world as miraculous and not merely in the concrete, not reduced only to the behavioural, not limited only to the here and now” (Maslow in Krippner, 1972, p. 115). This widening of perspective, then, could also result in a shift in values about what is basic, about “what’s important and what’s not important” (Maslow in Krippner, 1972, p. 119).

Particularly revealing in terms of plateau experiences induced by experiences of the natural environments is the sense that the witnessing of the miraculous might occur as an instigation of the surrounding environs, alongside the realisation that the beauty of things was existent continually: “unlike a peak experience, which can be felt originate within the individual, and is emotionally gripping, the plateau experience can represent a witnessing of aspects of the environment which are external to

oneself and a perception of previously unnoticed attributes of the environment” (Cleary and Shapiro, 1995, p. 8).

In terms of Maslow’s (1954) well known ‘hierarchy of needs’, self-transcendence, as described here, is often presented as a vehicle for achieving ‘self actualisation’ (commonly presented as the highest level of motivation). However, Maslow’s later writings suggest that he came to view self-transcendence itself as a higher

motivational level (Koltko-Rivera, 2006; Maslow, 1969; 1971). In so doing, Maslow recognized the importance of peak or plateau experiences in achieving a transcending of everyday life and the self, as well as recognizing that such experiences could potentially encourage people to behave altruistically (Koltko-Rivera, 2006). Indeed, Maslow believed that a lack of transcendent experiences could be detrimental to a person’s well being (Cleary and Shapiro, 1995; Maslow, 1971).