Human Development
Peak experiences
Description:
Peak experiences are, for an individual, spontaneous moments of greatest happiness, ecstasy, and rapture. They occur under a wide variety of circumstances, from being in love or giving birth to a child, to listening to music, creating a work of art, or climbing a mountain. They are also occasions of emotional growth, opening new horizons, enriching values, and releasing new potential.According to Maslow, the complete attention characteristic of such experiences, experienced with the whole of being, is a cognitive experience undergone by self actualizing individuals. However, some evidence suggests that most people have, or can have, peak experiences. The content of such experiences is believed to be similar, although the situations which trigger off such occurrences vary from person to person. Although many people may have such experiences, it is not clear to what extent particular experiences differ in degree, quality or level of joy, ecstasy or transcendence. In particular it is not clear to what extent infrequently reported experiences such as mystic or similar illumination differ from more commonly encountered expressions of great joy or happiness. One distinction is that, although they are experienced in the same way, the deep mystic state of wakeful relaxation such as arises in transcendental meditation is a "planned" state, whereas a peak experience is sudden and unplanned, resulting from a flash of insight or a new and significant experience. Reported characteristics of peak experiences include:
1. Perception of the universe as an integrated whole.
2. Intense concentration of a kind that does not normally occur; the precept is exclusively and fully attended to.
3. The occurrence of a cognition of being that tends to perceive external objects, the world, and individual people as more detached from human concerns.
4. Perception is ego-transcending, self-forgetful, ego-less and unselfish; objects and people are more readily perceived as having independent reality of their own.
5. The experience is felt to be a self-validating, self-justifying moment which carries its own intrinsic value.
6. Such experiences are recognized as end-experiences rather than means experiences, namely they are part of the operational definition of such statements as: life is meaningful.
7. Disorientation in time and space, or even lack of consciousness of space/time, experienced as a sense of eternity and infinity.
8. The world is accepted as it is and experienced as beautiful, good, and worthwhile.
9. A sense of being god-like.
10. Overlapping or fusion between facts and values, and identification of the intrinsic values of being.
11. A form of cognition which is much more passive and receptive than normal.
12. Experience of emotions such as wonder, awe, reverence, humility, surrender, and worship before the immensity of the experience.
13. Transcendence or resolution of the dichotomies, polarities and conflicts of life.
14. Loss of anxiety, fear, inhibition, defence, confusion and restraint.
15. Immediate after effects upon the person ranging from the simply therapeutic to full religious conversion.
16. Recognition of the ever-present possibility of access to what is perceived as a personally-defined heaven.
17. Sense of self-determination, responsibility and creative ability as a free agent.
18. Resolution of the dichotomy between humility and pride.
19. Experience of unitive consciousness, namely a sense of the sacred perceived in and through the particular and the secular.
20. Greater ability to love and accept, leading to greater spontaneity, honesty, and innocence.
21. Greater sense of being a person rather than an object in the world.
22. Reduction in striving, needing and wishing
23. Experience of a sense of luckiness, fortune and grace.
Peak experiences tend not to occur in persons whose character structure forces them to try to be extremely rational, materialistic or mechanistic. However, precisely those individuals with the clearest and strongest sense of identity are most able to transcend the ego or self and to become selfless.