Transcend: The New Science of Self-Actualization (Amazon) by Scott Barry Kaufman is a great gateway to Abraham Maslow.
This book is a nice place to start if you’re new to Maslow (especially his late-life writings) and also want to understand some of the modern research that’s been conducted over the last 50 years since Maslow passed away.
I especially enjoyed Kaufman’s proposal to update the hierarchy of needs from a pyramid to a sailboat. Due to the length of this summary, you can view a short post about that here: Why we Need to Evolve Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs from a Pyramid to a Sailboat Metaphor
To see Maslow’s own source material on self-actualization and transcendence, check out these posts:
– Go Beyond the Hierarchy of Needs in Maslow’s “The Farther Reaches of Human Nature” (Book Summary)
– What is Self-Actualization? Here’s what Maslow said about Self-Actualizers
– Premium🔒 How to Reach Self-Actualization & Be a Healthy Self-Actualizer (+ 2 Infographics)
– What is Transcendence? The True Top of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
– Premium🔒 How to Reach Transcendence & Be a Self-Actualizing Transcender (+ Infographic)
Quick Housekeeping:
- All quotes are from the author unless otherwise stated.
- I’ve added emphasis (in bold) to quotes throughout this post.
BOOK SUMMARY CONTENTS: Click a link to jump to a section below
Quick Overview of the Book
Security Needs:
– Safety
– Connection
– Self-Esteem
Growth Needs:
– Exploration (Adversity, Cognitive Exploration)
– Love (B-Love, Quiet Ego, Authenticity, Selfishness)
– Purpose (Strengths/Personality, Synergy, Happiness Byproduct)
Healthy Transcendence (Transcenders, Peak/Plateau Experiences, Transcending Dichotomies, Integration, & More)
The New Science of Self-Actualization: Transcend by Scott Barry Kaufman (Book Summary)
Quick Overview of the book Transcend by Scott Barry Kaufman
“Two big things which Abe gave to all of us: the art and science of becoming more fully human, and the democratization of the soul. For these we will be forever indebted.” — Warren Bennis (Maslow’s eulogy on June 10, 1970)
In Transcend, Kaufman provides a thorough synthesis:
- “This book is the result of a synthesis of many ideas, research findings, and personal collaborations.”
- “I have written this book to reinvigorate the wise, profound, and essentially human insights of humanistic psychology with the latest scientific findings from a wide range of fields—including positive psychology, social psychology, evolutionary psychology, clinical psychology, developmental psychology, personality psychology, organizational psychology, sociology, cybernetics, and neuroscience. The integration of a wide variety of perspectives is necessary for a more complete understanding of the full depths of human potential, as too much focus on a single perspective runs the risk of giving a distorted view of human nature.”
Turns out Maslow himself was also a synthesizer:
- “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.”
The beginnings of self-actualization:
- “In his 1934 magnum opus The Organism, Goldstein observed that there is an innate ‘drive for self-preservation’ among patients to ‘utilize the preserved capacities in the best possible way . . . We can say that an organism is governed by the tendency to actualize, as much as possible, its individual capacities, its ‘nature,’ in the world.’ Goldstein argued that this singular drive for ‘self-preservation’ and ‘self-actualization’ is ‘considered the basic law of life.’”
- “Even if all these [basic] needs are satisfied, we may still often (if not always) expect that a new discontent and restlessness will soon develop, unless the individual is doing what he, individually, is fitted for. A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What a man can be, he must be. He must be true to his own nature. This need we may call self-actualization. . . . It refers to man’s desire for self-fulfillment, namely, to the tendency for him to become actualized in what he is potentially. This tendency might be phrased as the desire to become more and more what one idiosyncratically is, to become everything that one is capable of becoming.” — Maslow (1943)
- “Maslow’s work on self-actualization was really his search for the characteristics of the ‘good’ human being. Maslow believed that human nature was basically good, and his work was an attempt to systematically show that this is the case by studying those who he considered most fully human. As he noted in an interview many years later, ‘I wanted to prove that humans are capable of something grander than war, prejudice, and hatred. I wanted to make science consider all the people: the best specimen of mankind I could find.'”
- “There seems to be no intrinsic reason why everyone shouldn’t be this way [self-actualizing]. Apparently, every baby has possibilities for self-actualization, but most all of them get it knocked out of them. . . . I think of the self-actualizing man not as an ordinary man with something added, but rather as the ordinary man with nothing taken away.” — Maslow (1946)
Maslow was working on new ideas—going beyond self-actualization—up until the very end of his life:
- “Maslow’s lectures, unpublished essays, and private personal journal entries make clear that he became preoccupied with this paradox of transcendence in the last few years of his life.”
- “I saw that Maslow was working on a set of axioms or propositions that would lay the foundation for a humanistic revolution. Devouring his last words and the contents of the neighboring folders, I discovered that these axioms were part of a book he was working on that would offer a new image of humanity and society.”
- “I also saw that he was planning to write a book entirely dedicated to humanistic education.”
- “He even planned on having a chapter of his book proposing the need for a fifth force in psychology—transhumanism—that would transcend human interests and focus on species-transcending values.”
- “If I had to condense this whole book into a single sentence, I think I could come close to the essence of it by saying that it spells out the consequences of the discovery that man has a higher nature and that this is part of his essence. Or more simply, human beings can be wonderful out of their own human and biological nature. We need not take refuge in super-natural gods to explain our saints and sages and heroes and statesmen, as if to explain our disbelief that mere unaided human beings could be that good or wise.” — Maslow (unpublished draft of book titled The Possibilities for Human Nature)
Safety (Security Need)
“Modern-day science makes clear that unpredictability has far-reaching consequences for the lives we can envision and create for ourselves. The need for safety, and its accompanying needs for stability, certainty, predictability, coherence, continuity, and trust in the environment, is the base upon which all the others are fulfilled.”
- “The need for safety is tied to a particular form of meaning in life. Psychologists have identified three different forms of meaning: coherence, purpose, and mattering. Purpose involves a motivation to realize future-oriented and valued life goals. Mattering consists of the extent to which people feel that their existence and actions in the world are significant, important, and valuable.”
- “The need for coherence is the form of meaning that is most strongly tied to the need for safety. Does my immediate environment make sense? Is there any predictability and comprehensibility in my life? Coherence is necessary to even get a chance to pursue one’s larger purpose or pursue various ways that one can matter in this world.”
- “First applied to the operation of physical systems, entropy is a measure of disorder. But the very same principles of entropy that apply to physical thermodynamic systems, such as self-organization, apply to all information-processing systems, including the brain, nervous system, and psychological processes of humans. All biological organisms—including humans—survive insofar as they are able to effectively manage internal entropy.”
Connection (Security Need)
“If both the physiological and the safety needs are fairly well gratified, there will emerge the love and affection and belongingness needs, and the whole cycle already described will repeat itself with this new center. . . . He will want to attain such a place more than anything else in the world and may even forget that once, when he was hungry, he sneered at love as unreal or unnecessary or important. . . . Now he will feel sharply the pangs of loneliness, of ostracism, of rejection, of friendlessness, of rootlessness.” — Abraham Maslow, Motivation and Personality (1954)
- “The need for connection actually consists of two subneeds: (a) The need to belong, to be liked, to be accepted, and (b) The need for intimacy, for mutuality, for relatedness.”
- “No human being is exempt from the dire consequences of loneliness, and no other basic human need satisfaction can substitute for a deep connection—not money, not fame, not power, not popularity, not even belonging and acceptance—even though we often seek one or another of these other routes in the false hope that they will fully satisfy our need for connection.”
- “Many countries that are economically deprived nevertheless find ways of increasing social belonging among their inhabitants. Even studies conducted in the slums of Calcutta, India, show that the levels of life satisfaction among inhabitants are higher than those of the average American (although not as high as the richest people in India)! Also, there are plenty of examples of people who choose an ‘environmentally friendly’ or ‘voluntarily simplistic’ lifestyle, who also score high in life satisfaction despite their low income.”
- “The message is clear: beyond a certain income (enough to make you feel safe and secure), how you spend your money becomes more important than how much money you have.”
- “In cultures that foster face-to-face interactions, people tend to be highly satisfied and live long lives. Author and explorer Dan Buettner investigated groups around the world, including the people of Ikaria, a Greek island in the Aegean Sea. Living to one hundred is common among the Ikarians.” (Note: Ikaria is one of the Blue Zones)
- “The Japanese notion of ikigai (the reason for which you wake up in the morning) is pervasive.”
Self-Esteem (Security Need)
“All people in our society (with a few pathological exceptions) have a need or desire for a stable, firmly based, (usually) high evaluation of themselves, for self-respect, or self-esteem, and for the esteem of others.” — Abraham Maslow, A Theory of Human Motivation (1943)
- “The most important attitude we have may be the attitude we have toward ourselves. A basic sense of self-worth and confidence in the effectiveness of our actions provides a fundamental foundation for growth. Self-esteem is one of the strongest correlates of life satisfaction (although the strength of the correlation differs based on culture), and low self-esteem is one of the biggest risk factors for depression.”
- “The latest research suggests that a healthy self-esteem is an outcome of genuine accomplishment and intimate connection with others, and of a sense of growing and developing as a whole person.”
- “So what is a healthy self-esteem? Modern research has identified two distinct faces of healthy self-esteem: self-worth and mastery.”
- “Self-worth involves the evaluation of your overall sense of self: Are you a fundamentally good person with social value in this world? Feeling worthy of who you are as a person lays a healthy foundation for who you want to become.”
- “The second face of self-esteem—mastery—involves the evaluation of your overall sense of agency: Are you an intentional being who can bring about your desired goals by exercising your will?”
Exploration (Growth Need)
“People who score high in the general tendency toward exploration are not only driven to engage in behavioral forms of exploration but also tend to get energized through the possibility of discovering new information and extracting meaning and growth from their experiences. These ‘cognitive needs,’ as Maslow referred to them, are just as important as the other human needs for becoming a whole person.”
The Upside of Adversity
- “It is precisely when the foundational structure of the self is shaken that we are in the best position to pursue new opportunities in our lives.”
- These seven areas of growth have been reported to spring from adversity: 1) Greater appreciation of life; 2) Greater appreciation and strengthening of close relationships; 3) Increased compassion and altruism; 4) The identification of new possibilities or a purpose in life; 5) Greater awareness and utilization of personal strengths; 6) Enhanced spiritual development; 7) Creative growth
Cognitive Exploration
- “A key factor that allows us to turn adversity into advantage is the extent to which we fully explore our thoughts and feelings surrounding the event. Cognitive exploration—which can be defined as a general curiosity about information and a tendency toward complexity and flexibility in information processing—enables us to be curious about confusing situations, increasing the likelihood that we will find new meaning in the seemingly incomprehensible.”
- “It’s only through shedding our natural defense mechanisms and approaching the discomfort head on, viewing everything as fodder for growth, that we can start to embrace the inevitable paradoxes of life and come to a more nuanced view of reality.”
- “Openness to experience reflects a drive for exploration of aesthetic, affective, and sensory information through imagination, perception, and artistic endeavor.”
- “Intellect reflects a drive toward exploration of abstract and verbal intellectual information, primarily through reasoning.”
- “Creative self-actualizers are capable of transcending the ordinary dichotomy between the intelligence of the mind and the wisdom of the heart. They are able to throw their whole selves into their work, flexibly switching between seemingly contradictory modes of being—the rational and the irrational, the emotional and the logical, the deliberate and the intuitive, and the imaginative and the abstract—without prejudging the value of any of these processes. Creative self-actualizers are true cognitive explorers.“
Love (Growth Need)
“To have the capacity to give love to those whom we don’t even have direct contact with, or feel a personal connection to, is a major pathway to a life of greater health, vitality, meaning, and growth as a whole person, not to mention a way of feeling more secure.”
B-Love
- “Maslow explicitly distinguished ‘needing love’ from ‘unneeding love’ and referred to the former as D-love (deficiency love) and the latter as B-love (‘love for the being of another person’).”
- “Instead of needing, B-love is admiring, and instead of striving for satiation, B-love usually grows rather than disappears. As a result, B-love is typically a more enjoyable experience, as it is intrinsically valuable (not valuable as a means to some other end).”
- “Therefore, B-loving people show that agency and communion need not be at odds with each other. In his 1966 book The Duality of Human Existence, the psychologist David Bakan emphasized the importance of integrating two essential modes of human existence: agency and communion. According to Bakan, agency involves self-protection, self-assertion, separation, and isolation, whereas communion involves participation, contact, openness, unity, and ‘non-contractual co-operation.’ Bakan argued that optimal mental health requires a state in which ‘there is a coalescence between charity and self-interest, between communion and agency.’”
Quiet Ego
- “In recent years, social psychologist Heidi Wayment and her colleagues have been developing a ‘quiet ego’ research program grounded in Buddhist philosophy and humanistic psychology ideals, and backed by empirical research in the field of positive psychology. The quiet-ego approach focuses on balancing interests of the self and of others and cultivating growth of the self and of others over time, based on self-awareness, interdependent identity, and compassionate experience. Paradoxically, it turns out, quieting the ego is so much more effective in cultivating well-being, growth, health, productivity, and a healthy self-esteem than focusing exclusively on self-enhancement.”
- “A quiet ego is definitely not the same thing as a silent ego. Squashing the ego so much that it loses its identity does no one any favors. Instead, the quiet ego perspective emphasizes balance and integration. As Wayment and her colleagues put it, ‘The volume of the ego is turned down so that it might listen to others as well as the self in an effort to approach life more humanely and compassionately.’ The goal of the quiet ego approach is to arrive at a less defensive and more integrative stance toward the self and others, not lose your sense of self or deny your self-esteem needs.”
Healthy Authenticity
- “Healthy authenticity, of the sort that helps you become a whole person (B-authenticity), involves understanding, accepting, and taking responsibility for your whole self as a route to personal growth and meaningful relationships.”
- “Healthy authenticity is an ongoing process of discovery, self-consciousness, and responsibility taking and is built on a secure foundation of a personality structure not dominated by the needs for safety, connection, and self-esteem. Springing from exploration and love, healthy authenticity allows you to truly face the unknown deep within yourself, accept the totality of your being, and become better at trusting that ‘alive, unique, personal center of ourselves,’ as the German psychoanalyst Karen Horney put it.”
- “The main components of healthy authenticity are self-awareness, self-honesty, integrity, and authentic relationships.”
- “Mature love is union under the condition of preserving one’s integrity, one’s individuality. . . . In love the paradox occurs that two beings become one and yet remain two.” — Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving (1956)
Healthy Selfishness
- “‘Modern culture is pervaded by a taboo on selfishness,’ wrote Erich Fromm in his 1939 essay ‘Selfishness and Self-Love.’ Fromm notes that this cultural taboo has had the unfortunate consequence of making people feel guilty for showing themselves healthy self-love and has even caused people to become ashamed of experiencing pleasure, health, and personal growth.”
- “It may seem paradoxical, but I also found that people who scored higher in healthy selfishness were more likely to care about others and report more growth-oriented motivations for helping others.”
- “A key to maintaining such a harmonious relationship is exercising a certain degree of healthy selfishness in the relationship, which Maslow describes as ‘a great self-respect, a disinclination to make sacrifices without good reason.’ Maslow notes that self-actualizing lovers demonstrate ‘a fusion of great ability to love and at the same time great respect for the other and great respect for oneself.’ Becoming a whole person requires setting appropriate boundaries and balancing one’s own needs with the needs of others.”
- “But perhaps the clearest way this paradox is resolved in whole love is by acknowledging that both partners can be interested in helping each other grow in their own direction. As Maslow notes, this requires not needing each other: ‘They can be extremely close together and yet go apart when necessary without collapsing. They do not cling to each other or have hooks or anchors of any kind. . . . Throughout the most intense and ecstatic love affairs, these people remain themselves and remain ultimately masters of themselves as well, living by their own standards even though enjoying each other intensely.'”
- “We have customarily defined [falling in love] in terms of a complete merging of egos and a loss of separateness, a giving up of individuality rather than a strengthening of it. While this is true, the fact appears to be at this moment that the individuality is strengthened, that the ego is in one sense merged with another, but yet in another sense remains separate and strong as always. The two tendencies, to transcend individuality and to sharpen and strengthen it, must be seen as partners and not as contradictories. Furthermore, it is implied that the best way to transcend the ego is via having a strong identity.” — Maslow
Purpose (Growth Need)
“The need for purpose can be defined as the need for an overarching aspiration that energizes one’s efforts and provides a central source of meaning and significance in one’s life. Having a purpose often causes a fundamental reordering of the most central motives associated with the self. Things that once preoccupied you suddenly cause you little concern and may even seem trivial.”
Strengths & Personality
- “In trying to figure out the deeper aspects of yourself that are the best within you (i.e., your best selves), it might be helpful to assess your ‘signature strengths,’ or the particular aspects of your personality that you yearn to use, that enable authentic expression, and that energize you and give you a sense of vitality. These include your various talents and your ‘character strengths’—those aspects of your personality that specifically contribute to the good life for yourself and for others.”
Synergy & Isomorphism
- “One major thread was the idea of ‘synergy,’ which fascinated Maslow. It was a term he first learned from his friend and mentor, anthropologist Ruth Benedict, one of the main inspirations for his work on self-actualization (because he viewed her as so self-actualizing).”
- “Benedict referred to synergistic cultures as those that are holistically structured and function for mutual benefit of the individual and the larger society. Placing this notion within an organizational context, Maslow argued that in an enlightened or ‘eupsychian’ workplace—meaning an environment conducive to self-actualization—that which is good for personal development is also good for the company.”
- “Under ideal conditions there would be isomorphism, a mutual selection between the person and his [self-actualizing] work (his cause, responsibility, call, vocation, task, and so forth). That is, each task would ‘call for’ just that one person in the world most uniquely suited to deal with it, like a key and a lock, and that one person would then feel the call most strongly and would reverberate to it, be tuned to its wave length, and so be responsive to its call. There is an interaction, a mutual suitability, like a good marriage or like a good friendship, like being designed for each other.” — Abraham Maslow, Eupsychian Management (1965)
- “[Self-actualizing] work transcends the self without trying to … [Self-actualizing] work is simultaneously a seeking and fulfilling of the self and also an achieving of the selflessness which is the ultimate expression of real self.” — Maslow
- “The ordinary dichotomy between inner and outer is also resolved, according to Maslow, because the cause for which one works is ‘introjected’ and becomes part of the self so that ‘the inner and the outer world fuse and become one and the same.’“
- “Self-actualizing people are, without one single exception, involved in a cause outside their own skin, in something outside of themselves. They are devoted, working at something, something which is very precious to them—some calling or vocation in the old sense. They are working at something which fate has called them to somehow and which they work at and which they love, so that the work-joy dichotomy in them disappears.” — Abraham Maslow, The Farther Reaches of Human Nature (1971)
Happiness is a Byproduct
- “To Maslow, those who were most self-actualized pursued their calling, not happiness. Nevertheless, he pointed out that happiness often comes as a result anyway: ‘Happiness is an epiphenomenon, a by-product, something not to be sought directly but an indirect reward for virtue. . . . The only happy people I know are the ones who are working well at something they consider important.'”
- “If you deliberately plan on being less than you are capable of being, then I warn you that you’ll be deeply unhappy for the rest of your life. You will be evading your own capacities, your own possibilities.” — Abraham Maslow, The Farther Reaches of Human Nature (1971)
- “In his classic book Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl wrote poignantly about how he witnessed that the ones who were most likely to survive in the concentration camps were those who believed there was a task waiting for them to fulfill. He argued that those who see a greater meaning in their lives are able to ‘transform a personal tragedy into a triumph, to turn one’s predicament into a human achievement.’“
Healthy Transcendence
“Considering the writings of Maslow and modern psychological research relating to self-actualization and the heights of human nature, I propose the following definition of healthy transcendence: Healthy transcendence is an emergent phenomenon resulting from the harmonious integration of one’s whole self in the service of cultivating the good society.“
- “This view of transcendence, which I believe is the healthiest form of transcendence, is not about leaving any parts of ourselves or anyone else behind or singularly rising above the rest of humanity. Healthy transcendence is not about being outside of the whole, or feeling superior to the whole, but being a harmonious part of the whole of human existence. It’s also not a level any human ever actually achieves, but it is a north star for all of humanity. In a nutshell: healthy transcendence involves harnessing all that you are in the service of realizing the best version of yourself so you can help raise the bar for the whole of humanity.“
Transcenders
- “To Maslow, these (transcenders) were people whose value system implied the ‘Bodhisattva path’ to enlightenment—’that is, the helping service to humanity or the helping of other people . . . and of simply becoming better human beings for others, as well as for themselves, and finally of transcending the ego.'”
- “Maslow took his exciting new insights and put them into a 1969 paper called ‘Theory Z,’ which was published in the second volume of the Journal of Transpersonal Psychology. Echoing the distinction between ‘transcenders’ and ‘merely healthy people,’ Maslow argued that the merely healthy fulfill the expectations of Douglas MacGregor’s Theory Y: they are free of deficiency needs and are driven by the desire for actualization of their personal potential and development of their identity, individuality, and uniqueness. ‘Such people live in the world, coming to fulfillment in it,’ Maslow noted. ‘They master it, lead it, use it for good purposes, as (healthy) politicians or practical people do.'”
Metamotivations & Metaneeds
- “Maslow proposed that transcenders are ‘metamotivated’ by higher ideals and values that go beyond the satisfaction of basic needs and the fulfillment of one’s unique self. These metamoticvations include a devotion to a calling outside oneself, as well as a commitment to the ultimate values, or the B-values, the values of Being. Maslow’s list of B-values includes truth, goodness, beauty, justice, meaningfulness, playfulness, aliveness, uniqueness, excellence, simplicity, elegance, and wholeness.” (Note: There are a total of 14 values mentioned in Maslow’s The Farther Reaches of Human Nature)
- “Maslow observed that when he asked transcenders why they do what they do and what makes their life worth living, they often cited those values. There was no further reason why they devoted so much time to their work; the values were not in service of anything else, nor were they instrumental in achieving any other goal.”
- “Maslow believed that satisfaction of the ‘metaneeds’ are necessary ‘to avoid illness and to achieve fullest humanness or growth. . . . They are worth living for and dying for. Contemplating them, or fusing with them gives the greatest joy that a human being is capable of.’”
Appreciating Basic Life
- “The great lesson from the true mystics—from the Zen monks, and now also from the Humanistic and Transpersonal psychologists—is that the sacred is in the ordinary, that it is to be found in one’s daily life, in one’s neighbors, friends, and family, in one’s back yard.” — Abraham Maslow, Religions, Values, and Peak-Experiences (1970)
- “The most fortunate are those who have a wonderful capacity to appreciate again and again, freshly and naively, the basic goods of life, with awe, pleasure, wonder and even ecstasy.” — Abraham Maslow, Toward a Psychology of Being (1962)
- “We asked participants to specifically indicate what elicited their experience of awe. ‘Natural scenery’ was described as the most frequent trigger, although other triggers were also represented: great skill, encounter with God, great virtue, building or monument, powerful leader, grand theory or idea, music, art, epiphany. The second most represented trigger was the ‘other’ category. Consistent with what Maslow observed, a number of the write-in responses referred to childbirth as a trigger for intense awe experiences.”
Peak Experiences
- “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.”
- “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.'”
- “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.” — Maslow
Plateau Experiences
- “At a transpersonal conference in Council Grove, Kansas, a few weeks later, Maslow provided a term for what he was experiencing: ‘the plateau experience.’ Maslow co-opted this term from his East Indian colleague U. A. Asrani (who actually credited the term to the English writer Arthur Osborne). While peak experiences are ecstatic and momentary, Maslow argued that plateau experiences are more enduring and cognitive and involve seeing the extraordinary in the ordinary.”
- “Maslow referred to the form of consciousness present in the plateau experience as ‘unitive consciousness,’ which he defined ‘as the simultaneous perception of the sacred and the ordinary . . . I now perceive under the aspect of eternity and become mystic, poetic, and symbolic about ordinary things. . . . There is a paradox because it is miraculous and yet doesn’t produce an autonomic burst.’ Elaborating on this in the preface to the 1970 edition of Religions, Values, and Peak Expeiences, he noted that the plateau state of consciousness ‘becomes a witnessing, an appreciating . . . which can, however, have a quality of casualness and of lounging about.'”
- “Maslow believed that plateau experiences were more voluntary than peak experiences and could be deliberately sought (‘I can go to an art museum or a meadow rather than into a subway’), and even taught: ‘I think you can teach plateau experiences; you could hold classes in miraculousness.’ In a journal entry dated March 28, 1970, Maslow also mentioned his intention to develop exercises to help bring on the plateau state: ‘Think this through including the B-exercises, unitive exercises, sacralizing exercises, etc. They would automatically help toward B-love.'”
Unitary Continuum of Transcendent Experiences
- Alternate Names for the Transcendent Experience: Mystic Experience; Peak Experience; Religious, Spiritual, and Mystical Experiences (RSMEs); Clear Light; Cosmic Consciousness; Deautomatization; Fana; Mystical Union; Flow Experience; Optimal Experience; Elevating Experience; God Experience; Intensity Experience; Inward Light; Living Flame of Love; Love-Fire; Numinous Experience; Objective Consciousness; The Peace of God, which Passeth All Understanding; Samadhi; Satori; Shamanic Ecstasy; The Silence Beyond Sound; Subliminal Consciousness.
- “At its most extreme, transcendence is a feeling of complete unity with everything (‘Absolute Unitary Being’), including other humans (the social environment), as well as all of existence, nature, and the cosmos (the spatial environment). James observed that one extreme outcome from mystical experiences can be the feeling of being at home in the universe.”
- “There are a variety of transcendent experiences that differ in their intensity and degree of unity with the world. There is a ‘unitary continuum,’ ranging from the experience of becoming deeply absorbed in an engrossing book, sports performance, or creative activity (what psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi refers to as the flow experience), to experiencing an extended mindful meditation retreat, to feeling gratitude for a selfless act of kindness, to merging with a loved one, to experiencing awe at a beautiful sunset or the stars above, to being so inspired by something—whether an inspiring role model, virtuoso performance, intellectual idea, or act of moral beauty—that you have a ‘transcendent awakening,’ all the way up to the great mystical illumination.”
- “While transcendent experiences differ in various ways, they all have in common weakening of the boundaries to connectedness with others, the world, and one’s own self. William James personally observed this core aspect of the transcendent experience: ‘Looking back on my own experiences, they all converge towards a kind of insight to which I cannot help ascribing some metaphysical significance. . . . It is as if the opposites of the world, whose contradictoriness and conflict make all our difficulties and troubles, were melted into unity.'”
- “Modern research suggests that the transcendent state of consciousness is related to positive mental health—including positive changes in family life, reduced fear of death, better health, and a greater sense of purpose—as well as a motivation for increased altruism and prosocial behaviors.”
- “In transcendent moments of self-loss, there is often a heightened sense of pure Being, and the experience often feels ‘realer than real.’ William James referred to this as the ‘noetic’ quality of the mystic experience. What’s more, the language associated with feelings of realness suggest a great connection with a larger whole, inclusiveness, and physical proximity—such as ‘all,’ ‘everything,’ ‘we,’ and ‘close’—and the use of fewer first-person pronouns such as ‘I’ and ‘my.'”
Transcending Dichotomies
- “A key emergence of the Theory Z worldview is ‘dichotomy-transcendence’: ordinary dichotomies—such as male vs. female, heart vs. head, lust vs. love, good vs. evil, national vs. global, selfish vs. unselfish, kindness vs. ruthlessness, happy vs. sad, or mystical vs. realistic—are no longer seen as dichotomies but are all seen as simply parts of a larger integrated whole.”
- “I hope I have made my point clear … Only by resolving and transcending the dichotomy between primary and secondary processes, conscious and unconscious, rational and intuitive, scientific and aesthetic, work and play, abstract and concrete, rubricizing and direct experiencing, can we perceive all of the world and of ourselves. Only there-by can we create whole-science, whole-language, whole-mathematics, whole-art, whole-education, and whole-people.” — Maslow (public lecture in 1961)
Transcending the Selfish-Unselfish Dichotomy
- “According to Maslow, the ordinary dichotomy between selfish and unselfish is resolved because people who pursue their selfish gratifications are automatically helping others. Vice versa, when they are being altruistic, they are automatically rewarded and gratified because what pleases them the most is using their wealth and competence to benefit all the other members of the culture.”
- “It must be stated that self-actualization is not enough. Personal salvation and what is good for the person alone cannot be really understood in isolation. . . . The good of other people must be invoked, as well as the good for oneself. . . . It is quite clear that a purely intrapsychic, individualistic psychology, without reference to other people and social conditions, is not adequate.” — Maslow (1966 unpublished essay “Critique of Self-Actualization Theory”)
- “In a 1961 paper, Maslow observed that self-actualization seems to be a ‘transitional goal, a rite of passage, a step along the path to the transcendence of identity. This is like saying its function is to erase itself.'”
- “Self-actualization . . . paradoxically makes more possible the transcendence of self, and of self-consciousness and of selfishness.” — Maslow (1962 book Toward a Psychology of Being)
- “We see that self-actualizing people resolve ordinary dichotomies. We tend to think of a heightened sense of connectedness as contrary to a heightened sense of individuality. However, as Maslow pointed out, the dichotomy is resolved among self-actualizing individuals: ‘The fact is that self-actualizing people are simultaneously the most individualistic and the most altruistic and social and loving of all human beings. The fact that we have in our culture put these qualities at opposite ends of a single continuum is apparently a mistake that must now be corrected. These qualities go together and the dichotomy is resolved in self-actualizing people.'”
- “The fully developed (and very fortunate) human being working under the best conditions tends to be motivated by values which transcend his self. They are not selfish anymore in the old sense of that term. Beauty is not within one’s skin nor is justice or order. One can hardly class these desires as selfish in the sense that my desire for food might be. My satisfaction with achieving or allowing justice is not within my own skin; it does not lie along my arteries. It is equally outside and inside: therefore, it has transcended the geographical limitations of the self.” — Maslow
- “The realization of healthy transcendence offers a new vision of civilization. Historically, the interests of society and the interests of the individual have been seen as mutually exclusive, sometimes even antagonistic (whatever is good for the person is bad for civilization). However, as we’ve seen as we have been climbing to higher heights of integration, this need not be the case. The purpose and values of the person can be synergistic with what’s good for the society. The healthiest societies are built on a realistic understanding of human needs and offer the greatest growth-fostering potential for the individuals who are part of the society.“
Paradox: You need a strong Ego/Self/Identity to Transcend it
- “Having a substantial quieting of the ego is strongly related to having a strong, not weak, sense of self and with increased, not weakened, authenticity. Indeed, those with the quietest ego defenses often have the strongest sense of self. As the Buddhist Harvard psychotherapist Jack Engler put it, ‘You have to be somebody before you can be nobody.’”
- “In his 1962 article ‘Peak Experiences as Acute Identity Experiences,’ Maslow tried to make sense of this seeming paradox, noting that ‘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 egoless.'”
- “[There is] the total loss of self-consciousness 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.” — Maslow
Transcender Worldview & Wisdom
- “The Theory Z worldview is full of awe, beauty, wonder, savoring, exploration, discovery, openness, holistic perception, unconditional acceptance, gratitude, B-love, B-humility (honest assessment of one’s capacities rather than hiding one’s self), B-playfulness, ego transcendence, synergy, unity, intrinsic motivation for work, and a motivation for the ultimate values in life.”
- “The Theory Z worldview is congruent with other prominent theories of ego development in the psychological literature, such as the ‘integrated’ level in Jane Loevinger’s stages of development, the ‘ego integrity’ and ‘generativity’ stages of Erik Erikson’s stages of psychosocial development, the interindividual stage of Robert Kegan’s constructive developmental theory, and the postconventional stages of Susanne Cook-Greuter’s theory of ego development. Outside of the classical psychological literature, there are also connections to the highest states of consciousness in Ken Wilber’s integral theory and the ‘second tier’ of Clare Graves’s spiral dynamics.”
- “The Theory Z worldview is strikingly similar to the modern psychological research on wisdom. Wisdom is often conceptualized in psychological literature as involving an integration among cognitive, affective, and behavioral dimensions. This includes the ability to accept multiple perspectives, to respond nondefensively when challenged, to express a wide array of emotions in order to derive meaning, to critically evaluate human truths, and to become aware of the uncertain and paradoxical nature of human problems.”
- “As clinical psychologist Deirdre Kramer puts it, ‘Wise people have learned to view the positive and negative and synthesize them to create a more human, more integrated sense of self, in all its frailty and vulnerability. . . . They seem able to first embrace and then transcend self-concerns to integrate their capacity for introspection with a deep and abiding concern for human relationships and generative concern for others.’ Wisdom tends to increase with age and is most common among those with high levels of openness to experience, the capacity for self-examination and introspection, a motivation for personal growth, and the willingness to remain skeptical of one’s self-views, continually questioning assumptions and beliefs, and exploring and evaluating new information that is relevant to one’s identities.”
Integration & Full Humanness
- “Becoming fully human is about living a full existence, not one that is continually happy. Being well is not always about feeling good; it also involves continually incorporating more meaning, engagement, and growth in one’s life.”
- “Wholeness is an aspiration, not a destination; it’s a process, not a state that is ever achieved … The process of becoming a whole person is an ongoing journey of discovery, openness, and courage, in which you reach higher and higher levels of integration and harmony within yourself and with the outside world, allowing greater flexibility and freedom to become who you truly want to become. Since you are always in a state of change, you are always in a state of becoming.”
- “The English humanistic psychotherapist John Rowan used the analogy of Russian nesting dolls to illustrate Maslow’s notion of an integrated hierarchy: each larger doll includes all the smaller dolls but also transcends them. Once we are working on our highest purpose, for instance, our needs for safety, connection, or self-esteem don’t vanish; instead, they become integrated with our more transcendent purpose. When the whole person is well-integrated, all of their basic needs are not merely met but work together to facilitate growth toward realizing their highest goals and values.“
- “In my view, the healthiest form of transcendence does not lie in any one aspect of your being but involves the healthy integration of your entire being.”
- “Viewed holistically, the characteristics of ‘transcenders’ represent a complete Weltanschauung, or worldview, similar to what Maslow referred to as ‘healthy childishness,’ or a ‘second naivete,’ in which there is a ‘true integration of the person at all levels.’ This worldview includes the satisfaction of the security and growth needs but also transcends them. A transcender is able to fluidly navigate both the D-realm and the B-realm of existence.“
- “By this point, it should be clear that self-actualization and self-transcendence can very much be harmonious with each other. I believe that a true integration of Eastern, Western, and indigenous philosophical notions of self-actualization is not only possible but necessary for reaching the highest ceilings of human nature. Becoming a whole person involves a hierarchical integration of security, growth, and transcendence. We need not pit these realms of being against one another; at the highest level of integration they fuse into a single whole.”
- “From the perspective of Theory Z, you are able to look at all of the human needs—lovingly and nonjudgmentally—from the highest vantage point possible, viewing them not as separate from one another but as integrated and harmonious. This vantage point isn’t tethered to your own self or identity, although if need be, it can still clearly see all of it.”
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