Peak Experiences
Limitless Horizons
Peak experiences are especially joyous and exciting moments in the life of every
individual. Maslow notes that peak experiences are often inspired by intense
feelings of love, exposure to great art or music, or the overwhelming beauty of
nature. "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" (Toward
a Psychology of Being, p. 111).
Virtually everyone has had a number of peak experiences, although we often take
them for granted. One's reactions while watching a vivid sunset or listening to
a moving piece of music are examples of peak experiences. According to Maslow,
peak experiences tend to be triggered by intense, inspiring occurrences: "It
looks as if any experience of real excellence, of real perfection ... tends to
produce a peak experience" (The
Farther Reaches of Human Nature, p. 175). These experiences
may also be triggered by tragic events. Recovering from depression or a serious
illness, or confronting death, can initiate extreme moments of love and joy.
The lives of most people are filled with long periods of relative
inattentiveness, lack of involvement, or even boredom. By contrast, peak
experiences, understood in the broadest sense, are those moments when we become
deeply involved, excited by, and absorbed in the world.
The most powerful peak experiences are relatively rare. For Maslow, the highest
peaks include "feelings of limitless horizons opening up to the vision, the
feeling of being. Simultaneously more powerful and also more helpless than one
ever was before, the feeling of great ecstasy and wonder and awe, the loss of
placing in time and space" (Motivation
and Personality, p. 164). They have been portrayed by poets as
moments of ecstasy; by the religious, as deep mystical experiences.
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