Religions, Values, and Peak-Experiences
Abraham H. Maslow
Chapter IV. Organizational Dangers to Transcendent Experiences
It has sometimes seemed to me as I interviewed "nontheistic
religious people" that they had more religious (or
transcendent) experiences than conventionally religious people.
(This is, so far, only an impression but it would obviously be
a worthwhile research project.) Partly this may have been because
they were more often "serious" about values, ethics,
life-philosophy, because they have had to struggle away from conventional
beliefs and have had to create a system of faith for themselves
individually. Various other determinants of this paradox also
suggested themselves at various times, but I'll pass these by
at this time.
The reason I now bring up this impression (which may or may not
be validated, may or may not be simply a sampling error, etc.
) is that it brought me to the realization that for most people
a conventional religion, while strongly religionizing one part
of life, thereby also strongly "dereligionizes" the
rest of life. The experiences of the holy, the sacred, the divine,
of awe, of creatureliness, of surrender, of mystery, of piety,
thanksgiving, gratitude, self-dedication, if they happen at all,
tend to be confined to a single day of the week, to happen under
one roof only of one kind of structure only, under certain triggering
circumstances only, to rest heavily on the presence of certain
traditional, powerful, but intrinsically irrelevant, stimuli,
e.g. organ music, incense, chanting of a particular kind, certain
regalia, and other arbitrary triggers. Being religious, or rather
feeling religious, under these ecclesiastical auspices seems to
absolve many (most?) people from the necessity or desire to feel
these experiences at any other time. "Religionizing"
only one part of life secularizes the rest of it.
This is in contrast with my impression that "serious"
people of all kinds tend to be able to "religionize"
any part of life, any day of the week, in any
place, and under all sorts of circumstances, i.e., to be aware
of Tillich's "dimension of depth." Of course, it would
not occur to the more "serious" people who are non-theists
to put the label "religious experiences" on what they
were feeling, or to use such words as "holy," "pious,"
"sacred," or the like. By my usage, however, they are
often having "core-religious experiences" or transcendent
experiences when they report having peak-experiences. In this
sense, a sensitive, creative working artist I know who calls himself
an agnostic could be said to be having many "religious experiences,"
and I am sure that he would agree with me if I asked him about
it.
In any case, once this paradox is thought through, it ceases to
be a paradox and becomes, instead, quite obvious. If "heaven"
is always available, ready to step into (70), and if the "unitive
consciousness" (with its B-cognition, its perception of the
realm of Being and the sacred and eternal) is always a possibility
for any serious and thoughtful person, being to some extent under
his own control (54), then having such "core-religious"
or transcendental experiences is also to some extent under our
own control, even apart from peak-experiences. (Having enough
peak-experiences during which B-cognition takes place can lead
to the probability of B-cognizing without peak-experiences.)
I have also been able, by lecturing and by writing, to teach B-cognition
and unitive consciousness, to some students at least. In principle,
it is possible, through adequate understanding, to transform means-activities
into end-activities, to "ontologize" (66); to see voluntarily
under the aspect of eternity, to see the sacred and symbolic in
and through the individual here-and-now instance.
What prevents this from happening? In general, all and any of
the forces that diminish us, pathologize us, or that make us regress,
e.g., ignorance, pain, illness, fear, "forgetting,"
dissociation, reduction to the concrete, neuroticizing, etc. That
is, not having core-religious experiences may be a "lower,"
lesser state, a state in which we are not "fully functioning,"
not at our best, not fully human, not sufficiently integrated.
When we are well and healthy and adequately fulfilling the concept
"human being," then experiences of transcendence should
in principle be commonplace.
Perhaps now what appeared to me first as a paradox can be seen
as a matter of fact, not at all surprising. I had noticed something
that had never before occurred to me, namely that orthodox religion
can easily mean de-sacralizing much of life. It can lead to dichotomizing
life into the transcendent and the secular-profane and can, therefore,
compartmentalize and separate them temporally, spatially, conceptually,
and experientially. This is in clear contradiction to the actualities
of the peak-experiences. It even contradicts the traditionally
religious versions of mystic experience, not to mention the experiences
of satori, of Nirvana, and other Eastern versions of peak-and
mystic experiences. All of these agree that the sacred and profane,
the religious and secular, are not separated from each other.
Apparently it is one danger of the legalistic and organizational
versions of religion that they may tend to suppress naturalistic
peak-, transcendent, mystical, or other core-religious experiences
and to make them less likely to occur, i.e., the degree of religious
organization may correlate negatively with the frequency of "religious"
experiences.[1] Conventional
religions may even be used as defenses against and resistances
to the shaking experiences of transcendence.
There may also be another such inverse relationship—between
organizationism and religious transcendent experiencing—at least
for some people. (For however many this may be, it is a possible
danger for all. ) If we contrast the vivid, poignant, shaking,
peak-experience type of religious or transcendent experience,
which I have been describing, with the thoughtless, habitual,
reflex-like, absent-minded, automatic responses which are dubbed
"religious" by many people (only because they occur
in familiar circumstances semantically labeled "religious"),
then we are faced with a universal, "existential" problem.
Familiarization and repetition produces a lowering of the intensity
and richness of consciousness, even though it also produces
preference, security, comfort, etc. (55). Familiarization, in
a word, makes it unnecessary to attend, to think, to feel, to
live fully, to experience richly. This is true not only in the
realm of religion but also in the realms of music, art, architecture,
patriotism, even in nature itself.
If organized religion has any ultimate effects at all, it is through
its power to shake the individual in his deepest insides. Words
can be repeated mindlessly and without touching the intrapersonal
depths, no matter how true or beautiful their meaning, so also
for symbolic actions of any kind, e.g., saluting the flag, or
for any ceremonies, rituals, or myths. They can be extremely
important in their effects upon the person and, through him, upon
the world. But this is true only if he experiences them, truly
lives them. Only then do they have meaning and effect.
This is probably another reason why transcendent experiences seem
to occur more frequently in people who have rejected their inherited
religion and who have then created one for themselves (whether
they call it that or not). Or, to be more cautious, this is what
seems to occur in my sample, i.e., mostly college people. It is
a problem not only for conservative religious organizations but
also for liberal religious organizations, indeed for any organization
of any kind.
And it will be just as true for educators when they will finally
be forced to try to teach spirituality and transcendence. Education
for patriotism in this country has been terribly disappointing
to most profoundly patriotic Americans, so much so that just these
people are apt to be called un-American. Rituals, ceremonies,
words, formulae may touch some, but they do not touch many unless
their meanings have been deeply understood and experienced. Clearly
the aim of education in this realm must be phrased in terms of
inner, subjective experiences in each individual. Unless these
experiences are known to have occurred, value-education cannot
be said to have succeeded in reaching its true goal.[2]
Footnotes
1. I have just run across similar statements
in Jung's autobiography (35). "The arch sin of faith, it
seemed to me, was that it forestalled experience... and confirmed
my conviction that in religious matters only experience counted"
(p.92). "I am of course aware that theologians are in a more
difficult situation than others. On the one hand they are closer
to religion, but on the other hand they are more bound by church
and dogma" (p. 94). (I hope that we are all aware that it
is easier to be "Pure" outside an organization, whether
religious, Political, economic, or, for that matter scientific.
And yet we cannot do without organizations. Perhaps one day we
shall invent organizations that do not "freeze"?) (back)
2. The whole of Chapter 1. "Religion
Versus the Religious," (and especially the last two paragraphs)
in John Dewey's A Common Faith are relevant to the theme
of this chapter. As a matter of fact, the whole of Dewey's book
should be read by anyone interested in my theses.