Religions, Values, and Peak-Experiences
Abraham H. Maslow
Appendix G. B-Values as Descriptions of Perception in Peak-Experiences
The described characteristics of Being are also the values of
Being. These Being values are perceived as ultimate and as further
unanalyzable (and yet they can each be defined in terms of each
and all of the others). They are paralleled also by the characteristics
of selfhood (identity) in peak-experiences; the characteristics
of ideal art; the characteristics of ideal mathematical demonstrations;
of ideal experiments and theories; of ideal science and knowledge;
the far goals of all ideal, uncovering (Taoistic, non-interfering)
psychotherapies; the far goals of the ideal humanistic education;
the far goals and the expression of some kinds of religion; the
characteristics of the ideally good environment and of the ideally
good society (62 ).
The following may be seen either as a list of the described attributes
of reality when perceived in peak. experiences, or as a list of
the irreducible, intrinsic values of this reality.
1. Truth: honesty; reality; (nakedness; simplicity; richness;
essentiality; oughtness; beauty; pure; clean and unadulterated
completeness).
2. Goodness: (rightness; desirability; oughtness; justice; benevolence;
honesty); (we love it, are attracted to it, approve of it).
3. Beauty: (rightness; form; aliveness; simplicity; richness;
wholeness; perfection; completion; uniqueness; honesty).
4. Wholeness: (unity; integration; tendency to oneness; interconnectedness;
simplicity; organization; structure; order; not dissociated; synergy;
homonymous and integrative tendencies).
4a. Dichotomy-transcendence: (acceptance, resolution, integration,
or transcendence of dichotomies, polarities, opposites, contradictions);
synergy (i.e., transformation of oppositions into unities, of
antagonists into collaborating or mutually enhancing partners).
5. Aliveness: (process; not deadness; dynamic; eternal; flowing;
self-perpetuating; spontaneity; self-moving energy; self-forming;
self-regulation; full-functioning; changing and yet remaining
the same; expressing itself; never-ending).
6. Uniqueness: (idiosyncrasy; individuality; singularity; non
comparability; its defining-characteristics; novelty; quale; suchness;
nothing else like it).
7. Perfection: (nothing superfluous; nothing lacking; everything
in its right place; unimprovable; just rightness; just-so-ness;
suitability; justice; completeness; nothing beyond; oughtness).
7a. Necessity: (inevitability; it must be just that way;
not changed in any slightest way; and it is good that it i5 that
way).
8. Completion: (ending; finality; justice; it's finished; no more
changing of the Gestalt; fulfillment; finis and telos;
nothing missing or lacking; totality; fulfillment of destiny;
cessation; climax; consummation; closure; death before rebirth;
cessation and completion of growth and development; total gratification
with no more gratification possible; no striving; no movement
toward any goal because already there; not pointing to anything
beyond itself ).
9. Justice: (fairness; oughtness; suitability; architectonic quality;
necessity; inevitability; disinterestedness; non-partiality).
9a. Order: (lawfulness; rightness; rhythm; regularity; symmetry;
structure; nothing superfluous; perfectly arranged ).
10. Simplicity: (honesty; nakedness; purity; essentiality; succinctness;
[mathematical] elegance; abstract; unmistakability; essential
skeletal structure; the heart of the matter; bluntness; only that
which is necessary; without ornament, nothing extra or superfluous
).
11. Richness: (totality; differentiation; complexity; intricacy;
nothing missing or hidden; all there; "nonimportance,"
i.e., everything is equally important; nothing is unimportant;
everything left the way it is, without improving, simplifying,
abstracting, rearranging; comprehensiveness).
12. Effortlessness: (ease; lack of strain, striving, or difficulty;
grace; perfect and beautiful functioning).
13. Playfulness: (fun; joy; amusement; gaiety; humor; exuberance;
effortlessness).
14. Self-sufficiency: (autonomy; independence; not needing anything
other than itself in order to be itself; self-determining; environment-transcendence;
separateness; living by its own laws; identity).
The descriptive B-values, seen as aspects of reality, should be
distinguished from the attitudes or emotions of the B-cognizer
toward this cognized reality and its attributes, e.g.,
awe, love, adoration, worship, humility, feeling of smallness
plus godlikeness, reverence, approval of, agreement with, wonder,
sense of mystery, gratitude, devotion, dedication, identification
with, belonging to, fusion with, surprise and incredulousness,
fear, joy, rapture, bliss, ecstasy, etc.
One recurring problem for all organized, revealed religions during
the last century has been the flat contradiction between their
claim to final, total, unchangeable, eternal and absolute truth
and the cultural, historical, and economic flux and relativism
affirmed by the developing social sciences and by the philosophers
of science. Any philosophy or religious system which has no place
for flux and for relativism is untenable (because it is untrue
to all the facts). But the human yearnings for peace, stability,
for unity, for some kind of certainty, all continue to exist and
to seek fulfillment even after the religious establishments have
failed to do the job.
It may be that data from the peak-experiences will one day offer
a possible resolution or transcendence of the dichotomy between
relative and absolute, historical and eternal. The B-values derived
from the peak-experiences, as well as from other sources (62),
may supply us with a perfectly naturalistic variety of "certainty,"
of unity, of eternity, of universality. Of course, all these words
will have to be understood in a particular way that is novel and
unfamiliar. And yet, enough of the old, yearned for meaning is
retained to supply the fulfillment that the organized religions
used to claim they could supply.
Of course, these "ultimate truths," if they are confirmed,
are still truths within a system. That is, they seem to be true
for the human species. That is, in the same sense that
Euclidian theorems are absolutely true within the Euclidian
system. Again, just as Euclidian propositions are ultimately
tautologous, so also the B-values (See Appendix F) may very well
turn out to be defining characteristics of humanness in its essence,
i.e., sine qua non aspects of the concept "human,"
and, therefore, tautologous. The statement, "The fully human
person in certain moments perceives the unity of the cosmos, fuses
with it, and rests in it, completely satisfied for the moment
in his yearning for one-ness," is very likely synonymous,
at a "higher level of magnification" (59), with the
statement, "This is a fully human person."
For the moment, I shan't attempt to go beyond these "species-relative
absolutes" to discuss the absolutes that would remain if
the human species were to disappear. It is sufficient at this
point to affirm that the B-values are absolutes of a kind,
a humanly satisfying kind, which, furthermore, are "cosmocentric"
in Marcel's sense, and not personally relative or selfishly ego-centered.