5/13/2019 0 Comments Maslow Peak Experience PdfAntenna by Adam Scott Miller The great British cult polymath philosopher Colin Wilson celebrated his 80th birthday in June. His prodigious output has included a dizzying variety of subject matter since his first book The Outsider in 1956. Starting from an investigation of the psychology of famous mavericks, ranging from Nietzsche to Lawrence of Arabia, the dancer Nijinsky and the mystic Gurdjieff, Wilson later went on to cover the occult and paranormal, serial killers, UFOlogy, ancient civilisations, literature and sexuality. He sometimes experimented with pulp-fiction formats to produce crime and science fiction novels that served as vehicles for his greater ideas that could be broadly termed (after the title of one of his books) a New Existentialism. For those interested in personal development and higher states of consciousness, and what that means in everyday moment-to-moment terms, perhaps the most accessible zone in Wilson’s vast corpus concerns his friendship with Abraham Maslow and the fruitful ideas this produced. PDF| Since Abraham Maslow's death in 1970, his concept of peak experience has enlarged our understanding of human spirituality. It has also influenced a. Here is an extract from the section The Psychology of Thelema in my Aleister Crowley and the Aeon of Horus. It can hopefully serve as a little taster for those who might want to investigate Wilson and Maslow more. It is also the foundation of the presentation on the subject I shall be giving in Glastonbury on August 10th. Abraham Maslow He discovered that people from all ages, genders, and backgrounds reported what he came to call “peak experiences,” a phrase that has passed into general cultural vocabulary. In all kinds of different circumstances, a sudden feeling of extraordinary well-being and elevated sensibilities might descend on people. For example, a young drummer talked of occasions when, after extensive practising, he suddenly found himself in a superb focused state where it was if the drums played themselves. There are now so many reports of similar phenomenon in sport that a whole literature and psychology has grown up around it. A mother preparing breakfast for her husband and children went into a state of profound joy and fulfilment when a ray of sunshine suddenly lit the scene. It seemed to simultaneously illuminate her higher emotions. She felt profound gratitude for what her everyday consciousness had started to take for granted. Once peak experiences were discussed, people began to remember many others. They also started to have new ones with increasing regularity. The psyche responds readily to all intimations of transcendent wholeness. This sort of thing would be called gratuitous grace by Catholics. They are often simple transient versions of the states recorded by the more famous mystics. Maslow believed that the ground can be prepared for them but they can’t really be induced to order. The preparation involves meeting the demands of what he called the Hierarchy of Needs. We have primal desires for food, shelter, and breeding. Freud developed a whole theory of human behaviour and the nature of society on the basis of these factors, feeling they were sufficient to explain everything. Maslow believed that if the basic needs are met, there is another dynamic that arises and also requires urgent fulfilment. He called it “Self-Actualisation”. People need to have a sense of inner worth, of distinct individuality, of growth. Some kind of creativity seeks expression. Denial of these urges produces alienation, inertia, all manner of dysfunctional grief. Colin Wilson at the time he became famous as a 24yr old for his cult-classic The Outsider. Colin Wilson knew all about this problem. His first book, cult classic The Outsider, was a study of the self-destructive path of many confused artistic types who had sought an outlet for their inner dynamism in a society that could not adequately accommodate them. The painter Van Gogh, the dancer Nijinsky, and philosopher Nietzsche, were all examples of intense talents that imploded.
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