Abraham Maslow on Revelation, Visions and Visitations...
Posted: Sat Jan 19, 2008 12:09 am
...including spiritual witnesses of the LDS kind. The emphasis added in brackets is mine.
Charity sought to discredit my post by asserting that I didn't know what I was talking about with regard to Maslow and his views on the relationship between peak experiences and religious experiences:
The following two quotes should settle the issue pretty soundly and also give great insight into the nature of those who clam to infallibly know that they have communed with a labeled supernatural entity:
Charity sought to discredit my post by asserting that I didn't know what I was talking about with regard to Maslow and his views on the relationship between peak experiences and religious experiences:
amantha, you have seriously misrepresented Maslow's concept of "peak experience." There was no provision for visions or visitaitons. Maslow particularly did not include religious experiences in his theory.
A peak experience is a sudden feeling of happiness and heightened control over the emotions, a sense of awareness. Awe and wonder are common expressions of the feelings associated with a peak experience. There is a sense of understanding that unifies the persons's cognititons.
There was no provision in the peak experience for revelation, visions, or visitations.
Spiritual or religious experiences could incluide peak experiences. But as all collies are dogs, but not all dogs are collies, there are spiritual and religious experiences OUTSIDE the Maslow theory.
The following two quotes should settle the issue pretty soundly and also give great insight into the nature of those who clam to infallibly know that they have communed with a labeled supernatural entity:
The very beginning, the intrinsic core, the essence, the universal nucleus of every known high religion (unless Confucianism is also called a religion) has been the private, lonely, personal illumination, revelation, or ecstasy of some acutely sensitive prophet or seer. The high religions call themselves revealed religions and each of them tends to rest its validity, its function, and its right to exist on the codification and the communication of this original mystic experience or revelation from the lonely prophet to the mass of human beings in general.
But it has recently begun to appear that these "revelations" or mystical illuminations can be subsumed under the head of the "peak-experiences"[1] or "ecstasies" or "transcendent" experiences which are now being eagerly investigated by many psychologists. That is to say, it is very likely, indeed almost certain, that these older reports, phrased in terms of supernatural revelation, were, in fact, perfectly natural, human peak-experiences of the kind that can easily be examined today, which, however, were phrased in terms of whatever conceptual, cultural, and linguistic framework the particular seer had available in his time (Laski).
In a word, we can study today what happened in the past and was then explainable in supernatural terms only. By so doing, we are enabled to examine religion in all its facets and in all its meanings in a way that makes it a part of science rather than something outside and exclusive of it.
Also this kind of study leads us to another very plausible hypothesis: to the extent that all mystical or peak-experiences are the same in their essence and have always been the same, all religions are the same in their essence and always have been the same. They should, therefore, come to agree in principle on teaching that which is common to all of them, I.e., whatever it is that peak-experiences teach in common (whatever is different about these illuminations can fairly be taken to be localisms both in time and space, and are, therefore, peripheral, expendable, not essential). This something common, this something which is left over after we peel away all the localisms, all the accidents of particular languages or particular philosophies, all the ethnocentric phrasings, all those elements which are not common, we may call the "core-religious experience" or the "transcendent experience." [from ISBN:0140194878, Religions, Values, and Peak Experiences by Abraham H. Maslow ©1964 by Kappa Delta Pi and ©1970 (preface) The Viking Press. Published by Penguin Books Limited ISBN 0 14 00.4262 8]
It has been demonstrated again and again that the transcendent experiences have occurred to some people in any culture and at any time and of any religion and in any caste or class. All these experiences are described in about the same general way; the language and the concrete contents may be different, indeed must be different. These experiences are essentially ineffable ( in the sense that even the best verbal phrasings are not quite good enough), which is also to say that they are unstructured (like Rorschach ink-blots). Also throughout history, they have never been understood in a naturalistic way. Small wonder it is then that the mystic, trying to describe his experience, can do it only in a local, culture-bound, ignorance-bound, language-bound way, confusing his description of the experience with whatever explanation of it and phrasing of it is most readily available to him in his time and in his place. [e.g. the holy ghost]
Laski (42) discusses the problem in detail in her chapters on "Overbeliefs" and in other places and agrees with James in disregarding them. For instance, she points out (p. 14), "To a substantial extent the people in the religious group knew the vocabulary for such experiences before they knew the experience; inevitably when the experiences are known, they tend to be recounted in the vocabulary already accepted as appropriate."[I.e. Moroni told me the spirit would confirm and by golly it did. Amazing that.]
Koestler (39) also said it well, "But because the experience is inarticulate, has no sensory shape, color or words, it lends itself to transcription in many forms, including visions of the cross, or of the goddess Kali; [there are your visions and visitations Charity and no you can't exclude Elohim and Jehova from the mix.]they are like dreams of a person born blind.... Thus a genuine mystic experience may mediate a bona fide conversion to practically any creed[Mormonsim], Christianity, Buddhism or Fire-Worship" (p. 353). In the same volume, Koestler reports in vivid detail a mystic experience of his own.
Still another way of understanding this phenomenon is to liken the peak experiences to raw materials which can be used for different styles of structures, as the same bricks and mortar and lumber would be built into different kinds of houses by a Frenchman, a Japanese, or a Tahitian (45).
I have, therefore, paid no attention to these localisms since they cancel one another out.[The visions and visitations are simply part and parcel of the religious experience qua peak experience] I take the generalized peak-experience to be that which is common to all places and times.[Religions, Values, and Peak Experiences ©1964 by Kappa Delta Pi and ©1970 (preface) The Viking Press. Published by Penguin Books LimitedISBN 0 14 00.4262 8]