Integration & Unification (Higher-Thinking Skills Becoming Reified...)

Integration & Unification (Higher-Thinking Skills Becoming Reified…)
 
 
"As one reads the works of Abraham Maslow (pioneer of Humanistic/ Transpersonal Psych) as he describes 'peak-experiences' in the lives of productive, healthy, and creative persons, one sees the psychological equivalents of the classical meanings of conversion discussed... The following description by Maslow of the aspects of a peak-experience as an acute identity experience is an empirical description of what an earlier generation called conversion... Note that at no point does he call peak-experiences conversion, but also note how similar the descriptions are:
 
'The person in the peak-experience feels more integrated (unified, whole, all-of-a-piece), than at other times. He also looks (to the observer) more integrated in various ways (described below), e.g., less split or dissociated, less fighting against himself, more at peace with himself, less split between an experiencing-self and an observing-self, more one-pointed, more harmoniously organized, more efficiently organized with all his parts functioning very nicely with each other, more synergic with less internal friction, etc.
 
'As he gets to be more purely and singly himself he is more able to fuse with the world.
 
'The person in the peak-experiences usually feels himself to be at the peak of his powers, using all his capacities at the best and fullest.
 
'A slightly different aspect of fully-functioning is effortlessness and ease of functioning when one is at one's best.
 
'He is now more free of blocks, inhibitions, cautions, fears, doubts, controls, reservations, self-criticisms, brakes. These may be the negative aspects of the feeling of worth, of self-acceptance, of self-love-respect.
 
'He is therefore more spontaneous, more expressive, more innocently behaving (guileless, naive, honest, candid, ingenuous, child-like, artless, unguarded, defenseless), more natural (simple, relaxed, unhesitant, plain, sincere, unaffected, primitive in a particular sense, immediate), more uncontrolled and freely flowing outward (automatic, impulsive, reflexlike, 'instinctive', unrestrained, unself-conscious, thoughtless, unaware).
 
'In the peak-experiences, the individual is more here-now, most free of the past and of the future in various senses, most 'all there' in the experience.
 
'The person now becomes more a pure psyche and less a thing-of-the-world living under the laws of the world.
 
'Expression and communication in the peak-experiences tend often to become poetic, mythical and rhapsodic, as if this were the natural kind of language to express such states of being.
 
'All peak-experiences may be fruitfully understood.
 
'People during and after peak-experiences characteristically feel lucky, fortunate, graced. A not uncommon reaction is 'I don't deserve this.' Peaks are not planned or brought about by design; they happen. We are 'surprised by joy.' The reaction of surprise, of unexpectedness, of the sweet 'shock of recognition' are very frequent.


'A common consequence is a feeling of gratitude, in religious persons to their God, in others to Fate, to Nature, to people, to the past, to parents, to the world, to everything and anything that helped to make this wonder possible. This can go over into worship, giving thanks, adoring, giving praise, oblation and other reactions which fit very easily into a religious framework. Clearly any psychology of religion, either supernatural or natural, must take account of these happenings, as also must any naturalistic theory of the origins of religion (Abraham Maslow, Toward a Psychology of Being).
 
'He ('peaker') may be on a pilgrimage to a fresh restatement of his faith which he can understand and use. This is the best possible hope. The worst possible solution may be that he does not see that the psychological systems of today are in essence surrogate religions. Thus, his teeth will be set on edge against the religion of parents that has indeed lost its power and become a 'grapes of wrath' kind of bitterness rather than love, joy, peace, long suffering, and kindness which are the fruits of the spirit (Wayne E. Oates, 'Conversion: Sacred and Secular)."