Plateau Experience

From The SpiritWiki

A Plateau Experience is the name given by Abraham Maslowto [1] a more permanent form of Connection, achieved after years of experience and practice.

Syncretic Terms

Permanent Connection > Liberation, Nirvana, Plateau Experience, Ritambharapragya

Related Terms

Plateau Experience >

Notes

A Plateau Experience "...is to live at a constantly high level in the sense of illumination or awakening or in Zen, in the easy or miraculous, in the nothing special. It is to take rather casually the poignancy and the preciousness and the beauty of things, but not to make a big deal out of it because it's happening every hour, you know, all the time."[2]

"The important point that emerges from these plateau experiences is that they're essentially cognitive. As a matter of fact, almost by definition, they represent a witnessing of the world. The plateau experience is a witnessing of reality. It involves seeing the symbolic, or the mythic, the poetic, the transcendent, the miraculous, the unbelievable, all of which I think are part of the real world instead of existing only in the eyes of the beholder."[3]

A plateau experience is a permanent state of connection, one wherein you can still go to a grocery store, pay bills, etc. [4]


[5]

"...the plateau experience perhaps has more to do with the growth of the individual, while the peak experience could serve, like an LSD experience, as an opener." [6]

Footnotes

  1. Maslow, A. H. "Lessons from the Peak-Experiences." Journal of Humanistic Psychology 2 1 (1962)
  2. Maslow, A. H. "Lessons from the Peak-Experiences." Journal of Humanistic Psychology 2 1 (1962): p. 112.
  3. Maslow, A. H. "Lessons from the Peak-Experiences." Journal of Humanistic Psychology 2 1 (1962): p. 114.
  4. Maslow, A. H. "Lessons from the Peak-Experiences." Journal of Humanistic Psychology 2 1 (1962): p. 114.
  5. Gruel, Nicole. “The Plateau Experience: An Exploration of Its Origins, Characteristics, and Potential.” The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology 47, no. 1 (2015): 44–63.
  6. Walter Pahnke quoted in Maslow, A. H. "Lessons from the Peak-Experiences." Journal of Humanistic Psychology 2 1 (1962): p. 118.