Christmas
Consciousness
by
Maurice Bassett
What
makes Christmas so special to adults and children alike, beyond the fact that it
is a celebration of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth?
Surely the story of the Christ child's birth in a manger, accompanied by
wise men, captures the imagination, and inspires songs and rituals.
But is there more than simple religious ritual at work?
The American psychologist, Dr Abraham H. Maslow, would argue there is.
He would point to the tacit dimension of Christmas and approach it as a
phenomenon capable of, and worthy of, naturalistic observation.
Unfortunately, Maslow never undertook this challenge himself, and I shall
have to explore Christmas Consciousness as part of Maslow's more general
research into the phenomenon known as the peak experience.
Having attained an understanding of the nature of the peak experience,
with emphasis on its role as a sine qua non to self-actualisation, I shall
endeavour to outline the self-image psychology of Maslow's contemporary, Colin
Wilson, in an effort to get a foothold on Christmas Consciousness, beyond
Christmas Day.
Growing
Tip of Humanity
The
origins of Abraham Maslow's discovery of the peak experience can be traced to
1935 when he first began studying his mentors, Ruth Benedict and Max Wertheimer,
for evidence of what he came later to call self-actualisation.
Long before using this term, which he borrowed from Kurt Goldstein,
Maslow called his subjects "Good Human Being" and kept a special
notebook for his observations and intuitions regarding these exceptional
individuals. Persons such as
Abraham Lincoln, |Thomas Jefferson, Albert Einstein, and Eleanor Roosevelt,
according to Maslow, exhbited a need to actualise their unique potential, and
were thereby motivated far more by their "missions" than by ordinary
needs for self-esteem, companionship and security.
These self-actualizing persons comprised only one percent or less of the
population, as Maslow discovered. They
were usually creative persons, and highly concerned with human affairs, yet
often loners or outsiders. Also,
as unenculturated eschewers of the status quo, these person called what Maslow
came to call the "growing tip" of humanity; and he soon discovered the
fact that "mystic experiences" (Lowry, 1973, p.91), later called peak
experiences, were an essential attribute of self-actualisers.
Of
the four subjects noted above, Maslow successfully interviewed, and corresponded
with, Eleanor Roosevelt. She, as it
so happened, never divulged her peak moments to Maslow, and he came to label her
as an anomalous "non-peaker" - "not the person who is unable to
have peak experiences, but rather the person who is afraid of them, who
suppresses them...or who 'forgets' them"
(Maslow, 1964, p.22). In
numerous other instances, however, Maslow gleaned information from his subjects
- often students and colleagues - regarding their peak moments in life.
As the facts began to surface, Maslow gained an understanding of the
profound difference between his self-actualizing subjects and those who remained
under the yoke of deficiency motivations such as security and self-esteem.
Thus, his fifteen years of research, pointing to a new psychology of
health rather than of pathology or deficiency, culminated in the publication of Self-Actualizing People: A Study of Psychological Health in 1950.
Maslow did not achieve real recognition, however, until 1954 when this
study was included in his anthology Motivation
and Personality (Maslow, 1954).
Maslow
originally defined peak experiences as "moments of highest happiness and
fulfillment." (Maslow, 1968,
p. 73). Oddly enough, Maslow did
not use the term "peak experience" in his 1950 paper, or in the first
edition of Motivation and Personality,
from 1954; he simply retained Freud’s term, “the oceanic feeling” (p. 216)
until he coined his own term in 1954 or 1955.
During these years Maslow undertook a phenomenological study of the peak
experience by obtaining solicited and unsolicited reports of peak experiences
and reading works on yoga and Zen Buddhism, including books by J. Krishnamurti
and Alan Watts (Hoffman, 1988, p. 224). Then,
in the spring of 1956, he attempted to publish a rather unorthodox paper to
summarise his research, Cognition of Being
in the Peak Experience, but failed to find a journal within his discipline
which would take such a risk. Finally,
as a keynote speaker at an American Psychological Association convention, he
presented his paper on September 1, 1956. (Years
later, in 1959, it was finally published by The
Journal of Genetic Psychology.) Reactions
were mixed; many of his colleagues felt that he had stepped to far beyond the
limits of psychology and into the realm of religion.
As a confirmed atheist, Maslow was quick to disassociate the peak
experience from its historically religious origins. He knew that he had entered virtually unexplored
territory in psychology and was furthering the work which William James began in
The Varieties of Religious Experience, yet he downplayed the role of religion in
religious experience; i.e., he favoured the humanistic aspects of religion above
its supernatural aspects.
Eruption
Into Consciousness
Through
his many interviews, Maslow soon learned that religious events such as Christmas
could serve as catalysts to the peak
experience, but so too could music, art, drugs such as LSD and alcohol and sex.
The peak experience could in fact be said to be a kind of orgasm, though
not every orgasm could be considered a peak experience.
In short, Maslow acknowledged that the peak experience came as a kind of
response to experiences of perfection; it was "the 100% experience, the
100% response to 100% stimulus" (Lowry, 1979, p. 944).
Not all sexual encounters are experiences of perfection, nor are all
religious events great epiphanies in ones life. As Maslow believed, those times which often profoundly alter
ones perceptions, such as the beauty of a sunset, or a phone call from a distant
loved one, come serendipitously, as if by grace. "A peak experience seems to be an eruption into
consciousness" (Lowry, 1979,
p.171) Maslow wrote, while pondering on the causal forces behind one of his
wife's peaks. Thus, in
company with C.S. Lewis, whose Surprised by Joy so influenced him, Maslow
considered the peak experience an epiphenomenon of health and something best not
sought directly. After all,
it would flood an individual at any time as a natural response to perfection, so
how could one presume to summon it forth at will?
An effective example of the peak experience can be found in Maslow's
journal entry for September 20, 1962:
"I'm
writing on my beautiful brick terrace for the first time, overlooking the
Charles River; the sun is out; all is green & rustly.
Watching a little group of yellow warblers feeding on my
property, my trees, my river, my world, my birds.
They're so beautiful - it's all such a miracle & suddenly tears come
to my eyes. I feel so
fortunate. This river is such a
fulfillment, such a hopeless hope come true unexpectedly.
And then the thought of all the Jews starved & gassed & burned,
who don't have all of this. I
could so easily have been one of them...I feel grace - as the Catholics say -
undeserved good fortune. (Lowry,
1979, p. 195)
Obviously
Maslow was no stranger to the peak experience, and many more of his personal
peaks are to be found in his posthumously published journals.
Essentially, according to Maslow's view, the peak experience can be seen
as an energy spurt where ones consciousness is suddenly and serendipitously
overwhelmed by a perception of meaning or value. Maslow often emphasised that the values of Being such as
justice, beauty, and truth - or B-values for short - were cognisable during the
peak experience. (See, for example,
Appendix G of Religions, Values and Peak
Experiences (Maslow, 1964) These
important illuminations often had therapeutic effect upon the character.
As with James's religious "conversion experiences", the peak
experience seemed to facilitate cognitive and behavioural changes in those
persons who actively applied their insights to their lives.
In the above quote from Maslow's journal, for example, Maslow could be
said to have attained a perception of not only beauty, in the birds and the
river, but of truth through understanding how lucky he was not to have been a
victim of the Holocaust. Interestingly,
prior to his peak experience, these were basic facts which he knew
intellectually, but had not grasped in
toto with his whole being.
Beyond
Passivity
So
it would seem that meaning perception is a very subtle mode of consciousness -
something which cannot be engaged at will, and something which one must wait for
as a child must wait for Christmas each year to achieve Christmas Consciousness.
Goethe's Faust saw his life as meaningless and was about to commit
suicide until he heard the "hymn of comfort singing" and the tolling
of the Easter bells (Goethe, 1883, p.44).
Something inside him, call it the unconscious, responded unconditionally
to the prospect of his death and succeeded in revitalizing him.
But if peak moments can provide much-needed energy during times of
crisis, and the unconscious is, perhaps, subsidising all the efforts of
consciousness, then surely some discipline exists for harnessing those energies
for everyday use. The next step in
attaining Christmas Consciousness, then, is to reach beyond Faust's passivity,
towards a sense of purpose which outlasts the mere ringing of Easter bells.
Existentially
speaking, the peak experience is a kind of growth experience. While the artist
may choose to build upon his peaks and create masterpieces of intensity such as
Van Gogh's Starry Night, the alcoholic
or Peeping Tom may pursue his peaks for purely selfish reasons. Each person has
the right to choose whether to embrace or reject his or her peak moments. Maslow
self-actualisers are characterised by their ability to assimilate experience,
both positive and negative, and extract a kind of fuel which propels the
imagination and awakens the sense of purpose, nourishing it just as food or
drink revitalises the body. In
the parlance of Bernard Shaw, self-actualisers have a fundamental appetite to
propagate the Life Force far above the ambitions of the personality. They know
how imperative it is to have a vision of purpose, and how powerfully such a
vision can be ignited by the forces of the will until it burns like a furnace.
As Shaw wrote in Man and Superman,
"To be in hell is to drift; to be in heaven is to steer."
(Shaw, 1904, p. 134). This maxim holds true for Maslovian psychology,
though Maslow himself was more of a Taoist than a Shavian will-worshipper, he
nonetheless evolved toward full humanness in his idiosyncratic way.
True genius means following your vision at all costs; and consciousness
is the gauge whereby you measure your progress.
When inflated properly, consciousness rolls along with very little
resistance, making tremendous mileage. Having
a peak experience amounts to increasing the pressure of consciousness; the joy,
the ecstasy, the perception of truth and beauty are all experiences which can be
captured and returned to again and again like remote towns via a map.
The mental map all human beings possess, of course, is the imagination -
the faculty that permits the individual to reach out to other realities.
The
Wilson Connection
Profoundly
important to any study of Maslovian psychology is the work of his biographer and
friend, the British writer Colin Wilson.
Maslow was deeply influenced by both WIlson's novels and his books on
existentialism. In fact, the
lengthy peak experience I have quoted above occurred while Maslow was in the
process of reading Wilson's second work Religion
and the Rebel. Thus,
after having read Wilson's first three books, Maslow inaugurated a
correspondence with Wilson which lasted from 1963 to Maslow's death in 1970. Of the several studies of Maslow's life and work,
Wilson's New Pathways in Psychology:
Maslow and the Post-Freudian Revolution is by far the best. Maslow himself facilitated Wilson's efforts by providing
autobiographical tapes and all the papers Wilson needed to do the job properly.
Where
psychology is concerned Wilson's central thrust has been the self-image concept. During the sixties he began to see the peak experience as a
kind of promotion experience followed instantly by demotion.
That is, as a result of the peak experience, ones self-image becomes
enhanced briefly, to the point where an ideal image can be perceived, then
swiftly disappears. Of course, a choice is applied in the aftermath of this
experience: whether to maintain ones normal identity, or risk adopting a new
self-image. As Wilson states, the
self-image is "a way of focusing powers that would otherwise find
themselves deprived of an object." (Wilson,
1972, p. 267) Years later, in
1985, Wilson advanced his self-image psychology by means of a novel The
Personality Surgeon. Briefly, Wilson argues for the use of advanced technology,
through computers and video cameras, in sessions of personality therapy or
"surgery." Subjects are
given tools to see themselves phenomenologically, as if through the eyes of
others, and then chose which image they think appropriate, if any.
The
ritual of Christmas will never be replaced, but the phenomenon of Christmas
Consciousness need not occur for so short a time if it was grasped that every
response one makes - to the phone ringing, to traffic in the morning, to an
overcrowded classroom -is indicative of underlying values; and consciousness is
the tool whereby these may be understood or improved upon.