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Religions, Values, and Peak-ExperiencesAbraham H. MaslowAppendix C. Ethnocentric Phrasings of Peak-ExperiencesIt 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. 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." 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; they are like dreams of a person born blind.... Thus a genuine mystic experience may mediate a bona fide conversion to practically any creed, 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. I take the generalized peak-experience to be that which is common to all places and times.
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