Maslow’s Final Contribution to the Hierarchy of Needs.

Abraham H. Maslow’s (synthesizer of the Hierarchy of Needs model) spent his final year of life outlining the plateau experience as his final contribution to the field of transpersonal psychology. Pulling from Taoism and other wisdom traditions, Maslow defines the plateau experience as a shift in ones consciousness from the personal to a perception of receiving one’s surroundings, marked by a sense of unity. The plateau phase is about cultivating an appreciation and patience in the miraculous nature of our ordinary existence, in our community, in our loved ones and in ourselves.

The plateau experieince is less of a departure from the original last experience of self- actualization (the original final phase in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs), but rather a settling that happens when we fully accept ourselves and the experience of being human as part of the larger systems that surround us. Unlike the short lasting, involuntary peak experiences that encompass the self-actualization phase, the plateau experience encounters the long lasting choice to see the beauty and the miraculous in all moments of our daily life. In essence the plateau experience represents an awakening to what has always been there, readily available, but unnoticed or only half-noticed… a more mundane permanence of unity as opposed to the acute mystical experiences encountered in the peak experiences of the self actualization phase.

Sam Harris explores this concept when confronting death…