Fusions of Facts and Values

I shall begin with an explanation of what I have called peak-experiences1 because it is in such experiences that my thesis is most easily and amply demonstrated. The word, peak-experiences, is a generalization for the best moments of the human being, for the happiest moments of life, for experiences of ecstacy, rapture, bliss, of the greatest joy. I found that such experiences came from profound esthetic experiences such as creative ecstacies, moments of mature love, perfect sexual experiences, parental love, experiences of natural childbirth and many others. I use the one word—peak-experiences—as a kind of generalized and abstract concept because I discovered that all of these ecstatic experiences had some characteristics in common. Indeed, I found that it was possible to make a generalized, abstract schema or model which could describe their common characteristics. The word enables me to speak of all or any of these experiences in the same moment1

When I asked my subjects, after they had described their peak-experiences, how the world looked different to them during these times, I received answers which also could be schematized and generalized. Actually it is almost necessary to do this for there is no other way of encompassing the thousands of words or descriptions which have been given to me. My own boiling-down and condensation of this multitude of words, and these many descriptions of the way the world looks to them, from perhaps a hundred people, during and after peak-experiences would be: truth, beauty, wholeness, goodness, dichotomy-transcendance, aliveness process, uniqueness, perfection, necessity, completion, justice, order, simplicity, richness, effortlessness, playfulness, and self-sufficiency.2

While it is perfectly true that this is one person's condensation and boiling-down, I have little doubt but that any one else would come up with approximately the same list of characteristics. I am confident that it would not be very different, at least not beyo