(8) The experience results in a positive change in attitude and behavior relative to oneself, others and life. There is an increased personality integration, including a heightened sense of personal worth. One has an increased faith in their own potential for creative achievement. There is greater compassion, sensitivity and tolerance felt in one's relationships with other persons. There is a loss of the fear of death and an enriched appreciation for the whole of creation.¹¹

Tart's description of altered states of consciousness is more general than Maslow's, which deals specifically with peak experience. The latter refers to a very specific kind of altered state, and next to the near-death experience it is the most profound type. A synopsis of the peak experience was presented in the preface. Maslow believed that mystical, religious or transcendental experiences were all varieties of peak experience.¹²

The peak experience leads to a substantial change in the life of anyone who has had one, relative both to attitudes and behavior. One learns that life is a process, and the prior distinctions between winning and losing, success and failure, become much less important.¹³...The individual begins to trust intuition much more. Their inner signals become stronger. One feels as if he or she is cooperating with events, rather than controlling them or suffering them, by aligning themselves with existing forces.¹⁴...There is a transformation of fear so that virtually any ill event can be accepted. There is no longer a fear of failure, because of the realization that we are engaged in a continuous learning process. One is no longer intimidated by pain or paradox. Each survival and transcendence adds courage for every new encounter.¹⁵

The intensity of the peak experience appears to have a more profound effect than does the content of the experience, as far as each is related to subsequent change in values, personality and conduct, either positive or negative. Painful experiences appear to be as personally revealing and permanently beneficial as experiences of great joy and beauty.¹⁶

It has been determined that the incidence of peak experience is surprisingly common. Andrew Greeley and William McReady, of the University of Chicago, conducted a survey of the U.S. population in 1975 and determined that 40% reported they had had a mystical or peak experience during their lifetime.¹⁷

The near-death experience is the other very profound form of altered state of consciousness, probably the more profound of the two. It is very similar in most respects to the peak experience as defined by Abraham Maslow. A controlled study of near-death or "core experience," as reported by Kenneth Ring, lists various elements that were common to many individuals interviewed. The core elements reported by Ring, which are similar to those of the peak experience, include feelings of profound peace, well-being, joy or euphoria; loss of bodily sensation; absence of pain; feeling of separation from the physical body, often floating through a soft black void; the taking stock of one's life in a completely guilt-free environment; loss of time-sense; the feeling of total acceptance, warmth, love and security; a total and complete inability to find words which can convey the quality of the experience; and a permanent and profound effect which changes one's life.¹⁸...Images are also seen in a holographic domain, with the observer being a part of the process. About the only major differences between near-death and peak experiences are that in peak experience there is the lack of perception of dying or death, the lack of perception of traveling through a tunnel toward a bright light, and the lack of rapid visual playback of a life review.

Netscape CTRL + D MAC Command + D

page 15.3