Meditation and Self-transcendence: A Human Need?

Building on previous work that connects Taoist principles and social psychology, this commentary explores how mindfulness, meditation, and self-transcendence fit into Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs. It proposes adding a new layer to the hierarchy: the need for self-transcendence, drawing on Maslow's concept of peak-experiences and William James' notion of mystical experiences. An autoethnographic meditative experience is analyzed as a peak-experience to illustrate how people strive for this state of being.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Building on Fircks (2023), who aims at integrating the theoretical and historical roots of mindfulness into psychology through a bridge between Taoism, relying on the polarity of life and wu wei (the principle of not-forcing) and Mead's Social Psychology, this commentary seeks to further explore how mindfulness, meditation and self-transcendence plays a role in the personal needs hierarchy of the human organism. This is done in the framework of Abraham Maslow's theory of human motivation and his hierarchy of needs, where a model that introduces a new layer in the hierarchy of needs, the need for self-transcendence, is presented. This model containing the new hierarchy of self-transcendence is based on Maslow's own notion of peak-experiences, as well as related to William James' notion of mystical experiences. Fircks' (2023) autoethnographic meditative experience is conceptualized as a peak-experience and analyzed to show how human beings strive to experience this state of being.