Maslow's Law flawed?

Question

According to Maslow's law, we need to satisfy basic needs like air, water, food, sex before we can satisfy 'higher' needs. However, monks and nuns are celibate, yet they are still leading normal lives. Does that mean Maslow is incorrect, or did I misinterpret his theory wrongly?

Answer 1

Abraham Maslow's development as a psychologist is fascinating. In the 1950s, he developed his famed pyramid of human needs. At the top he placed "spiritual realization" or "spiritualization of senses." When promoting his theory in more godless U.S. academia, he left off this capstone, in order to make his basic idea more acceptable to academic sceptics and atheists.

In the last year of his life, about 1970, he evaluated his theory and the many case studies of individuals who had taken it up as a way to guide their lives. He found about 95-98% of the people did not do as well as his theory predicted. The reason was that they lacked a general moral and spiritual system of value and contact with God, Spirit.

He then revised his theory, calling it "Theory Z," to include at the top of the self-actualization hierarchy, God-realization or Self-realization. He was back where his intuition began, at the cost of many people not doing as well as they might have, if he'd been more brave.

Interestingly, Plato's highest goal for philosophy is to know God.

Saint Therese of Neumann lived, under 24/7 National Socialist military and medical hostile inspection and guard, without water or food, for decades. She stated she lived on God's Light. She lost no weight, and witnessed Christ Jesus' crucifixion on a weekly Friday basis, during the "Book of Revelation" outpicturing of the "mark of the beast" in Nazi Germany. Paramahansa Yogananda, a Saint, bravely visited her (he was not Blond and Blue-Eyed, you see), and both co-witnessed the Crucifixion records displayed for Saint Therese, and said he understood how she was indeed living on the Light of God. He joked to her, don't tell anyone...it will put the farmers out of a job. (Chronicled in "Autobiography of a Yogi," .)

Most religious are variously spiritually able, etc. Most live on water, food, and find sexual energies competing with what Yogananda terms kundalini, what the Taoists term "immortal body energy circulation." Hence, there is perhaps too often a tension in some Western religious, as to when their kundalini becomes focused on sexuality.

Some, such as Mother Teresa, devote their energies to rescuing pitiable suffering ones. This may be called "sublimation," and is not dissimilar to taking a cold shower.

Work comes before reproduction, as in "be fruitful and [then] multiply," and when the spiritual action of sexuality is understood as Saint Paul understood sex, it is both a little and a great thing.

So, Maslow is quite correct, insofar as he recognizes "Theory Z," and by sublimation monks and nuns who've not yet raised their kundalilni may work and work through their pro-Creative needs, and become more realized in that process. The realization of kundallini's movement from 1st to 7th (crown) chakra and beyond is also given in Ann Ree Colton's magnificent "Kundalini West," and in Mark Prophet's "Climb the Highest Mountain."

Also worthwhile in the maslowian line of reasoning: "The Reincarnation of Edgar Cayce?", Free and Wilcock, which chronicles a modern "rite of passage," and "Life before Life," Jim Tucker, M.D., who is doing good work in this field. In this wise, each day and even each embodiment-initiative is a movement of kundalini, Soul-individuation, a la Plotinus' One Mind Soul-individuation philosophy (he experienced out-of-body realization of the One, fulfillilng Plato's goal of philosophy, to know God). "Expecting Adam," Martha Beck, is a great example of fuller maslowian dynamics in action, as a young woman in a Harvard Ph.D. program, finding she is pregnant, raises her self-actualization by a selfless service (giving birth to her son); this book is highly worthwhile.

When a religious or an artist "jumps ahead" of the basic structure of human needs--aka "Jacob's Ladder" of true Mind and Soul realization--sublimation finds poignant expression as the religious or artist may combine e.g. sexual desire metaphor with divine Love/Self-realization; Saint Teresa of Avila, "Interior Castle," and Dante's "Paradiso" are possible examples of such focused Goodness.

"Creation: Artistic and Spiritual," O. M. Aivanhov, is good on this topic. Marie-Louise von Franz' "Number and Time: Reflections Leading toward a Unification of Depth Psychology and Physics" is worthwhile for some; she was a psychiatrist colleague of Jung's, and of W. Pauli's, quite brilliant, and ahead of the times. Likewise, contemporary psychiatrist Olga Kharitidi's "The Master of Lucid Dreams" and even her earlier "Entering the Circle" are wise (she pioneered in helping develop an out-of-body-inducing apparatus at a leading physics institute in the 1980s), as is professor of clinical psychology Elizabeth Mayer's "Extraordinary Knowing," and Dr. William Tiller's "Psychoenergetic Science;" he developed, prior to string theory, an experimental model [SU(2)] using quantum physics and what is known as string theory dimensionality, which has produced--with statisticall significance--certain quantum effects per trained human [psi] meditators, which effects otherwise are duplicatable only with high-end physics apparatus. Http://www.tiller.org

Lynne McTaggart's "The Field" is a lay-friendly report on some recent mainstream biophysics research which tends to corroborate Drs. Tiller's and Mayer's work.

cordially,

j.

p.s. On the lay level, http://www.coasttocoastam.com radio has occasional guests who discuss along these lines.

Answer 2

You pretty much got it right. Personally, I'm surprised that anyone believes in the thing.

In a similar vein, self-esteem is WAY above food, which suggests that he believes nobody can be proud of their skill as a hunter unless they have security, a good family life, and sexual intimacy. Nonsense.

I likewise take issue with some things which probably shouldn't even be in there - he puts spontaneity at the pinnacle but many wouldn't take to be much of a need at all, and he puts things like 'respect by others' which are essentially completely out of your control (as any stoic will tell you).

Most of the people I know who like it say that it's just a very loose guidleline, rather than any actual kind of structural set. In my opinion, that seems to defeat much of Maslow's purpose and would certainly preclude it from being a 'law'. But to each their own, I suppose.

Answer 3

Hmm-solid question. I guess the whole point of people who have the lifestyles of monks, nuns, etc. is that they want to elevate themeslves beyond everyday human desires. Therefore it doesn't necessarily invalidate Maslow's law that there are some people who chose lifestyles that are outside the "norm".

Answer 4

I wouldn't call their lives normal, but that might be a quibble. One needs to ask what "satisfy" means. The sex drive is a tricky thing; some people can sublimate it and thus "satisfy" it. And we don't know what goes on behind closed doors in a monastery.

Answer 5

Simplified version (at least as far as I understood): The law of causality (since A happened, B happened) is flawed (according to the author), especially when used in social sciences; it could just as easily be that since C happened, B happened). In other words, nothing is "for sure", something could happen "just because" or for a multitude of reasons. Now, do you agree? Why or why not?

Answer 6

1

Answer 7

One can satisfy their own sexual need, heck i did it for years...