of needs. Toward the very end of his life,
Maslow was working on an unfinished the-
ory, which included “self-transcendence” at
the top of his hierarchy of needs. In his de-
scriptions, self-transcendence involves fur-
thering a cause beyond the self and experi-
encing a radical shift in perspective, includ-
ing a communion beyond the boundaries of
the self through “peak experience.”
During the last few years of his life,
Maslow was enamored by the Buddhist
“Bodhisattva Path” to enlightenment. Here
is a snippet of an interview with Maslow
somewhere between November 23, 1968,
and January 24, 1969, just a few years be-
fore he suddenly died of a heart attack at
the age of 62:
“Well, we can talk about self-ac-
tualizing people at different levels much
more than I ever thought 10 years ago.
For one thing thereʼs this becoming ac-
quainted with people who had every-
thing. I mean everything in my terms, in
psychological terms rather than auto-
mobiles, and yet who could be quite un-
happy and not know their way and
stagger, and stumble around and do all
sorts of dopey things, and stupid things.Then there was another differentiation
that I had to make, that of people who
were basic-need gratified, neurosis free,
and using some capacities well, and yet
being “merely healthy” as I call it, the
“merely healthy” as over against the
transcenders. Well, I think the differ-
ence comes from those who have peak
experiences and those who donʼt, more
or less. Thatʼs what I described first for
self-actualizing people who are tran-
scenders mostly, people in whom the ba-
sic-need gratification would automati-
cally lead to the value system which im-
plies also the Bodhisattva path. That is,
the helping service to humanity or the
helping of other people... and of simply
becoming better human beings for oth-
ers, as well as for themselves, and finally
of transcending the ego.These ideas preoccupied Maslow so
much at the latest stages of his life that he
made a call for a new psychology beyond
humanistic psychology. On September 14,
1967, Maslow delivered a lecture in San
Francisco titled “The Farther Reaches of
Human Nature,” in which he presented
some of these ideas:The major emphasis in Humanis-
tic psychology rests on the assumptions
regarding “higher needs.”... These high-
er human needs are... biological, and I
speak here of love, the need of love, for
friendship, for dignity, for self-respect,
for individuality, for self-fulfillment, and
so on. If however, these needs are ful-
filled, a different picture emerges. There
are people who do feel loved and who are
able to love, who do feel safe and secure
and who do feel respected and who do
have self-respect. If you study these peo-
ple and ask what motivates them, you
find yourself in another realm. This realm
is what I have to call transhumanistic,
meaning that which motivates, gratifies,
and activates the fortunate, developed,
i.e., already self-actualizing person.
These people are motivated by some-
thing beyond the basic needs. The...
point of departure, into this transhu-
manistic realm comes when they answer
the following kind of questions: “What
are the moments which give you...
the greatest satisfaction?... What are
the moments of reward which make
your work and your life worthwhile?”
The answers to those questions were in