LARRY MULLINS
LECTURE TO FLAGLER COLLEGE
PSYCHOLOGY STUDENTS
St. Augustine, Florida, November 10, 2009

SELF-ACTUALIZING and MASLOW’S LOST DISCOVERY

Good morning.

Self-actualizing is the process of becoming more and more REAL. But, how do people actualize their potentials? How do they become self-actualizers? And what relevance does the self-actualizing process have today? These are the questions I will address with you this morning.

Abraham Maslow set the modern motivational movement into motion long before anyone heard of The Secret, or Tony Robbins and Stephen Covey. Maslow’s ideas about self-fulfillment, creativity, and well-being still influence not only psychology, but also modern health care, education, managerial theory, organizational development, and even theology.

But very few people, even highly educated people, understand the self-actualizing process. The common wisdom is that a self-actualizing individual is essentially a person devoted to some great cause, or mission. Something he or she deems larger than self. While this is true, it is only part of the story. Because this description would fit Adolph Hitler or Osama bin Ladin. There is another element to self-actualizing that very few people understand. Maslow called it his greatest finding. But it was brushed aside and is in danger of being lost. Abraham Maslow discovered that every self-actualizer he studied was passionately devoted to what he called Being values. I term them MetaValues.

I have two primary purposes today. First, I will revisit Maslow’s lost discovery about self-actualizing, and I hope to demonstrate why it is critically important to you and your future.

I have a second, equally important mission today. Experts in this field have long known that the vast majority of people only achieve about one-tenth of their potential. This is as true today as it was fifty years ago, when Abraham Maslow was predicting a revolution in human potential. I want you to take home this message. Even though any individual in this room is capable of becoming a self-actualizing person and could live a life of extraordinary meaning and purpose, the odds are one hundred to one against most people doing this. This is of personal concern, because that means if you are typical, you will likely achieve only ten percent of your potential. This issue is also of academic concern, because if we could measurably increase the number of self-actualizers in the world, we could set a new world-changing renaissance into motion.

You may be thinking right now, “I’m an exception. I’m one of the top one percent.” If you are thinking that, you are right. You are potentially one of the top one percent. That’s what Dr. Maslow believed, and so do I.
First, I want to make you aware of what the self-actualizing process is, and how an understanding of Being values is the most important knowledge and aspiring actualizer can acquire. Second, to raise your awareness of what this means to your future success and happiness, and how Being values could launch the revolution in human thought Maslow predicted. I should add that, even though civilization is at this moment in a serious crisis of values, in my judgment we are on the brink of the revolution and renaissance that Maslow predicted.

WHAT IS SELF-ACTUALIZATION?

Briefly, self-actualization is about the endless process of becoming more real. Essentially, that process is one of reaching new levels of Being, of consciousness.

Now, I said a moment ago that very few people understand the self-actualizing process. I should qualify that remark with an example. Jim Collins wrote two smash best sellers for business people: Built to Last and Good to Great. Collins said this about the self-actualizing process:
“Maslow’s profound concept of self-actualization could generate a Copernican Revolution of work and society, catapulting us out of what future generations will look back on as the dark ages of management.”

Unfortunately, Jim Collins featured a company name Phillip Morris in both of his best sellers. Most of us would agree that Phillip Morris makes a product that damages the health of people, and may even kill them. Collins was confronted by some members of his staff who strongly believed this company was not a “great” company. But Collins concluded that the core values of a company did not matter so long as everyone was on board and agreed to them. This is exactly the opposite of what Abraham Maslow believed. In fact, Maslow asserted that such beliefs are toxic and dangerous.

That misunderstanding by a prominent leader is why I want you to embrace a paradigm shift. How many people in this room subscribe to the common belief that “My values are mine, and your values are yours?” When I talk to hard nosed business men I get about the same response. Most people think values are furniture for the mind. I want you to suspend disbelief for a few moments.

WHO WOULD KNOWING HIRE A LIAR?

Not all values are born equal. In matters of taste, or social mores, values are not transcultural. However, MetaValues are transcultural. All normal minds share the same key MetaValues of Truth, Beauty and Goodness. These are the great classic values of Socrates and Plato. As you might imagine, this idea does not resonate with most businesspeople.

The problem is you can’t see, or measure or weigh values. Then, how can I say we share them? We can detect MetaValues when we see them in action. I ask businesspersons, and I now ask you three questions.

1. Would you hire someone who was untrustworthy? Whom you knew lied, lacked integrity and had no regard for truth? 2. Would you hire someone who had no concern for the quality of his work? Who simply did sloppy, error prone work? 3. Would you hire someone who was reckless in his dealings with others, who was uncaring, and abrasive with other people?
Of course, all things being equal, you would want to hire people who have integrity, whose work embraced excellence, and who cared about and respected other people. On this level MetaValues are better understood. When we see someone operating with integrity, we see Truth manifesting itself. When we see excellence of any kind, we see Beauty being manifested. And when we see Caring, we see Goodness in action.

PLATO AND QUANTUM PHYSICS

I should backtrack here and note that Plato, after being long ignored, has again become more fashionable thanks to the discoveries of quantum physics. Plato believed that ideas such as truth, beauty and goodness were realities. We cannot see them, but he believed they existed independent of the material world. He even claimed these ideas existed in a reality superior to the physical world. Of course, this runs counter to what most people might think. But so does much of quantum Physics. Plato’s ideas were embraced by the father of the uncertainty principle, a pillar of quantum theory, Werner Heisenberg. He wrote in Across the Frontiers:

“I think that … modern physics has definitely decided for Plato. For the smallest pieces of matter are in fact not physical objects in the ordinary sense of the word; they are forms, structures—or in Plato’s sense—Ideas, which can be unambiguously spoken of only in the language of mathematics.”

If you are a deep thinker, you would ask the question: “How is it possible that we share these values?” Whether you are an Oxford scholar or a bush person in Australia, you honor and respect Truth. Likewise, you don’t need a sportscaster to tell you that you just saw a beautiful basketball shot, or a great chef to tell you that you just had and excellent meal. On some level, we all value and enjoy Beauty. And finally, we like to be around caring people. We all respect the value of Goodness.

We all have an intuitive reality response that protects us from the a priori assumptions of science, religion and philosophy. We all have an intuitive reality response that protects us from the a priori assumptions of science, religion and philosophy.

So grant me that on some level at least, there is a reasonable degree of intuitive evidence that we all share the MetaValues of Truth, Beauty and Goodness. These are the Being values that Abraham Maslow detected operating to an uncommon degree in self-actualizers. And this was the concept that Maslow called his most important finding, MetaValues (or what he designated as Being values.) Truth, Beauty and Goodness are Being values.

As I said, the concept of Being values has been neglected and is in danger of being lost. Being Values, or MetaValues are real. They are active agents, inner resources available to everyone. They change lives. They drive and inspire the top one percent of the world’s achievers, people Dr. Maslow designated as Self-Actualizers. MetaValues will one day lead to an explosion of human potential that will revolutionize the world we live in.

Once again, self-actualization is about the endless process of becoming more real. Essentially, that process is one of reaching new levels of Being, higher degrees of consciousness. Now the term Being is a key to a discussion of values. What do I mean by Being? What did Dr. Maslow mean when he said self-actualizers were driven by Being values?

ST. AUGUSTINE ON BEING VALUES

St. Augustine nailed the explanation. He would ask his students, and I now ask you, “Would you rather have a precious pearl, or an ordinary field mouse.” After his students gave the obvious answer, St. Augustine would ask: “If you had to choose one, would you rather BE a precious pearl or an ordinary field mouse?” The answer changes. Why? Because nonbeing is fine for an object that has value, but it is an unthinkable condition for a human being. A field mouse at least has some degree of volition.

St. Augustine’s idea clarifies a massively important issue: The difference between what HAS value and what IS value. Human consciousness is value. It is Being value. MetaValue. Consciousness is an evolutionary miracle that we almost never discuss. Yet it is with us day and night. And Abraham Maslow’s greatest findings involved our ability to affect our personal evolution and to actualize higher and higher states of Being.

Maslow first emerged as a Freudian and a behaviorist and a college professor with a hundred and eighty IQ. In his early years he believed human behavior was a simply malleable product of its genes and its environment. Yet he went on to discover a new kind of person.

He began to change his mind about the nature of humankind when his wife had their first child. Observing this child Dr. Maslow became convinced that there is more to human behavior than could be explained by Freud or Watson.

He did not refute these ideas, but rather felt they were inadequate in scope. There was something deeper and more complex than materialist, reductionist ideas could explain.

MASLOW DISCOVERS THE SELF-ACTUALIZING PERSONALITY

The big insight that first signaled WHAT this something is came early in his career. Maslow was a teacher at Brooklyn College in the late thirties when his concept of self-actualizing was born. New York at that time was in a golden age of intellectual and academic riches. Great minds were migrating from Europe to the US to escape the Nazi menace. Young Maslow was thrilled to rub elbows with some of the greatest minds of his generation. Two of these genius minds stood out above all the others. One was Ruth Benedict, and the other was Max Wertheimer. Ruth Benedict was an anthropologist who wrote a ground-breaking work about the cultures of Native Americans long before it was politically correct to do so. Wertheimer was an esteemed European who help found the school of Gestalt psychology that saw the brain as a holistic mechanism capable a great leaps of conceptual thought.

So fascinating were these personalities that Maslow began making notes on them. Beyond intellectual achievements, there was an intangible essence of character that affected everything these two did. They had an uncommon degree of sensitivity to others, they operated with uncompromising integrity, and they had a passionate devotion to a mission greater than self. With all this they each had a childlike openness and embraced new, creative ideas. They focused their egos on problems, not personal issues or gain. They simply did not act like most people act.

Maslow studied the differences between the two, noting that one was a woman who achieved her Ph.D. relatively late in life after a traumatic, lonely childhood and a difficult marriage. The other was a man trained as a musician and lawyer before discovering his driving passion. She grew up in America. He grew up in battle-torn Europe.

Then the pivotal insight came. Maslow looked down at his descriptions of Benedict and Wertheimer and realized that he was not looking at lists of the qualities of two people. Instead, he was looking at a description of a kind of person. The two were different in many ways, raised in different environments, but what was most notable was what united them. Each laughed with gusto, lived on the verge of reckless abandon, and embraced life. Could it be that this is what a human being is actually supposed to be? Maslow wondered. Why are these two people able to reach such levels of excellence? Are there others?

This line of thinking ran straight up against Maslow’s Freudian and behaviorist training. The schools of Freud and Skinner had virtually completely focused on sick people.

THIRD FORCE PSYCHOLOGY IS BORN

But what if doing so left a gaping hole in the understanding of human potential? What if there were more like Benedict and Wertheimer? What could one learn from a clinical study of these people? Would it be possible to discover the inner forces that drove the highest and best of humanity?
The new idea was electric and overwhelming in its implications. With rare exceptions, psychology and psychiatry had examined only the failed—or at least the foundering—specimens of humankind. But that evening in Brooklyn, Abraham Maslow uncovered evidence of a new kind of person: the self-actualizing individual. This discovery would launch an avocation to find more of the people who were somehow totally engaged in the process of making their latent and potential selves real.

Eventually Maslow’s quest to discover the secrets of self-actualizers would become a relentless, glorious obsession and it would set into motion a new school of psychology. Third Force psychology would challenge old-school ideas with the revolutionary concept of self-actualization. It would lead Maslow to discover significant evidence that concealed within every normal human being is the nucleus of a potential superior self. It was a genuine breakthrough.

Before we leave this issue, does everyone understand why this was such an important breakthrough? So two people each possessed the same list of 16 unusual and noble characteristics. So they came from totally different environments and inheritance factors. So what? How did this challenge the schools of behaviorism and Freudian psychology?

Briefly, once again, self-actualization is about the endless process of becoming more real. Essentially, that process is one of reaching new levels of Being, of consciousness. Now, I could give you a list of the characteristics of self-actualizers, but I want to dig deeper than that today. I want you to experience, to some degree, the concept of self-actualizing. When we discussed the reality of MetaValues, and the notion that we all recognize and share the values of Truth, Beauty and Goodness, that was more important than a list of qualities.

THE PEAK EXPERIENCE

Today, in the brief time we have together, I want to discuss something else about self-actualizers that most of us have already experienced. It’s called the peak experience. Some psychologists call it flow. This is an elevated state of consciousness that seems to invade the psyche unexpectedly. Contrary to popular opinion, it does not come in moments of contemplation but rather it usually happens when we are stretching ourselves, striving for something, trying to reach another level. Athletes call it being in the zone. Everything seems to fall into place, we forget ourselves and we almost seem to be in another world.

But can what we think, and what we believe, really increase our ability to do? Is there evidence to support such a theory? There is. One of the most powerful validations of this idea is anecdotal, but highly significant.
The year was 1979. Garfield, an American Olympic weightlifting coach, had been lecturing in Milan. After his talks, he began to have conversations with a group of Soviet Union experts in athletic performance who contested many of Garfield’s training ideas. Several days of good-natured debate followed. During one of these late-night discussions, Garfield implied that the only reason the Russian Block athletes had achieved such astounding results in competition was that they used drugs. This accusation offended the Soviet experts. They insisted that Garfield accompany them to a gym, where they promised they would reveal their secrets of world-class performance.

It was very late, and the Soviets had to pull strings to get someone to open the training facility. Once inside, they carefully unpacked a host of impressive instruments and hooked Garfield up to them. Then they began to interview Garfield intensely, making computations, and taking notes. How often did Garfield work out with weights? Garfield replied that he had not done any important exercise for eight years. Back then, at his peak, he had bench-pressed 365 pounds. How much did Garfield think he could bench-press now? Garfield suggested that he might be able to do 300 pounds, certainly no more than that. How long did he think it would take him to work up to 365 pounds again? Garfield guessed it would take about nine months to a year to reach his old record.

Then, at the urging of the trainers, Garfield attempted a 300-pound bench-press. It was very difficult; he barely made the lift. Now the Soviets began to make calculations and measurements again, even taking a blood test. At last, they announced that they were ready to complete their demonstration.
Garfield sat upon a bench, still wired to the network of monitors. He was told to loosen up, to lie back, and to relax. The Soviet scientists talked him into drifting into a deeper and deeper state of relaxation. Although completely awake and alert, in time Garfield felt more at ease than he ever had in his life. The Soviets suggested his arms were growing warm and heavy. Garfield began to feel a remarkable tingle throughout his body. After forty minutes in a deep, meditative, receptive state, the trainers gently suggested that he sit up and contemplate the barbell before him. They had loaded it to 365 pounds––sixty-five pounds more than the weight he had barely lifted before!

“Imagine yourself approaching the bar with utter confidence,” a trainer whispered in his ear. “See yourself lying down and actually pressing the weight. In your mind you must feel the cold bar, the rough knurled area for gripping; hear the weights rattling; hear your own breathing.” The suggestion caused an immediate anxiety reaction from Garfield that sent the monitor readings into orbit. But the Soviet trainers were quietly confident. They continually assured him of his power. They urged him to see himself lifting the bar.

Their monologue began to crowd out and replace the Will-to-Fail conversation that had been going on in Garfield’s mind. They told him to zoom in and out of the positive visual images that were playing in his mind; to view himself from above, from the side; to see his hands up close. Repeatedly, they went through the visualization process, asking him to imagine how his muscles would feel when he completed the lift. Garfield wrote about the astounding transformation that began to take place:
“Surprisingly, everything began to come together for me … The imagery now imprinted in my mind began to guide my physical movements. Slowly and patiently, their voices sure yet gentle, the Soviets led me through the lift. I became convinced I could do it. The world around me seemed to fade, giving way to self-confidence, belief in myself, and then to deliberate action.”

When the Soviet experts saw that Garfield had reached the moment of peak physical and mental resonance, they quickly unhooked him from the equipment. Garfield moved in, positioned himself, and promptly lifted the weight.

Charles Garfield never forgot the experience. He began to develop new ideas about the possibilities of what he termed Peak Performance and to apply them to American Olympic athletes, with impressive results. He began to write books and give lectures on the untapped potential of all Americans, not just athletes. He saw a definite overlap between the work of the Russian and American psychologists, especially Abraham Maslow. Garfield wrote:
“There is now not a shadow of a doubt in my mind that the Soviets have long been aware of the work of the American psychologist Abraham Maslow and of his exploration of what he called ‘peak experiences’ and the emotional foundations that accompany such moments.”

Self-actualizers have peak experiences much more often than other people. While some people fear them, self-actualizers actually embrace them. What I am talking about has nothing to do with substance use. The peak experience is a natural state of mind that almost becomes a way of life for the self-actualizer. Peak experiences have been known to change lives. In fact, it was a peak experience that set Abraham Maslow off in his quest to discover the secrets of self-actualizing.

MASLOW’S PEAK EXPERIENCE

Abraham Maslow was driving home from his work at Brooklyn College when he found his progress arrested by the motley procession. Not only was it blocking traffic, it wasn’t even much of a parade. In fact, it was pathetic. There were Boy Scouts marching out of step and overweight, middle-aged men in out-of-date uniforms. The American flag had seen better days. And the band consisted of some poor soul playing a flute off-key.

The thirty-three-year-old professor was troubled on that fateful day in December of 1941. The Japanese had recently attacked Pearl Harbor and the United States was suddenly at war. Moreover, shortly after the Pearl Harbor disaster, Adolf Hitler had declared war on America. A brooding uncertainty about the future had cast a shadow over the country.

While Maslow watched the tiny parade, something remarkable took place. As he sat there in his car, he was conscious of a growing empathy for the people marching past him, seeking to demonstrate their patriotism. Maslow felt tears begin to run down his face. For some inexplicable reason, he was deeply moved. Then, suddenly, Maslow had a vision of a peace table. Around the table were seated influential people, and they were discussing issues concerning human nature, hatred, and war—as well as the need for peace and brotherhood.

Maslow was having a peak experience. A seemingly trivial event had triggered a vision that would irrevocably alter his life and determine everything he did from that moment on. He realized he now had a lifetime mission, a personal ought-to-be. He would devote himself to discovering a psychology for the peace table. He would strive to prove that human beings are capable of something grander than war, prejudice, and hatred.
Abraham Maslow concluded in those pivotal moments that to achieve his sweeping ought-to-be, he would need to create a new science–a science of values. He decided to challenge the notion that values are the exclusive domain of religionists and visionaries. Maslow was convinced that a science of values could study and explore religion, poetry, and art. He decided that he would strive to understand great people, the best specimens of humankind. He would later write about this peak experience incident and how it inspired the desire in him to study the highest and best achievers. Maslow was determined to discover the secret of their strength and power. That became his mission, his cause … his commitment to something larger and more important than himself.

“BUCKY” FULLER IS TRANSFORMED

The peak experience often changes the course of a human life. For example, consider the little-known experience of Buckminster Fuller. Few know that the renowned inventor of the geodesic dome nearly committed suicide as a young man.

“Bucky” Fuller, born in 1895, gained fame as an architect, engineer, futurist, cartographer, writer, and poet. During the ’20s, he coined the term Spaceship Earth, and was the first to write of the problems of a closed-system planet. In 1969, he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Yet, most people have forgotten what is probably his most astounding achievement. This lost achievement is the MetaValues insight he had as a young man that saved him from suicide and propelled him on a fast track to world fame and accomplishment.

In 1927, Fuller was an abject failure, penniless and without hope. He and his wife were living in Chicago in a one-room apartment on Belmont Avenue. For five years, the Fullers had been grieving the tragic loss of their first child. The child had suffered through bouts with infantile paralysis, flu, spinal meningitis, and pneumonia. After her long ordeal and struggle, on her fourth birthday, she breathed her final breath. It was a crushing, devastating loss. Fuller buried himself in a flurry of activity. He assisted his architect father-in-law in creating a company based upon a new building material. Fuller organized four factories around the country to produce the new product. He worked at a manic pace, but the pain of his lost child would not go away. The minute Fuller got through work for the day, he went off to drink all night. His new enterprise tanked. He felt disgraced; several investors had lost money on the project. Just as he was hitting bottom, a new daughter was born to the Fullers, Allegra. Am I an utter failure? Fuller asked himself. If so, I had better get myself out of the way, so at least my wife and baby can be taken care of by my family.

On this fateful night, Fuller made his way to Lincoln Park, right on the shores of Lake Michigan. He knew the park well. At night, he would run through the park and spend hours lamenting his fate. Tonight he had a special plan in mind. He would hurl himself into the water and end his life. Standing at the shoreline, something made him hesitate. Now, in what he thought would be the last few moments of his life, he began to ask questions from the depths of his soul. He suddenly realized that all his life he had taken advice from others; he had never trusted his own mind. He wondered what importance a small, impoverished man with a remaining life expectancy of only ten more years could have anyway. (Fuller was thirty-two and the life expectancy of those born in 1895 was only forty-two.) The big corporations and powerful governments seemed unable to solve the planet’s problems. So, what significance could he possibly have?

From somewhere within, answers began to come to Fuller. The individual can take initiatives without anyone’s permission, he thought. Then he said something astonishing to himself:

“You do not have the right to eliminate yourself, you do not belong to you. You belong to the universe. The significance of you will forever remain obscure to you, but you may assume that you are fulfilling your significance if you apply yourself to converting all your experience to the highest advantage of others.”

These transforming words startled Fuller. The strangely worded sentence could have but one meaning. He was to convert his entire life experience to one of service. He vowed from that moment to live—but to live in an entirely new way. Never again would he live only for himself. He would use his unfinished life to serve humankind. He also vowed to do his own thinking instead of trying to accommodate everyone else’s opinions, credos, and theories. He determined to use all of his powers toward solving the problems that affect everyone aboard planet Earth. He concluded that if he forgot himself and worked only for all humanity, he would be doing what nature wanted him to do and that nature would support him in this.

Buckminster Fuller left the park and returned home a transformed man. His was the path of service, the conversion of all experience toward the benefit of others.

Over the next fifty-four years (well beyond his life expectancy), Buckminster Fuller went on to blaze a career of unparalleled achievements. He would author twenty-eight books and receive forty-seven honorary doctorates in the arts, science, engineering, and the humanities. Fuller would be awarded dozens of major architectural and design awards including the Gold Medal of the American Institute of Architects and the Gold Medal of the Royal Institute of British Architects. He would acquire twenty-eight U.S. patents for his inventions. Bucky kept his vow and committed his entire productivity to the whole planet Earth and its resources, undertaking to protect and advance all life forms. He often stated that he found greater effectiveness in his work when devoting it entirely to the service of others.

THE WORLDWIDE CRISIS OF VALUES

There can be no doubt, civilization as we know it in crisis.

But the real crisis is not about energy, or economics or terrorism. These are only symptoms. The real crisis is one of values.

The truth is that there are too many people running things who are immature, narcissistic, and impoverished of noble values. We do not need more energy resources as much as we need more men and women to step up and respond to the call for mature leadership. The world simply does not have enough leaders who embrace the MetaValues of Truth, Beauty and Goodness.

Not only do we lack enough mature political leaders, but we lack mature leadership in all phases of human activity. We have plenty of ferocious, aggressive, homo sapiens males in leadership roles, and more waiting in line, aspiring to lead. But we have very few leaders who are of noble character, integrity, caring and excellence. These are the MetaValues that are destined to unite us and save civilization.

Great leaders are aware that, when unbridled power leads us toward arrogance, Truth reminds us of our limitations. When power narrows the perspective of our concerns, Beauty reminds us of the richness and diversity of our existence. When power corrupts and damage is done to the innocent, Goodness cleanses and heals. For it is Love, the composite of the MetaValues of Truth, Beauty and Goodness that must serve as the touchstone to guide our judgments and actions.

The facts are virtually self-evident. If we had enough MetaValue-driven leaders, the crisis of trust in our institutions would soon fade away. The revolution of productivity and genius that Abraham Maslow predicted many years ago is at hand … a revolution that is benign and gentle, and yet powerful beyond measure. New leaders will arise, who will expend the energy and make the sacrifices necessary to help free the world from those personalities who have too long exploited the helpless masses and drenched the planet in innocent blood.

Are you one of these new leaders? If not you, then who?

Thank you for the time we spent together today.