Peak Experience

A peak experience is an altered state of consciousness marked by intense euphoria, most often achieved by individuals in the process of self-actualizing, a concept developed by the psychologist Abraham Maslow beginning in the mid-1940s, who coined the term itself in 1956. Maslow described peak experiences as rare, exciting, deeply moving and exhilarating moments that produce an elevated form of perceiving reality, at times verging on the mystical in their effect on the person undergoing them. Such experiences can arise from activities ranging from the simple to the intense, and what defines them is not the nature of the activity itself but the blissful, ecstatic feeling experienced while it unfolds, perceived as a single holistic moment of reaching one's fullest potential.