A Dialogue with Carl Rogers and Paul Tillich pt. 2 | Saybrook University

I am sometimes afraid when our students of theology get instruction in psychotherapeutic problems that they will EST he is Paul till philosophical Theologian professor of theology at the University of California Santa Barbara and recipient of 13 honorary doctoral degrees from schools around the world Professor Tik is author of more than two dozen books among them his three vol life worked Systematic Theology distinguished for its restatement of Christian theology in terms of its relevance and significance to our time and culture psych analyst Carl Rogers teacher and psychologist past president of the American Psychological Association Pioneer in

the development of counseling centers last year recipient of the American humanist of the Year award and author of numerous articles and books on pschology and human behavior among them his latest and perhaps most popular on becoming a person Dr Rogers is currently a resident fellow of the western Behavioral Sciences Institute La Hoya California personality andate so to speak as patient ultimate values two of the modern world's most perceptive Minds Paul tick and Carl Rogers engage in part two of a dialog of our time other hand the minister who represents the ultimate meaning of life can

have much skill unconsciously although he is unskilled but even then he should not establish himself as a uh second second rate psychotherapist now that seems to me uh a very important rule otherwise our cooperation would soon end in little catastrophes and would come to an end altogether well that sort of sets off in me a somewhat um deeper question I realize very well that I and I think many other therapists are interested in the kind of issues that involve the uh religious worker and the theolog and yet um for myself I prefer to put my

thinking on those issues in humanistic terms or or to attack those issues through the channels of uh of scientific investigation I guess I have some real um Sympathy for the modern view that is sort of symbolized in the phrase that God God is dead that is that that religion no longer does speak to people in the modern world and um I I would be interested in knowing why you tend to put your thinking which certainly is very conveni to that of uh a number of psychologists these days why you tend to put your thinking in

religious uh terminology and Theological uh language now I think that is a very large question yes and it could take all our time so I want to confine myself to a few points now first the fundamental point is that I believe metaphorically speaking man lives not only in the horizontal Dimension namely the relationship of himself as a finite being to other finite beings observing them and managing them but he also has in himself something which I call metaphorically the vertical line the line not to a heaven with God and other beings in it but what

I me mean with the vertical line is towards something which is not transitory infinitude and and finite something which is infinite unconditional ultimate I usually call it man has an experience in himself that he is more than a piece of finite objects which come and go he experiences something Beyond time and space I don't speak here I must emphasize this in such speeches again and again in terms of life after death or in other symbols which cannot be used in this way anymore but I speak of the immediate experience I of the temporal of the

Eternal in the temporal or of the temporal invaded by the Eternal in some moments of our life and of the life together with other people and of the group life now that is for me the reason why I try to continue to interpret the great traditional religious symbol as relevant for us course I know and that was the other point you made that they have become largely irrelevant and that we cannot use them in the way in which they are used still very much in preaching and religious teaching and Lites for people who can live

in them who are not by critical analysis estranged from them but for those large amount of people who you call humanists we need a translation in interpretation of these symbols but not as you seem to indicate a replacement I don't believe that scientific language is able to Express the vertical Dimension adequately because it is bound to the relationship of highight things to each other even in Psychology and certainly in all physical sciences this is the reason why I think we need another language and this language is a language of symbols and myths it is a

Rel ious language but we poor theologians in contrast to you happy psychologists are in the bad situation that we know the symbols with which we deal has to be reinterpreted and even radically reinterpreted but uh I have taken this heavy yoke upon myself and I have decided long ago I will continue to the end with it well I realized um as you were talking I have sort of a fantasy of this uh vertical Dimension not going for me not going up but going down uh what I mean is this I um I feel at times

when I'm when I'm really being helpful to a client of mine in those uh sort of rare moments when there is something approximating an iow relationship between us and when uh I feel that something significant is happening then uh I feel as though I am somehow in tune with uh forces in the universe or that uh uh forces are operating through me in in in regard to this helping relationship that um well I guess I feel somewhat the same way the scientist does when he um uh is able to bring about the the splitting of

the atom he didn't crack it with his own little hands but he uh nevertheless put himself in line with the significant forces of the universe and thereby was able to uh uh trigger off a significant event and I feel much that same way I think uh uh often times in dealing with a client when I really am being helpful no I'm very grateful about what you say now the first words were especially interesting to me when you said a vertical line has always an up and a down and uh you will be interested to hear

from me that I am accused very often by my theological colleagues that I speak much too much of down and spad of up and that's true when I want to give a name for what I am about ultimately concerned then I call it the ground of being and ground is of course down and not up so I go with you down now the question is uh where to do we go and here again I had the feeling I could go uh far away uh with you when uh you used the term Universe forces of the

universe but uh when I speak of ground of being I don't understand this depth of the universe in terms of an of all elements in the universe of all single things but as many philosophers and theologians did the creative ground of the universe that out of which all these forms and elements come and uh I called it the creative ground and this was the second point in which I was glad this creative ground can be exper erience in everything which is rooted in the creative ground for instance in a person to person encounter and I

had without being an analyst but have many forms of encounters with human beings very similar experience as you that now here is something present which transcends The Limited reality of the thou and the ego of the other one and of myself and uh I sometimes called it in special moments the presence of the Holy in a nonreligious conversation MH that I can experience and have experience and I agree with you and then finally there was your third point about the scientists and I often told my scientist friends that uh they follow strictly the principle formulated

classically by Thomas aquinus great medieval Theologian if you know something then you know something about God and uh I would agree with this St M and uh therefore these men also have an experience of what I like to call the uh vertical line down and perhaps also up although what they do in splitting atoms is discovering and managing finite relations to each other I'd like to um shift to another topic that has been of interest to me and I suspect may be of interest to you uh this is the question of what constitutes the optimal

person in other words uh what is it that we're working toward whether in therapy or uh in the area of religion for myself I have a um um rather simple uh definition and yet one which I think has a good many implications I feel that uh I'm quite pleased in my work as a therapist if I find that uh my clients and I too are if we're both moving toward what I think of as greater openness to experience if if uh the individ idual is becoming more able to listen to what's going on within himself

more sensitive to the reactions he's having to a given situation if he's more accurately perceptive of the uh world around him both the world of reality and the world of relationships uh then I think uh my feeling is I will be pleased that's that's the direction I would hope with we would move because then he will be in the process first of all he will be in process all the time he won't this isn't the static kind of goal for an individual and um he will be in the uh process of becoming more fully himself

he'll also be um uh realistic in the best sense in that he's realistic about what is going on within himself as well as realistic about the world it's um and I think he will also be in the process of becoming more uh social simply because uh one of the elements which he can't help but actualize in himself as the uh uh need and desire for closer Human Relationships so uh for me this uh concept of uh openness to experience describes a good deal of what I would uh hope to see in the uh in the

more optimal person whether we're talking about the person who emerges from therapy or the development of a good citizen or whatever I wonder if you would have any comments on that or on your own point of view in that area yes now there are two questions in this the one is the way namely the openness and the other is the aim it is of course not a static aim not a dynamic aim but it's an aim and uh let me speak to both points uh the openness is a word uh which is very familiar to

myself because there are many questions a theologian is asked and which can be answered only by the concept of openness or opening up uh I will give you two examples the one example is the function of classical symbols and symbols generally I always used to answer symbols open up they open up reality and they open up something in us if this world were not forbidden in a university today I would call it something in all soul but you know as I myself as a psychologist so somebody who deals with the soul that the word soul

is forbidden in academic context but that's what symbols do and they do it not only to individuals they do it also to groups and usually only through groups two individuals so that's the one thing that I use the word open this seems to me one of the main functions perhaps the main functions of symbol namely to open up then the another use of the word open is that uh I am asked now what can I do to experience God or to get the Divine Spirit or things like that and my answer is the only thing

you can do is keep yourselves open you cannot force God down you cannot uh produce the Divine spirit in yourselves but what you can do is to open yourself to keep yourself open for it and uh this is of course in your terminology a particular experiences experience but we must keep open for all experiences so I would agree very much with the way which you have described I would even believe that in all experiences there is a possibility of having an ultimate experience then the AIM now the aim uh is uh manyfold the the uh

discussed perhaps we could agree about realization of our true self bringing into actuality what is essentially given to us or when I speak in religious symbolism I could say to become the way in which God sees us in all our potentialities and what that now practically is is the next and very important question you also indicated something of this namely to become social I think this is a part of a larger concept I would call it Love in the sense of the Greek word agap which is a particular word of the New Testament and which

means that love which is described by Paul in 1 Corinthians 13 and which accept the other as a person and then tries to reunite with him and to overcome the separation the existential separation which exists between men and men now this aim I would agree but I would add of course since I speak also in terms of the vertical Dimension that uh it is the keeping to that Dimension to uh maintain in the faith into an ultimate meaning of life and the absolute and unconditional seriousness of this direction of this ultimate aim of life so

when I shall speak now in popular terms it very dangerous always I would say faith and love as the two concepts which are necessary but faith not in the sense of beliefs but in the sense of being related to the ultimate and love not in sense of any sentimentality but in a sense of affirming the other person and even one's own person because I believe with Austin and Eric for and others that there is a Justified set self affirmation and self acceptance I wouldn't use the word self love that's too difficult but selfa affirmation and

self acceptance one of the most difficult things to reach no I I find that I um like it best when you become concrete that is when you put it like in terms of faith and love those are those can be very abstract Concepts which uh can have all kinds of different meanings but the uh uh putting it in the concrete yes I do feel that the person does have to gain a uh I wouldn't even hesitate to say he has to gain a real appreciation of or liking of himself uh if he is going to

affirm himself in a uh in a healthy and and useful fashion there's one other corollary to this um notion of being open to experience that you might explore a bit too I to me the the individual who is reasonably open to his experience um is involved in a continuous valuing process it is I think that um I I realize I've sort of dropped the notion of values in the conventional sense of there being certain values which you could list and that kind of thing but it does seem to me that the individual who is open

to his experience is continually valuing each moment and valuing his behavior in each moment as to whether it is uh uh related to his own self-fulfillment his own actualization and that um It's that kind of uh valuing process that to me uh makes sense in the mature person uh it also makes sense in a world where um the whole situation is changing so rapidly that I I feel that uh ordinary lists of values uh are probably not as uh appropriate are meaningful as they were in periods gone by yes now I am an outspoken critic

of the philosophy of values so I certainly agree with you I replace uh this thing by my concept of agap or love namely love which is listening I call it listening love which doesn't follow abstract valuations but which is uh related to the concrete situation and out of its listening to this very moment gains its decision for action and its inner feeling of satisfaction and even Joy or dissatisfaction and bad conscience I like that phrase cuz I think it could be a listening within a listening to oneself as well as a listening love for the

other individual yes then I say listening to the situation I mean the situation is uh constituted out of everything around me and myself so listening love is always listening to both sides so that's certainly uh I I feel we're not very far apart in our thinking about this value approach I thought we might be further apart than they seem to be but uh one other instance I feel that uh the small infant is a good example of a valuing process that's going on continuously he's uh he isn't troubled by the concepts and standards that have

been built up for adults and he's continually valuing his experience as being either making for his enhancement or being uh opposed to that actualization now this valuation of course would be not an intellectual valuation but the valuation with his whole being I think of it as an organismic valuing process that means a reaction of his whole being and I certainly believe that it is an adequate ction and can help very much to come to a better you have been listening to two of the modern world's most perceptive Minds Paul tick philosophical Theologian and Carl Rogers

psychologist in part two of a dialogue of our time produced by Robert Lee and directed by Thomas D Skinner this program was presented in cooperation with the Western Behavioral Sciences Institute La Hoya California by radio television San Diego State