On Carl Rogers

     Carl Rogers is certainly a better known and more accessible person than Gurdjieff. Of course, both are dead now. The dead are really second class citizens. They are history. They are invisible, untouchable, they have no voice. But their spirit is still with us. It occurs to me, for the first time, that this could be the metaphorical meaning of Jesus resurrection, which is usually understood as a physical event, in which one either believes, in the face of all experience, or not.

     In any case, the spirit of Rogers is still with us, if you can access that. I ran into the spirit of Carl Rogers last weekend in Brattleboro, Vermont. He hangs out there sometimes, in spirit.

     Rogers' name is quite well known, but his spirit is not well known, and that is too bad. I will tell you something about the spirit of Carl Rogers.

     Rogers stood for a kind of human relationship characterized by certain core conditions, conditions that can exist in relationships but that often do not, not in our culture. There are four of these core conditions. The first is unconditional positive regard, as Rogers called it. I think that could be fairly translated as love. Obviously Rogers chose to use a different phrase, and it isn't hard to imagine why. Immediately after unconditional positive regard, in my opinion, must be mentioned the second core condition, genuineness. That covers not only one's love, but also all one's other feelings as well, including dislike, repulsion, criticisms, judgments, rejection, and so on. I will not say indifference. In this kind of relationship, indifference is out the window. Indifference is a defense of ours. We are not indifferent to each other really, but we often act as if we were, and we learn to believe that we are, to protect ourselves in a culture in which real human relationships, characterized by these core conditions, seldom exist. We might not have strong feelings either positive or negative about another person at any given moment, but we are lying to ourselves, to that person, and to everyone else if we claim to be indifferent. Other people make a difference to us, a great deal of difference. Every person. Ever notice how a dog reacts, when encountering a fellow dog? We aren't different, just more inhibited.

     Unconditional positive regard and genuineness are complementary conditions. Both are necessary for either to really exist.

     The third core condition is the quest for empathic understanding. Obviously none of us walks in anyone else's shoes. This condition means that I would like to know how it feels, and what it looks like, to walk in your shoes. I would also like you to know, or most especially to want to know, what it is to walk in mine. This is love of course, expressed. It has to be a two-way street. I really don't think that I can love you more than you love me. I wish to understand you empathically, but if you don't have an equal interest in me, my interest withers. Somebody always has to take the first step, but it has to be reciprocated. I may be a bit shy about reciprocating this kind of intimate probing. I have certainly been hurt, and I have also hurt others. I tend to assume shyness on the part of others as well. I know that I will never really experience your life, but I would like to be on intimate terms of communication, emotionally, with you, both ways. As it were, I need your help to guide me into yourself, and I also want to guide you into me, if we can risk the intimacy for which we long. It is very risky, very tender. Any adult knows the risks, but the potential gratification is almost unlimited. It is a frankly sexual metaphor. Emotional intimacy doesn't necessarily imply sexual intimacy, but it is the only true foundation for sexual intimacy, if mutually desired. Trying to go about this in reverse order doesn't work out very well in my experience. I have certainly tried. I don't think that anything else in my life has produced so much suffering, for me and for others. One is exposed to the suffering of having one's trust betrayed, and the even more horrible suffering of knowing that one has betrayed someone else's trust. This can approach hell on earth.

     And the fourth core condition is presence. I have to be paying attention to my present experience to fulfill these core conditions of relationship, and so do you, if we are to have that kind of relationship. These core conditions are not attributes of an individual, they are attributes of a relationship, except for presence.

     I was quite fascinated by "Robinson Crusoe" when I was a child. If one were in Robinson Crusoe's condition, one really couldn't love, because there is no one to love. One really couldn't be genuine. There would be no one with whom to join the dance of empathic understanding. But one still could practice presence, in one's loneliness. Presence is an individual matter. It has to do with the direction of one's own attention. That is your department, and my department. No one else can direct your attention for you. They might like to try- that is manipulation- but you have to allow yourself to be manipulated. Of course, when one is a small child, one's attention is directed by others and by language, as we learn it. It happens automatically. This is the basic trouble with us. In our culture, we do not learn the crucial importance of remaining present. We learn to be not present as we learn language, we learn to live, and do live, in "waking sleep."

     Rogers had a vision, a feeling for the kind of human relationship that must exist, God's kingdom come to Earth, as we dream that it must exist in Heaven. We know in our hearts how it should be, we long for it, but we don't know how to have it in our lives, so we think that this pain of isolation, estrangement, indifference and stupidity must be just the condition of Earth, and pray to go to Heaven after we die, where we imagine that we will actually experience the core conditions. As the Reverend Ike used to say, "don't wait for pie in the sky by and by. Get yours now with ice cream on top." The dead don't get pie. They really are second class citizens.