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40 S U F I S U M M E R 2017

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 From the Scientific
to the Mystical
in the Work of Carl Rogers
By MICHAEL SIVORI

“I have felt an increasing discomfort between the rigorous

objectivity of myself as a scientist and the almost mystical
subjectivity of myself as therapist.”–Carl Rogers

C
ARTWORK © HILMA AF KLINT, COMPLIMENTS OF THE HILMA AF KLINT FOUNDATION.

arl Rogers was an ‘accidental mystic.’ Over a lifetime he produced a

huge body of work on the science of the psychotherapeutic relationship.
PHOTOGRAPHER ALBIN DAHLSTRÖM, MODERNA MUSEET, STOCKHOLM.

He was the first person in its history to receive both the APA’s Scientific
Contribution Award and latterly the Professional Contribution Award. The
citation for this first award recognized his work in developing an original
method to objectify… the analysis of the therapeutic process, for formulating
a testable theory of psychotherapy and its effects on personality… and for
extensive systematic research to exhibit the value of the method and explore
and test the implications of the theory. Shortly before his death in 1987, at the
age of 85, he had also been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, recognizing
his work with communities in conflict in Latin America and Northern Ireland,
amongst others.

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 His scientific contribution to psychology, and to the
inception and growth of Person-centered therapy (PCT),
particularized the essential components of successful thera-
peutic personality re-structuring and for the first time dem-
onstrated empirically that successful therapy is the outcome
of the quality of the relationship between therapist and client.
In so doing, it challenged the notion that the psychotherapist
was the agent of change and that their ability to diagnose and
interpret was the key driver for this. Instead Rogers demon-
strated that all people have the capacity for self-interpretation
and self-ordering and the function of the therapist was to
facilitate this in a relational climate of genuineness, accep-
tance and empathic understanding.
Beginning in December, 1940, and up until his major the-
oretical publications in the late 1950s, he had been among the
first psychologists to harness the new technology of the day—
magnetic recording discs, the precursor to tape—to actually
record the encounters between therapist and client. Rogers’
pre-eminent contribution to the science of psychotherapy
was to quantify the essential elements of this climate, based
on years of analyzing “in very minute detail” the phrasings
and sentences, even specific words, used by therapists where
the client had benefitted or had been impaired by the coun-
selor’s intervention. “I cannot exaggerate the excitement of our
learnings as we clustered about the machine that enabled us to
listen to ourselves, playing [the recordings] over and over . . . .
We gained a great deal from that microscopic study.” 1
But what happens when a scientist, in the process of their
work, seemingly stumbles upon mystical experience? What
happens when phenomena are noticed for which there is no
scientific vocabulary?
Steeped in the experimental method, through Teachers’
College, Columbia University, and Dewey’s philosophical
school of Pragmatism, Rogers began as a Freudian analyst in
Rochester, NY, in the 1930s but by 1940 he had evolved. He
would go on to pioneer the application of the experimental
method to therapy, formulating rigorous, testable hypotheses
and objective measures of personality change in psychotherapy.2
In “Persons or Science?” he wrote:
I have become increasingly conscious of the gap between
these two roles . . . the better therapist I have become, the
more I am aware of my complete subjectivity when I am
at my best in this function. And as I have become a better
investigator, more “hard-headed” . . . I have felt an increas-
ing discomfort between the rigorous objectivity of myself
as a scientist and the almost mystical subjectivity of myself
as therapist.3
He undertook major experimental studies that sought to
confirm, or not, his theory. His seminal volume On Becoming
a Person, written whilst Professor at the University of Wis-
consin, consolidated his experimental work and summarized
his major theoretical statements. But it also set out a vision
of what he saw as a more human science—he wrote in the
first person and at length about his own development, to
42 S U F I S U M M E R 2017
SUFI93_MASTER_ART_FILE_24MAY2017.indd 42
underline his concurrent philosophical stance that sought to
humanize psychology.
In this paper there is also a first, strong hint of mysticism;
although Rogers did not profess any religious convictions, he
describes moments of intensely subjective encounters with
clients where at:
the deepest parts of therapy [there] seems to be a unity
of experiencing. . . . When there is this complete unity,
singleness, fullness of experiencing in the relationship,… a
timeless living in the experience which is between the client
and me.4
This was published in 1961; it would be some twenty years
later before Rogers referred publicly to this type of experi-
ence again. Why? Most likely because his work was so com-
mitted to testing and confirmation, or not, of his theories that
he did not want to lessen the scientific standing of his work
by discussing phenomena that sounded unscientific.
In an interview posthumously published in 1987, Rog-
ers once again referred to that experience of timelessnes and
“unity” in the therapeutic encounter from 1961. Now, this
time it is less couched in philosophical terms and is explicitly
mystical in its language:
[When] I am in a slightly altered state of consciousness in
the relationship, then whatever I do seems full of healing.
Then simply my presence is releasing and helpful. At those
moments it seems that my inner spirit has reached out and
touched the inner spirit of the other. Our relationship tran-
scends itself, and has become part of something larger.5
THE ACCIDENTAL MYSTIC
Rogers might be reasonably described as an “accidental
mystic” since he had not set out to prove the existence of
the phenomena of unity. He had in fact stumbled across it in
the course of his work, and as such, ever the pragmatist, he
had given it due regard—valuing its therapeutic benefit—but
limited his discussion of it. An analogy here could be that
the therapeutic situation is a glass of tea, and the individual
consciousness of the therapist and client are each a sugar
cube. When the sugar cubes are immersed in the glass of tea
and interact, they dissolve, to enhance the sweetness of the
tea. If the analogy works, then it highlights the absence of a
credible scientific language to discuss these aspects of human
experience.
What Rogers’ work tells us is that this type of unity is
achieved, in part, through simultaneously immersing oneself
wholeheartedly into the here and now of relationship, while
at the same time, stepping out of one’s need to have anything
happen in that relationship: an intimate letting-go with the
faith that this is therapeutically valuable; it requires courage
and sincerity in the therapist.
It begins with the quality of attentiveness and sensitivity
to the other and from subjective immersion into the subjec-
tive world of the other that points the way to unity:
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 It seems that my inner spirit has reached out and touched
the inner spirit of the other. Our relationship transcends itself,
and has become part of something larger.
ARTWORK © HILMA AF KLINT, COMPLIMENTS OF THE HILMA AF KLINT FOUNDATION.
When I can really hear someone . . . it enriches my life [and]
there is [a] peculiar satisfaction in really hearing someone:
it is like listening to the music of the spheres because beyond
PHOTOGRAPHER ALBIN DAHLSTRÖM, MODERNA MUSEET, STOCKHOLM.
the immediate message of the person, no matter what that
might be, there is the universal. Hidden in all the personal
communications which I really hear there seem to be order-
ly psychological laws, aspects of the same order we find in
the universe as a whole.6
A tantalizing allusion by Rogers that falls short of explaining
what that order might be, or perhaps, it is a knowing that is
beyond words and their meanings.
Perhaps in Sufi terms we can consider that Rogers is
describing a fleeting movement between the particular
intellect and the universal intellect. In comparing Sufism
with psychoanalysis, Dr. Javad Nurbakhsh describes the
particular intellect, which is our personal intellect, as the
gatekeeper of the ego. It is able to learn but is incapable of
knowing the Truth. Whereas the universal intellect is “heart-
consciousness,” a state of consciousness that a person arrives
at through concerted effort on the Path including: devotion
to the Master, letting go of attachments, service to creation,
SUFI93_MASTER_ART_FILE_24MAY2017.indd 43
maintaining a cheerful countenance in the face of hardship
and trial, lightening the hearts of others, and constant
remembrance of God.
When the heart becomes cleansed of the rust of multip-
li- city, it will reflect the Truth as it is. . . . And the source
of . . . knowledge or insight is called the universal intellect or
‘heart-consciousness.’7
The traditional model of psychoanalysis is that in order to
get to ‘the light’ one must delve into the dark recesses of the
subonscious first. However, this could be criticized as a West-
ern reductionist approach. Writers from spiritual traditions
have pointed out that one cannot go into the dark (of the
subconscious) unless one has the light of a higher conscious-
ness or superconscious. In his biography of Sri Aurobindo,
Satprem writes:
You must know the whole before you can know the part
and the highest before you can truly understand the lowest.
. . . Psychoanalysts . . . look from down up and explain the
higher lights by the lower obscurities; but . . . the [super-
conscious], not the [subconscious] is the true foundation
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 of things. The significance of the lotus is not to be found by
analysing the secrets of the mud from which it grows. 8
So Rogers is describing in his terms a moment whereby
he is operating in the realm of the superconscious or which
in Sufism is called seeing with the eye of the heart. That is,
perceiving existence as it truly is, in its wholeness from the
top down.
THE MYSTICAL MOMENT AND ROGERS
I believe that what Rogers could not, and would not, articu-
late—because he had no empirical base—was that the recip-
rocal intensity of a deeply immersed subjective relationship
lifts the energy of the interpersonal field to such a degree that
perception with the eye of the heart is possible for a moment.
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SUFI93_MASTER_ART_FILE_24MAY2017.indd 44
I choose the word moment carefully, not just as a tempo-
ral measure but in fact to allude to its quality of timelessness;
something reported by most therapists participating in Gel-
lar and Greenberg’s qualitative study.9
This sense of timelessness leads again to terms in the
spiritual lexicon. For example, Volume 8 of the Farhang-e
Nurbakhsh (Sufi Symbolism), where Dr. Nurbakhsh provides
the definitions by past Sufi Masters of the term “moment,”
writing that moment or ‘waqt’:
describes ‘time present’ when the entry of a Divine infusion
. . . or the stimulus of Divine attraction in the Sufi’s heart so
preoccupies one that one loses all sense of past or future.10
Shah Nimatullah Wali in the same volume on this subject
is cited thus:
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 Be present in your [moment]. . . . Let past and future go, do
not lose your [moment], for consciousness of the past spoils
the present moment and thinking of the future causes it to
pass. Hence it has been said that the Sufi is the ‘child of the
moment.’11
The experience of timelessness occurs in many situa-
tions—at an exciting sports event, or at a music gig. A band
walks onstage—they are feeling good tonight, they begin
their performance, it reaches their audience and lifts their
spirits; in turn the people in the audience respond enthusi-
astically and this enhances the band, which in turn lifts the
audience higher, and so on. The dynamic field of potentiality
exists and is present in all interpersonal interactions. Surely
I am amongst many of you who have witnessed that phe-
nomenon in music: from the grand orchestral concert halls
to traditional Irish folk sessions in tiny pubs: the symbiotic
enhancement of the communal experience where, with music
as a vehicle, the veil between performer and audience is dis-
solved. Where, the day after, you feel somehow enhanced by
the experience of having been a part of that event.
This dynamic energetic field exists between therapist
and client, lover and beloved, master and disciple, and the
focused immersion into it heightens the subjectivity to such a
degree that separateness is felt to be passing away, and a new
wondrous plain of consciousness is experienced. Imagine the
therapeutic possibilities if this could be predicted. And this is
the challenge for those that want to seriously extend Rogers’
work. How do you make a scientific case for this? What best
to give to the interpersonal field to raise the energy dynamic
to such a degree that the field unifies the consciousness of
individuals within it?
I’m sure many therapists would immediately tell me that
mindfulness does that. But I’m not so sure. Yes, it might, or it
ARTWORK © HILMA AF KLINT, COMPLIMENTS OF THE HILMA AF KLINT FOUNDATION.
might be other qualities that contribute. Or maybe it is how
much of yourself—your being—you give, and not just to the
other person, but to the situation. How much of your “sugar-
ness” will you give to that tea? How much of your profes-
PHOTOGRAPHER ALBIN DAHLSTRÖM, MODERNA MUSEET, STOCKHOLM.
sional façade, or self, will you put aside or sacrifice so that
you can enter into that realm?
Rogers was clear about how much to give of himself to the
therapy relationship:
I launch myself into the relationship . . . not as a scientist, not
as a physician who can accurately diagnose and cure, but as a
person, entering into a personal relationship. I risk myself . . .
I let myself go into the immediacy of the relationship where
it is my total organism which takes over and is sensitive . . .
I live the relationship on this basis.12
He had found himself, when doing this, unwittingly
experiencing mystical moments on countless occasions in
his work with individuals and groups. But he did not turn
towards consciously engaging with mysticism until much
later in life.
As scientist and pragmatist, he did not want his theory
to be the last statements on the therapeutic relationship, but
SUFI93_MASTER_ART_FILE_24MAY2017.indd 45
instead urged further experimentation. He continued his life’s
work of reconciling the scientific with the subjective world of
personal and spiritual experience, and the “new science” of
Chaos theory and his own philosophy were closely aligned.
Rogers had described the psychologically healthy per-
son—the “fully-functioning person”—as a person continu-
ally in the process of becoming (their potentialities), adapt-
ing positively to the feedback and interaction they have with
their environment. The fully-functioning person moves
creatively “towards ever greater complexity of experiencing.”
This is the marker of a person in the process of becoming
their potential.
In the years before he died Rogers was excited to see that
his findings in the science of psychotherapy were reflected
in other fields such as chemistry and mathematics and with
the emergence of Chaos theory. In other words, the fully-
functioning person is an open system—a principle in Chaos
theory—interacting with their environment and integrating
these new experiences to adapt, as they proceed.
There are clear implications in his later work that, although
as yet scientifically untestable, Rogers’ personal experience
had led him to apprehend a spiritual reality; that he saw this
as part of our evolution as a species, or our potential as indi-
viduals, but that he did not believe he could responsibly con-
vey this without sufficient empirical evidence.
It could well have been that Rogers would have gone on to
use open systems theory to begin to synthesize the scientific
with the spiritual.
According to Ruth Sanford, his close companion in his
later years, he believed that living as an open system, being
a fully-functioning person and moving towards ever great-
er complexity “does not rule out transformation to another
form of existence.”13
NOTES
1 Carl Rogers, A Way of Being (New York: Houghton Mifflin 1980), 138.
2 Carl Rogers, On Becoming a Person: a therapist’s view of psychotherapy (London:
Constable, 1961).
3 Carl Rogers, “Persons or Science? A Philosophical Question,” CrossCurrents 3, no. 4
(1953): 289-306.
4 Carl Rogers, On Becoming a Person: a therapist’s view of psychotherapy (London:
Constable, 1961), 202.
5 B.T. Brodley, “Personal Presence in Client-Centred Therapy” The Person-Centred Jour-
nal, (2000) 7 no. 2, citation from Baldwin, M. Interview with Carl Rogers on the use of
the self in therapy in “The use of self in therapy” eds. M. Baldwin and V. Satir (New York:
Haworth Press, 1987), 45-52.
6 Carl Rogers, A Way of Being (New York: Houghton Mifflin 1980), 8.
7 Dr Javad Nurbakhsh “Sufism and Psychoanalysis; Part Two: A Comparison between
Sufism and Psychoanalysis,” Sufi: A Journal of Sufism, 6, Summer (1990) 5-6.
8 Satprem, Sri Aurobindo, or the adventure of consciousness (Mount Vernon, WA: Institute
of Evolutionary Research, 1993), 206.
9 S. M. Geller and L.S. Greenberg, “Therapeutic Presence: Therapists’ experience of pres-
ence in the psychotherapy encounter,” Person-Centred and Experiential Therapies 1, (1
& 2), 2002.
10 Dr Javad Nurbakhsh, Sufi Symbolism VIII (London: Khaniqahi Nimatullahi Publica-
tions, 1994), 105.
11 Ibid, 107-119.
12 Carl Rogers, On Becoming a Person: a therapist’s view of psychotherapy (London:
Constable, 1961), 202.
13 R. Sanford, “From Rogers to Gleick and Back Again,” Beyond Carl Rogers Ed. D. Bra-
zier, (London: Constable, 1993), 259.
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