Recently a friend of mine asked me what I thought of Fr. Richard Rohr, and I dismissed him with some sort of comment such as, “Oh, Rohr’s books are tea table twaddle.”
And, according to Dan Burke, there are, apparently, concerns about Rohr’s orthodoxy.
But, while researching something else on the internet, I came upon a link to Fr. Rohr’s book Immortal Diamond: The Search for our True Self. And I read, with a good deal of interest, an interview with Fr. Rohr (pasted below, with my comments in boldface), as well as perhaps the BEST AMAZON BOOK REVIEW EVER …
I wonder why it was so hard to folloe.
What folloes below is the interview with Rohr. Note that it’s C. G. Jung warmed over, but it’s the best of Jung, which is saying something. Again, my comments follow (I mean, folloe) each of Rohr’s in bracketed boldface.
Q&A with Robert Rohr, author of Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self
Q. What do you mean by False Self and True Self?
A. When I use the term False Self, I mean that it is the self we manufacture and adopt to find our identity in the world—our jobs, our occupations, our religion, our culture, our sources of status. False doesn’t mean that it’s bad; it simply means that it’s external, passing, that it changes. Everyone has a False Self—you need it to function in the world. True Self is who you are objectively in God. Most religious and spiritual traditions would call it the soul, although it is also mysteriously more than that. You do not create True Self by your own personality or choices or, or experiences. It’s nothing that you manufacture or do. It’s your innermost, essential being.
A. When I use the term False Self, I mean that it is the self we manufacture and adopt to find our identity in the world—our jobs, our occupations, our religion, our culture, our sources of status. False doesn’t mean that it’s bad; it simply means that it’s external, passing, that it changes. Everyone has a False Self—you need it to function in the world. True Self is who you are objectively in God. Most religious and spiritual traditions would call it the soul, although it is also mysteriously more than that. You do not create True Self by your own personality or choices or, or experiences. It’s nothing that you manufacture or do. It’s your innermost, essential being.
[Rohr is describing what Jung called the persona. Other modern writers use the term “false self” instead of persona, so that they can set up a distinction between “false self” and “true self”, instead of Jung’s dichotomy of persona and Self. The problem with Jung is that the Self is “autonomous”, or, in effect, deified. The Self is God, or at lest the Inner God, speaking with a voice that must be obeyed so that the soul may achieve “individuation”, which, for Jung and his followers, simply means “self-indulgence”. But Rohr seems to be on to something that Jung hit upon but did not take seriously enough.
I would say Rohr is presenting the “false self” (the persona) as doxa, and the journey to the self-known-by-God (the “true self”) as a journey toward a reality that is not of our own making. The potential for abuse, of course, is evident. One may call “my wife and kids” the obligation of the “false self” and “sleeping with my mistress” the way to the “true self”.
But, with the guidelines of the Church and the voice of conscience, perhaps this pitfall can be avoided … though Rohr does not stress this.]
Q. How do the concepts of True Self and False Self relate to the questions you explored in Falling Upward?
A. In my book Falling Upward, I try to talk about the journey, the transitioning from the first half of life, the necessary suffering in the middle of life, and the liberation of the second half of life. In talking about True Self/False Self in Immortal Diamond, I’m trying to actually explain what it is we’re finding in the second half of life–our True Self. If you don’t find or recover your True Self, you remain in the first half of life forever, as many people do. They think they are their occupation, their family, their culture, their religion; without the falling apart of what Thomas Merton called our “private salvation project,” without that falling there is no upward. In Immortal Diamond I’m calling the upward the True Self and I’m trying to explain what the True Self is.
A. In my book Falling Upward, I try to talk about the journey, the transitioning from the first half of life, the necessary suffering in the middle of life, and the liberation of the second half of life. In talking about True Self/False Self in Immortal Diamond, I’m trying to actually explain what it is we’re finding in the second half of life–our True Self. If you don’t find or recover your True Self, you remain in the first half of life forever, as many people do. They think they are their occupation, their family, their culture, their religion; without the falling apart of what Thomas Merton called our “private salvation project,” without that falling there is no upward. In Immortal Diamond I’m calling the upward the True Self and I’m trying to explain what the True Self is.
[Again, this is from Jung, who wrote about the stages of life and about the middle of life as being a crisis period that offered great opportunity for attaining spiritual growth. Though the phrase “attaining spiritual growth” in our society usually means, “I’m finally doing what I always wanted to do, but was too decent to do before now.” However, if we take Rohr’s insights in the proper light, what he seems to be saying is we need a crisis, a cross, a passion, to topple our house of cards, to undo our Unreality. Perhaps both Jung and Rohr could avoid the pitfall of mere self-indulgence if, indeed, the “true self” is that part of us that is most visible to God’s penetrating glance and most needful of God, what I have elsewhere called the Vulnerable Thing. That part of us is not our salvation, for it can be as selfish as any other part of our character: but it is the part of us that approaches Our Lord as a child, with simplicity, innocence and earnestness, all cynical worldliness stripped away. If it takes a mid life crisis to get to that, then Rohr is on to something.]
Q. Why is finding True Self so important to the spiritual journey?
A. In many ways this quest for the True Self is the foundational issue. Your True Self is the only part of you that really has access to the big questions, things like love, suffering, death, God. Your False Self just entertains itself. But once you make contact with your True Self, there’s a natural correspondence between who you are and who God is. Let me put it this way. When you discover your True Self, it’s very easy to recognize the presence of God. When you’re living out of your False Self, you tend to be more attracted to externals–external beliefs, external rituals–but you are never really touched at any deep level because it’s not really YOU that’s making contact. It’s your temperament, your personality, your culture, all of which are okay, but your True Self is that part of you that already knows God, already loves God at some unconscious level. When you can connect with your True Self, the whole spiritual life opens up.
A. In many ways this quest for the True Self is the foundational issue. Your True Self is the only part of you that really has access to the big questions, things like love, suffering, death, God. Your False Self just entertains itself. But once you make contact with your True Self, there’s a natural correspondence between who you are and who God is. Let me put it this way. When you discover your True Self, it’s very easy to recognize the presence of God. When you’re living out of your False Self, you tend to be more attracted to externals–external beliefs, external rituals–but you are never really touched at any deep level because it’s not really YOU that’s making contact. It’s your temperament, your personality, your culture, all of which are okay, but your True Self is that part of you that already knows God, already loves God at some unconscious level. When you can connect with your True Self, the whole spiritual life opens up.
[This is really good stuff. He’s talking about the difference between living at the level of doxa vs. living at the level of sophia: philodoxy vs. philosophy, divertissement vs. periagoge, Unreality vs. reality. Again, it’s very easy to say, “Now that I’m living with my gay lover I’m in touch with my true self and my whole spiritual life has opened up!” But that’s simply a self-serving parody of the reality Rohr is describing; that’s indulging the false self, not turning the true self toward God. But do we have the courage to tell ourselves that? Or will we simply use the gifts of psychology to continue to play games and to continue to justify sin?]
Q. What is the connection between finding True Self and facing death?
A. The phrase “you must die before you die” in one form or another is found in most of the world religions. Jesus would say, “Unless the grain of wheat die it remains just a single grain.” This means that this concocted False Self, this manufactured identity that is who we all think we are, has to go. That’s what the language of being “born again” really means. It’s not some kind of magical transaction that takes place between you and God, but the death of the passing self, the one you have created for yourself. That’s what has to die. Until that False Self dies you don’t really know who you are. Once you let go of your passing self, as St. Francis said, “The second death can do you no harm.” In other words, once you have experienced the little losses and failings or falling upwards, you know at a deep level that you’ve been there before and none of it is going to kill you. You’ve already learned how to die. If you don’t learn how to die early, ahead of time, you spend your life avoiding all failure, humiliation, loss, and you’re not ready for the last death. Your True Self, your soul knows spiritual things, and knows God. So if you don’t awaken it, you really don’t know God. You can be religious, but you don’t encounter God at any depth. It’s just spinning the necessary prayer wheels, whatever your tradition tells you is the appropriate prayer wheel. It isn’t really transformative religion.
A. The phrase “you must die before you die” in one form or another is found in most of the world religions. Jesus would say, “Unless the grain of wheat die it remains just a single grain.” This means that this concocted False Self, this manufactured identity that is who we all think we are, has to go. That’s what the language of being “born again” really means. It’s not some kind of magical transaction that takes place between you and God, but the death of the passing self, the one you have created for yourself. That’s what has to die. Until that False Self dies you don’t really know who you are. Once you let go of your passing self, as St. Francis said, “The second death can do you no harm.” In other words, once you have experienced the little losses and failings or falling upwards, you know at a deep level that you’ve been there before and none of it is going to kill you. You’ve already learned how to die. If you don’t learn how to die early, ahead of time, you spend your life avoiding all failure, humiliation, loss, and you’re not ready for the last death. Your True Self, your soul knows spiritual things, and knows God. So if you don’t awaken it, you really don’t know God. You can be religious, but you don’t encounter God at any depth. It’s just spinning the necessary prayer wheels, whatever your tradition tells you is the appropriate prayer wheel. It isn’t really transformative religion.
[Of course, being born again can be both an ontological change wrought by baptism and also a symbol for the death-to-false-self and rebirth-to-God (and therefore to true-self): it can be both. As with everything in Scripture, it can be both literally and symbolically true at the same time. And, if I’ve learned anything from my Devout Catholic friends, it’s that “transformative religion” is the very last thing most of them want. What most of us want is a more powerful false self, not the pain and sacrifice required to act from the true self. And so, as insightful as all this is, if it’s not coupled with the humility, the basic humility, of our need for a savior, the recognition that we will turn all good gifts to the bad without God’s help – including the great good gift of psychological insight – then it’s a tool that’s ripe for abuse.]
Q. How can we make contact with our True Self?
A. It is hard work to remain in contact with your True Self. That’s why daily prayer is important. Somehow we have to reestablish our foundational ground over and over because we lose it every day. I surely do. I get caught up in letters, emails, what people want of me, what I need to be, the little dance I have to do today for this person or that person. It may be necessary, but if you are living in that world, that revolving hall of mirrors, you so get enchanted with these reflections of what everybody thinks you are or wants you to be that you forget or you never discover who you really are before you did anything right or anything wrong, before you had your name, your reputation, your education, your family, your culture. That’s how we get caught up in what some call our “survival dance.” Finding True Self is about finding your sacred dance, who you are forever and who you always will be. That’s the self that can go to Heaven, if you want to put it that way, because it’s already in Heaven. It’s already there. So you’re returning home.
A. It is hard work to remain in contact with your True Self. That’s why daily prayer is important. Somehow we have to reestablish our foundational ground over and over because we lose it every day. I surely do. I get caught up in letters, emails, what people want of me, what I need to be, the little dance I have to do today for this person or that person. It may be necessary, but if you are living in that world, that revolving hall of mirrors, you so get enchanted with these reflections of what everybody thinks you are or wants you to be that you forget or you never discover who you really are before you did anything right or anything wrong, before you had your name, your reputation, your education, your family, your culture. That’s how we get caught up in what some call our “survival dance.” Finding True Self is about finding your sacred dance, who you are forever and who you always will be. That’s the self that can go to Heaven, if you want to put it that way, because it’s already in Heaven. It’s already there. So you’re returning home.
[I agree with this – with the caveat that heaven is not our heaven. If we think we make heaven, we end up creating hell on earth. If we find heaven, both the “Kingdom of God that is within you / among you” and the Kingdom of God that only fully comes outside of time and the world, we find it. We don’t make it. It’s objective, like truth itself; and getting there is a gift, a grace. It’s real, like God. It’s not a construct. This is, in fact, implicit in everything Rohr says. If the false self is false, it’s because we’ve concocted it to suit our needs; it’s made by us. The true self is discovered by us. It’s true because it’s there, it’s objective. It’s a fact, as is God, who is the source of all facts and who is Himself the truest self.]
Q. Where did the title, Immortal Diamond, come from?
A. The metaphor immortal diamond came from a poem by the Jesuit Englishman, Gerard Manley Hopkins. The last lines of this beautiful poem say, “I am all at once what Christ is, since he was what I am, and/ This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, patch, matchwood, immortal diamond,/ Is immortal diamond.” When I first wanted to clarify this notion of True Self/False Self, I immediately said that’s going to be the, the metaphor. I think it names what I’m talking about, something that’s strong, true, clear, but hidden within us.
A. The metaphor immortal diamond came from a poem by the Jesuit Englishman, Gerard Manley Hopkins. The last lines of this beautiful poem say, “I am all at once what Christ is, since he was what I am, and/ This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, patch, matchwood, immortal diamond,/ Is immortal diamond.” When I first wanted to clarify this notion of True Self/False Self, I immediately said that’s going to be the, the metaphor. I think it names what I’m talking about, something that’s strong, true, clear, but hidden within us.
[What’s good about all of this is very good indeed. What’s bad about it is what’s left unsaid.]
So there you have it. Hope this was not too hard to folloe.
Dear Kevin,
There are people who believe that no thought or idea is valid unless it comes from them. And perhaps this describes the intellectual character of heresy: a small truth extracted from its context and inflated so as to appear as THE truth. They live in a constant state of Eureka. The title of Rohr’s book and its thesis makes me suspect that the intellectual isolation in which he lives may be closing in on him, and that’s a good thing if he is to avoid the fate of Nietzche.
Given his earlier work (the title escapes me) in which he created quite a stir by “discovering” that the ecstacy of saints like Teresa of Avila were expressions of sexual repression because they were all instances of “longing for Union,” Rohr’s discovery of the “true self” is no surprise. Of course, you see Jung in his remarks. Derivation is the only path he knows. He doesn’t know how to read. He can only abstract.
The surrender he talks about is his own. He has made a prison of his intellect. The exit is marked “humility.”
He should read. And he should read fiction. And he should begin with O’Conner’s Wise Blood.