Friday, June 23, 2023

Experience is the Highest Authority

Experience is, for me, the highest authority. The touchstone of validity is my own experience. No other person's ideas, and non of my own ideas, are as authoritative as my experience. It is to experience that I must return again and again, to discover a closer approximation to truth as it is in the process of becoming me. Neither the bible nor the prophets - neither Freud nor research - neither the revelations of God nor man - can take precendence over my own direct experience. My experience is not authoritation because it is fallible. It is the basis of authority because it can always be checked in new primary ways. In this way it's frequent error or fallibility is always open to correction.

Carl Rogers

No comments: