Why did I end my last DM calling Otto Rank a “spiritual giant” of the 20th century?
One reason is this. During my training as a Dominican, around 1965, I told my Dominican superiors that “my generation will be more interested in spirituality than in religion.” When it came time to choose a topic for my master’s dissertation, I chose to write on “The Prayer of Jesus in the New Testament.” This, because the thrust of Vatican II then going on, was a return to the Scriptures and I knew that any renewal of spirituality had to begin with a return to biblical spirituality.
I had the privilege then of there being a new professor of Biblical studies in our Aquinas Institute, who had just returned with a doctoral degree from the École Biblique in Jerusalem, a renowned school of contemporary biblical scholarship begun by Père Lagrange and the French Dominicans in 1890. He directed my thesis.
The number one thing I learned from writing the thesis was this: How Jewish Jesus was. How there could be no renewal of Christian spirituality without returning to the Jewish roots and mindset of Jesus.
Otto Rank appeared in my life 13 years later, and Otto Rank was Jewish. Reading him helped to enlarge my appreciation of the mindset of the historical Jesus.
Instead of “original sin,” Rank talked about an “original wound.” Instead of a theology of “God and me,” he wrote about why Karl Marx was so important in history (because he appealed to the “irrational” factor of hope for the hopeless); and why a “masculine ideology” that ruled Freud must be set aside by women creating their own psychology; and how creativity (the image of God in all of us?) was the key to our neuroses as well as to our salvation.
Instead of considering mysticism a “neurosis” à la Freud, Rank celebrates the unio mystica, the mystical union as a path of healing and a taste of “the beyond” to which all humans aspire. We undergo the unio mystica through “love and art.” And how a reunion of soul, psyche and cosmos was essential to reawaken humanity.
And how we must find room in our souls and social institutions for the “irrational”—play, music, dance, laughter, art, creativity etc.—to balance a dangerous and excessive rationality in culture and education if we are to live and thrive.
In a brilliant epilogue to his book, Kramer cites poet e.e. cummings of how our “difference,” such as Rank emphasizes, emerges: Almost anybody can learn to think or believe or know, but not a single human being can be taught to feel. Why? Because whenever you think or you believe or you know, you’re a lot of other people: but the moment you feel, you’re nobody-but-yourself.
To be nobody-but yourself-in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else–means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.
Art and life remind us that biology and sexuality do not dictate our destiny. Rank asks: Will people ever learn that there is no other equality possible than the equal right of every individual to become and to be himself or herself, which actually means to accept his own difference and have it accepted by others?
Kramer reminds us that “difference” for Rank is how women and men experience the exhilaration of being present, fully alive and conscious, awestruck at the mystery and wonder of existence, never ceasing to create something new out of Nothingness—bringing new life, new ideas, new energy, new knowledge, and previously unimagined ways to transcend anxiety, alienation, and existential loneliness, and overcome death.
He cites George Santayana, “there is no cure for birth and death, save to enjoy the interval.” For Rank, “birth is not only a trauma but also a triumph.” We can reconnect to others and the macrocosm. By surrendering to the majesty of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, we rediscover our likeness to all humanity, and feel again, viscerally, our godlike place in the ALL.*
* Robert Kramer,Otto Rank and the Creation of Modern Psychotherapy, pp. 224f. (This link will take you to the publisher’s page, where you can order a discounted copy; use code “AUFLY30” to claim your 30% discount.)
To read the transcript of Matthew Fox’s video meditation, click HERE.
Banner Image: Mystical Union — “Unio Mystico.” Photo by Wendy Zhang on Unsplash.
Queries for Contemplation
Have you experienced and rediscovered at times your “godlike place in the ALL”? What were the circumstances that brought that about? What role has that experience played in the rest of your life?
Related Readings by Matthew Fox
“Otto Rank on the Artistic Journey as a Spiritual Journey, the Spiritual Journey As an Artistic Journey,” in Wrestling with the Prophets, pp. 199-214.
“Otto Rank as Mystic and Prophet in the Creation Spirituality Tradition” on MatthewFox.org
“Psychotherapy and the ‘Unio Mystica’: Meister Eckhart Meets Otto Rank” in Meister Eckhart: A Mystic-Warrior for Our Times, pp. 139-156.
Passion For Creation: The Earth-Honoring Spirituality of Meister Eckhart.
Creativity: Where the Divine and the Human Meet.
Sins of the Sprit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul & Society, pp. xxxviii-xli, 113, 173f., 254, 271, 295, 339f., 344. 357.
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7 thoughts on “Otto Rank’s Spiritual Vision, continued”
I have never lost it.
Birth.
Service to humanity.
Rank and Becker’s dissection of the egocentric pursuit of immortality projects convinced me to seek a road less traveled towards my hum[ble]anity. I found guidance on that path in the “spirituality of imperfection” underlying the writings of Ernest Kurtz and others, as well as in those of the most Taoist of western spiritual masters, Eckhart, first explored in the 80s through Matthew Fox’s Breakthrough: Meister Eckhart’s Creation Spirituality.
Finding one’s “godlike place in the ALL” is well described in last week’s issue of Maria Popova’s The Marginalian [https://www.themarginalian.org/2025/12/29/growing-older/]: “Make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes increasingly merged in the universal life. An individual human existence should be like a river—small at first, narrowly contained within its banks, and rushing passionately past rocks and over waterfalls. Gradually the river grows wider, the banks recede, the waters flow more quietly, and in the end, without any visible break, they become merged in the sea, and painlessly lose their individual being.”[B. Russell]
Those are profound personal spiritual questions Matthew, “Have you experienced and rediscovered your “godlike place in the ALL?, and What role has that experience placed in the rest of your life?”. Briefly, in the space allotted to me, I would say that my personal spiritual journey has been an ongoing quest since my early adult years to answer those questions to the ‘present time.’ The understanding I have so far is that it entails having Faith in this transformative process of integrating my human and Divine natures towards LOVING DIVERSE ONENESS with others, all living creatures, Our Beautiful Sacred Mother Earth, and with All physical/nonphysical spiritual beings and dimensions of Our Sacred multidimensional/multiverse evolving CO-CREATION COSMOS in the Divine Spirit/Flow of the ETERNAL PRESENT MOMENT… The three interrelated universal spiritual traditions that continue to help me understand and experience this transformational process are —Contemplative~Creation~Incarnational Spiritual Traditions….
My journey as a mystic covers almost 50 years. I had THE Mystical experience when I was about 20, but didn’t know it as such until a bit later, and then gradually found and explored more mystics and Mysticism. I found out that this Mystical experience is THE foundational experience in Judaism, Christianity, Plato and Plotinus, some forms of gnosticism, Islam (Sufism), and most forms of Hinduism. There are other forms of “mystical” experiences which are also deeply meaningful, but this one is foundational to these specific religions and philosophers.
I learned, over and over, that women are NOT considered a part of this Mysticism. They are usually excluded and deemed “very much lesser.”
Jesus, though, seems to have been against such exclusion.
Since this is an all-encompassing framework, one doesn’t “fall out of it” but instead “re-submerges in various depths” within it, which has been what my life has done since then.
What role has it played in my life? It is my religious/experiential framework, that which all else fits within. It is also a guide, a lesson, and comfort.
Thank you, GG, for:
“…whenever you think or you believe or you know,
you’re a lot of other people: but the moment you feel, you’re nobody-but-yourself. ” ~ e.e cummings
“… there is no other equality possible than the equal right of every individual to become and to be himself or herself, which actually means to accept his own difference and have it accepted by others.” Otto Rank
These two quotes give me “permission to be me” in words that are more succinct than anything I’ve read or heard in my 78 years of life.
Thank you for your reflections of today. They are a true gift.
To be clear, this was not GG’s DM but mine, Matthew. I am pleased to know how Rank and Kramer and e.e. cummings support your journey.
I will not surrender to the notion that l am what you say l am to the verdict of convention served as the course of your fate l will continue as the soul of my inner soul dictates proud begging defense accusing receding lurking l am a fucked up child and pilgrim of the free it is a terror to be free to breathe but to live life life must renew itself in me