The Great Bernadette Roberts

[RisingLane]

No one describes the ego and the self-conscious mechanism quite like Bernadette Roberts. Her book "What is Self?" is an impressive achievement.

She believed in free will, and she was a monotheist, but aside from that, her explanation of the self-conscious mechanism is unmatched.

As a contemplative, she studied the interior movements closely and described them with precision.

Check out this interview with her.

Edited 15 hours ago by RisingLane

[Michal__]

Great books. I read "What is Self?" too.

[RisingLane]

30 minutes ago, Michal__ said:

Great books. I read "What is Self?" too.

Many fans of "The Experience of No-Self" don’t seem to enjoy "What is Self?" as much, finding it too technical, yet that book contains so many beautiful passages with clear and insightful descriptions of ego and self.

For example:

"The term 'ego' articulates a specific experience. Its best articulation might be this: the ego is what we feel when self-will is crossed, blocked or otherwise thwarted. It is the psychological pain that underlies all tantrum behaviors—anger, hitting back, revenge, anxiety and much more. It is the cause of true psychological and spiritual suffering and always symptomatic of an imbalanced, immature psyche. The ego is the interior movement we experience when we do not get what we want; it is also the experience of near uncontainable highs when we do get what we want. Obviously the ego is the experience of extremes—extreme feelings, that is—and for this reason it easily imbalances the whole psyche or consciousness. The ego is first and foremost the feeling-self—it is not, primarily at least, the knowing-self. Merely to know something exists—an object, a virtue, something good or bad—does not mean that we want it for ourselves. The ego springs alive only when we want something for ourselves and are determined to get it, possess it. This affirms that the ego is the experience of self-will, a will turned solely on itself that seeks its own fulfillment and benefit. When frustrated this egoic power or energy has given rise to all the evils in the world, yet the same ego in pursuit of goodness can give rise to great good in the world. Thus the ego is a particular self-energy or power that can go either way—negatively toward what is not good for self, positively toward what is good for self. If we believe that the divine is our highest good, then the ego (self-energy or self-will) goes in pursuit of the divine, and this pursuit is the ego's true, proper, developmental direction. The ego is, therefore, basically good; it is only bad when it goes against its own highest good."

[Michal__]

I didn't finish "The experience of No-Self".

[RisingLane]

5 minutes ago, Michal__ said:

I didn't finish "The experience of No-Self".

Interesting. It’s probably her most accessible and entertaining book.

[Michal__]

18 minutes ago, RisingLane said:

Interesting. It’s probably her most accessible and entertaining book.

I just got lazy. I am low key addicted to modafinil and only put in enough time reading, meditating and working when I am on it. I was out of it for a long time.

[gettoefl]

She is good. Here is her 13 step path. Read from bottom to top. 

[gettoefl]

Quote

 

I know of no other way of articulating this turning point than to put it in purely Christian terms. Having realized self’s abiding oneness with the Divine, there is also the realization of Christ's self, his purely human self and its oneness with the Divine. At one time the divine Logos (or preincarnate Christ) “put off” absolute divinity in order to "put on" humanity, that is, to fully accept the conditional life of self. In like manner, the present turning point is the contemplative’s full acceptance of the conditional, impermanent and non eternal self and the “putting off” of the final Divine Condition.

This putting off, or having no more experiences of "outshining" or Beatific foretastes is accomplished by moving into the marketplace of the common man in order to fully live the conditional self. Live it in the Realized Condition of Oneness just as Christ lived it, giving away the self in the living of it with other selves. This means that the contemplative now seeks the maximum arising of the phenomenal self, which, as we have said, serves as a maximum "reminder" of its Divine Center. The degree to which we seek this maximum arising is proportionate to the speed with which we traverse this marketplace stage of the journey. (Many people do not realize that the marketplace is a necessary stage of the journey. Instead, there is the general belief that once we come to the Realized or Unitive Condition, this is the end of the line. This is a false or wrong view, of course).

The other way to go is to continue to relish and protect our exalted and blissful experiences of Beatific Outshining by keeping to our meditative, contemplative, or less distracting style of life – obviously, the reclusive lifestyle is more conducive to having such experiences. But actually, that would be the same as the butterfly clinging to his cocoon, the refusal of the Realizer to let go the raft once he has come to the other shore. In that case, there has been no complete acceptance of the phenomenal conditional self. Indeed, there cannot be full acceptance of self until and unless there is a "putting off" of the Final Divine Condition or heavenly state – total detachment from this experience, total surrender and forfeiture of it. This can only be done, however, by moving into the marketplace of ordinary life and becoming one with the unknown, unrealized and unenlightened. The marketplace means choosing the maximum opportunities and circumstances under which the conditional self can arise. This is the true challenge of the mature, Realized human being.

 

[RisingLane]

Her 13-step path is fascinating. Even after reading The Real Christ—her most challenging book—I still don’t fully grasp what she means by Christ. She never outright says “You are God” like Leo does, though she comes close. She seems to emphasize an eternal union with God without identifying as God. I’m not sure if she stopped short because of her Christian faith, or if Leo’s take is simply wrong.

[gettoefl]

8 minutes ago, RisingLane said:

Her 13-step path is fascinating. Even after reading The Real Christ—her most challenging book—I still don’t fully grasp what she means by Christ. She never outright says “You are God” like Leo does, though she comes close. She seems to emphasize an eternal union with God without identifying as God. I’m not sure if she stopped short because of her Christian faith, or if Leo’s take is simply wrong.

I'd say Christ is the activity of God that creates finite universes like this one. God knows nothing about here. Since just like the finite cannot know the infinite so too the infinite cannot know the finite. It God knew here, here would be eternal. God outsources this project to the apple of his eye, his Son the Christ.

[RisingLane]

7 minutes ago, gettoefl said:

I'd say Christ is the activity of God that creates finite universes like this one. God knows nothing about here. Since just like the finite cannot know the infinite so too the infinite cannot know the finite. It God knew here, here would be eternal. God outsources this project to the apple of his eye, his Son the Christ.

Fascinating! But isn’t God supposed to be omniscient? How could God not know about this place? And why does she insist that “I am God” is nonsense? She even had an “I am God” experience herself, which seemed to have really frightened her.

[Breakingthewall]

4 hours ago, RisingLane said:

the ego is what we feel when self-will is crossed, blocked or otherwise thwarted. It is the psychological pain that underlies all tantrum behaviors—

The ego is more than that. When your mind is in absolute silence, there is still a barrier. There is a center, a kind of black hole into which all experience converges. A receiver, an observer, where everything ends, which absorbs all the movement of reality but remains immobile.

This center is the ego. It can be an aligned, disciplined ego, one that accepts, that does not desire, that only observes. But it is still an ego. The absence of ego is the dissolution of the center. This is the difficult part of the game. The door without a door, which wants to be opened by the door itself.

[gettoefl]

3 hours ago, RisingLane said:

Fascinating! But isn’t God supposed to be omniscient? How could God not know about this place? And why does she insist that “I am God” is nonsense? She even had an “I am God” experience herself, which seemed to have really frightened her.

Here is the thing. We think we live separately from God - every look in the mirror confirms this assumption. The journey then is man->Christ->God. Christ is what breaks down the idea we are separate from God and enables us to live out of that truth. It is how we come to unitive consciousness and then to no-self and then to fullness in God. Christ is the marketplace stage of Robert's path where we live fully carrying out God's work. I am God is nonsense in egoic consciousness which is where all think they are. God cannot know a two-ness universe since two-ness is an impossibility we made up out of thin air. God doesn't mind we did this but knows there is a better reality where suffering is not the case and so God has Christ be the vehicle for the apparent journey back to oneness.

Edited 7 hours ago by gettoefl

[RisingLane]

7 hours ago, Breakingthewall said:

The ego is more than that. When your mind is in absolute silence, there is still a barrier. There is a center, a kind of black hole into which all experience converges. A receiver, an observer, where everything ends, which absorbs all the movement of reality but remains immobile.

This center is the ego. It can be an aligned, disciplined ego, one that accepts, that does not desire, that only observes. But it is still an ego. The absence of ego is the dissolution of the center. This is the difficult part of the game. The door without a door, which wants to be opened by the door itself.

Roberts says the center is what’s left when the ego disappears, explaining it in the video above using circles. I’m not sure a desireless ego can exist. She believes the ego comes alive the moment we want something, and that it can’t truly accept. Only the egoless center remains unmoved.