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It sometimes strikes me that the whole of science is a piece of impudence; that nature can afford to ignore our impertinent interference. If our monkey mischief should ever reach the point of blowing up the earth by decomposing an atom, and even annihilated the sun himself, I cannot really suppose that the universe would turn a hair.
-- Aleister Crowley
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gurugeorge |
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Post subject: Bernadette Roberts
 Posted: Jul 11, 2008 - 09:09 AM
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Joined: Apr 13, 2004
Posts: 208
Location: London, UK
Status: Offline
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Just finished The Experience of No Self: A Contemplative Journey by a lady called Bernadette Roberts. This book is fairly popular in neo-Advaita circles, and one can understand why. It's one one of those books, like Suzanne Segals Collision with the Inifinite, and Stephen Jourdain's Radical Awakening, that has tremendous power because it's not couched in any particular jargon, and is a sort of fresh, almost unconditioned look at the phenomenon of mysticism straight from someone's heart, in their very own words.
One of the first things that will strike anyone familiar with Thelemic material is how often she uses the phrase "that which remains". Now it's almost a dead certainty that she's never even heard of Liber AL, she's an ex-Christian-nun, a contemplative who sits squarely in the Christian tradition of John of the Cross (her favourite mystical author).
But her own experience has, in her own words, taken her somewhat beyond where Christian contemplatives, at least in their writings, leave off.
Interestingly, she gives her theory of why this is so here:
"To journey beyond the self means leaving behind not only our relative notions, expectations, and theories concerning what lies beyond the known, it also means leaving behind all our previous experiences, be they spiritual, mystical or otherwise. It means going beyond our usual frames of reference and encountering areas of theological sensitivity which, alone, might necessitate such accounts remaning unrecorded or unpreserved. I have always been of the opinion that John of the Cross, with the Spanish Inquisition breathing down his neck, failed to give us the full story. We know that his writings were left incomplete."
This should give a flavour of this remarkable woman's moral courage and independence of thought.
As to the meat of it, I think this book contains one of the best blow-by-blow accounts of the Crossing of the Abyss anywhere (she calls it "The Passageway"). Whether she did it in full (on every level of her being) or merely in part I wouldn't dare judge. But by triangulation of my own small experience at a much lower level with the writings of other greats, I reckon that's what's really going on here.
Whatever, it's a darn good read by a real maverick, at times a bit pompous and self-important, but you can forgive her, because her account of her mystical experiences is refreshingly original and first-hand, in a field that's often plagued by third-hand parroted trash. |
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"To wake up is to wake the world up" - D.E. Harding
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MichaelStaley |
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Post subject: RE: Bernadette Roberts
Posted: Jul 11, 2008 - 09:58 AM
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Joined: Apr 21, 2004
Posts: 792
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That sounds extremely interesting. Would you be willing to do a more detailed review of the book for Lashtal?
I've not heard the term "neo-advaita" before. Does that apply to work later than, say, that of Ramana Maharshi or Wei Wu Wei?
It was an author called Benoit, I think, that used the term "The Supreme Insight" as the title for one of his books, and that term summarises Advaita in my opinion.
Best wishes,
Michael. |
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"It's all in the egg".
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Iskandar |
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Post subject: Re: Bernadette Roberts
Posted: Jul 11, 2008 - 03:55 PM
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Joined: Feb 14, 2005
Posts: 193
Status: Offline
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gurugeorge wrote: › As to the meat of it, I think this book contains one of the best blow-by-blow accounts of the Crossing of the Abyss anywhere (she calls it "The Passageway"). Whether she did it in full (on every level of her being) or merely in part I wouldn't dare judge. But by triangulation of my own small experience at a much lower level with the writings of other greats, I reckon that's what's really going on here.
I also consider the following book to be an extraordinary account of the Crossing of the Abyss: "How To Grow a Lotus Blossom, or How a Zen Buddhist Prepares for Death" by a British woman known as Jiyu Kennett, who established her Zen Buddhist monastery at Shasta Abbey in California (she trained as the first woman in six centuries to do so at Sojiji, one of the two headquarters of Soto Zen in Japan). Highly recommended.
Incidentally, she was born in Hastings and was growing up while Crowley was there spending his last days. I once listened to a tape-recording of her talk where she mentions that whenever the kids misbehaved, they would be told "If you keep doing this, Mr. Crowley will come and take you away." Or some other words to that effect - it was a while ago I heard this so my memory is imperfect, but this is the gist of it. |
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gurugeorge |
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Post subject: Re: RE: Bernadette Roberts
Posted: Jul 11, 2008 - 04:39 PM
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Joined: Apr 13, 2004
Posts: 208
Location: London, UK
Status: Offline
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MichaelStaley wrote: › That sounds extremely interesting. Would you be willing to do a more detailed review of the book for Lashtal?
I've not heard the term "neo-advaita" before. Does that apply to work later than, say, that of Ramana Maharshi or Wei Wu Wei?
It was an author called Benoit, I think, that used the term "The Supreme Insight" as the title for one of his books, and that term summarises Advaita in my opinion.
Best wishes,
Michael.
I'd be happy to in spirit, but unfortunately I don't really have the time to do a full review atm. "Neo-Advaita" is a coinage that was initially meant as a put-down but is worn by some as a badge of pride - it refers to the crop of Westerners who, when Osho exploded, were scattered to various publicly available Indian Advaitins such as Papaji, Nisargadatta Maharaj, etc., and also to other Westerners and Indian teachers who follow to some extent Ramana Maharshi's teachings in a modern context (Papaji was himself a student of Ramana's, although only for a short time), or who are "self-enlightened" ("Prayekhabuddhas", maybe)and don't come from any tradition. Some more old-skool Advaitins think these upstarts are shallow jokers, but I think most of them are actually pretty good. They're marked by an uncompromising attitude to the "no teaching, nothing to be done to "gain" enlightenment" idea. This rankles with some traditionalists who feel a good grounding in the traditional scholarly Advaita stuff, even a bit of Indian tradition, is necessary.
A top exposition from another maverick who's more or less firmly in the neo-Advaitin camp, or rather pegged as such by most people, is David Carse, whose book Perfect, Brilliant Stillness, is quite extraordinary.
Wei Wu Wei was a profound writer, and of course Ramana is beautiful, a diamond geezer, as they say  |
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"To wake up is to wake the world up" - D.E. Harding
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