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05 Sep 19 - 08:42 PM (#4007520) Subject: BS: Bernadette Roberts (1931 - 2017), author From: keberoxu I just found out, this month, of Bernadette Roberts' peaceful death two years ago, as no-one informed me of her passing when it actually happened. I can't call myself her student, as I was too lazy and self-involved to dedicate myself to the path she walked. Regardless, Bernadette Roberts has been one of the most important people, one of the greatest sources of light and wisdom, in my life. I first came across her while reading an issue of Yoga Journal magazine; which interview, I think, can still be scared up online here and there. She granted the interview -- I don't know if it was an exchange of faxes or something slower, it was years ago, before "texting" -- under the condition that it not be an in-person meeting but a more private, long-distance exchange of questions and answers. By this time she had already published The Experience of No-Self, a volume of memoirs and experiences, and that was the book that stopped everybody in their tracks. Bernadette's parents raised their family in Hollywood, California, of all places, and there were deodar trees in the area; Bernadette was one of I believe four children. Through all the peaks and valleys of her life, she remained loyal to her family. She even remained loyal to the church: her parents were the most staunch of Roman Catholics, and within their appearance of mild-mannered conventionality and fitting in amongst their fellow parishioniers, these were adults who believed the faith they professed and lived it with great intensity. Her father was an attorney, and I believe his influence to be a striking feature of Bernadette's writing in her several books; she is an intellectual who writes at the post-graduate level, and many is the time that her writing becomes literally a legal argument, making a case for a position. What I think is significant about Mrs. Roberts is her fidelity to the Church, her devout practice of Eucharistic Adoration, to the very end, even as her contemplative/mystical experiences took her to the outer limits of being an immortal spirit in a mortal body. I'm darned if I know how she did it -- within that slight wiry body was one of the strongest people I have ever been acquainted with, and many were the battles she had to fight in life. I met her three times. On each occasion she was leading a retreat and I was a participant. I doubt that I made a lasting impression on her, but she certainly did on me. Bernadette Roberts had had nothing less than an experience parallel to the one we call the Buddha, sitting under that Bodhi tree: the experience after which he spoke to the mechanism of his inner self, the one which collapsed before and within him, and said: Housebuilder! You have been seen! You will not build another house. All your beams are broken, the ridgepole is destroyed. This experience is the focus of her book The Experience of No-Self, and she describes this experience in the plainest, most direct English prose. And it is my duty and my honor to report that she lived as she wrote: her personality was direct, lively, animated, and opinionated. She walked an extraordinary path and stayed a real human being the whole time. You will have to read the book, and read the final chapter, for Bernadette's description of her conversation with her much older friend, "Lucille," who let her know that she was not alone and that others had had this experience and thrived. So now Bernadette and Lucille are over the threshold of physical death, where they can be reunited. I'm sure the reunion was joyful and brimming with laughter. Thank you, Bernadette Roberts. |