The Path to No-Self by Bernadette Roberts

Author:Bernadette Roberts [Roberts, Bernadette]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: SUNY Press
Published: 1981-01-28T08:00:00+00:00

Between Phase III and IV

Having seen clearly that pure vision lies beyond all self-involvement — beyond the faculties of soul, feelings, responses, and even the door at the center — all former contemplative experiences now appeared less pure, tainted by contrast. For this reason, I decided if I could not at this time have the continual vision of God beyond self-consciousness, then I wanted no experiences at all; once the self is seen through — and beyond — nothing less than pure vision can entice. Like everyone else, I took it for granted that the permanent vision of God was reserved for the next life. And since I was not destined to die immediately, what I had to do now was to accept this present life — self included — and make the best of it. I was therefore willing to put my experiential life behind and move forward by way of simple faith; I now saw that faith devoid of all experience was the closest one could come to the truth, the reality of God. If self invariably had its finger in every experience, at least it could not touch naked faith, or faith that is utterly selfless.

This is a particular type of faith. It is not an intellectual assent to belief or a system of thought; it is not a faith that gives rise to feelings and experiences; it is not a mental construct we cling to with persistent will; rather, this faith is the truth of God as He is in Himself and not as He is in “my” self; it is a faith that comes after seeing and not before. Where, before transformation, faith was dependent upon our minds, wills, experiences — our self, that is — now, after transformation, faith or the truth of God never depends on anything outside itself.

What is more, because it is a realized truth, it is a faith we cannot live without even if we wanted to, even if we tried to run from it all the days of our lives. As long as faith rests with the intellect, we will always be subject to doubt and disbelief — after all, it is the nature of the intellect to doubt. This tells us we must go beyond the intellect if we are to lay hold of truth, and this laying-hold is what I regard as mature faith. In a word: faith is selfless, whereas our experiences and our knowledge are not.

When I first glimpsed the true beauty and meaning of a naked, selfless faith, I had the feeling of having come full circle in that, after the transformation, I was now back where I started — a most ordinary person of simple faith. The only difference was that I now had the faith of the butterfly and not of the caterpillar; a mature faith derived from seeing, experiencing, and transformation, which was now free from self and in no way dependent upon it. This faith, then, is the continuous, obscure

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