Like many others, my first experience of Bernadette Roberts was through her book The Experience of No-Self. I found it while browsing in a used bookstore, and picked it up solely because seeing “No-Self” in a book title in the mid-1990s was an intriguing rarity. I had no idea who Bernadette was, and while her writing was interesting, it quickly became another in a long line of books I digested in my search for enlightenment.
A couple of years later, I found myself at a spiritual dead end. My teacher, Richard Rose, had succumbed to Alzheimer’s, and I felt adrift and at a loss what to do next. There were only a handful of living spiritual teachers I thought worth investigating and Bernadette Roberts was one of them.
Towards the end of winter, two friends and I flew to a retreat she offered in California. Bernadette was in her sixties, at turns irreverent and opinionated, and a long student of Catholic mysticism. She knew the Christian spiritual journey, and her spiritual life was solidly set by age twenty-six when she attained the Unitive state—which she described as her self becoming centered in God. By her own admission Bernadette was “very limited, very narrow.” Most of her retreat was so buried in the terminology of Christian mysticism that I was ready to leave by the first day. Nor did she have patience for anyone working outside of a religious framework. I felt she looked with pity upon those of us associated with “independent” spiritual teachers like Mr. Rose. She advised us to join a religion because it offered more resources than a lone spiritual teacher. I felt no resonance with this advice, but shortly afterwards she made a telling remark about introverts and extroverts.
“All the mystics have been extroverts, big ones,” she said. “Introverts should not be in monasteries. They have some supernatural experiences and they just fade away. They should be in the world.”
Feeling the truth in this comment, I relaxed in her presence. I told her my spiritual path felt like pushing an enormous ball up a never-ending hill. Bernadette replied that I was in a rut and should do the opposite of what I was doing. This was not new advice, but hearing it from a stranger reaffirmed my decision to leave my current situation. For that small bit of advice at a propitious moment, I am deeply grateful.
That was my sole visit to Bernadette Roberts. I read her subsequent books, The Path to No-Self and What is Self?, but never found a foothold in her teachings that I used as a practice. For me, her teaching was one of inspiration and potential—a reminder that enlightenment wasn’t some far-off possibility. At the time, she was only the second person I met that I felt was enlightened, and what enlightenment means is more than this short writing can address. Suffice it to say she had a depth to her presence which was familiar, but different, than what I felt around Richard Rose. She left me knowing that others from vastly different backgrounds had reached a similar place, and that I more than ever wanted to find my way there as well.