The Path to No-Self: Life at the Center

Rating:
Summary: Thanks!
Review: Great book. The Noself state is indeed controversial, but not new, at least in India where the benefitiary of such condition is called a Jivanmukti (liberated while alive). For centuries there detractors said it was not possible, that at Mukta (liberation), the Jiva (man) automatically becomes a Videhamukta, dies and merges with the Father. But Ramana Maharshi, short of calling himself a Jivanmukti, often and clearly defined the characteristics of that state, and said it existed. It is clearly a state of Noself, without the sense of "I". To the eyes of the world this person appears to engage in activity, but does nothing, thus creating no new Karma with absence of doership. The unfathomable state of the Jnani (pronounced Guiani in Sanskrit). Mukta or liberation is indeed dissolution of the self (ego). This Ramana also defined as Sahaja Stithi, or state of constant Samadhi. Samadhi, the saint of Arunachala said, was our normal condition. Wisely, Ms. Roberts defines experiences of Nirvikalpa Samadhi, like the one sustained by Henry Suso and quoted in her book as temporary glimpses, marvelous! She adds they are a real awakening to our real nature. Ramana said Nirvikalpa Samadhi was like a bucket temporarily submersed in a well, the Self, which resumed its activity (the little self) when retrieved from the well. Take heart, this state of Noself is certainly not to be feared, and it seems to be unavoidable. However, Paul Brunton was critical of the possibility of living with total absence of "I", How, Brunton asked, the body functions without this sense?.

Rating:
Summary: Thanks!
Review: Great book. The Noself state is indeed controversial, but not new, at least in India where the benefitiary of such condition is called a Jivanmukti (liberated while alive). For centuries there detractors said it was not possible, that at Mukta (liberation), the Jiva (man) automatically becomes a Videhamukta, dies and merges with the Father. But Ramana Maharshi, short of calling himself a Jivanmukti, often and clearly defined the characteristics of that state, and said it existed. It is clearly a state of Noself, without the sense of "I". To the eyes of the world this person appears to engage in activity, but does nothing, thus creating no new Karma with absence of doership. The unfathomable state of the Jnani (pronounced Guiani in Sanskrit). Mukta or liberation is indeed dissolution of the self (ego). This Ramana also defined as Sahaja Stithi, or state of constant Samadhi. Samadhi, the saint of Arunachala said, was our normal condition. Wisely, Ms. Roberts defines experiences of Nirvikalpa Samadhi, like the one sustained by Henry Suso and quoted in her book as temporary glimpses, marvelous! She adds they are a real awakening to our real nature. Ramana said Nirvikalpa Samadhi was like a bucket temporarily submersed in a well, the Self, which resumed its activity (the little self) when retrieved from the well. Take heart, this state of Noself is certainly not to be feared, and it seems to be unavoidable. However, Paul Brunton was critical of the possibility of living with total absence of "I", How, Brunton asked, the body functions without this sense?.

Rating:
Summary: A book to live with
Review: This lucid and unfailingly honest account of the process of coming to terms with the loss of "self" is simply a grace for those with ears to hear. Ms. Roberts, a former nun, has walked the contemplative path to the point where it disappears into nowhere and then, remarkably enough, kept walking. Her personal experiences and reflections on the journey are invaluable to those traveling a similar route; along with the writings of St. John of the Cross, her books (I include "The Experience of No-Self" as well) are simply the most nourishing of mana for those lost in the desert of God, as well as for those who have lived in the desert and are being called at last back to the city. The straightforwardness of her writing and her contemporary reality are a blessing. No one tells it like it is about the dark night of the soul better than Bernadette Roberts, and her books have been sustaining companions to me for almost twenty years. They were all I could read, at many points. These are not books for scholars; these are books for those in the grip of the real thing.

Rating:
Summary: A book to live with
Review: This lucid and unfailingly honest account of the process of coming to terms with the loss of "self" is simply a grace for those with ears to hear. Ms. Roberts, a former nun, has walked the contemplative path to the point where it disappears into nowhere and then, remarkably enough, kept walking. Her personal experiences and reflections on the journey are invaluable to those traveling a similar route; along with the writings of St. John of the Cross, her books (I include "The Experience of No-Self" as well) are simply the most nourishing of mana for those lost in the desert of God, as well as for those who have lived in the desert and are being called at last back to the city. The straightforwardness of her writing and her contemporary reality are a blessing. No one tells it like it is about the dark night of the soul better than Bernadette Roberts, and her books have been sustaining companions to me for almost twenty years. They were all I could read, at many points. These are not books for scholars; these are books for those in the grip of the real thing.

Rating:
Summary: Thought-provoking, encourages reflection on one's self.
Review: Whether coming from a Christian deistic or a Buddhist non-deistic background, Roberts speaks to the moment when God and the self disappear in a kind of intimate togetherness. God is gone as an object of our search/worship/longing...And the self is gone with God, so there is no one remaining who would search/worship/long in the first place. This is unlike the mystics Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross, for whom only God remains as the self is taken up within God. And it is unlike the existentialists, for whom only the self remains after God is removed to Nothingness. We are simply left with life as it is...a kind of blend of Heidegger's non-self Dasein and Zen's everyday mind. That is, one can arrive (or find oneself there) by other means. So what is interesting about Roberts' book is not so much the path that is described as it is the place that the path leads to. The no-self is full of grace but without a heavenly source of it. The no-self has returned to its pre-spiritual essence, which is actually the non-objectified spiritual reality in which there is no difference between the spiritual and the non-spiritual. But Bernadette Roberts describes it much better than these words of mine.