The Experience of No-Self

A Contemplative Journey, Revised Edition

Bernadette Roberts

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 1993
• ISBN:
  9781438417462
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Part I
The Journey

Chapter 1

Through past experience I had become familiar with many different types and levels of silence. There is a silence within, a silence that descends from without; a silence that stills existence and a silence that engulfs the entire universe. There is a silence of the self and its faculties of will, thought, memory, and emotions. There is a silence in which there is nothing, a silence in which there is something; and finally, there is the silence of noself and the silence of God. If there was any path on which I could chart my contemplative experiences, it would be this ever-expanding and deepening path of silence.

On one occasion, however, this path seemed to come to an end when I entered a silence from which I would never totally emerge. But I must preface this account by saying that on previous occasions, I had come upon a pervasive silence of the faculties so total as to give rise to subtle apprehensions of fear. It was a fear of being engulfed forever, of being lost, annihilated, or blacking out and possibly never returning. In such moments, to ward off the fear, I would make some movement of abandoning my fate to God—a gesture of the will, a thought, some type of projection. And every time I did this the silence would be broken and I would gradually return to my usual self—and security. Then, one day, this was not to be the case.

Down the road from where I lived there was a monastery by the sea, and on afternoons when I could get away I liked to spend some time alone in the silence of its chapel. This particular afternoon was no different than others. Once again there was a pervasive silence and once again I waited for the onset of fear to break it up. But this time the fear never came. Whether by habit of expectation or the reality of a fear held in abeyance, I felt some moments of suspense or tension—as if waiting for fear to touch me. During these moments of waiting I felt as if I were poised on a precipice or balanced on a thin tightrope, with the known (myself) on one side and the unknown (God) on the other. A movement of fear would have been a movement toward the self and the known. Would I pass over this time, or would I fall back into my self—as usual? Since there was no power of my own to move or choose I knew the decision was not mine; within, all was still, silent and motionless. In this stillness I was not aware of the moment when the fear and tension of waiting had left. Still, I continued to wait for a movement not of myself and when no movement came, I simply remained in a great stillness.

Sister was rattling the keys of the chapel door. It was time to lock up, and time to go home and prepare dinner for my children. Always in the past, having to abruptly pull out of a deep silence was difficult, for my energies were then at a low ebb, and the effort of moving was like lifting a dead weight. This time, however, it suddenly occurred to me not to think about getting up, but to just do it. I think I learned a valuable lesson here, because I left the chapel as a feather floats in the wind. Once outside, I fully expected to return to my ordinary energies and thinking mind, but this day I had a difficult time because I was continually falling back into the great silence. The drive home was a constant battle against complete unconsciousness, and trying to get dinner was like trying to move a mountain.

For three exhausting days it was a battle to stay awake and ward off the silence that every second threatened to overpower me. The only way I could accomplish the minimum of chores was by persistently reminding myself of what I was doing: now I’m peeling the carrots, now I’m cutting them, now I’m getting out a pan, now I’m putting water in the pan and on and on until, finally, I was so exhausted I would have to run for the couch. The moment I lay down I immediately blacked out. Sometimes it seemed I was out for hours, when it was only five minutes; at other times, it seemed like five minutes when it was hours. In this blackout there were no dreams, no awareness of my surroundings, no thoughts, no experiences—absolutely nothing.

On the fourth day I noticed the silence easing up so I could stay awake with less effort and, therefore, trusted myself to go shopping for groceries. I do not know what happened, but suddenly a lady was shaking me and asking, “Are you asleep?” I smiled at her while trying to get my bearings because, for the moment, I had not the slightest idea how I got in the store or what I should be doing. So I had to start all over again: now I am pushing the basket, now I must get some oranges, and so on. The morning of the fifth day, I could not find my slippers anywhere, but when getting breakfast for the children I opened the refrigerator and what I found there was unbelievable, positively ludicrous.

By the ninth day, the silence had so eased up I felt assured that a little while longer and all would be normal again. But as the days went by and I was once more able to function as usual I noticed something was missing, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Something, or some part of me had not returned. Some part of me was still in silence. It was as if some part of my mind had closed down. I blamed it on the memory because it was the last to return, and when it finally did, I noticed how flat and lifeless it was—like colorless slides on an antique film. It was dead. Not only was the distant past empty, but also the past of the previous minutes.

Now when something is dead you soon lose the habit of trying to resurrect it; thus when the memory is lifeless you learn to live as one who has no past—you learn to live in the present moment. That this could now be done effortlessly—and out of sheer necessity—was one good outcome of an otherwise exhausting experience. And even when I regained my practical memory, the effortless living in the present never left. But with the return of a practical memory I discounted my earlier notion of what was missing and decided that the silent aspect of my mind was actually a kind of “absorption,” an absorption in the unknown, which for me, of course, was God. It was like a continuous gaze at the great, silent Unknowable which no activity could interrupt. This was another welcomed outcome of the initial experience.

This interpretation of the silent aspect of my mind (absorption) seemed sufficiently explanatory for about a month when I again changed my mind and decided that this absorption was actually an awareness, a special kind of “seeing” so that what had really happened was not a close-down of any kind, but actually an openingup; nothing was missing, “something” had been added. After a while, however, this notion also did not seem to fit, it was somehow dissatisfying, something else had happened. So I decided to go to the library to see if I could solve this mystery through someone else’s experience.

What I found out is that, if it cannot be found in the works of John of the Cross, it will probably not be found at all. While the writings of the Saint were well known to me, I could not find there an explanation of my specific experience; nor was I able to find it anywhere in the library. But coming home that day, walking downhill with a panorama of valley and hills before me, I turned my gaze inward, and what I saw, stopped me in my tracks. Instead of the usual unlocalized center of myself, there was nothing there, it was empty; and at the moment of seeing this there was a flood of quiet joy and I knew, finally I knew what was missing—it was my “self.”

Physically I felt as if a great burden had been lifted from me, I felt so light I looked down at my feet to be sure they were on the ground. Later I thought of St. Paul’s experience, “Now, not I, but Christ lives in me,” and realized that despite my emptiness no one else had moved in to take my place. So I decided that Christ WAS the joy, the emptiness itself; He was all that was left of this human experience. For days I walked with this joy that, at times, was so great, I marveled at the flood gates and wondered how long they would hold.

This experience was the height of my contemplative vocation. It was the ending of a question that had plagued me for years: where do “I” leave off and God begin? Over the years the line that separated us had grown so thin and faded that most of the time I couldn’t see it at all, but always my mind had wanted desperately to know: what was His and what was mine? Now my quandary was over. There was no “mine” anymore, there was only His. I could have lived in this joyous state the rest of my life, but such was not in the Great Plan. It was just a matter of days, a week perhaps, when my entire spiritual life—the work, the suffering, the experiences and the goals of a lifetime—suddenly exploded into a million irretrievable pieces and there was nothing, absolutely nothing left.

Chapter 2

When the joy of my own emptiness began to wane I decided to rejuvenate it by spending some solitary time gazing into my empty self. Though the center of self was gone, I was sure the remaining emptiness, the silence and joy, was God Himself. Thus on one occasion, with full hedonistic deliberation, I settled myself down and turned my gaze inward. Almost immediately the empty space began to expand, and expanded so rapidly it seemed to explode; then, in the pit of my stomach I had the feeling of falling a hundred floors in a nonstop elevator, and in this fall every sense of life was drained from me. The moment of landing I knew: When there is no personal self, there is also no personal God. I saw clearly how the two go together—and where they went, I have never found out.

For a while I sat there mentally and emotionally stunned. I couldn’t think about what had happened, nor was there any response in me at all. Around me there was only stillness, and in this complete stillness I waited and waited for some kind of reaction to set in or something to happen next, but nothing ever did. In me there was no sense of life, no movement and no feeling; finally I realized I no longer had a “within” at all.

The moment of falling had been such a complete wipe-out that never again would I have any sense of possessing a life I could call my own—or any other type of life. My interior or spiritual life was finished. There was no more gazing within; from now on my eyes could only look outward. At the time, I had no way of knowing the tremendous repercussions that would follow this sudden event. I had to learn bit by bit on a totally experiential level. My mind could not comprehend what had happened; this event and everything that followed fell outside any frame of reference known to me. From here on, I literally had to grope my way along an unknown path.

My first thought was: oh, no, not another Dark Night! I was accustomed to those experiential disappearances of God and was rather disappointed to think there were any of them left. But when none of the usual reactions set in (anything from anxiety to agony—you name it), I felt this experience fell outside anything John of the Cross had described and put the notion out of my mind. Besides, it didn’t make any difference, I simply had to cope with the reality of the here and now, a reality in which there was no sense of life in me.

So I sat there fully awake, healthy, faculties unimpaired, obviously alive; in a word, all systems were functioning as usual—but I felt no life. What do you do now? I decided I might as well get an early start preparing dinner, but as I did so, all the usual movements now seemed so mechanical I felt I had suddenly become a robot, for I could no longer endow my work with any personal energies. I did my chores with no life to back them up and they were all totally mechanical, a mere conditioned habit of movement.

After a while this “gets” to you and you gradually have a pressing need to find some life somewhere. Hoping to find it I went into the garden and stood there looking around. I knew there was life there, but I couldn’t “feel” it; so I went around like a blind man, touching everything: the leaves and flowers; reaching up I grabbed the pine branches and let them slide through my hands; stooping down, I ran my hands through the soil. Then I lay down on the grass, palms downward, looking up through the branches of the pine tree and felt the moving air flow over me. It was good to be there; everything was okay. Somewhere there was life all around me, even if there was no life in me.

Later that evening before the sun went down I took myself to a place I always went in time of crisis—the local bird refuge. It was only a few blocks from home and the route there passed by beautiful vistas of the sea, with its miles of shoreline and hills rising up behind the refuge. Usually I only climbed in a little way, for beyond the stump where I would sit was a marsh that grew deeper with mud and water as it approached one of the ponds formed by the river which here, emptied into the sea. But this day I took off my shoes and socks and climbed into the middle of the refuge until I found a small rock barely visible above the mud. Here, among the tall reeds and wild grasses I sat down and disappeared—literally sank into the life that was around me, and soon, on me as well.

Always I had felt at home here. It was a place of great peace and a mysterious stillness. By experience I knew that thinking would never solve the problems of life, it was just being here, out-of-doors, in the midst of real life, that automatically separated the relevant from the irrelevant, so that upon returning home all the irrelevancies had been swept away and I could see clearly the path I must go. So too, on this particular day I knew I was home, more at home perhaps than ever before. Around the little rock life was teeming and overflowing; it was everywhere, and so compensated for my own lack of life that the earlier events of the day seemed not to have happened. For sure, this was where I belonged, surrounded and locked securely into this elusive unlocalized thing called “life.” After all, I thought, perhaps no man is better than the elements of which he is composed, for these elements are his very life—but how this could be so, I did not know. Just to be there was all that mattered.

The next weeks were spent mainly out-of-doors. Life indoors had become almost intolerable because it was now so routine, lifeless, and devoid of personal energies that it was all I could do to accomplish the minimum of chores. But out-of-doors somewhere life was flowing—peaceful, forgetful, unknowable—and this was where I had to be. So I roamed the hills, the riverbanks and the seashore just looking, watching, and being there.

Though I had looked and watched all my life, this time was different because I could no more find life in the trees, the wild flowers or the waters than I could find it in myself; and yet, there was life all around. It’s strange how the mind wants to localize and pinpoint this unknowable thing called life, and when its demands are met, it goes blind with this knowledge and is forever locked out of the only true security man has—or so I would soon learn. For now, however, I was looking for this security and could not find it. Though everything seemed as empty as myself I knew there was life somewhere in nature, and for now, I wanted only to be there and be a part of it.

On a bluff above the sea, overlooking a cove of rocks on which the seals would doze, there stood a gnarled, wind-blown cypress tree, a favorite spot of mine—until a Forest Ranger one day told me to leave, lest I add to the soil erosion. Between the tortured roots, which allowed for no other growth, there was a place to sit down without mashing a single dandelion or disturbing the varied flora that made this bluff so beautiful.

It was here that nature finally yielded its secret to me in a simple, still moment in which I saw how it all worked. God or life was not in anything, it was just the reverse: everything was in God. And we were not in God like drops of water that could be separated from the sea, but more like … well, the only thing I could think of was the notion of trying to pinch out a spot on an inflated balloon; if you pinch out a spot and try to cut it off the whole thing will pop because it can’t be done. You cannot separate anything from God, for as soon as you let go of the notion of separateness, everything falls back into the wholeness of God and life.

But to see how this works and to explain it are two different matters. One thing is for sure: as long as we are caught up in words, definitions, and all that the mind wants to cling to, we can never see how it works. And until we can go beyond our notions regarding the true nature of life we will never realize how totally secure we really are, and how all the fighting for individual survival and self-security is a waste of energy. This insight then, opened a new door for me. I began to see things differently and, above all, I quit wandering around looking for life—obviously it’s everywhere, we’re in it; it’s all there is.

Solely in retrospect I would like to mention a certain lesson learned on this journey. I learned that a single insight is not sufficient to bring about any real change. In time, every insight has a way of filtering down to our usual frame of reference, and once we make it fit, it gets lost in the milieu of the mind—the mind, which has a tendency to pollute every insight. The secret of allowing an insight to become a permanent way of knowing and seeing is not to touch it, cling to it, dogmatize it, or even think about it. Insights come and go, but to have them stay we have to flow with them, otherwise no change is possible. It is a mistake to think that because we have been thrown the ball, we know which direction to run. Perhaps our greatest insights are lost this way: we plunk them down in our usual frame of reference and go nowhere. But if we are really ready when the ball comes, the sheer momentum will carry us and place us in the flow—wherever it is going. Now I pass this along only because I had to learn it the hard way. When the pieces didn’t fit or when an insight fell outside my frame of reference I felt more lost than was really necessary. Thus I could have saved myself a lot of trouble looking and searching for my own unanswerable questions.

An example of learning the hard way occurred here, with the falling away of all feeling of possessing individual life, which forced me to look for life outside myself. Since I had already lived some forty years experiencing life within, this was a very difficult time, a time of transition and acclimation without being able to see ahead or understanding what had happened. Nevertheless, I did the best I could to help myself, and since I was a daily communicant, it occurred to me it might be of some avail to carry the Eucharist with me at all times—in a pix around my neck. With the falling away of life within, the reception of the Eucharist no longer had any effect on me. Where before it had always drawn me into its mysterious silence, now, no such change occurred. If anything, there was too much silence. Thus, with the failure of the Eucharist to restore a sense of life within, I felt doubly lost and decided I might at least carry it with me in my search to find God without.

After a few weeks, however, I saw this ruse was not working when it brought no sense of life or security, nor brought about any change in the situation. Then, under the cypress tree on the day already mentioned, I consumed the host and saw all things were in God, that he was closer and more personal than I ever dare...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part I The Journey
• Part II A Closer Look
• Back Cover