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JB, I think you have that on a web page, don't you? Let me know the link and I'll make the edit. - - - Grateful to those of you who've been participating, as it's likely this discussion will become more widely known. Jim Arraj will link to it on his website, and the search engines will pick it up. I think it's an important discussion for many reasons, two of the most important being: a. it gives us an opportunity to reflect more deeply on important topics like the meaning of the Incarnation, Theosis, "the final things," etc. b. Bernadette Roberts' is regarded by people like Ken Wilber as one of the most enlightened beings to ever come out of Christianity. It also seems that her writings have had considerable influence on Thomas Keating and other leaders in the renewal of Christian contemplative spirituality. Although she clearly wants to distinguish her experience from those of Advaitists, it's also clear that some of what she writes resonates strongly with them, which is why they claim her as an example of a Christian nondualist. Here is a link to a review of The Experience of No-Self that I posted on Amazon.com years ago. I had added a comment a couple of months ago that expresses points I've made on this discussion. | ||||
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Ah, yes, I see that we were typing up our comments at the same time this a.m. and cross-posted. I will have a look at that one above carefully... much peace to you!!  | ||||
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johnboy, i didn't understand the statement,"I WILL STOP HERE AS MY THOUGHTS ARE FOGGING UP..."(wink,wink!) rebecca | ||||
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johnboy, i am very busy also, but now that i have had time to read over( and over and over...)your post , it comes to mind that i agree with a lot of what you say. i wonder if you have time to clarify a few things for me?this discussion is indeed not only important for me, but fascinating, as i have felt very alone in my search, and have not been able to share these things with anyone.my quest to see christ in all men has been a joy and also a sorrow, as many times it has been misunderstood. my difficulty often is that if i am to live in Love, then i also must live in Truth. our society often scorns such things. ( of course it is also hard for others to accept that i love them, no matter what the Truth may be) bernadette roberts also brought to light events that i have also encountered in my walk.but she interpreted them differently,and many of them came to her in a different order than i. which i attribute to the fact of our(or should i say 'my')individuality.i have been able to quickly forgive( about89% of the time), and let go of pain, and live in a calm but enthusiastically joyous Love and can accept any trials that come my way.( of course He is always raising the bar!)however(SHASHA)i think what depressed me about her book was that it left me feeling very alone again.if it were not for my profound infusion of LOVE for Him,(from Him) and my desire to be alone with Him, then i would not be able to bear it.how does one share this Love that christ told us to share in this state of NO SELF? the idea of not having my self to share the christ in me with others makes me very afraid.it feels like death.i understand that " the Divine Essence is beyond our discursive faculties", and also that God transcends our thought and our level of love, but does that mean that on the level of NO SELF, we have been absorbed into the Divine Essence? i have long wondered if this is our final resting place for our spirit. if so, i am sure it will be GLORIOUS, but at my present level it feels like death.and also, what if this stated accomplishment of NO SELF is just another trick of the ego? so...help me God!( or anyone else out there?) in Him, rebecca | ||||
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Hmmm, Rebecca, I'm going to take a stab at this for you. But do be patient. Instead of self and no self, think in terms of noisy self and quiet self and think of noisy and quiet in terms of emotional energy. Think of the different ways we grow in authenticity: intellectual, affective, moral, social and religious (Lonergan's conversions) and how growth in one way does not necessarily accompany growth in other ways.  Think of how we can gain clarity of insight about reality, intellectually, sometimes through inexplicable aha moments of brilliant raw awareness, which bubbles up from our unconscious,  sometimes through arduous intellectual and philosophical exertion  .Think of how we grow in emotional maturity and individuation processes, sometimes through gradual and healthy formative upbringing, sometimes from growth brought on by crisis and our sucessful transcendence of circumstances, suffering and pain  .Think of how we grow in faith and hope and love, sometimes through gradual conversion and formation, sometimes through profoundly moving metanoia experiences, sometimes through liminal experiences that take us away from the ordinary and open us to new encounters  .It seems to me that, while all of these growth processes can be placed in the service of each other process, our individual paths reveal them to be otherwise quite distinct. It also seems to me that, once our egos are relieved of the disquiet of emotional energy, our psychic resources are then available to better grow our authenticity such that, for example, 1) intellectually, insights come with greater spontaneous facility and they can be deep and profound and almost otherworldly (novel as they can be in their unconscious origin), gifting us even with enlightenment and nondual intuitions of the unity of being; 2) affectively, our responsivity is more free and spontaneous, less reactionary, more existentially-oriented toward what is life-giving and relationship-enhancing, less neurotically-driven toward what is life-destroying and relationship-detracting, as our unconscious energy is properly ordered away from anger,  fear and inordinate desires and toward purified desires and healthy appetites;3) virtuously, neither hand knows what the other is doing in more authentic love, which flows from the wellsprings of an unconscious that is centered in the things of God, with God, with the love of self for sake of God and the love of God for sake of God, though not without the love of God for sake of self and not without the love of self for sake of self --- for the self is not metaphysically anihilated, just energetically quieted, affectively speaking As you know, growth in intellect has never implied, necessarily, emotional growth or other aspects of psychological individuation or human authenticity. And this is true whether our metaphysical insights come through arduous philosophical labor or from spontaneous experiences of unitary being. Neither does emotional maturity necessarily imply growth in theological virtues. And we know from our studies of the saints that the greatest faith, hope and love have been gifted humankind by the simplest of children and the most eccentric of adults. What will happen to this or that individual who undergoes a loss of the affective ego, a quieting of the noisy self? We do not know. It depends on their formation. It depends on their mental health, both due to internal chemical milieu and external circumstantial milieu. It depends on their ascetic disciplines and prayer routines. It depends on their meditation forms and durations. It depends on the One Who infuses mystical contemplation. It depends on where they happen to be on the path of this or that development. This is all way overdetermined. We do know that psychic structures and phenomenal states are sometimes closely linked to developmental stages, both psychological and spiritual. Sometimes they are not. We do know that such stages, structures and states are often in the service of theological virtue but that sometimes they are not. We do know that what Merton called the false self (or persona) does not disappear but that we learn to go beyond it through transformation. We do know that our personhood is integral and valued by God and destined for ongoing conversion and authenticity and resurrection along with the quiet self, which remains restless until it rests in Him, alone. NO SELF, then, is not a level. NO SELF is not an absorption or anihilation. The only I that has been removed is the one between the NO and the SE in the word NOiSE. Events, as you say, that you encounter and that other people encounter might legitimately be interpreted differently from the standpoint of each person's internal growth in human authenticity (the conversions: intellectual, affective, moral, social and religious). Such events cannot be legitimately interpreted from the standpoint of describing external physical and metaphysical realities, drawing ontological conclusions about creation and the Creator. Such speculation is the domain of the sciences: positivist, normative and practical (including theological science), which are advanced by a community of inquiry according to specific norms. The way to "share this Love that christ told us to share in this state of NO SELF" is to be now here in love. Be now here. Be now. Be. It is precisely not entailed in any way, shape or form by Hamlet's "not to be." That "the idea of not having my self to share the christ in me with others makes me very afraid. it feels like death" might better be conceived as not having a noisy emotional self getting in the way of your authentic imago Dei self sharing Christ's LIFE with others. If that is death, then bring it on! Finally, you write: i understand that " the Divine Essence is beyond our discursive faculties", and also that God transcends our thought and our level of love, but does that mean that on the level of NO SELF, we have been absorbed into the Divine Essence? In a prior post, I mentioned that, due to our being fashioned in the likeness of God, we, even as creatures, enjoy an unfathomable depth dimension, which is to affirm that we can swim in one another's depths forever, too! And, for this reason, the essence of love that we share with one another is also off-limits to our discursive faculties, too. I cannot begin to offer a robust explanatory apologetic for the who, what, when, where, how and why of my love for my children and spouse and extended family and friends. This dimension of relationality transcends anything that I could tender in emprical, rational or practical terms. This does not mean, however, that I have been absorbed into my spouse or children (although sometimes, let me tell you ...) In closing, you ask: this stated accomplishment of NO SELF is just another trick of the ego? Why would anyone consider this an accomplishment? In and of itself, as an experience, its origins are manifold and varied. I realize that there is talk in the literature on nonduality of levels and stages and such, but the loss of the affective ego is a value-neutral phenomenon, sometimes indicating health, sometimes disease, sometimes in the service of transformation, sometimes leading to utter confusion as we grapple with various interpretations. As with any alternating consolations and desolations, I think the time-honored spiritual direction is to let go of these things, to discern the movement of the Spirit, to desire and occupy ourselves in prayer, not so much to gain consolations but so as to gain the strength to serve (Teresa). | ||||
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In the context of this same discussion, perhaps we can explore how the thoughts, below, might be properly nuanced? From THE PARADOX OF NON-DUALITY by Fr. Thomas Keating, OCSO I conceive of the False Self as the persona, which is a good and necessary thing, just not a sufficient thing for completing the transformative journey. We go beyond it but not wothout it. The No Self is not, then, the True Self that follows the development of the persona on our journey of individuation and transformation. The No Self is, rather, an experience of nondual awareness, of absolute unitary being. It may be, though, that this No Self experience is correlated with the journey to True Self. We find them together, often. Nondual awareness is a metaphysical intuition, not a state of virtue. It is, rather, value-neutral, in fact. Now, again, it may be that it is well-correlated with this state of virtue. This seems quite alright vis a vis a spousal or bridal mysticism, in and of itself, which should not otherwise be equated with nondual states of awareness but might well be highly correlated with experiences of same. It is preferable to other formulations of No Self, which anihilate the ego, self or even personhood. We must be clear as to whether or not we are talking about a fleeting epistemic experience or an ontological reality. Keating speaks in epistemic terms is my take. I rather like that. It seems clear that Fr. Keating talks in terms of awareness or a sense of this or that, which is to say in epistemic terms, but does not commit the metaphysical category errors of others who make sweeping ontological & metaphysical claims. He affirms the dialectic between apophatic and kataphatic, nondual and dual (and transdual). When I say tetradalectic, I mean to nurture the interplay, for example, of sensation, intuition, thinking and feeling; or between the empirical, rational, practical and relational; or between the subjective, objective, intersubjective and interobjective; or between the descriptive, prescriptive, interpretive and evaluative; or between the positivist, philosophic, theistic and theotic; or between truth, beauty, goodness and unity; or between creed, cult, code and community and so on. These different approaches, faculties, sensibilities and methodologies are not each holonic (the Wilber mistake that leads to arational gnosticism) but are tetradically holistic. That one correction to Wilber cures a host of ills, I believe. At any rate, I sense that Keating and Rohr get this aspect right. | ||||
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Phil, this is the rosetta stone here. I always reconciled what BR was saying to what Arraj was saying by couching everything she described in terms of her epistemic experience --- how reality presented to her --- and not in ontological terms --- how reality is metaphysically structured. In this way, all of Arraj's distinctions stand intact, all of BR's experiences stand intact, and while certain phenomenal states and psychic structures are not equated with any given developmental stages, whether psychological or spiritual levels, they could certainly be conceived to be highly correlated with same, thus preserving her account and interpretation along with Jim's paradigm, which is well conceived and fits all that I've read and heard of Maritain and Merton and the Carmelite contemplative tradition, for example. In other words, this or that phenomenal state and/or psychic structure might be thought of as (both normally and normatively, or let's just say, ordinarily) necessary but not otherwise sufficient conditions to indicate any given developmental level or stage, such as in spousal mysticism for example. Jim's distinctions don't implicitly or explicitly challenge, then, BR's account or interpretation. For this reconcilement to work, of course, she would have to affirm the epistemic dynamic and deny any ontological implications. Otherwise, her account cannot be appropriated by Keating, whose take I receive as orthodox, properly nuanced. Not sure I said this well, but we can revisit this and clarify what I am at least trying to convey. | ||||
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johnboy, thanks SO much for your post! it was a tremendous help! more later, i have the rugrats today! rebecca | ||||
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JB, I think a big part of the problem with B and even Keating is that the distinction you're making between epistemic and ontology (experience vs. the nature of things) is often blurred. You'll find many references to this in some of what we shared earlier in the thread, not to mention a host of theological problems and the clear implication that no-self and beyond is a state beyond transforming union rather than a metaphysical intuition, as you noted. More on all this later. Thanks for the clarifying posts. | ||||
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Hi, Rebecca, I think there's a decision to be made here as to whether you want a cognitive-behavioral solution or a psychodynamic solution. For a cognitive-behavioral solution, of course people can give you new ways of seeing things and suggest new actions. For a psychodynamic solution, however, the wisdom of the tradition is that you "stay with" the feeling of aloneness. Of course, this is difficult and painful work, and again the conventional wisdom is that it should only be done with the assistance of a therapist. Derek. | ||||
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I have to laugh here because this distinction is the source of so much oneupmanship in those Eastern guru scenes. "Other gurus can tell you about about conventional reality, but only I can put you in touch with ultimate reality" LOL. | ||||
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My first reading of Keating was that he was facilely mapping one set of experiences over another without much rigor, disambiguation or parsing. Looking more closely, I feel safe in attributing an epistemic stance to him rather than an ontological perspective because I can glean that from within the context of other things he wrote in that same article and other things he's written over the years. It is not just a distinction between an epistemic stance and an ontological perspective, which is crucial, it is also a matter of distinguishing between states, structures and stages that, on one hand, ordinarily correlate, which I think it is fair to say, or, on the other hand, necessarily indicate, which is patently absurd, one transformative or unitive level or another. I would not say, without running these specific ideas by Keating or BR, for example, whether certain of their takes are heterodox or orthodox because so much of the confusion can arise from the inartful expression of realities that are inherently difficult to articulate, by definition, as we attempt to effable about what is otherwise ineluctably ineffable. | ||||
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JB, good luck dialoguing with BR on anything. I think you can see from her response to Jim Arraj's essay how this goes. I don't think there's any doubt that her comment on the Incarnation that I replied to in my opening post is heterodox. She's made a lot of other theological statements that she claims to be backed by "revelation" that are clearly wrong. I noted in an earlier post that the Church has a clear process for dealing with private revelation, and one indicator of its trustworthiness is that it must be free from theological error. A number of BR's pronouncements fail this test, so regardless of how one understands her transformative experience, one can evaluate what theological implications she's drawing. On this matter, she holds herself above the need for dialogue and discussion, as she has "revelation" and "Truth" on her side. Well, sorry, that's not how it works. "Revelation" and "Truth" are also a matter of corporate discernment. I can post more examples of serious theological errors, if you'd like. Check out some of the statements retreat participants recorded from her for abundant examples. | ||||
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I think my categories and distinctions could clarify some of the misinterpretations. Anyone buying into same would not be drawing ontological conclusions about metaphysical reality or speculative theology in the first place. If that is what this or that person does, then, there's your answer: they don't buy into my schema. And, the practical upshot is, then, one's formative spirituality will be impoverished, at best, spiritually dangerous, in the worst case scenario, because if our positivist and philosophic and theistic frames of reference are fraught with error, then our theotic outlook will necessarily miss the mark. Typically, if a Catholic attains a high profile with and a broad public consumption of their thoughts, and if some of those thoughts are heterodox and fraught with spiritual peril, doesn't a local bishop or even the CDF get proactive in pointing out and correcting such error? | ||||
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Well, yes . . . eventually. As you know, the Church works slowly!  I wouldn't say that there's "broad public consumption" of B's writings, however. The whole nonduality bit is still of marginal influence in Catholicism, but with people like Richard Rohr now jumping on the bandwagon, it's about to shift into another gear. | ||||
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As you and I both know, however, certain bishops | ||||
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Well, that gives me hope that a more scholarly and sufficiently nuanced take on these realities will emerge. It'll take more dialogue and clarification to get there I would reckon. | ||||
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Nope, JB. You won't get a more "scholary and sufficiently nuanced take on these realities" from Richard Rohr, at least not until he does his homework more carefully. We covered some of his errors on the discussion about Eckhart Tolle. See http://www.cacradicalgrace.org...tian%20Tradition.pdf You'll find him conflating infused and natural mysticism, and regarding acquired contemplation as what the Catholic mystics taught. That use of terminology is way out-of-sync with the way we've talked about mystical experiences for centuries. Arraj's works have addressed this, at length, as have many other authors (Jordan Aumann, Thomas Dubay, classical texts on Christian prayer, etc.). There's also this piece by Thomas Keating featured in Rohr's quarterly journal, "Radical Grace," which theme was on "Non-dual Thinking" Keating's connecting nonduality with "the grace of the Ascension" and his statement that it is "clearly a statement beyond what is called in the Christian contemplative tradition, 'Transforming Union'" gives evidence of Bernadette's influence. I have read that issue of "Radical Grace," and while it features several well-known authors, some of what they wrote is problemmatic, imo. Here's an excerpt from an email I sent to Rohr and the editor (never heard back from either):
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Phil, your link above reads: http://cacradicalgrace.org/res...-Jun/keat.php%5B/url It should read: http://cacradicalgrace.org/res.../01_Apr-Jun/keat.php | ||||
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Another thing that I find interesting, or maybe moreso perplexing, is how loose folks can be in their use of the word consciousness. Last I heard, in the Philosophy of Mind, this was still being called the hard problem, notwithstanding Dennett's Consciousness Explained. I mentioned in a prior post how we can successfully refer to realities that we cannot otherwise successfully describe. And this was in a theological context re: God-talk. This is also true regarding certain physical and metaphysical realities. Before we go too far in describing this or that consciousness theologically, it seems to me that it is necessary that we obtain better descriptions of consciousness philosophically. And those are not to be had just yet. Consciousness thus remains one of those realities, from both a physical and metaphysical perspective, to which we can successfully refer but which we cannot otherwise robustly describe with any satisfying degree of explanatory adequacy. Concretely, then, for example, does it have some quantum dimension? is it physicalist but nonreductively so? is it epiphenomenal? is it another primitive along side space, time, mass and energy? Our positivist God-talk, which inhabits the last drawer in the last desk of all metaphysical inquiry, is necessarily vague and analogical, such as in the panentheist take which I set forth in my nonduality thread. This panentheist perspective is not invested in, and in fact is pretty much agnostic and indifferent to, any given philosophy of mind approach. It can live with whatever the scientists and philosophers come up with, eventually, and will have a more robust God-analogue when such dust settles, if it ever does. This is all to suggest that we can get along quite well, theologically, from a merely phenomenological perspective, metaphysically, even as we wait for more knowledge, scientifically. No future discoveries in philosophy of mind will jeopardize our human dignity or the rich tapestry and depthful experiences of our encounters with reality, with others, our world and our God. They will make our God-analogs richer and our tautological arguments more taut vis a vis our grasps of reality. So, all this talk of consciousness here and consciousnes there seems to me to be empirically falsifiable. And, to the extent that it ever is not, it is otherwise nothing but the inhabitation of elaborate tautologies whose conclusions are already buried in the very terms and premises of their arguments, which offer no way to cash out any value in terms of practical significance. It's just people moving abstractions and constructs around in logical formulae that have little or no correspondence to external reality (at least as I have or can, presently, experience same). I think we can successfully refer to such as global consciousness, for example, from a vague semiotic perspective vis a vis a community of inquiry, but to pretend to have successfully described same in terms of some type of organic evolution or kosmic address specifications is farfetched, like this Wilberian thought, for example: The integral model I am suggesting therefore explicitly includes a corresponding subtle energy at every level of consciousness across the entire spectrum (gross to subtle to causal, or matter to body to mind to soul to spirit). As I have understood BR vis a vis consciousness, she precisely defines NO SELF as NO CONSCIOUSNESS. Paradoxically, investing, in the end, nothing in consciousness, this opens the backdoor to the arational gnosticism dwelling, which Wilber entered through the frontdoor by investing, in the end, everything in consciousness? There is no critiquing of gnostic knowledge, by definition, especially when it is arational and unmediated? except that, in the end, only orthopraxis will authenticate orthodoxy; we can look for "true glory" and fruits from "true practice," which is love. We certainly wouldn't expect additions to Revelation, or departures from established dogma, both which can be inventoried, such "inventories" requiring a great deal of parsing, disambiguation and nuancing. | ||||
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I had seen that article and thought it was a typo or something! | ||||
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I addressed this article in a prior post. Whatever the influence, I don't see Keating going where BR goes in ontological terms. I feel like he remains safely within an essentially epistemic stance. I do think he needs to more clearly draw the distinction between such a state as might ordinarily correlate with a level, which I think would be fine, versus otherwise suggesting that it necessarily indicates a level, which I could not buy. | ||||
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That was very well said, Phil. I believe the applicable Arrajian metaphor would be Theology Without a Net. Rohr wrote: I think he is right on in what he is saying here. At the same time, we must take great care, semiotically and semantically, to make sure that the terms, categories and logic employed by any vocabulary of choice in our dialogue are referencing and describing the same realities, hence my ongoing emphasis on the need for deliberate disambiguation, careful parsing, high nuance, rigorous definition and suitable logic or grammar. | ||||
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I'm placing heavy bets on him. I've listened and watched him for too long and have been so very pleased with and inspired by him. He's one smart cookie and a great soul. A real prince. I like what he says here: And he says this in the context of speaking against Gnosticism and for Incarnationalism, which is our portal to the Divine via the particular, the concrete, the physical ... even the sad and painful. That's what we'd expect from a good Franciscan, n'est pas? | ||||
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JB wrote: I mentioned in a prior post how we can successfully refer to realities that we cannot otherwise successfully describe. And this was in a theological context re: God-talk. This is also true regarding certain physical and metaphysical realities. Before we go too far in describing this or that consciousness theologically, it seems to me that it is necessary that we obtain better descriptions of consciousness philosophically. And those are not to be had just yet. B certainly takes a crack at this in her book, What is Self?. She at least defines what she means by Self, which is, indeed, consciousness. E.g. . That's just a hint of how she approaches things. Of course, one must inquire whether this takes into account the implications of the Incarnation and its making present the divine through the medium of human consciousness. Also, it's obvious that there are other more inclusive definitions of consciousness which consider it the interiority of living things, or their "way of knowing." Hence, all living things have a kind of consciousness in such a perspective, and what's unique about the human is the spiritual dimension of our consciousness. More JB: There is no critiquing of gnostic knowledge, by definition, especially when it is arational and unmediated? except that, in the end, only orthopraxis will authenticate orthodoxy; we can look for "true glory" and fruits from "true practice," which is love. We certainly wouldn't expect additions to Revelation, or departures from established dogma, both which can be inventoried, such "inventories" requiring a great deal of parsing, disambiguation and nuancing. Fair enough, only I question your point about orthopraxis and orthodoxy. Lots of loving people out there who are theologically ill-informed, and lots of sharp theologians who aren't especially loving. There's no doubt a mutually reinforcing synergy, but theology has come to be a discipline in its own right and theological statements can be evaluated on their own merit without necessarily considering the lifestyle of the writer. We can also generally assume that in a religious tradition, people are using words in a manner congruent with the tradition's understanding of them. Having read all B's books several times, corresponded with her extensively, and attended a week-long workshop she presented, I believe I have a sense of where she's coming from, and that my critiques of some aspects of her works are not based on misunderstandings of her meaning or intent. As for Richard Rohr, I agree that he's done some nice work. I don't think this is his area of expertise, however. I've also heard him give some social critiques that were sorry-ass, at best -- simplistic and naive Republican/Bush-trashing, liberal garbage, to be honest. One of his DVDs on Amazon is getting hammered with such feedback. And Keating . . . you give him the benefit of the doubt based on your wider reading of his works. That ought not be required of a reader, however. I mean, come on, JB! The man comes right out and says nondual experience is a stage beyond Transforming Union. Bam! There it is. Black-and-white. No disambiguation required. That's what he said, and he even alluded to Bernadette's "grace of the Ascension." So that's a problem, and I see that he and Rohr are doing contemplative workshops together . . . that Rohr's next book is entitled The Third Eye. Keep a wary eye out. Rohr wouldn't be the first one to go loony over nondual teaching. ---- Btw, anyone else feel free to jump in about any part of what JB and I have been discussing, or anything from the exchange between B and Arraj (and our earlier comments). | ||||
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Topic Closed Shalom Place Community Shalom Place Discussion Groups General Discussion Forums Christian Spirituality Issues Bernadette Roberts responds to Jim Arraj