The Experience of No-Self: A Contemplative Journey - Paperback

by Bernadette Roberts (Author)

Explores the journey beyond union, beyond self and God, into the silent and still regions of the Unknown.

In this profound spiritual memoir, one woman chronicles a journey into the deepest reaches of contemplative silence-a silence that begins as a gentle inner stillness and expands into something vast, unsettling, and ultimately life-shattering. What starts as familiar solitude in a seaside monastery chapel becomes an encounter with the unknown so complete that it unravels the boundaries of memory, identity, and selfhood itself.

Across days of overpowering stillness-where ordinary tasks dissolve into moment-to-moment survival and consciousness flickers like a failing candle-she discovers that the silence she entered will not fully release her. When the world finally returns, it returns changed. Something is missing. Something essential. And then, in a moment of startling clarity, she sees the truth: the self she once knew is gone.

What follows is an intimate and unflinching account of spiritual dissolution and awakening-of a joy so immense it floods the soul, and a loss so total it reshapes the meaning of faith, surrender, and God. Drawing on personal experience rather than doctrine, this narrative echoes the great mystics while remaining wholly original, compelling, and deeply human.

Back Jacket

This is the personal account of a two-year journey during which the author experienced the falling away of everything she call a self. The purpose of this book is to help clarify the second movement, to make it more recognizable and to bring to light, if possible, the ultimate final realization of the Christian motion of loss-of-self.

Author Biography

Bernadette Roberts is also the author of The Path to No-Self: Life at the Center, What is Self?, and Spiritual Journey Recapitulates the History of Religion.