Background
Bernadette Roberts was born in 1931 in California to devout Catholic parents.
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Bernadette Roberts
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She is best known for having written a series of books detailing her journey beyond Self, which she defines as the source of all man’s emotional and spiritual experiences (in fact, all experience) and synonymous with Consciousness, she viewed this journey as the culmination and completion of her Catholic and Christian religio-spiritual journey. After eight and a half years of monastic life, Bernadette left the cloister and entered the University of Utah where she was a pre-medical student for three years. Bernadette went on to obtain a Montessori credential in London, England and opened her own Montessori school in Kalispell, Montana in 1969.
In her Montessori school, Bernadette repeated all of Piaget’s cognitive (developmental) experiments with children.
In 1973 she obtained a Master’s degree in Early Childhood Education from the University of Southern California. She has often said that “Camaldoli is my only true home on this earth.” Bernadette has extensively chronicled and described her life and spiritual journey.
Her book Contemplative: Autobiography of the Early Years presents an account of her early family life and spiritual experiences. Her spiritual journey after entering the cloister is described in The Path to Number-Self: Life at the Center.
This book includes descriptions of her experience of the “Dark Nights” and of the state of “Union,” as spoken of by various Christian mystics.
After years of life in union with God, Bernadette describes an event she calls the experience of “no-Self” in The book, however, only covers a two-year period after the events described. Bernadette has since further elaborated on the context for this event. After the first publication of The Experience, Bernadette was invited to speak around the country, to present her talk, “A Passage Through Self,” that uses a series of circles to illustrate the spiritual journey.
Her most recent work is The Real Christ (2012).
