My Answer to 'Anonymous'

[Once again I received a message from someone ("Anonymous" this time, but there have been others) asking why I don't post any more unpublished material from personal letters and other writings of Bernadette Roberts. I cannot do it, but I will share this piece of an email from her to me, written very near the end of her life, and addressing this very subject. With this, I hope to put to rest the request for unpublished material. I have published parts of letters on this site, and have regretted it every time. Bernadette's instructions could not be more clear.

From Bernadette: Since I may not be around much longer, I'm less concerned with what I've published than with all the other stuff - letters, notes, papers, etc., that I've passed out but were never intended for publication. People have a way of picking out some sentence or other that seems to contradict something else I've said - accuse me of a "change of mind".   Articulating one part of the journey, however - say that of a beginner - is not the same as articulating a much later segment wherein a further, deeper insight is expressed, one that is NOT the result of any "change of mind".   But this is the way it goes when people do not grasp the true nature of the journey from beginning to end - they endlessly take things out of their original context. So don't publish any of it!

My mistrust is based on the fact that few people know the culmination of the True Self (which is the culmination of the Unitive State) and thus, never having lived through this State from one end to the other, they are incapable of having a true understanding of what is meant by "NO-Self".   Not having lived through the True Self, there is no going beyond it to the truth of No-Self - the REVELATION of THE REAL CHRIST.  GOD CANNOT REVEAL THIS TRUTH ahead of time because no one is prepared to understand it.  Needless to say, knowing this end ahead of time goes no further than a piece of intellectual knowledge - which is NOT the Truth.  To exponentially live this truth is a whole other scenario.        

[There will be those who say they DO understand what she means by True Self and No-Self, which only means they do not yet know what they do not know.  I can give no other reason for my refusal, nor can I fully explain how it is to come in contact with a living example of Truth, and the life-changing power of that experience. But I can say it is powerful enough that you would never want to betray it in the least, and I do not. Bernadette even said to me once that she as "sorry" she ever gave me these things and that she gave them for me to read, for the benefit of my relationship with God. Why? I have no idea. But I trust that God knows, and I am at rest with that. I ask you to be too.]