Going Beyond the Jesus Story: An Examination of Christian Belief, Mystical Experience and the Ongoing Development of Conscious Awareness [Paperback]

Key to Mr. Lockhart's book is his repeated citation of the work of Bernadette Roberts-- indeed, her paradigm is central to his thesis. Unfortunately the author completely misrepresents her view. Having attended nearly every retreat Bernadette has given in the last 25 years, and discussed with her at length each of her works, I am certain that Lockhart's interpretation of Bernadette's paradigm is inaccurate and errantly misleading.

The errors in his misreading are myriad, let me just point out two glaring ones:
1. Lockhart consistently misrepresents the loss-of-self Bernadette describes as loss "of the affective self." No, absolutely not true: what she is writing about is the complete loss of self-- as utterly different from Lockhart's reading as day to night.

2. Lockhart refuses to take seriously the very context of Berndette's views on self and no-self -- the Christian revelation of Trinity, Incarnation, and Eucharist. Lockhart relegates elements such as these, inconvenient to his paradigm, to a footnote. When presenting these Christian elements of her paradigm, says Lockhart, Bernadette "becomes for the first time, mired in what looks like theological sleight-of-hand. This is partly due to her background and training as a Carmelite..." In other words, Lockhart has high praise for Roberts' insight when it comports with his paradigm (unfortunately, he typically misreads her even then)-- but when her paradigm fails to cohere with his, he deems her writing under the spell her Christian "conditioning."

To underscore the cognitive dissonance in Lockhart's analysis: On the one hand, Roberts, he insists, is an expert on "awareness" par excellence; on the other hand, Roberts is quite unaware that the essence of her paradigm, which central foci are the Christ-event, the Trinity, and the Eucharist, is a befogged product of her Catholic conditioning.

Could it be exactly the other way around? Could Lockhart's Gurdieffian conditioning and his blunt-edged demythologizing, be blocking his ability to take Roberts' full spiritual report (and not just cherry-picked elements of it) seriously?

Too bad that Mr. Lockhart dismisses the heart of Roberts' paradigm: ironically, it is the most lucid exposition of the 'lost Christianity' he says he is seeking.

Some years ago Bernadette wrote "Forcing the Fit" (available at Bernadette's Friends website) elucidating point by point how several authors (who, like Mr. Lockhart, have highlighted her contribution to their paradigms) have wrenched passages from her books out of context to shore up paradigms incongruent with hers, utterly distorting her viewpoint in the doing. Would that Mr. Lockhart had read "Forcing the Fit" before writing his book-- though, given the dead weight of conditioning against the Christian revelation Bernadette writes of, one wonders if such reading would have made any difference. Only Mr. Lockhart can say.

If Lockhart's readers would like to understand for themselves Bernadette's paradigm, I would recommend their reading her work directly; she has written six books (three of which can only be found at Bernadette's Friends), Mr. Lockhart only lists two of her books in his bibliography.

Joseph Conti, Ph.D.
Department of Comparative Religion
California State University at Fullerton