8 Anthony de Mello Quotes on Philosophy

Anthony de Mello quotes on philosophy

6. As soon as you look at the world through an ideology you are finished. No reality fits an ideology. Life is beyond that. That is why people are always searching for a meaning to life: Meaning is only found when you go beyond meaning. Life only makes sense when you perceive it as mystery and it makes no sense to the conceptualizing mind.

8. Do you know what eternal life is? You think it's everlasting life. But your own theologians will tell you that that is crazy, because everlasting is still within time. It is time perduring forever. Eternal means timeless- no time. The human mind cannot understand that. The human mind can understand time and can deny time. What is timeless is beyond our comprehension. Yet the mystics tell us that eternity is right now. How's that for good news? It is right now. People are so distressed when I tell them to forget their past. They're crazy! Just drop it! When you hear 'Repent for your past,' realize it's a great religious distraction from waking up. Wake up! That's what repent means. Not 'weep for your sins.': Wake up! understand, stop all the crying. Understand! Wake up!

10. 'Help us to find God.' 'No one can help you there.' 'Why not?' 'For the same reason that no one can help the fish to find the ocean.'

26. The Master never ceased to attack the notions about God that people entertain.

27. The Master was exceedingly gracious to university dons who visited him, but he would never reply to their questions or be drawn into their theological speculations. To his disciples, who marveled at this, he said, 'Can one talk about the ocean to a frog in a well or about the divine to people who are restricted by their concepts?'

30. The sun and its light, the ocean and the wave, the singer and his song- not one. Not two.

33. This is what Wisdom means: To be changed without the slightest effort on your part, to be transformed, believe it or not, merely by waking to the reality that is not words, that lies beyond the reach of words. If you are fortunate enough to be Awakened thus, you will know why the finest language is the one that is not spoken, the finest action is the one that is not done and the finest change is the one that is not willed.

34. Thought can organize the world so well that you are no longer able to see it.