18 Anthony de Mello Quotes on Spirituality

Anthony de Mello quotes on spirituality

1. A disciple said to him, 'I am ready, in the quest for God, to give up anything: wealth, friends, family, country, life itself. What else can a person give up?' The Master calmly replied, 'One's beliefs about God.'

5. Any time you are with anyone or think of anyone you must say to yourself: I am dying and this person too is dying, attempting the while to experience the truth of the words you are saying. If every one of you agrees to practice this, bitterness will die out, harmony will arise.

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!

9. Every word, every image used for God is a distortion more than a description.

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.'

11. 'I wish to become a teacher of the Truth.' 'Are you prepared to be ridiculed, ignored and starving till you are forty-five?' 'I am. But tell me: What will happen after I am forty-five?' 'You will have grown accustomed to it.'

12. If you just swallow everything I am telling you, I am brainwashing you.

15. Is there life before death? -that is the question!

21. Spirituality means waking up. Most people, even though they don't know it, are asleep. They're born asleep, they live asleep, they marry in their sleep, they breed children in their sleep, they die in their sleep without ever waking up. They never understand the loveliness and the beauty of this thing that we call human existence. You know- all mystics- Catholic, Christian, non-Christian, no matter what their theology, no matter what their religion- are unanimous on one thing: that all is well, all is well. Though everything is a mess, all is well. Strange paradox, to be sure. But, tragically, most people never get to see that all is well because they are asleep. They are having a nightmare.

25. The important thing is not to know who 'I' is or what 'I' is. You'll never succeed. There are no words for it. The important thing is to drop the labels.

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?'

28. The Master would frequently assert that holiness was less a matter of what one did than of what one allowed to happen.

29. The Master would insist that the final barrier to our attaining God was the word and concept 'God.'

32. These things will destroy the human race: politics without principle, progress without compassion, wealth without work, learning without silence, religion without fearlessness, and worship without awareness.

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.

36. To a visitor who asked to become his disciple the Master said, 'You may live with me, but don't become my follower.' 'Whom, then, shall I follow?' 'No one. The day you follow someone you cease to follow Truth.'

45. 'You are only a disciple because your eyes are closed. The day you open them you will see there is nothing you can learn from me or anyone.' 'What then is a Master for?' 'To make you see the uselessness of having one.'

51. The books of Father Anthony de Mello were written in a multi-religious context to help the followers of other religions, agnostics and atheists in their spiritual search, and they were not intended by the author as manuals of instruction of the Catholic faithful in Christian doctrine or dogma.