Short version released on my newsletter, ‘The Doorman’
21 January, 2021, episode #494 of the Tim Ferriss Show—it’s an interview with two famous Olympian swimmers, Michael Phelps and Grant Hackett. If you go right to the end of the interview, the legendary athletes ask host and bestselling author Tim Ferriss which of his books he recommends (put them on screen). Ferriss says that actually, instead of any of his own books, he recommends a small, lesser known book. This same book entered my life in 2020, recommended by a friend. Neither of us could believe how little known this book was. I began to share it, with family members and friends. At the same time, I met two people who had, by chance, read this little known book too. These would go on to become very important people in my life. Everyone in my circle reading this book had the same reaction, they were all struck by it. We would refer back to it often, re-read it in the years to come, and every time, it had the effect of bringing us home. It remains my favourite work, written or spoken.
That book is called Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality. Or, as we call it, simply, Awareness.
The Author? A little known psychotherapist, spiritual teacher, Jesuit Priest, masterful storyteller, and perhaps the greatest philosopher no one has heard of. A man by the name of Anthony de Mello.
More on the intro to DeMello
Anthony de Mello was born in Bombay, India, in 1931. He was part of the Jesuits, an order of priests founded by St Ignatius of Loyola in the 1500s. I went to a Jesuit high school in Sydney, and yet despite the brilliance, wisdom and clarity of sight of de Mello, he was never mentioned. De Mello was far from a conventional priest, going beyond church teaching and deeply into Eastern Spirituality. As a result, the church’s view on him is a little mixed. Pope Benedict once wrote that De Mello’s works
… contain some valid elements of oriental wisdom. These can be helpful in achieving self-mastery, in breaking the bonds and feelings that keep us from being free, and in approaching with serenity the various vicissitudes of life… But already in certain passages in these early works and to a greater degree in his later publications, one notices a progressive distancing from the essential contents of the Christian faith.
So, de Mello has and always will speak beyond any one creed or set of beliefs, resonating with both religious and non-religious people alike. He wrote a few books, some of which have been published posthumously. He also ran retreats and gave talks, many which you can find on YouTube and podcast players today.
The one gripe I have with philosophy, spirituality, religion, even personal development, politics, and all things which are meant to speak to and improve society and our deeper quality of life, is that they can’t help, sooner or later, becoming an ideology. A fixed idea set that inevitably drifts away from its intended purpose.
Whereas this man said things like:
“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.”
He also said,
“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.”
I’m almost glad I didn’t hear about him through my school’s connection to the Jesuits—there’s a certain joy to finding heartfelt thinkers and storytellers like this in your own way, through your own avenues, in your own time. They seem to emerge when you least expect, but most need them to.
Why de Mello is unique
I always single out Anthony de Mello because, I don’t think I’ve heard a word de Mello said I disagree with—maybe that’s not a good thing. Maybe I’m brainwashed. I don’t know!
De Mello called out things most people wouldn’t dare challenge or think to question. For example, he called out the insincerity inside charity, pointing out the only true charitable act is the good deed we do without realising. He also challenged the popular idea that people need to ‘belong’, to a group or community. De Mello’s conversations shed light on the seemingly innocuous indulgences and fantasies we hold onto, how they allow pain, suffering, confusion and fear to seep in. I like that he spoke clearly and didn’t pull punches, yet always seemed peaceful, respectful, loving. He appears honest and not too preachy, despite the depth of his message.
Where I’d set him apart from other philosophers or spiritual teachers is that he goes far beyond intellectual engagement for me. Provided my ears and mind are open, there’s a feeling I get whenever I read his words or listen to his voice, a feeling I get from very few—the only other prominent philosopher I get this from is Alan Watts. It’s a warmness. A calmness. And it’s funny that these two figures stand the test of time for me. Other voices seem to hit a diminishing return, a hole appears in their arguments, or they begin to lose relevance for me—as if they only spoke to me while I was going through a certain stage or in a phase. Both Watts and de Mello have the opposite effect. An enduring effect. Their voices seem to grow stronger—and more relevant—over time. I keep seeing things I never noticed. It’s like fine wine, a great book or film—every time I come back to it, it’s better than before.
De Mello has some wild claims. They might be offensive to our ears.
‘No person on earth has the power to make you unhappy.’ ‘Problems exist only in the human mind.’ ‘Take away human beings from this planet and life would go on.’
MIND BLOWN
I think he was right that the big answers, so-to-speak, are simple—the problem is we don’t want to hear them.
De Mello’s Ideas
So, if you’ve never heard of this fine fellow before, it’s about time we fix that. I’ll do my best to overview some of the most important de Mello insights and lessons. This is by no means comprehensive, just an oversight. A teaser. Let’s start that teaser with Wake Up.
Big DeMello Ideas
Wake Up!
You have to listen to audiobooks or recordings of De Mello when he keeps shouting, ‘Wake up! Wake up!’ Everything de Mello taught us rests on this foundational idea—that too much of life is spent asleep.
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. —Anthony De Mello
Let me clear this up. He’s not one of those hustle culture figures telling us to wake up at 4am to start grinding or that ‘there’s plenty of time to sleep when we’re dead’. He’s not talking about actual sleep, like REMs and all that. It’s that we’re stuck going through lot of experiences unconsciously, basically because our thinking has been tainted, because we’re all brainwashed, programmed and conditioned into silly illusions. We’re asleep to the goodness of reality.
Conditioning
“not easy to listen, especially when you get emotional about an idea, and even when you don’t get emotional about it, not easy to listen! Because don’t forget, you’re listening from your programming, from your conditioning… And you’re frequently interpreting everything that’s being said in terms of your hypnotic state.”
He discussed at great length the depths of our conditioning. One of the funny examples he gave is that we’ll gag at the idea of eating a dog in the West, but have no problem eating a cow. In the East, it’s the opposite, where cows might be considered sacred, and dogs—well, a little more, digestible.
So, while our life decisions and actions feel logical, rational and justified, they are driven by this sort of arbitrary conditioning. Our ideas do not necessarily correlate to reality, and that is a source of tension for us, when our conditioned ideas inevitably fail to deliver reality, which we experience as a failure to provide lasting happiness.
Being sad when someone you love dies, upset if the love of your life leaves you, frustrated when you can’t bring about the change you want to make in the world—we call these fair and natural reactions to bad circumstances—they’re considered the undeniable, unfortunate realities of life. De Mello didn’t deny our right to feel this way—only he questioned our reactions, encouraging us to investigate them. The grief we feel at a time of loss does nothing to help the deceased, does it? While we experience sadness for the loss of a loved one, the sadness is in truth for ourselves in having lost them. Which is okay, but us continuing to feel bad doesn’t help the deceased, it doesn’t bring them back, and beyond its natural course, it doesn’t help us either. It just creates more suffering people!
This sort of understanding can, on its own, puncture negative emotions and depressive moods. This is how de Mello showed people the power of understanding. Now you might be thinking, ‘I’d feel so guilty, if someone I love died and I didn’t feel bad.’ I agree. It feels wrong not to be sad. This is an example of the power and prevalence of conditioning in our lives—a confusing, maddening mess, and very often, all it yields is needless self-imprisonment.
You can freely critique this idea. De Mello never asked anyone to believe him—he expected to be listened to critically and challenged. So ask yourself, does this idea gaslight genuine emotional reactions? Is he saying all conditioning is all bad? Are we not going to be sad, emotional and reactive anyway? That’s the beauty of de Mello—he knew that, as people, we have to come to any beliefs or enlightening insight ourselves. If we take our beliefs from others, including him, we’d just be replacing other programming with new programming—with his programming.
If that makes even a shred of sense to you, then you’re someway to seeing the beauty of de Mello.
Conflict between being a Spiritual Teacher and Psychotherapist
This leads me to another big de Mello idea—the conflict he experienced between being a Spiritual Teacher and Psychotherapist. Given I studied psychology, I always had this bind—I saw so much value in psychology, psychologists, therapists—but always felt something was missing, too. Like psychology unearthed a great deal about the human condition but critically lacked something too. Well, de Mello felt treating people with psychotherapy was often not what they really needed—that psychotherapy was more about giving people relief, whereas the Spiritual Teacher in him felt people needed to suffer more before they could get better, before they could really ‘wake up’ (play in his voice).
I think that’s very meaningful. It makes us think more deeply about our current understanding of mental health, and what our negative life experiences are teaching us. It makes us wonder…
What is the True Source of Pain?
When we feel pain, or mentally unwell, what’s the solution? How do we go about becoming unstuck? This is where de Mello’s teaching can be a real bitter pill to swallow—even though it’s very, very good news:
Where it all started for De Mello, was to stop blaming or looking to the outside world, to anything about its condition, for evidence of problems or unfairness.
“No person on earth has the power to make you unhappy” When you bump your knee against the table, the pain is in your knee, not the table. The reality is alright, it’s not problematic.
“That negative feeling is in you, it’s not in reality, so stop trying to change reality”
“Problems only exist in the human mind. Reality is not problematic. Take away human beings from this planet and life would go on, and nature would go on, in all her loveliness and her violence. Where would the problem be? No problem, You ARE the problem”
The long and short of it is, the negative feeling is not in the object, it’s in YOU. Or us.
We don’t need to fix things?
So, in a strange, paradoxical way, he argued we don’t need to fix things. We need to…
Understand
The trouble with people is they’re busy fixing things they don’t understand
We’re always fixing things aren’t we? never strikes us that things don’t need to be fixed… they need to be understood—then they would change
I guess, if we look at it, trying to meddle with the outside world tends to make problems worse. Understanding, just understanding, allows them to change.
Everything de Mello communicated had to do with a naturalness to life. While we react by doing, adding, chasing, and acquiring more, what we really need to do is stop obstructing this naturalness—stop obstructing it with what he called our attachments and illusions.
Dropping the attachments—akin to dropping illusions
If the naturalness of life is like flowing water, then I’d say attachments and illusions are like blockages to de Mello. I would define an attachment as something we’ve become attached to—pretty obvious, hey? An external idea, image, object, or person, who we take on as if they were part of us, usually in the hope they make us look and feel complete. We become so ingrained with these attachments that we’ll feel pain if they’re taken away. This is always a big question—whether other people or possessions, achieving things or reaching life milestones, or whatever else, will make us feel complete, or if they’re just illusions. If we should feel sad and sorry for ourselves when bad things happen, or if we feel bad for other reasons, because of an idea we invested in set us up for pain, and thus pain is actually our opportunity to learn from this error and move past it.
“Now the tragedy of an attachment is that if its object is not attained it causes unhappiness. But if it is attained, it does not cause happiness—it merely causes a flash of pleasure followed by weariness; and it is always accompanied, of course, by the anxiety that you may lose the object of your attachment. You will say, “Can’t I keep just one attachment?” Of course. You can keep as many as you want. But for each attachment you pay a price in lost happiness. Think of this: The nature of attachments is such, that even if you satisfy many of them in the course of a single day, the one attachment that was not satisfied will prey upon your mind and make you unhappy. There.” ― Anthony de Mello, The Way to Love
Just contemplate the weight of that. He’s saying that voice, the one that might sneak up late at night and say, ‘I’m doing pretty well, only I still don’t have X’… or make us worry about that upcoming exam, or something to do with our future, or our children, maybe even their health or ours—he’s saying that voice is likely the outcome of some attachment we’ve formed. Not that our fears or dreams are totally invalid, but they have at least one foot planted in illusion.
And you might resonate with what De Mello said about this experience as a relentless cycle.
“Because left to its own devices life would never produce love, it would only lead you to attraction, from attraction to pleasure, then to attachment, to satisfaction, which finally leads to wearisomeness and boredom. Then comes a plateau. Then once again the weary cycle: attraction, pleasure, attachment, fulfillment, satisfaction, boredom. All of this mixed with the anxieties, the jealousies, the possessiveness, the sorrow, the pain, that make the cycle a roller coaster. When you have gone repeatedly around and around the cycle, a time finally comes when you have had enough and want to call a halt to the whole process. And if you are lucky enough not to run into something or someone else that catches your eye, you will have at least attained a fragile peace. That is the most that life can give you; and you can mistakenly equate this state with freedom and you die without ever having known what it means to be really free and to love.” ― Anthony de Mello, The Way to Love
De Mello believed the only real remedy to pain and fear was dropping our attachments. Dropping our illusions. He says in Way To Love that this is a horrific experience, like telling a drug addict the only joy he’s had in life must go. That his drug, the only thing that fills his emptiness, needs to be given up for the emptiness to pass.
To return to the pipes metaphor, we have to clear the blockages. It takes huge strength to do this, it takes a leap of faith. The result?
When the eye is unobstructed, the result is sight. When the ear is unobstructed, the result is hearing. When the mind is unobstructed the result is truth. When the heart is unobstructed, the result is joy and love. — Anthony de Mello
Happiness is our natural state
The dominoes are falling now. This idea is one you might see as an important tenet in Buddhism, Eastern Spirituality, or even Western philosophy and Christianity. If the things we’re after won’t bring happiness, what will? The most accurate answer to that question is ‘nothing.’ De Mello upheld that happiness was in fact our natural state. Something we already have. The key to unlocking it was unlearning all the BS that gets in the way of experiencing the simple beauty of life.
Happiness is our natural state. Happiness is the natural state of little children, to whom the kingdom belongs until they have been polluted and contaminated by the stupidity of society and culture. To acquire happiness you don’t have to do anything, because happiness cannot be acquired. Does anybody know why? Because we have it already. How can you acquire what you already have? Then why don’t you experience it? Because you’ve got to drop something. You’ve got to drop illusions. You don’t have to add anything in order to be happy; you’ve got to drop something. Life is easy, life is delightful. It’s only hard on your illusions, your ambitions, your greed, your cravings. Do you know where these things come from? From having identified with all kinds of labels!”
― Anthony de Mello,
We confuse love and desire
That’s happiness. Now, let’s go to the big one. LOVE.
De Mello talked about our universal drive to seek love and to be loved. Only he felt people weren’t really after ‘love’—what they really wanted was to be desired. He didn’t equate love with being swept away with someone or completed by another person, [Jerry Macquire Snippet?’] with being fulfilled by someone else. That was only attachment, masquerading as love. He disagreed with that old cliche that love is blind, insisting, ‘nothing is so clear-sighted as love’. Love for him was equated with seeing another person as a whole being in their own right, exactly as they are. With wanting to be desired, and confusing this for love, we do the opposite—we see people as we want them to be. We see them not as they are, but as we are. This is the opposite of love. De Mello’s idea of true love therefore rested on non-attachment:
“I have no fear of losing you, for you aren’t an object of my property, or anyone else’s. I love you as you are, without attachment, without fears, without conditions, without egoism, trying not to absorb you. I love you freely because I love your freedom, as well as mine” ― Anthony de Mello
“Perfect love casts out fear. Where there is love there are no demands, no expectations, no dependency. I do not demand that you make me happy; my happiness does not lie in you. If you were to leave me, I will not feel sorry for myself; I enjoy your company immensely, but I do not cling.” ― Anthony de Mello, Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality
Put more simply,
“Can you be said to love me if you need me?”
Then there’s one of my favourite de Mello quotes:
“What I really enjoy is not you, it is something which is greater than both you and me… a kind of an orchestra that plays, and on the occasion of your presence, it plays one melody. And when you depart, the orchestra doesn’t stop, on the occasion of meeting someone else, it plays another melody. And when I’m alone, it continues to play”
Loneliness is not cured by contact with others…
So—to loneliness. We normally equate loneliness with a lack of companionship and connection to others. People feel lonely because they don’t have loved ones, a community, friends, husband, wife or children. Right? When we feel the absence of people, we need people to fill that absence, then we should stop feeling lonely. While all these sorts of relationships, when healthy, are an avenue to joy, de Mello challenged this idea that ‘we need to belong’. His famous declaration was that loneliness is not cured by contact with others, but by contact with reality.
In other words, this belonging is often another tempting illusion, one where we try to burden a group of people with making us feel complete. Contact with people might bring us relief from loneliness, but reliance on them to fulfil us has consequences. The longing for connection with others is in all likelihood the longing for connection with oneself—that is, a longing to feel okay with and about ourselves, to be in harmony with ourselves. To accept ourselves. This doesn’t mean isolation from others or the rejection of relationships, but was what de Mello believed to be the path to healthier relationships. The ability to be alone, without being lonely, was very important to de Mello.
The only thing we need
This brings me to perhaps the cornerstone of de Mello’s message, one of the most controversial, and liberating things a human being has ever said. While we are inundated with messages about what we need, from brands and advertisers to preachers and loved ones, from people who commoditise us to those heavily invested in our wellbeing, while experts will point to studies, and any sane person would agree we all need food, water and shelter, on this matter de Mello was abundantly clear. In his mind, in his soul, there was only one thing we needed. That was to love. To love others and to love ourselves. Not even to be loved in return. But just to love.
My understanding is, if we had it de Mello’s way, if we could see more of reality, more often—we wouldn’t get upset when others cause us harm, or take it personally when we’re rejected. We wouldn’t be caught up in the need ‘to belong’. Lovesickness would be severely cut down. We wouldn’t try to change others—or, more accurately, we wouldn’t expect to change anyone. Our first and foremost focus, would be to dance our own dance.
His message gives no credibility to hate, judgement, self-pity or victimhood. It is one of few voices that enables total peace. For that reason, it has to be worth considering, and remembering. If we can remember him, then maybe his most controversial idea will permeate—the idea which opens that fantastic book, Awareness. That the Mystics all agree on one thing—that all is well. All is well, all is well. All is a mess, but all is well.
Call to Action—Where to find more de Mello.
That’s the story of the greatest philosopher that few people have heard of. I encourage you to read a few de Mello quotes—they’re easy to find on the internet. Or you can check out his books. They make great audiobooks, or paperback reads, and they’re great presents for people if you know they’re the soul-searching type. In particular, I recommend Awareness and Way To Love.
