Anthony De Mello Quotes

The only way to change is by changing your understanding.

Ordinarily, everything we do is in our self-interest. Everything.

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.

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

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.

Negative feelings are in you, not in reality. Stop trying to change reality. That's crazy! Stop trying to change the other person. We spend all our time and energy trying to change external circumstances, trying to change our spouses, our bosses, our friends, our enemies, and everybody else. We don't have to change anything. Negative feelings are in you.

So love the thought of death, love it.

For to love persons is to have died to the need for persons and to be utterly alone.

If the heart is unobstructed, the result is love.

A nice definition of an awakened person: a person who no longer marches to the drums of society, a person who dances to the tune of the music that springs up from within.

Doesn't everyone see Reality as it is?

What is my identity ?" "Nothing," said the Master. "You mean that I am an emptiness and a void?" said the incredulous disciple. "Nothing that can be labeled." said the Master.

Wisdom comes to those who learn nothing, unlearn everything.

Live your life as you see fit. That's not selfish. Selfish is to demand that others live their lives as you see fit.

You must cultivate activities that you love. You must discover work that you do, not for its utility, but for itself, whether it succeeds or not, whether you are praised for it or not, whether you are loved and rewarded for it or not, whether people know about it and are grateful to you for it or not. How many activities can you count in your life that you engage in simply because they delight you and grip your soul? Find them out, cultivate them, for they are your passport to freedom and to love.

You have to understand, my dears, that the shortest distance between truth and a human being is a story.

When I speak, you must not listen to the words, my dear. Listen to the Silence.

Can one be fully human without experiencing tragedy? The only tragedy there is in the world is ignorance; all evil comes from that.

You are so proud of your intelligence," said the master. "You are like a like a condemned man, proud of the vastness of his prison cell.

This truth I firmly hold, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding;
my life has been a gift, a blessing to the world.

It is a great mystery that though the human heart longs for Truth, in which alone it finds liberation and delight, the first reaction of human beings to Truth is one of hostility and fear!

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

Don't ask the world to change....you change first.

Sinners often speak the truth. And saints have led people astray. Examine what is said, not the one who says it.

There are three stages in one's spiritual development," said the Master. "The carnal, the spiritual and the divine." "What is the carnal stage?" asked the eager disciples. "That's the stage when trees are seen as trees and mountains as mountains." "And the spiritual?" "That's when one looks more deeply into things - then trees are no longer trees and mountains no longer mountains." "And the divine?" "Ah, that's Enlightenment," said the Master with a chuckle, "when trees become trees again and mountains, mountains.

One day, a philosopher asked, "What is the purpose of creation?" "Lovemaking," said the Master. Later, to his disciples, he said, "Before creation, love was. After creation, love was made. When love is consummated, creation will cease to be, and love will be forever."

I was neurotic for years. I was anxious and depressed and selfish. Everyone kept telling me to change. I resented them and I agreed with them, and I wanted to change, but simply couldn't, no matter how hard I tried. Then one day someone said to me, Don't change. I love you just as you are. Those words were music to my ears: Don't change, Don't change. Don't change ... I love you as you are. I relaxed. I came alive. And suddenly I changed!

I leave you free to be yourself: to think your thoughts, indulge your tastes, follow your inclinations, behave in ways that you decide are to your liking.

My commitment is not to consistency but to the Truth .

Silence is not the absence of sound, but the absence of self.

How sad if we pass through life and never see it with the eyes of a child.

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.

"That of the person who sees other human beings as sinners," said the Master.

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.

To relate is to react. To react is to understand oneself. To understand oneself is to be enlightened. Relationships are schools for enlightenment.

All that you give to others you are giving to yourself.

As the Arabs say, The nature of rain is the same, but it makes thorns grow in the marshes and flowers in the gardens.

What, concretely, is Enlightenment ?" "Seeing Reality as it is," said the Master. "Doesn't everyone see Reality as it is?" "Oh, no! Most people see it as they think it is." "What's the difference?" "The difference between thinking you are drowning in a stormy sea and knowing you cannot drown because there isn't any water in sight for miles around.

Extend
your arms
in welcome
to the future.
The best
is yet to come!

When you come to see you are not as wise today as you thought you were yesterday, you are wiser today.

The way to really live is to die. The passport to living is to imagine yourself in your grave. Imagine you're lying in your coffin ... Now look at your problems from that viewpoint. Changes everything, doesn't it?

The spiritual quest is a journey without distance. You travel from where you are right now To where you have always been. From ignorance to recognition ...

Life is easy, life is delightful. It's only hard on your illusions, your ambitions, your greed, your cravings.

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.

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

You have within yourself the answer to every question you propose - if you only knew how to look for it. In the Land of the spirit, you cannot walk by the light of someone else's lamp. You want to borrow mine. I'd rather teach you how to make your own.

Because everyone is the same distance from the sun. Does it really lessen the distance if you live on top of a skyscraper?

There is no explanation you can give that will explain away all the sufferings and evil and torture and destruction and hunger in the world! You'll never explain it. Because life is a mystery, which means your thinking mind cannot make sense of it. For that you've got to wake up and then you'll suddenly realize that reality is not the problem, you are the problem.

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.

Drop your false ideas. See through people. If you see through yourself, you will see through everyone. Then you will love them. Otherwise you spend the whole time grappling with your wrong notions of them, with your illusions that are constantly crashing against reality.

Most people tell you they want to get out of kindergarten, but don't believe them. Don't believe them! All they want you to do is to mend their broken toys. "Give me back my wife. Give me back my job. Give me back my money. Give me back my reputation, my success." This is what they want; they want their toys replaced. That's all. Even the best psychologist will tell you that, that people don't really want to be cured. What they want is relief; a cure is painful.

What is love?"; "The total absence of fear," said the Master; "What is it we fear?"; "Love," said the Master.

To be properly wicked, you do not have to break the Law. Just observe it to the letter.

When you are guilty, it is not your sins you hate but yourself.

A disciple, in his reverence for the Master, looked upon him as God incarnate. "Tell me, O Master," he said, "why you have come into this world." "To teach fools like you to stop wasting their time worshiping Masters.

Say goodbye to golden yesterdays: or your heart will never learn to love the present.

When you get rid of your fear of failure, your tensions about succeeding ... you can be yourself. Relaxed. You'll no longer be driving with your brakes on.

I lack the Lord's own gentleness of heart, for I see deliberate malice where he sees ignorance and weakness.

Said a disciple, 'I don't trade my love for money.'
Said the Master, 'isn't itas bad - or worse - that you trade it for love?

The human mind makes foolish divisions in what love sees as one.

A religious belief ... is not a statement about Reality, but a hint, a clue about something that is a mystery, beyond the grasp of human thought. In short, a religious belief is only a finger pointing to the moon. Some religious people never get beyond the study of the finger. Others are engaged in sucking it. Others yet use the finger to gouge their eyes out. These are the bigots whom religion has made blind. Rare indeed is the religionist who is sufficiently detached from the finger to see what it is indicating - these are those who, having gone beyond belief, are taken for blasphemers.

True tolerance only arises from a keen awareness of the abysmal ignorance of everyone as far as truth is concerned.

Take away human beings from this planet and life would go on, nature would go on in all its loveliness and violence. Where would the problem be? No problem. You created the problem. You are the problem. You identified with "me" and that is the problem. The feeling is in you, not in reality.

All suffering comes from a person's inability to sit still and be alone.

"What is the secret of your serenity?" Said the master: "Wholehearted cooperation with the inevitable."

A lost coin is found by means of a candle; the deepest truth is found by means of a simple story.

The only way that someone can be of help to you is by challenging your ideas.

You can never be free
as long as you have an ego to defend.

There is only one cause of unhappiness: the false beliefs you have in your head, beliefs so widespread, so commonly held, that it never occurs to you to question them.

Name one practical, down-to-earth effect of spirituality," said the skeptic who was ready for an argument. "Here's one," said the Master. "When someone offends you, you can raise your spirits to heights where offenses cannot reach.

The three most difficult things for a human being are not physical feats or intellectual achievements. They are, first, returning love for hate; second, including the excluded; third, admitting that you are wrong.

As you identify less and less with the "me", you will be more at ease with everybody and with everything. Do you know why? Because you are no longer afraid of being hurt or not liked. You no longer desire to impress anyone. Can you imagine the relief when you don't have to impress anybody anymore? Oh, what a relief. Happiness at last!

When you cling, life is destroyed; when you hold on to anything, you cease to live.

I have no fear of losing u, 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.

Spirituality practiced in the state of activity is incomparably superior to that practiced in a state of withdrawel.

A thought is a screen, not a mirror; that is why you live in a thought envelope, untouched by Reality.

There are two ways to wash dishes: One is to wash them in order to make them clean; the other is to wash them in order to wash them.

The best things in life cannot be willed into being.

One always treads with a joyful step when one has dropped the burden called the ego.

The Master made it his task to destroy systematically every
doctrine, every belief, every concept of the divine, for these
things, which were originally intended as pointers, were now
being taken as descriptions.
He loved to quote the Eastern saying When the sage points
to the moon, all that the idiot sees is the finger.

You can will an act of service but you cannot will love.

The master never seemed to have his fill of gazing at his firstborn child. "What do you want him to be when he grows up?" someone asked. "Outrageously happy," said the master.

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!

What we need is not just action that will bring about change but sight that will bring about love.

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?

To those who seek to protect their ego true Peace brings only disturbance.

I'm going to write a book someday and the title will be I'm an Ass, You're an Ass. That's the most liberating, wonderful thing in the world, when you openly admit you're an ass. It's wonderful. When people tell me, You're wrong I say, What can you expect of an ass?

"I seek the meaning of existence," said the stranger. "You are of course assuming," said the Master, "that existence has a meaning." "Doesn't it?" "When you experience existence as it is - not as you think it is you will discover that your question has no meaning," said the Master.

The Master persistently warned against the attempt to encompass Reality in a concept or a name. A scholar in mysticism once asked, "When you speak of BEING, sir, is it eternal, transcendent being you speak of, or transient, contingent being?" The Master closed his eyes in thought. Then he opened them, put on his most disarming expression, and said, "Yes!

The law is an expression of God 's holy will and as such must be honored and loved," said the preacher piously. "Rubbish," said the Master. "The law is a necessary evil and as such must be cut down to the barest minimum. Show me a lover of the law and I will show you a muttonheaded tyrant .

Let the story do its work in you, and when it is done then you won't need the story anymore.

You see persons and things not as they are but as you are.

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.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if we had a world where everybody said, 'We don't know?' The fact is that you're surrounded -God and you don't see God, because you KNOW ABOUT God. The final barrier to the vision of God is your God concept. You miss God because you think you know. The highest knowledge of God is to know God as unknowable. All revelations, however divine, are never any more than a finger pointing at the moon. As we say in the East, 'When the sage points to the moon, all the idiot sees is the finger'.

Wisdom tends to grow in proportion to one's awareness of one's ignorance.

A good teacher offers practice , a bad one offers theories .

The words of the scholar are to be understood. The words of the master are not to be understood. They are to be listened to as one listens to the wind in the trees and the sound of the river and the song of the bird. They will awaken something within the heart that is beyond all knowledge.

On the question of his own enlightenment the Master always remained reticent, even though the disciples tried every means to get him to talk. All the information they had on this subject was what the Master once said to his youngest son, who wanted to know what his father felt when he became enlightened. The answer was, 'A fool.'
When the boy asked why, the Master had replied, 'Well, son, it was like going to great pains to break into a house by climbing a ladder and smashing a window--- and realizing later that the door of the house was open.

We're crazy, We're living on crazy ideas about love, about relationships, about happiness, about joy, about everything.

When you're on the verge of going insane, raving mad, you're about to become either a psychotic or a mystic.