"What miracles has your Master worked?" he said to a disciple.

"Well, there are miracles and miracles. In your land it is regarded as a miracle if God does someone's will. In our country it is regarded as a miracle if someone does the will of God."

© Anthony de Mello, SJ

This so infuriated the local priest that he came in a huff to argue the matter out with the Master.

"But surely the word 'God' can lead us to God?" said the priest.

"It can," said the Master calmly.

"How can something help and be a barrier?"

Said the Master, "The donkey that brings you to the door is not the means by which you enter the house."

© Anthony de Mello, SJ

"Obedience keeps the rules," he would say. "Love knows when to break them."

© Anthony de Mello, SJ

"But are we not to hate our sins?" a disciple said one day.

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

© Anthony de Mello, SJ

"My very first disciple was so weak that the exercises killed him. My second disciple drove himself crazy from his earnest practice of the exercises I gave him. My third disciple dulled his intellect through too much contemplation. But the fourth managed to keep his sanity."

"Why was that?" someone would invariably ask.

"Possibly because he was the only one who refused to do the exercises." The Master's words would be drowned in howls of laughter.

© Anthony de Mello, SJ

"Why be a great man?" said the Master. "Being a man is a great enough achievement."

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"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."

© Anthony de Mello, SJ

Said the Master:

"To be public-spirited and belong to no party,
to move without being bound to any given course,
to take things as they come,
have no remorse for the past,
no anxiety for the future,
to move when pushed,
to come when dragged,
to be like a mighty gale,
like a feather in the wind,
like weeds floating on a river,
like a mill stone meekly grinding,
to love all creation equally
as heaven and earth are equal to all
– such is the product of Enlightenment."

On hearing these words, one of the younger disciples cried, "This sort of teaching is not for the living but for the dead," and walked away, never to return.

© Anthony de Mello, SJ

"Do not our efforts change the course of human history?" he demanded.

"Oh yes, they do," said the Master.

"And have not our human labours changed the earth?"

"They certainly have," said the Master.

"Then why do you teach that human effort is of little consequence?"

Said the Master, "Because when the wind subsides, the leaves still fall."

© Anthony de Mello, SJ

The disciple was astonished. "But you are the one who taught us to look on God as Father!"

"When will you learn that a father isn't someone you can lean on but someone who rids you of your tendency to lean?"

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"If your God comes to your rescue and gets you out of trouble," he would say, "it is time you started searching for the true God."

When asked to elaborate, this is the story he told:

"A man left a brand-new bicycle unattended at the marketplace while he went about his shopping.

He only remembered the bicycle the following day - and rushed to the marketplace, expecting it would have been stolen. The bicycle was exactly where he had left it.

Overwhelmed with joy, he rushed to a nearby temple to thank God for having kept his bicycle safe only to find, when he got out of the temple, that the bicycle was gone."

© Anthony de Mello, SJ

"Don't listen to his words. Listen to his message."

"How does one do that?"

"Take hold of a sentence that he says. Shake it well till all the words drop off. What is left will set your heart on fire."

© Anthony de Mello, SJ

"The total absence of fear," said the Master.

"What is it we fear?"

"Love," said the Master.

© Anthony de Mello, SJ

Said the Master, "Love other things together."

© Anthony de Mello, SJ

He asked to be left unburied, but the disciples wouldn't hear of it, protesting that he would be eaten by the animals and birds.

"Then make sure you place my staff near me that I might drive them away," said the Master with a smile.

"How would you manage that? You will be unconscious."

"In which case it will not matter, will it, that I be devoured by the birds and beasts."

© Anthony de Mello, SJ

The Master only laughed and did not give a single answer.

To his disciples, who demanded to know the reason for his evasiveness, he later said, "Have you observed that it is precisely those who do not know what to do with this life who want another that will last forever?"

"But is there life after death or is there not?" persisted a disciple.

"Is there life before death? - that is the question!" said the Master enigmatically.

© Anthony de Mello, SJ

"Why?" demanded the disciples after the bishop had gone.

"Because they all too easily sacrifice persons for the advancement of a purpose," said the Master.

© Anthony de Mello, SJ

"Life," was the reply.

Said the Master, "If you are to live, words must die."

When asked later what he meant, he said, "You are lost and forlorn because you dwell in a world of words. You feed on words, you are satisfied with words when what you need is substance. A menu will not satisfy your hunger. A formula will not slake your thirst."

© Anthony de Mello, SJ

They got a clue one day when they heard the Master say, "Don't attempt to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time -- and irritates the pig."

© Anthony de Mello, SJ

And he explained it thus:

And he concluded: "If the withered tree had survived, nothing would have induced the bird to give up its security and fly."

© Anthony de Mello, SJ

Then he would add: "Someday I shall carry a flaming torch myself to set fire to both the temple and the Lord!"

© Anthony de Mello, SJ

"No."

"Did you become a saint?"

"No."

"Then what did you become?"

"Awake."

© Anthony de Mello, SJ

"Wait a minute," said the Master. "What you plan to tell us, is it true?"

"I don't think it is."

"Is it useful?"

"No, it isn't."

"Is it funny?"

"No."

"Then why should we be hearing it?"

© Anthony de Mello, SJ

Each year the disciple would return with the same request and each time the Master would give him the same reply: "Wait."

One day he said to the Master, "When will I be ready to teach?"

Said the Master, "When your excessive eagerness to teach has left you."

© Anthony de Mello, SJ

"If I did not, would I bother to come to you?"

"Oh yes Most people do."

"What for?"

"Not for a cure. That's painful. For relief."

To his disciples the Master said, "People who want a cure, provided they can have it without pain, are like those who favour progress, provided they can have it without change."

© Anthony de Mello, SJ

"Through neither. Salvation comes from seeing."

"Seeing what?"

"That the gold necklace you wish to acquire is hanging round your neck. That the snake you are so frightened of is only a rope on the ground."

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Later 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."

The disciple went away sad, for he clung to his convictions. He feared "ignorance" more than death.

© Anthony de Mello, SJ

Later he said, good-naturedly, "A lot of people seem to have those little pocket calculators, but nothing in their pockets worth calculating!"

Weeks later, when a visitor asked him what he taught his disciples, he said, "To get their priorities right: Better have the money than calculate it; better have the experience than define it."

© Anthony de Mello, SJ

"The harder you seek, the more distance you create between Him and you."

"So what does one do about the distance?"

"Understand that it isn't there."

"Does that mean that God and I are one?"

"Not one. Not two."

"How is that possible?"

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

© Anthony de Mello, SJ

© Anthony de Mello, SJ

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?"

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"Could it be because you lacked the courage to shake the tree?" said the Master benignly.

© Anthony de Mello, SJ

"Should growth be the only consideration in an economic theory?" he asked.

"Yes. All growth is good in itself."

"Isn't that the thinking of the cancer cell?" said the Master.

© Anthony de Mello, SJ

"Do you promise to do whatever I tell you?" said the Master gravely.

"I swear I shall do anything."

"Very well. How many animals do you have?"

"A cow, a goat and six chickens."

"Take them all into the room with you. Then come back after a week."

The disciple was appalled. But he had promised to obey! So he took the animals in. A week later he came back, a pitiable figure, moaning, "I'm a nervous wreck. The dirt! The stench! The noise! We're all on the verge of madness!"

"Go back," said the Master, "and put the animals out."

The man ran all the way home. And came back the following day, his eyes sparkling with joy. "How sweet life is! The animals are out. The home is a Paradise, so quiet and clean and roomy!"

© Anthony de Mello, SJ

"Whom, then, shall I follow?"

"No one. The day you follow someone you cease to follow Truth."

© Anthony de Mello, SJ

"No one can help you there."

"Why not?"

"For the same reason that no one can help the fish to find the ocean."

© Anthony de Mello, SJ

"Then why would he wish to reform anything?" protested his disciples.

"Well, there are reformers and reformers: One type lets action flow through them while they themselves do nothing; these are like people who change the shape and flow of a river. The others generate their own activity; they are like people who exert themselves to make the river wetter.

© Anthony de Mello, SJ

"To profit from books you don't have to live in a library," he would say.

Or, even more forcefully, "You can read books without ever stepping into a library; and practice spirituality without ever going to a temple."

© Anthony de Mello, SJ

"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."

© Anthony de Mello, SJ

The Master was unmoved. To all their objections he would say, "You have yet to understand, my dears, that the shortest distance between a human being and Truth is a story."

Another time he said, "Do not despise the story. A lost gold coin is found by means of a penny candle; the deepest truth is found by means of a simple story."

© Anthony de Mello, SJ

"There was once a student who never became a mathematician because he blindly believed the answers he found at the back of his math textbook - and, ironically, the answers were correct."

© Anthony de Mello, SJ

"I know. An overwhelming passion for it."

"No. An unremitting readiness to admit you may be wrong."

© Anthony de Mello, SJ

When the governor was looking for an adviser, he came to the Master and said, "Tell me, is it true that the young man knows as much as they say he does?"

"Truth to tell," said the Master wryly, "the fellow reads so much I don't see how he could ever find the time to know anything."

© Anthony de Mello, SJ

The address was over in less than a minute. All he said was:

"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."

© Anthony de Mello, SJ

The Master looked straight through the man and said, "If I were you, from now on I would play on the ground floor."

This startled the disciples. "Why didn't you tell him to stop gambling?" they demanded.

"Because I knew he wouldn't," was the Master's simple and sagacious explanation.

© Anthony de Mello, SJ

To a disciple who consulted him on marriage he said, "Be sure you don't marry a saint."

"Why ever not?"

"Because it is the surest way to make yourself a martyr," was the Master's merry reply.

© Anthony de Mello, SJ

"What is it we fail to see when you are with us?" they asked.

But the Master would not say.

When the moment of his death was near, they said, "What is it we will see when you are gone?"

With a twinkle in his eye, the Master said, "All I did was sit on the riverbank handing out river water. After I'm gone, I trust you will notice the river."

© Anthony de Mello, SJ

"She blooms because she blooms,
the Rose:
Does not ask why,
nor does she preen herself
to catch my eye."

And the saying: "A saint is a saint until he knows that he is one."

© Anthony de Mello, SJ

He laughed at his disciples when they took to simple living in imitation of him.

"Of what use is it to copy my behaviour," he would say, "without my motivation. Or to adopt my motivation without the vision that produced it?"

They understood him better when he said, "Does a goat become a rabbi because he grows a beard?"

© Anthony de Mello, SJ

Some said it came from selfishness. Others, from delusion. Yet others, from the inability to distinguish the real from the unreal.

When the Master was consulted, he said, "All suffering comes from a person's inability to sit still and be alone."

© Anthony de Mello, SJ

"Because they have learned to see goodness and beauty everywhere," said the Master.

"Why don't I see goodness and beauty everywhere?"

"Because you cannot see outside of you what you fail to see inside."

© Anthony de Mello, SJ

And each day he would get the same mysterious answer: "Through desire."

"But I desire God with all my heart, don't I? Then why have I not found him?"

One day the Master happened to be bathing in the river with the disciple. He pushed the man's head underwater and held it there while the poor fellow struggled desperately to break loose.

Next day it was the Master who began the conversation. "Why did you struggle so when I held your head under water?"

"Because I was gasping for air."

"When you are given the grace to gasp for God the way you gasped for air, you will have found him.'

© Anthony de Mello, SJ

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