Anthony De Mello SJ

Thank you for:
- Bill De Mello
- Romo Rev. J. Francis Stroud, S.J. 
That allowed us to put Anthony's writting in this website.

Biography

Until his sudden death on June 2, 1987, Fr. Tony de Mello was the director of the Sadhana Institute of Pastoral Counseling near Poona, India. Author of five best selling books, renowned worldwide for his workshops, retreats, and prayer courses, he aimed simply to teach people HOW TO PRAY, how to WAKE UP AND LIVE

Most people, he maintained, are asleep. They need to wake up, open up their eyes, see what is real, both inside and outside of themselves. The greatest human gift is to be aware, to be in touch with oneself, one's body, mind, feelings, thoughts, sensations.

Here are some of his typical challenges: "Come home yourself! Come back to your senses! Do you hear that bird sing? How can you hear the song and not hear the singer? How can you see the wave and not see the ocean? How can you see the dance and not see the dancer?"

The thousands of people who attended Fr. de Mello's workshops, and the thousands more who did not attend but who wished they could have, will surely consider it a great blessing that full-length conferences of this superbly gifted and eloquent speaker have been preserved. It is just the way he was, uninhibited by a TV studio or time limits. It is a priceless final gift he has left his friends.


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Friends . . . remember the Rev. Anthony de Mello as a Jesuit priest who surely succeeded at one of the tasks he considered most important -- to improve God's reputation on earth.

De Mello, a Catholic spiritual leader from India, spent most of his waking hours talking about God's goodness and counseling people to enjoy life -- in the present.

In books, on tapes and in his workshops, he asked his listeners to set aside worries about an uncertain future, about a tomorrow that might never come.p>As if offering yet one more lesson in his own spirituality, de Mello, who was to give his annual workshop in "Sadhana" [in St. Louis] . . . died suddenly at Fordham University in New York.

De Mello, was born in Bombay, India. He became known in many countries for his version of "Sadhana," an Indian word for "the way to God."

De Mello spoke of a great thirst in the West for the God experience, a sense of the divine. His friends say that, above all, de Mello wanted to teach people to pray and to learn to be "awake" -- that is, alert to the pervasiveness of God.

He taught meditational techniques that are a blend of Eastern religious thought, modern psychology and the spiritual exercises of Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuit religious order.

De Mello worried that Christians in the West had lost sight of their rich, mystical tradition. He felt that much of the recent "turning to the East" in search of meditational techniques was a result of the loss.

De Mello's books consist of pithy stories, including "Song of the Bird," Wellsprings," and "One-Minute Wisdom." "Sadhana: A Way to God" has been translated into Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Japanese, Chinese, Indonesian, Bengali, and Thai.

"He loved stories," said the Rev. Joseph Brown, Jesuit priest who coordinated de Mello's workshops [in St. Louis].

De Mello has given workshops at Saint Louis University each summer since 1981, drawing about 700 participants each year . . . .

De Mello had gone to Fordham just before his death to begin his annual summer tour of U.S. cities. He died of a heart attack during the night. The next morning, he was found on the floor near the door of his room at Fordham. Friends said he had appeared to be in good health but had complained of indigestion on the day before his death. Brown, a clinical psychologist, said de Mello had been the catalyst for deep personal changes in many people, including himself.

"I could go on for days," Brown said. "He was an entertainer, a storyteller and a challenger. He blows your mind. He is one of the most powerful speakers I have ever heard. He makes you see things in different ways. He was a genius of devising exercises for people to get in touch with themselves and to pray out of that experience."

Others said that de Mello's greatest strength was his insistence that prayer is made with the heart more than with the head. Rather than more words about God, people want a taste of him, de Mello said.

Brown said that people often spoke of "a deep inner peace" after listening to de Mello speak or attending one of his workshops.

His admirerers also appreciated his strong preference for stories over dogmas as a vehicle for expressing religious truths.

Perhaps the best way to express de Mello's style of communicating with those who knew him is to tell some of his favorite stories. These are from "Song of the Bird":


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The disciples were full of questions about God. Said the master, 'God is the Unknown and the Unknowable. Every statement about him, every answer to your questions, is a distortion of the truth.'

The disciples were bewildered. 'Then why do you speak about him at all?'

'Why does the bird sing?' said the master. 'Not because it has a statement, be because it has a song.' --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The devil once went for a walk with a friend. They saw a man ahead of them stoop down and pick up something form the ground. 'What did that man find?' asked the friend. "A piece of truth,' said the devil.

'Doesn't that disturb you?' asked the friend.

'No," said the devil. 'I shall let him make a belief out of it.'


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Joanne Callahan, a pastoral minister, said her friendship with de Mello had helped her in work with the dying.

"His exercises put us in the presence of our own death and our own feelings about that," she said. "I think Tony saw life as a gift and lived it in that awareness. His whole theme was to get people to 'wake up' and 'be aware'" of themselves, their bodies, their experiences.

"He lived very intensely, and he really counted on God's mercy." Callahan said. "I don't think he would have felt that he needed time to prepare for death."


Please, see more details in here...

His Books:
- Sadhana: A Way to God
- The Song of the Bird
- Wellsprings
- One Minute Wisdom
- Taking Flight
- The Heart of the Enlightened
- Awareness
- The Way to Love
- Contact with God
- One Minute Nonsense
- More One Minute Nonsense
- The Prayer of The Frog

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