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Anthony De Mello - Fearlessness Book PDF Anthony De Mello - Fearlessness: You don’t know what it is, so you don’t think it’s available to you - It’s available Anthony De Mello’s book Fearlessness is based on the course of the same name given by Anthony De Mello in 1986 at Fordham University, New York, United States. The one trouble behind your every problem is fear. No fear, no problem. But you don’t know what fearlessness is, so you don’t think it’s available to you. IT’S AVAILABLE! The HOW is in this book. You’re the litmus paper. Step into this book with both feet and see what happens in you, See if there is a result, meaning, are you losing your tension, your anger, your depression? Is the fear of failure loosening its grip on you? Is your stress about succeeding giving way to engaging work? Is there greater kindness and understanding in your relationships? Are you gradually becoming happier, more relaxed, more alive, much more yourself? Anthony De Mello says, I can promise you this: I have not known a single person who gave time to this approach (”Awareness”) who didn’t see this kind of change. Anthony De Mello - Fearlessness This is Audible. The title of this audiobook is Anthony De Mello - ”Fearlessness - you don’t know what it is, so you don’t think it is available to you. It’s available ”. It is written and narrated by Anthony De Mello and edited by Don Joseph Goewey. INTRODUCTION For Anthony De Mello, spirituality is waking up, which begs the question, wak- ing up from what exactly? Waking up from the false beliefs our culture has programmed into us that has us actively making ourselves miserable with stress, fear, judgments, and a disparag- ing sense of unworthiness that has us seeing the world, ourselves, and each other in distorted ways. As a Jesuit priest and psychotherapist, Tony found that peo- ple were often caught in a kind of bad dream of unhappiness, and what became his life work was focusing on helping people wake up from it, which begs the next question. Wake up to what? Wake up to the reality that Christ was pointing to, which he called the kingdom of joy and which he said is where we actually live already but we are too much caught in that bad dream of unhappiness to see it. This course, consisting of a series of lectures by Anthony De Mello given at Fordham University, is about busting the false beliefs of our programming to rediscover the loveliness and the beauty of this journey we call life which 1 is immediately revealed to us when we drop the programming and reclaim our original innocence, which is the boundless freedom of our spiritual nature. The promise is that as we recover our innocence, we inevitably come to see that all is well. All is well even in the midst of the mess we’re prone to make when we function from fearful illusions. By definition, all is well when we are fearless. Spirituality is a perennial invitation to wake up to the truth that all is well, not as a concept but as a reality we experience directly. Waking up to it is always just a shift away, an effortless shift in awareness that arise at the understanding that there is nothing to fear. There’s only one thing required to make the shift to fearlessness, and it is our willingness to be consciously aware when our mind has gone south. That means remaining constantly in touch with whatever upset our thoughts are dragging us into, then stepping back from it and allowing grace to relieve us of the turmoil. But we have to experience that kind of grace for ourselves which is an experience Anthony De Mello helps us reach. Tony asserts that fearlessness is a state we are capable of actualizing, but most people find it hard to believe that anyone could even remotely be capable of it, which might explain why generation after generation has continued to function from so much stress, anxiety, conflict, hatred, and worry. Tony asserts that fearlessness is not just relief from the turmoil, it is the cure for the turmoil. That is a big result to claim I know, But I am confident that if you give this course half a chance, simply by being open minded, you will change in ways that you’ve always wanted to change. That’s what Tony has done for me. The only effort it will entail is your openness to see what’s in it that rings true for you and then simply applying that. You’re the litmus paper. See what happens in you, what changes for you. See if there is a result. By result, I mean, do you begin to lose your tension? Is your fear of failure loosening its grip on you? Is your stress about succeeding, giving way to engaging work in life with the joy and creativity of loving the challenge? Are you gradually becoming happier, more relaxed, more alive, much more yourself? Are you having moments when you behold spontaneously the beautiful things of life that in your sleep state you’ve been walking past or not seeing at all? Who in their right mind would not want to give the possibility of something like that a chance? That chance is available to you in this audiobook. One more thing I want to add before closing. This audiobook was created from audio recordings of lectures Anthony DeMello gave over 4 decades ago at Fordham University. Anthony de Mello was a seminal influence in the modern spiritual movement, and these recordings are historically significant, to say nothing of their spiritual significance for each of us personally. Please take note that, although the record- ings are better than good enough in a few places, the audio quality may not meet 21st century studio standards. This is due, of course, to the technology limitations of recordings made in 1976. On occasion, you may encounter some 2 background noise, volume variations, or some other imperfections. These are typical of older recordings from that era. We have made a substantial effort to enhance and restore these recordings while preserving the original content and the original authenticity. That said, this audiobook extends to you a transformational experience you will value for the way it enriches your life. END of INTRODUCTION What is spirituality? Spirituality means waking up. Most people, even though they don’t know it, are asleep. Life is a banquet, and the tragedy is that most people are starving to death. That’s what I want to talk about with you. There’s that news report of the story of, some people on a raft off the coast of Brazil who were perishing from thirst, and they had no idea that the water they were floating on was fresh water. See, the river was coming out into the sea with such force that it went on for a couple of miles. They had fresh water right there. They had no idea of it. See, that’s what I’m really talking about. It’s like we’re surrounded with joy, with happiness, with love, and most people have no idea whatsoever of this reason. They’re brainwashed. Reason. They’re hypnotized. They’re asleep. Imagine a stage magician who hypnotizes someone, and this person is seeing what isn’t there and not seeing what is there. That’s what it’s all about. Wake up. Not weep for your sins, for your mistakes, for your past failings, which you committed in the first place because you were asleep anyway. Are you gonna cry because of what you did in your hypnotized state? Why do you want to identify with that person? Wake up. Wake up. Put on a new mind. Take on a new way of looking at things, for the kingdom is here. The kingdom of joy is here. But it’s the rare Christian who takes that seriously. So, the first thing you need to wake up is to consider that your culture hypnotized you into believing that you needed to to make something of yourself, to measure up, to become a certain kind of person, to acquire certain kinds of property, to attain a certain kind of status, certain kind of reputation before you could have a seat at the banquet. This is what you were taught. Yet all the great mystics tell you there’s nothing you need to do or acquire to gain entrance to the banquet, meaning the kingdom of joy. Do you know why? Because you are there already, albeit unsuspectingly. You’re just too brainwashed to know it, to see it. The second thing you need to wake up is understand that maybe you’ve got the wrong ideas obstructing you. And it is these ideas that are influencing your life and keeping you asleep and making it the mess that it is. Ideas about success and failure, ideas about 3 happiness, ideas about fulfillment, ideas about love, ideas about freedom, etc. And it isn’t easy to listen to someone who would challenge those ideas. You know, they’ve made some interesting studies in brainwashing. And they prove you’re brainwashed when you take on, when you introject an idea that isn’t yours, somebody else’s idea, your culture’s idea. And the funny thing is that you’ll be ready to die for it. The first test that you’ve been brainwashed, that you’ve got introjected convictions and beliefs is that the moment they’re attacked, you feel stung. You react emotionally. That’s a pretty good sign not infallible, but a pretty good sign that we’re dealing with brainwashing. And you’re even ready to die for an idea that never was yours. The terrorists or the sink so called takes on an idea, swallows it whole, and are ready to martyr themselves for it. Not easy for that programmed mind to listen to another way of seeing, 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, from your hypnotic state, and you’re frequently interpreting everything that’s being said in terms of your hypnotic state, of your conditioning, of your programming. We all have our positions, don’t we? And we listen from those positions. The most difficult thing in the world, to listen, to see. We don’t want to see. Because if you look, you may change. If you look, you’ll lose control of this life, or to be more accurate, this hypnotic state that you’re so precariously holding together. So in order to wake up, in order to awake, the one thing you need the most is not energy or strength or even great intelligence. The one thing you need the most of all is the readiness to learn something new. Chances that you will wake up are in direct proportion to the amount of truth you can take without running away. How much are you ready to take without running away? How ready are you to think something unfamiliar? Ready for the new? Be ready, for the first reaction is one of fear. It’s not that we fear the unknown. You cannot fear something that you do not know. Nobody is afraid of the unknown. What you really fear is the loss of the known. That’s what you fear the loss. What I am offering is a place to challenge ideas, to see fundamentally what is false and what is true. This is what I am going to share with you. Are you ready for that? I discovered something, and it turned my life upside down, revolutionized my life. I became a new man. This is what I’m gonna share with you. What I’m gonna share with you is is my rediscovery of life. So you might say to me, how come you heard this just 10 or 12 years ago? Hadn’t you read the gospels? Of course, I’d read the gospels, but I hadn’t seen it. It was right there, but I hadn’t seen it. Later, having discovered it, I found it in all the major religious writings. And I’m amazed. I mean, I I was reading it, and I hadn’t recognized it, hadn’t seen it. 4 I wish to god I’d found this when I was younger. Oh, what a difference it would have made. So how long would it take to give it to you? A whole day? Well, I’ll be honest with you. Couple of minutes. Grasping it or getting it might take you 10 minutes, one day, 3 days, 20 years. Who knows? That depends on you. If you would bring one quality, just one. You need one quality to see what I saw. Just one. I already stated it previously. Sometimes I repeat a message to get it across. It’s listening. It’s your ability to listen. You need that one quality to see what I saw. Is it difficult to hear? Is it difficult to understand? It’s so simple a 7 year old child could understand it. Isn’t that amazing? And in fact, when I I think of it today, I think, why didn’t I see it? I don’t know. I don’t know why I didn’t see it, but I didn’t. Now maybe 1 or other of you might see it. What would you need to see it? Just one thing, the ability to listen. That’s all. Are you able to listen? If you can, you might get it. Now listening is not as easy as you might think it is. Reason. We’re always listening from kind of fixed concepts, fixed positions, prejudices. Listening does not mean swallowing. That’s gullibility. Oh, he says it, so I take it. I don’t want you to have any spirit of faith while you’re listening to me. Don’t take me on faith. What I want you to do is question everything I’m saying, think about it, feel free to do that. So it does not mean gullibility, but then listening doesn’t mean attacking because I’m going to say something so new, some of you are going to think I’m crazy, I’m out of my mind. Then you’re going to be tempted to attack. If you tell a Marxist, there’s some- thing wrong with Marxism, the first thing he’s likely to do is attack you. You tell a capitalist there’s something wrong with capitalism, he’s up in arms. You tell an American, hey. You know, there’s something wrong with the United States. And the same with the Indian, if you’re attacking India, etcetera. Doesn’t mean swallowing, doesn’t mean attacking, doesn’t mean agreeing. They tell me about a Jesuit superior who was a great success. See? So somebody said to him, how come you’re such a great success as a superior? He says very simple. The formula is simple. I agree with everyone. They said, don’t be absurd. How could you be a successful superior agreeing with everybody? He says, that’s right. That’s right. How could I be a successful superior agreeing with everybody? So it doesn’t mean agreeing with me. You could disagree with me and get it. 5 Isn’t that amazing? It means being alert. You’re alert. You’re watching. You’re listening with a kind of a fresh mind. That’s not easy either. Listening with a fresh mind, without prejudices, without fixed formulas, without a fixed position. Alright. If you are ready to hear something new, simple, new, unexpected against almost everything you’ve been told till now. Ready to hear that? Then maybe you’ll hear what I have to say. Maybe you’ll get it. You know, when Jesus taught the good news, I think he was attacked not only because what he taught was good but because it was new. We hate anything new. I hated anything new. Don’t wanna hear anything new. Give me the old stuff. We don’t like the new. It’s too disturbing, too liberating. Okay. So the ability to listen. Buddha formulated it beautifully, he says, monks and scholars must accept my words not out of respect must not accept my words out of respect but must analyze them. The way a goldsmith analyzes gold by cutting, scraping, rubbing, melting. Okay. So we’ve got that clear. Next, the title of this course is the rediscovery of life. Here is what that means. We were born happy, we lost it, we were born with the gift of life, we lost it, we got to rediscover it. So let’s begin the investigation. Life, what’s this thing we call life? Take a look at the world and then I’ll invite you to take a look at your own life, take a look at the world poverty everywhere, the squalor, the dirt, the misery, you call that life. Well, I got news for you, I’ll show you life even there sometime ago. I was introduced to a rickshaw puller in Calcutta, the work is it’s awful, they don’t last very long. The life span of these poor men is, from 10 to 12 years once they begin pulling the rickshaw. Now Ram Chandra, Ram Chandra was his name, Ram Chandra had TB. At that time, there was a group of people engaging in an illegal activity called exporting skeletons. You know what they did? They sort of bought your skele- ton while you were alive. You were very poor, you went to them and you sold your skeleton for the equivalent about $10 and so they’d say to you many of these rickshaw pullers, it say how long have you been working in this trade? And Ramchandra says 10 years, then they think he doesn’t have much longer to live. Alright. Here’s your money. Then the moment you die, they pounce on the body. They take it away, and then when the body is decomposed through some process they have, they get a skeleton. Now Ramchandra, he had a wife. He had kids. The squalor, the poverty, the misery, the uncertainty, you’d never think to find happiness there, right? One day I said Ramchandra, aren’t you upset? He said about what? You know the future, the future of the kids, he says well, I’m doing the best I can, but the rest is in the hands of god. 6 Nothing seemed to face him. He was alright. Nothing seem to upset him, I said hey, but what about your sickness that causes suffering, doesn’t it? He says a bit, we got to take life as it comes, I never once saw him in a bad mood, Well, one day when I was talking I suddenly realized I was in the presence of a mystic. I suddenly realized I was in the presence of life. It was right there. He was alive. I was dead. You know, those lovely words of Jesus, look at the birds of the air, look at the flowers of the field, they don’t sew, they don’t spin, they don’t have a moment of anxiety for the future, not like you. Ramchandra must be dead by now, you know, I met him very briefly but I know I met a mystic, extraordinary person, he discovered life. You know, it’s interesting I frequently reflected the human mind is such an extraordinary thing, it has invented the computer, it is split the atom, it sends ships into space, it has not solved the problem of human suffering of anguish, loneliness, emptiness, despair. I don’t think your strangers to fear, depression, sorrow to loneliness, heartache, emptiness, despair, how come we have not found the answer to that, We have made all kinds of technological advances has that raise the quality of our living by 1 inch, want to know my opinion? No. Oh! We have more comfort, more speed, pleasures, entertainment, greater technological advances, what I am saying is, any improvement on that fear, that emptiness, that heartache, any improvement on that greed and hatred and conflict, less fighting, less cruelty and the tragedy is as I discovered the secret has been found, we do not have to go and search, we got the solution, why do not we use it? We do not want it, would you believe that? We do not want it, can you imagine my saying to somebody look, I am going to give you a formula which would make you happy for the rest of your life, you will enjoy every single minute of the rest of your life. Imagine my saying that to you, okay, I am going to say that to you, I am going to give you the formula, You know what most of you are going to do? Sorry for insulting you in advance. If you’re anything like the audiences I’ve had till now, you know what most of you are going to do? You say, don’t wanna hear it. As this course unfolds, I’m gonna prove it to you, You don’t want it. I was in Saint Louis, giving a a workshop. There was a priest there who came to see me. He said about 3 months ago, I assisted an AIDS victim on his death bed. And the AIDS victim told me the following. He said, the doctor told me I had 6 months to live. And this man dying of AIDS told me these have been the 6 happiest months of my whole misspent life. Happiest. In fact, I’ve never been happy till these 6 months. I discovered happiness. He said, as soon as the doctor told me that, I dropped tension, pressure, anxiety, hope and fell, not into despair, but into happiness at last. And the priest said, you know, many as the time, I’ve been reflecting on the words of that man. Here’s another guy who had it, who found it. Philippians, you got it right here, the formula is here. 7 Philippians, listen to what Philippians says. For whatever the situation I find myself in, I have learned to be self sufficient. I am experienced in being brought low and I have known what it meant to have abundance. I have learned how to cope with every circumstance. How to eat well or to go hungry? To be well provided for or to do without? I have learnt how to cope with every circumstance. A little earlier, this passage says, rejoice always. I think of Ram Chandra in Calcutta. I think of the man with AIDS in Saint Louis. Both of these men were an incarnation of Philippians. I had read Philippians all my life and had never understood it, I mean, he was staring at me, staring me in the face and had never understood it. What if you wanted to grasp what these two men grasp? What do you have to understand about yourself? 1st, your life is in a mess, don’t like to hear that? If you are like the average person I run into, your life is in a mess. People will say to me, what do you mean my life is in a mess? I’m getting ahead. People admire me, You think your life is not in a mess? You mean you’re enjoying every single minute of your life? Here’s the litmus test for the mess. Ever feel anxious, ever feel stressed, ever get depressed, ever worry, ever get angry, ever feel dissatisfied with life, ever feel disappointed, ever feel unappreciated, ever judge or condemn yourself or other people, ever feel guilty or ashamed, Ever feel not good enough? You mean to tell me that all your relationships are going well with everybody? Do you ever withhold love or affection or fail to extend empathy? Ever refuse to forgive? In short, do you ever get upset about anything and sometimes project your upset onto other people? You mean aren’t we supposed to get upset? You want the clear, simple answer? No. You mean not be upset by anything? No. I don’t want to hear anymore, see what I mean? You got a theory, you got to be upset or you’re not human. It’s a theory boxing you into a belief that has you actively engaged in making yourself miserable. That’s the mess. If you weren’t actively engaged in making yourself miserable, you’d be happy. Happiness is our natural state. The world is shot through with happiness, but you can’t see it because of a theory. Disagree? Okay, go ahead and be upset. I was doing that all along, until I saw through it. That’s what this course is all about, seeing through the mess to light. At the bottom of the emotional mess, we addressed last session is fear, the opposite of which is, of course, is fearlessness. Fearlessness, you don’t know what it means and the tragedy is you don’t think it is available. It is so easy to get since they told you it is not available, you don’t believe it is possible because they told you it’s not available. You anxious for the future? Any whiff of anxiety, worry, upset, you’re in a mess, do you want to stop throwing your life away in this manner? Wanna clean it up? I’ll clean it up for you 5 minutes depending on how ready you are and I 8 mean that, I mean it. It’s so simple and it’s so deadly serious that people miss it and you can have it. It starts with awareness, with seeing how we are unconsciously throwing this gift of life away. Reminded of that powerful story of the fisherman who goes out early in the morning to fish, and it’s apparently it’s too dark or something. And his foot hits upon something that seems like a sack. So he picks it up, probably washed ashore from some shipwreck. Then he opens it and he can feel pebbles inside. So he takes these pebbles and he entertains himself till it’s dawns by by flinging those pebbles far out into the sea and to see if he can judge from the plop how far he sent the pebble. Well, when it becomes a bit light, he looks into the sack and he finds 3 precious stones there. God, they were filled with precious stones and he hadn’t known it. A fortune in precious stones wasted. Now, you know, that could be a parable of a misspent life. It’s it’s tragic, it’s painful. I think back on my own life and I think, why did I waste it? I wasted it. Why waste even a minute regretting the past? But the fact is I wasted it. Now that’s the condition of people everywhere. You’re telling them life is ex- traordinary, life is delightful, you could enjoy it, you wouldn’t have a minute of tension, not one, no pressure, no anxiety. You want it? Not possible, never been done, cannot be done, they won’t hear you. They won’t listen. No spirit of research, of investigation. Let’s find out. I mean, our priests have told us it can’t be done. Our psychologists tell us it cannot be done. So the first thing, are you ready to admit that your life is in a mess? 2nd, this is a bit tougher, okay? You don’t want to get out of it, You do not want to get out of the mess. You talk to any psychologist who’s worth his name and he’ll confirm that. The last thing a client wants is a cure. He doesn’t want to get cured. He wants relief. All they want for 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 repaired. That’s not waking up. Waking up is to be honest enough to admit to yourself that you don’t like it. Wanna test that on yourself? Suppose you could be blissfully happy but you’re not going to be a success, you’re gonna fail. And everybody say he’s a bum, but you’ll be happy, you’ll be blissfully happy. Ready to barter the good opinion of people for that? Oh no, I do not want happiness, I want fame, they do not want to be happy, they do not want to live, they want money. Ram Chandra, the rickshaw, he lived like a king. He knew what life was, he was happy, he was like the birds of the air and the lilies of the field. He was an 9 incarnation of the sermon on the mount. What does it mean to live like a king? You know what most people think it means? It means moving around in limousines, having everybody curtsy to them and salute them, have their names in the headlines, having power over people, they think that’s what it means to live like a king. And I’ll tell you what it means to live like a king, to know no anxiety at all, no inner conflict at all, no tension, no pressures, no upset, no heartache. So then what are you left with? Happiness, undiluted. People sometimes say, what do I do to be happy? You don’t have to do anything to be happy, you can’t acquire happiness. You know why? Because you have it, You got it right now. You got it. But you’re the whole time blocking it. You’re blocking it. Stop blocking it, you’ll have it. If I could show you how to get rid of your conflicts, your anxieties, tensions, pressures, emptiness, your loneliness, your despair, your depression, your heartache, you get rid of all of that, what are you left with? Sheer undiluted happiness, that’s what you have. The Chinese put it beautiful. When the eye is unobstructed, they say the result is sight, when the ear is unobstructed, the result is hearing, When the mouth is unobstructed, the result is taste. When the mind is unobstructed, the result is truth. And when the heart is unobstructed, the result is joy and love. You’ve got it all, but it’s obstructed. So second major step in waking up is seeing you don’t want to get out of the mess. You want success, you want fame and prestige, you want other people’s approval, you want comfort, you want your little possessions, you want the little things that society has falsely taught you are essential for happiness. All this, it’s not your fault. Society, culture, they taught you and they taught me, they taught all of us that in order to be happy, you need money, success, a beautiful or handsome partner in life, a good job, spirituality, God, you name it. Unless you get these things, you’re not going to be happy. Now that is an attachment. An attachment is a belief that without this thing, that outcome, this person, you are not going to be happy. Once you get convinced of that, a program’s into our subconscious, stamped into our nerves, our brain, to the roots of our being. We were programmed to unhappiness. This is what is obstructing your natural state of happiness and creating the mess. There’s only one reason why you are not experiencing what in India we call. We have a special word for happiness, for this kind of happiness. It’s called, Bliss. There’s only one reason why you are not experiencing bliss this present moment and it is because you’re thinking or you’re focusing on what you don’t have or else you would experience bliss happiness. You’re focusing on what you don’t have. Right now, you have everything you need to be in happiness, bliss, right now. This is Amir. Jesus was talking this to 3rd world people, to starving people, to 10 poor people. He’s telling them good news, happiness. It’s yours for the taking. You know something? To be honest with you, happiness cannot be defined. I haven’t found a definition. As a matter of fact, you have no idea of what happiness is till you’ve dropped attachment. So it could only be defined as the dropping of illusion, the dropping of attachment. When misery caused by attachment is dropped, happiness is attained. Here is a telling exercise to do. I invite you to make a list of all your attachments and desires. List as many as you can think of. Then stop and contemplate how once they had you in their grip, you began to strive, might and main, to get them and keep them. Then look over your list. Look at the whole of it and feel its impact. The exhausting task attachments have been that left you little energy for the business of living and enjoying life fully. So how do we drop attachments? It is through awareness of how they obstruct happiness. This is what we’ll cover next. Let’s pull the thread through as we step into awareness. You’re suffering because you’re asleep. It’s the result of your conditioning. It has nothing to do with you or more accurately with your essential self. When you awake, when you understand, when you see Anthony De Mello - Fearlessness Book PDF Anthony De Mello - Fearlessness: You don’t know what it is, so you don’t think it’s available to you - It’s available Anthony De Mello’s book Fearlessness is based on the course of the same name given by Anthony De Mello in 1986 at Fordham University, New York, United States. The one trouble behind your every problem is fear. No fear, no problem. But you don’t know what fearlessness is, so you don’t think it’s available to you. IT’S AVAILABLE! The HOW is in this book. You’re the litmus paper. Step into this book with both feet and see what happens in you, See if there is a result, meaning, are you losing your tension, your anger, your depression? Is the fear of failure loosening its grip on you? Is your stress about succeeding giving way to engaging work? Is there greater kindness and understanding in your relationships? Are you gradually becoming happier, more relaxed, more alive, much more yourself? Anthony De Mello says, I can promise you this: I have not known a single person who gave time to this approach (”Awareness”) who didn’t see this kind of change. Anthony De Mello - Fearlessness This is Audible. The title of this audiobook is Anthony De Mello - ”Fearlessness - you don’t know what it is, so you don’t think it is available to you. It’s available ”. It is written and narrated by Anthony De Mello and edited by Don Joseph Goewey. INTRODUCTION For Anthony De Mello, spirituality is waking up, which begs the question, wak- ing up from what exactly? Waking up from the false beliefs our culture has programmed into us that has us actively making ourselves miserable with stress, fear, judgments, and a disparag- ing sense of unworthiness that has us seeing the world, ourselves, and each other in distorted ways. As a Jesuit priest and psychotherapist, Tony found that peo- ple were often caught in a kind of bad dream of unhappiness, and what became his life work was focusing on helping people wake up from it, which begs the next question. Wake up to what? Wake up to the reality that Christ was pointing to, which he called the kingdom of joy and which he said is where we actually live already but we are too much caught in that bad dream of unhappiness to see it. This course, consisting of a series of lectures by Anthony De Mello given at Fordham University, is about busting the false beliefs of our programming to rediscover the loveliness and the beauty of this journey we call life which 1 is immediately revealed to us when we drop the programming and reclaim our original innocence, which is the boundless freedom of our spiritual nature. The promise is that as we recover our innocence, we inevitably come to see that all is well. All is well even in the midst of the mess we’re prone to make when we function from fearful illusions. By definition, all is well when we are fearless. Spirituality is a perennial invitation to wake up to the truth that all is well, not as a concept but as a reality we experience directly. Waking up to it is always just a shift away, an effortless shift in awareness that arise at the understanding that there is nothing to fear. There’s only one thing required to make the shift to fearlessness, and it is our willingness to be consciously aware when our mind has gone south. That means remaining constantly in touch with whatever upset our thoughts are dragging us into, then stepping back from it and allowing grace to relieve us of the turmoil. But we have to experience that kind of grace for ourselves which is an experience Anthony De Mello helps us reach. Tony asserts that fearlessness is a state we are capable of actualizing, but most people find it hard to believe that anyone could even remotely be capable of it, which might explain why generation after generation has continued to function from so much stress, anxiety, conflict, hatred, and worry. Tony asserts that fearlessness is not just relief from the turmoil, it is the cure for the turmoil. That is a big result to claim I know, But I am confident that if you give this course half a chance, simply by being open minded, you will change in ways that you’ve always wanted to change. That’s what Tony has done for me. The only effort it will entail is your openness to see what’s in it that rings true for you and then simply applying that. You’re the litmus paper. See what happens in you, what changes for you. See if there is a result. By result, I mean, do you begin to lose your tension? Is your fear of failure loosening its grip on you? Is your stress about succeeding, giving way to engaging work in life with the joy and creativity of loving the challenge? Are you gradually becoming happier, more relaxed, more alive, much more yourself? Are you having moments when you behold spontaneously the beautiful things of life that in your sleep state you’ve been walking past or not seeing at all? Who in their right mind would not want to give the possibility of something like that a chance? That chance is available to you in this audiobook. One more thing I want to add before closing. This audiobook was created from audio recordings of lectures Anthony DeMello gave over 4 decades ago at Fordham University. Anthony de Mello was a seminal influence in the modern spiritual movement, and these recordings are historically significant, to say nothing of their spiritual significance for each of us personally. Please take note that, although the record- ings are better than good enough in a few places, the audio quality may not meet 21st century studio standards. This is due, of course, to the technology limitations of recordings made in 1976. On occasion, you may encounter some 2 background noise, volume variations, or some other imperfections. These are typical of older recordings from that era. We have made a substantial effort to enhance and restore these recordings while preserving the original content and the original authenticity. That said, this audiobook extends to you a transformational experience you will value for the way it enriches your life. END of INTRODUCTION What is spirituality? Spirituality means waking up. Most people, even though they don’t know it, are asleep. Life is a banquet, and the tragedy is that most people are starving to death. That’s what I want to talk about with you. There’s that news report of the story of, some people on a raft off the coast of Brazil who were perishing from thirst, and they had no idea that the water they were floating on was fresh water. See, the river was coming out into the sea with such force that it went on for a couple of miles. They had fresh water right there. They had no idea of it. See, that’s what I’m really talking about. It’s like we’re surrounded with joy, with happiness, with love, and most people have no idea whatsoever of this reason. They’re brainwashed. Reason. They’re hypnotized. They’re asleep. Imagine a stage magician who hypnotizes someone, and this person is seeing what isn’t there and not seeing what is there. That’s what it’s all about. Wake up. Not weep for your sins, for your mistakes, for your past failings, which you committed in the first place because you were asleep anyway. Are you gonna cry because of what you did in your hypnotized state? Why do you want to identify with that person? Wake up. Wake up. Put on a new mind. Take on a new way of looking at things, for the kingdom is here. The kingdom of joy is here. But it’s the rare Christian who takes that seriously. So, the first thing you need to wake up is to consider that your culture hypnotized you into believing that you needed to to make something of yourself, to measure up, to become a certain kind of person, to acquire certain kinds of property, to attain a certain kind of status, certain kind of reputation before you could have a seat at the banquet. This is what you were taught. Yet all the great mystics tell you there’s nothing you need to do or acquire to gain entrance to the banquet, meaning the kingdom of joy. Do you know why? Because you are there already, albeit unsuspectingly. You’re just too brainwashed to know it, to see it. The second thing you need to wake up is understand that maybe you’ve got the wrong ideas obstructing you. And it is these ideas that are influencing your life and keeping you asleep and making it the mess that it is. Ideas about success and failure, ideas about 3 happiness, ideas about fulfillment, ideas about love, ideas about freedom, etc. And it isn’t easy to listen to someone who would challenge those ideas. You know, they’ve made some interesting studies in brainwashing. And they prove you’re brainwashed when you take on, when you introject an idea that isn’t yours, somebody else’s idea, your culture’s idea. And the funny thing is that you’ll be ready to die for it. The first test that you’ve been brainwashed, that you’ve got introjected convictions and beliefs is that the moment they’re attacked, you feel stung. You react emotionally. That’s a pretty good sign not infallible, but a pretty good sign that we’re dealing with brainwashing. And you’re even ready to die for an idea that never was yours. The terrorists or the sink so called takes on an idea, swallows it whole, and are ready to martyr themselves for it. Not easy for that programmed mind to listen to another way of seeing, 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, from your hypnotic state, and you’re frequently interpreting everything that’s being said in terms of your hypnotic state, of your conditioning, of your programming. We all have our positions, don’t we? And we listen from those positions. The most difficult thing in the world, to listen, to see. We don’t want to see. Because if you look, you may change. If you look, you’ll lose control of this life, or to be more accurate, this hypnotic state that you’re so precariously holding together. So in order to wake up, in order to awake, the one thing you need the most is not energy or strength or even great intelligence. The one thing you need the most of all is the readiness to learn something new. Chances that you will wake up are in direct proportion to the amount of truth you can take without running away. How much are you ready to take without running away? How ready are you to think something unfamiliar? Ready for the new? Be ready, for the first reaction is one of fear. It’s not that we fear the unknown. You cannot fear something that you do not know. Nobody is afraid of the unknown. What you really fear is the loss of the known. That’s what you fear the loss. What I am offering is a place to challenge ideas, to see fundamentally what is false and what is true. This is what I am going to share with you. Are you ready for that? I discovered something, and it turned my life upside down, revolutionized my life. I became a new man. This is what I’m gonna share with you. What I’m gonna share with you is is my rediscovery of life. So you might say to me, how come you heard this just 10 or 12 years ago? Hadn’t you read the gospels? Of course, I’d read the gospels, but I hadn’t seen it. It was right there, but I hadn’t seen it. Later, having discovered it, I found it in all the major religious writings. And I’m amazed. I mean, I I was reading it, and I hadn’t recognized it, hadn’t seen it. 4 I wish to god I’d found this when I was younger. Oh, what a difference it would have made. So how long would it take to give it to you? A whole day? Well, I’ll be honest with you. Couple of minutes. Grasping it or getting it might take you 10 minutes, one day, 3 days, 20 years. Who knows? That depends on you. If you would bring one quality, just one. You need one quality to see what I saw. Just one. I already stated it previously. Sometimes I repeat a message to get it across. It’s listening. It’s your ability to listen. You need that one quality to see what I saw. Is it difficult to hear? Is it difficult to understand? It’s so simple a 7 year old child could understand it. Isn’t that amazing? And in fact, when I I think of it today, I think, why didn’t I see it? I don’t know. I don’t know why I didn’t see it, but I didn’t. Now maybe 1 or other of you might see it. What would you need to see it? Just one thing, the ability to listen. That’s all. Are you able to listen? If you can, you might get it. Now listening is not as easy as you might think it is. Reason. We’re always listening from kind of fixed concepts, fixed positions, prejudices. Listening does not mean swallowing. That’s gullibility. Oh, he says it, so I take it. I don’t want you to have any spirit of faith while you’re listening to me. Don’t take me on faith. What I want you to do is question everything I’m saying, think about it, feel free to do that. So it does not mean gullibility, but then listening doesn’t mean attacking because I’m going to say something so new, some of you are going to think I’m crazy, I’m out of my mind. Then you’re going to be tempted to attack. If you tell a Marxist, there’s some- thing wrong with Marxism, the first thing he’s likely to do is attack you. You tell a capitalist there’s something wrong with capitalism, he’s up in arms. You tell an American, hey. You know, there’s something wrong with the United States. And the same with the Indian, if you’re attacking India, etcetera. Doesn’t mean swallowing, doesn’t mean attacking, doesn’t mean agreeing. They tell me about a Jesuit superior who was a great success. See? So somebody said to him, how come you’re such a great success as a superior? He says very simple. The formula is simple. I agree with everyone. They said, don’t be absurd. How could you be a successful superior agreeing with everybody? He says, that’s right. That’s right. How could I be a successful superior agreeing with everybody? So it doesn’t mean agreeing with me. You could disagree with me and get it. 5 Isn’t that amazing? It means being alert. You’re alert. You’re watching. You’re listening with a kind of a fresh mind. That’s not easy either. Listening with a fresh mind, without prejudices, without fixed formulas, without a fixed position. Alright. If you are ready to hear something new, simple, new, unexpected against almost everything you’ve been told till now. Ready to hear that? Then maybe you’ll hear what I have to say. Maybe you’ll get it. You know, when Jesus taught the good news, I think he was attacked not only because what he taught was good but because it was new. We hate anything new. I hated anything new. Don’t wanna hear anything new. Give me the old stuff. We don’t like the new. It’s too disturbing, too liberating. Okay. So the ability to listen. Buddha formulated it beautifully, he says, monks and scholars must accept my words not out of respect must not accept my words out of respect but must analyze them. The way a goldsmith analyzes gold by cutting, scraping, rubbing, melting. Okay. So we’ve got that clear. Next, the title of this course is the rediscovery of life. Here is what that means. We were born happy, we lost it, we were born with the gift of life, we lost it, we got to rediscover it. So let’s begin the investigation. Life, what’s this thing we call life? Take a look at the world and then I’ll invite you to take a look at your own life, take a look at the world poverty everywhere, the squalor, the dirt, the misery, you call that life. Well, I got news for you, I’ll show you life even there sometime ago. I was introduced to a rickshaw puller in Calcutta, the work is it’s awful, they don’t last very long. The life span of these poor men is, from 10 to 12 years once they begin pulling the rickshaw. Now Ram Chandra, Ram Chandra was his name, Ram Chandra had TB. At that time, there was a group of people engaging in an illegal activity called exporting skeletons. You know what they did? They sort of bought your skele- ton while you were alive. You were very poor, you went to them and you sold your skeleton for the equivalent about $10 and so they’d say to you many of these rickshaw pullers, it say how long have you been working in this trade? And Ramchandra says 10 years, then they think he doesn’t have much longer to live. Alright. Here’s your money. Then the moment you die, they pounce on the body. They take it away, and then when the body is decomposed through some process they have, they get a skeleton. Now Ramchandra, he had a wife. He had kids. The squalor, the poverty, the misery, the uncertainty, you’d never think to find happiness there, right? One day I said Ramchandra, aren’t you upset? He said about what? You know the future, the future of the kids, he says well, I’m doing the best I can, but the rest is in the hands of god. 6 Nothing seemed to face him. He was alright. Nothing seem to upset him, I said hey, but what about your sickness that causes suffering, doesn’t it? He says a bit, we got to take life as it comes, I never once saw him in a bad mood, Well, one day when I was talking I suddenly realized I was in the presence of a mystic. I suddenly realized I was in the presence of life. It was right there. He was alive. I was dead. You know, those lovely words of Jesus, look at the birds of the air, look at the flowers of the field, they don’t sew, they don’t spin, they don’t have a moment of anxiety for the future, not like you. Ramchandra must be dead by now, you know, I met him very briefly but I know I met a mystic, extraordinary person, he discovered life. You know, it’s interesting I frequently reflected the human mind is such an extraordinary thing, it has invented the computer, it is split the atom, it sends ships into space, it has not solved the problem of human suffering of anguish, loneliness, emptiness, despair. I don’t think your strangers to fear, depression, sorrow to loneliness, heartache, emptiness, despair, how come we have not found the answer to that, We have made all kinds of technological advances has that raise the quality of our living by 1 inch, want to know my opinion? No. Oh! We have more comfort, more speed, pleasures, entertainment, greater technological advances, what I am saying is, any improvement on that fear, that emptiness, that heartache, any improvement on that greed and hatred and conflict, less fighting, less cruelty and the tragedy is as I discovered the secret has been found, we do not have to go and search, we got the solution, why do not we use it? We do not want it, would you believe that? We do not want it, can you imagine my saying to somebody look, I am going to give you a formula which would make you happy for the rest of your life, you will enjoy every single minute of the rest of your life. Imagine my saying that to you, okay, I am going to say that to you, I am going to give you the formula, You know what most of you are going to do? Sorry for insulting you in advance. If you’re anything like the audiences I’ve had till now, you know what most of you are going to do? You say, don’t wanna hear it. As this course unfolds, I’m gonna prove it to you, You don’t want it. I was in Saint Louis, giving a a workshop. There was a priest there who came to see me. He said about 3 months ago, I assisted an AIDS victim on his death bed. And the AIDS victim told me the following. He said, the doctor told me I had 6 months to live. And this man dying of AIDS told me these have been the 6 happiest months of my whole misspent life. Happiest. In fact, I’ve never been happy till these 6 months. I discovered happiness. He said, as soon as the doctor told me that, I dropped tension, pressure, anxiety, hope and fell, not into despair, but into happiness at last. And the priest said, you know, many as the time, I’ve been reflecting on the words of that man. Here’s another guy who had it, who found it. Philippians, you got it right here, the formula is here. 7 Philippians, listen to what Philippians says. For whatever the situation I find myself in, I have learned to be self sufficient. I am experienced in being brought low and I have known what it meant to have abundance. I have learned how to cope with every circumstance. How to eat well or to go hungry? To be well provided for or to do without? I have learnt how to cope with every circumstance. A little earlier, this passage says, rejoice always. I think of Ram Chandra in Calcutta. I think of the man with AIDS in Saint Louis. Both of these men were an incarnation of Philippians. I had read Philippians all my life and had never understood it, I mean, he was staring at me, staring me in the face and had never understood it. What if you wanted to grasp what these two men grasp? What do you have to understand about yourself? 1st, your life is in a mess, don’t like to hear that? If you are like the average person I run into, your life is in a mess. People will say to me, what do you mean my life is in a mess? I’m getting ahead. People admire me, You think your life is not in a mess? You mean you’re enjoying every single minute of your life? Here’s the litmus test for the mess. Ever feel anxious, ever feel stressed, ever get depressed, ever worry, ever get angry, ever feel dissatisfied with life, ever feel disappointed, ever feel unappreciated, ever judge or condemn yourself or other people, ever feel guilty or ashamed, Ever feel not good enough? You mean to tell me that all your relationships are going well with everybody? Do you ever withhold love or affection or fail to extend empathy? Ever refuse to forgive? In short, do you ever get upset about anything and sometimes project your upset onto other people? You mean aren’t we supposed to get upset? You want the clear, simple answer? No. You mean not be upset by anything? No. I don’t want to hear anymore, see what I mean? You got a theory, you got to be upset or you’re not human. It’s a theory boxing you into a belief that has you actively engaged in making yourself miserable. That’s the mess. If you weren’t actively engaged in making yourself miserable, you’d be happy. Happiness is our natural state. The world is shot through with happiness, but you can’t see it because of a theory. Disagree? Okay, go ahead and be upset. I was doing that all along, until I saw through it. That’s what this course is all about, seeing through the mess to light. At the bottom of the emotional mess, we addressed last session is fear, the opposite of which is, of course, is fearlessness. Fearlessness, you don’t know what it means and the tragedy is you don’t think it is available. It is so easy to get since they told you it is not available, you don’t believe it is possible because they told you it’s not available. You anxious for the future? Any whiff of anxiety, worry, upset, you’re in a mess, do you want to stop throwing your life away in this manner? Wanna clean it up? I’ll clean it up for you 5 minutes depending on how ready you are and I 8 mean that, I mean it. It’s so simple and it’s so deadly serious that people miss it and you can have it. It starts with awareness, with seeing how we are unconsciously throwing this gift of life away. Reminded of that powerful story of the fisherman who goes out early in the morning to fish, and it’s apparently it’s too dark or something. And his foot hits upon something that seems like a sack. So he picks it up, probably washed ashore from some shipwreck. Then he opens it and he can feel pebbles inside. So he takes these pebbles and he entertains himself till it’s dawns by by flinging those pebbles far out into the sea and to see if he can judge from the plop how far he sent the pebble. Well, when it becomes a bit light, he looks into the sack and he finds 3 precious stones there. God, they were filled with precious stones and he hadn’t known it. A fortune in precious stones wasted. Now, you know, that could be a parable of a misspent life. It’s it’s tragic, it’s painful. I think back on my own life and I think, why did I waste it? I wasted it. Why waste even a minute regretting the past? But the fact is I wasted it. Now that’s the condition of people everywhere. You’re telling them life is ex- traordinary, life is delightful, you could enjoy it, you wouldn’t have a minute of tension, not one, no pressure, no anxiety. You want it? Not possible, never been done, cannot be done, they won’t hear you. They won’t listen. No spirit of research, of investigation. Let’s find out. I mean, our priests have told us it can’t be done. Our psychologists tell us it cannot be done. So the first thing, are you ready to admit that your life is in a mess? 2nd, this is a bit tougher, okay? You don’t want to get out of it, You do not want to get out of the mess. You talk to any psychologist who’s worth his name and he’ll confirm that. The last thing a client wants is a cure. He doesn’t want to get cured. He wants relief. All they want for 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 repaired. That’s not waking up. Waking up is to be honest enough to admit to yourself that you don’t like it. Wanna test that on yourself? Suppose you could be blissfully happy but you’re not going to be a success, you’re gonna fail. And everybody say he’s a bum, but you’ll be happy, you’ll be blissfully happy. Ready to barter the good opinion of people for that? Oh no, I do not want happiness, I want fame, they do not want to be happy, they do not want to live, they want money. Ram Chandra, the rickshaw, he lived like a king. He knew what life was, he was happy, he was like the birds of the air and the lilies of the field. He was an 9 incarnation of the sermon on the mount. What does it mean to live like a king? You know what most people think it means? It means moving around in limousines, having everybody curtsy to them and salute them, have their names in the headlines, having power over people, they think that’s what it means to live like a king. And I’ll tell you what it means to live like a king, to know no anxiety at all, no inner conflict at all, no tension, no pressures, no upset, no heartache. So then what are you left with? Happiness, undiluted. People sometimes say, what do I do to be happy? You don’t have to do anything to be happy, you can’t acquire happiness. You know why? Because you have it, You got it right now. You got it. But you’re the whole time blocking it. You’re blocking it. Stop blocking it, you’ll have it. If I could show you how to get rid of your conflicts, your anxieties, tensions, pressures, emptiness, your loneliness, your despair, your depression, your heartache, you get rid of all of that, what are you left with? Sheer undiluted happiness, that’s what you have. The Chinese put it beautiful. When the eye is unobstructed, they say the result is sight, when the ear is unobstructed, the result is hearing, When the mouth is unobstructed, the result is taste. When the mind is unobstructed, the result is truth. And when the heart is unobstructed, the result is joy and love. You’ve got it all, but it’s obstructed. So second major step in waking up is seeing you don’t want to get out of the mess. You want success, you want fame and prestige, you want other people’s approval, you want comfort, you want your little possessions, you want the little things that society has falsely taught you are essential for happiness. All this, it’s not your fault. Society, culture, they taught you and they taught me, they taught all of us that in order to be happy, you need money, success, a beautiful or handsome partner in life, a good job, spirituality, God, you name it. Unless you get these things, you’re not going to be happy. Now that is an attachment. An attachment is a belief that without this thing, that outcome, this person, you are not going to be happy. Once you get convinced of that, a program’s into our subconscious, stamped into our nerves, our brain, to the roots of our being. We were programmed to unhappiness. This is what is obstructing your natural state of happiness and creating the mess. There’s only one reason why you are not experiencing what in India we call. We have a special word for happiness, for this kind of happiness. It’s called, Bliss. There’s only one reason why you are not experiencing bliss this present moment and it is because you’re thinking or you’re focusing on what you don’t have or else you would experience bliss happiness. You’re focusing on what you don’t have. Right now, you have everything you need to be in happiness, bliss, right now. This is Amir. Jesus was talking this to 3rd world people, to starving people, to 10 poor people. He’s telling them good news, happiness. It’s yours for the taking. You know something? To be honest with you, happiness cannot be defined. I haven’t found a definition. As a matter of fact, you have no idea of what happiness is till you’ve dropped attachment. So it could only be defined as the dropping of illusion, the dropping of attachment. When misery caused by attachment is dropped, happiness is attained. Here is a telling exercise to do. I invite you to make a list of all your attachments and desires. List as many as you can think of. Then stop and contemplate how once they had you in their grip, you began to strive, might and main, to get them and keep them. Then look over your list. Look at the whole of it and feel its impact. The exhausting task attachments have been that left you little energy for the business of living and enjoying life fully. So how do we drop attachments? It is through awareness of how they obstruct happiness. This is what we’ll cover next. Let’s pull the thread through as we step into awareness. You’re suffering because you’re asleep. It’s the result of your conditioning. It has nothing to do with you or more accurately with your essential self. When you awake, when you understand, when you