Editor's entry
~1 min readAnthony de Mello’s posthumously-edited transcripts of retreats given in the years before his death in 1987 — short, talk-shaped chapters drawing on Jesuit spirituality, Zen koans, Sufi teaching stories and Indian Advaita. The recurring move: the suffering reader does not need a new belief, a new teacher, or a new technique; what is needed is awareness of the mechanical nature of one’s own reactions, and the recognition that no event or person on earth has the power to make a person unhappy.
Edited by his fellow Jesuit J. Francis Stroud and published by Doubleday’s Image imprint in 1990, the book is the most-read distillation of de Mello’s late teaching. The chapters circle back to the same instructions — self-observation, identification with thought, the gap between what is named “reality” and what is actually seen — and the prose keeps the conversational shape of the retreat talks rather than smoothing them into a treatise.
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Reception
editor-collectedDe Mello’s most-circulated book — particularly within Catholic spiritual-direction and Ignatian-retreat networks — and the title most often given as a starting point. The Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued a 1998 “notification” under Cardinal Ratzinger criticising posthumous interpretations of his writings as incompatible with Catholic teaching; the notification did not condemn de Mello personally but produced a chilling effect inside the Society of Jesus. Outside Catholic circles the book is read as a remarkably ecumenical primer on present-moment awareness, with Bruce Lee–level memorability per page.
Index reception note
Frequently asked
3 questions- What is Awareness about?
- Anthony de Mello’s posthumously-edited retreat transcripts on waking up from mechanical reaction. The recurring instruction is self-observation: watching one’s own thoughts, feelings and motives as if they were happening to someone else, until the assumption that an external event or person can make one unhappy stops feeling self-evident.
- Who edited the book and when was it published?
- It was edited by de Mello’s fellow Jesuit J. Francis Stroud from talks given before de Mello’s sudden death in June 1987, and first published in 1990 by Doubleday’s Image imprint. Most subsequent printings keep the same Stroud-edited text.
- Why did the Vatican issue a notification about de Mello’s writings?
- In 1998 the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, under Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, issued a “notification” criticising posthumous interpretations of de Mello’s writings as incompatible with Catholic teaching. The document did not condemn de Mello personally, but it did chill institutional Jesuit promotion of the books and is part of the historical context in which Awareness is now read.
Catalogue record
- Author
- Anthony de Mello
- Title
- Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality
- Original title
- Awareness
- Publisher
- Image
- Year
- 1 June 1990
- Pages
- 184
- Language
- English
- ISBN
- 9780385249379
- Shelf
- Awakening · Presence · Consciousness
Availability
By the same author
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