Words

People feed on words,

live by words, would fall apart without them.

Anthony de Mello in "The Prayer of the frog" page 81

Words are indicators

Words (and concepts) are indicators,

not reflections, of reality.

But, as the mystics of the East declare,

When the sage points to the moon

all that the idiot sees is the finger!

Anthony de Mello in "The Prayer of the frog" page 80

World is a mental contruct

We almost never see reality.

What we see is a reflection of it

in the form of words and concepts

which we then proceed to take for reality.

The world we live in

is mostly a mental construct.

Anthony de Mello in "The Prayer of the frog" page 80

The power of observation

A famous Viennese surgeon told his students that a surgeon needed two gifts: freedom from nausea and the power of observation.

Then he dipped a finger into some nauseating fluid and licked it, requesting each of the students to do the same. They steeled themselves to it and managed it without flinching.

With a smile, the surgeon then said, "Gentlemen, I congratulate you on having passed the first test. But not, unfortunately, the second, for not one of you noticed that the finger I licked was not the one I dipped into the fluid."

Anthony de Mello in "The Prayer of the frog" page55

God's home

Once upon a time there was a forest where the birds sang by day and the insects by night. Trees flourished, flowers bloomed and all manner of creatures roamed about in freedom.

And all who enterd there were led to Solitude which is the home of God who dwells in Nature's silence and Nature's beauty.

But then the Age of Unconsciousness arrived when it became possible for people to contruct buildings a thousand feet high and to destroy rivers and forests and mountains in a month. So houses for worship were built from the wood of the forest trees and from the stone under the forest soil. Pinnacle, spire and minaret ponted towards the sky; the air was filled with the sound of bells, with prayer and chant and exhortation.

And God was suddenly without a home.

Anthony de Mello in "The Prayer of the frog" page33

To be enlightened

To know things is to be learned.

To know others is to be wise.

To know the self is to be enlightened.

Anthony de Mello in "The Prayer of the Frog" page 192