Customer Reviews

Heart of the Enlightened

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Anthony DeMello is a master of story telling. Here are more than two hundred of his stories belonging to various cultures, countries and centuries. They are classified under seven heads of Spirituality, Education, Authority, Human Nature, Relationships, Service and Enlightenment. The author takes credit for only stringing them together. They are highly thought provoking and illuminating. Nobody can resist a story and sometimes a story can change one's life.

Anthony DeMello was one of the great spiritual masters of our time. He was a Catholic priest of the Jesuit order, hailing from India. He died in New York on June 2nd, 1987. He has left behind a body of literature, which will continue to influence the world profoundly in the years to come.

Anthony de Mello's books generally fall into three groups - guided meditations; cross-cultural, interreligious, traditional teaching tales; and sayings of the Master in context. This book falls into the second category - traditional teaching tales. Fr. de Mello has categorized the stories into seven chapters: spirituality, education, authority, human nature, relationships, service and enlightment. Most of the stories are told without any "editorial" comments i.e. the author trusts the power of story. The selection is excellent coming from a wide variety of traditions and ages, including modern jokes such as "where do you plug it in?" when faced with a piano.

You can read the book straight through and get a lot of laughs or you can read it as intended, pondering the stories and risking having your life changed. The latter is the intend of the author.