Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality

De Mello illustrates the misleading nature of words by imagining himself as an Indian prisoner in Pakistan who reacts emotionally to the false assertion that the land before him is “India,” only to discover that the region he is seeing is really Pakistan. De Mello uses this example to denounce all flags and political boundaries as mind-made idols. He defines culture as a form of conditioning, citing the hypothetical example of an American baby who is raised in Russia and grows up to hate Americans.

He recalls a Jesuit friend whose compulsive alms-giving was a habit that he learned from his mother and unthinkingly copied. He also cites the sample of another friend whose perfect meditation record might also be a form of compulsion, not a sign of innate virtue. True virtue, he insists, comes from sensitivity, while habits are a manifestation of conditioning. He urges people to focus on the present moment and free themselves from past experiences and labels.

De Mello likens perception to the filtered version of reality that is presented to a president or a pope; in these scenarios, the leader cannot hear the feedback from the entire populace, but must instead be fed a tailored, selective version.