Awareness is a work of spirituality presented as an edited transcription of various talks given by Anthony de Mello, a Jesuit priest. De Mello addresses a live audience, using jokes, anecdotes, and parables to teach a method of spiritually “waking up” by unlearning one’s conditioning, observing one’s thoughts and feelings without judgment, and distinguishing between the observing “I” and the conditioned “me.”

De Mello defines spirituality as waking up from a lifelong sleep of unawareness. He claims that most people remain asleep, never realizing that no matter what problems are occurring in the moment, all is well with the world. He tells a whimsical story about a father who endeavors to wake up his son, Jaime, who needs to go to school. Only at the end of the story does de Mello reveal that Jaime is 45 years old and is the headmaster of the school, not a student. De Mello states that people resist waking up because they prefer to keep their “toys” (their current illusory comforts, like jobs, money, or status) rather than enduring the painful process of waking up and growing beyond the need for these attachments. De Mello states that waking up can be irritating and says that he will simply present his ideas and allow his listeners to learn from him—or not—as they choose.

De Mello states that he will not help or harm anyone, as he believes that people are solely responsible for the help or damage that comes to them. He describes a therapy group in which a religious sister named Mary feels unsupported by her superior. De Mello role-plays as the superior and offers praise, and Mary reacts by feeling supported. He then asks her to leave the room, and role-plays to the rest of the group, claiming that as Mary’s superior, he actually does not like her performance at work. He demonstrates that because the praise was false, Mary’s sense of being supported was imaginary; she reacted positively to an illusion, and her feeling of support was self-created.

In the same vein, he concludes that people fall in love with their ideas of others, not with the reality of who those people are. He warns against trying to change people who are unwilling to change, then closes with a joke about a man who sees someone with a banana in his ear and unsuccessfully tries to inform him of this fact. (The man with the banana in his ear says that he cannot hear the other man’s advice—because he has a banana in his ear.) De Mello states that it is “useless” to try to get someone to understand something and recommends letting go of any attachment to the result of such attempts. He resolves to say what he has to say, and if people “profit, that’s fine, and if they don’t, too bad!” (8).

De Mello asserts that people do not truly want to wake up. He offers a test: to mentally tell a beloved person, “I would rather have happiness than have you” (9) and observe the conditioned guilt that results. He then reframes selfishness by arguing that it is equally selfish to expect someone to choose you over their own happiness.

De Mello mentions a member of his audience once telling him of their belief that “the test of love is sacrifice” (10). De Mello counters that mutual self-sacrifice only results in two unhappy people.

De Mello argues that people prefer conditional happiness to unconditional happiness. Essentially, they believe that they can only be happy if certain goals are achieved or certain objects are acquired. He states that spirituality is a way to find peace, joy, and happiness that are not tied to external circumstances. He equates awakening with unconditional love, freedom, and peace, insisting this form of spirituality is practical because it ends conflict.

He ironically questions the value of pursuits like space travel when people cannot live peacefully on their own planet, and he urges his listeners to shift from seeking happiness in external things to finding it within themselves.

De Mello, who has experience as a practicing psychologist, describes his sense of inner conflict when he is forced to choose between using methods psychology and methods of spirituality. He contends that psychotherapy can ameliorate suffering but often keeps people spiritually asleep. He contends that many people must suffer profoundly before they are spurred to awaken.

He tells a story about a student who satirizes school authority figures by sculpting models of them out of cow dung. The boy sculpts a teacher and a principal out of cow dung, but then states that it is impossible for him to create a model of a psychologist, as he does not have enough cow dung for such a project. De Mello then describes the world as “crazy,” notes that great ideas often begin as blasphemies, and urges people to distrust collective certainties.

De Mello critiques the concept of renunciation, explaining that fighting or rejecting something only gives it power over you. He then describes an Indian guru’s observation that sex workers often long for God while priests long for sex; in both cases, he means to show that people are fixated on the very thing they seek to renounce.

He advises people to accept their demons and to understand their desires rather than suppressing them. He states, “If you understood, you’d simply drop the desire for it” (16).

While suffering can cause awakening, de Mello offers listening as a more direct way, defining it as an openness to discovery. He says that “truth is never expressed in words” (17). In his view, his role is to expose obstacles and help listeners to unlearn false beliefs that cause unhappiness.

He praises an elderly Jesuit who admitted to being wrong his whole life, calling the man’s admission an act of true faith—an openness to casting aside old beliefs and learning new things. Citing the Buddha, de Mello advises listeners not to take his word for the truth of his ideas. Instead, he wants people to “challenge [their] whole belief system” (19).

De Mello claims that most charity is really just self-interest in disguise. He identifies three kinds of selfishness: directly pleasing oneself, pleasing others in order to gain a good feeling about oneself, and doing good deeds to avoid feeling bad. He highlights various biblical scenes in which the most righteous people are those who are unaware of having done a good deed at all. He states, “A saint is one until he or she knows it” (21).

He questions the motives of martyrs and soldiers, asserting that these people often commit their famous or lauded actions as the result of social programming or brainwashing. He asserts, “They’ve got an idea in their heads that they must die, that death is a great thing. They feel nothing, they go right in” (22).

He reiterates that the worst type of selfishness is doing good deeds in order to avoid getting a “bad feeling.” He cites his own experience of agreeing to meet with a parishioner whom he disliked, merely to avoid the guilt that he would have felt if he had refused to meet with this person. He goes on to assert that people enjoy hurting others; they only want to avoid being perceived as being hurtful.

De Mello compares life to a banquet and claims that “most people are starving to death” (26) because of their hypnosis-like conditioning, which keeps them spiritually “asleep.” He uses the analogy of people who are stranded on a raft, dying of thirst because they do not realize that they are floating on fresh water. He defines repentance not as weeping for one’s past sins but as waking up. In his view, those who are fully aware of what they are doing will no longer commit the sins that they once committed in a state of unawareness.

He explains that brainwashing is revealed when people feel personally attacked and get emotional when someone challenges the beliefs that they profess to have. He states that both “terrorists” and “saints” adopt a belief that does not belong to them and “are ready to die for it” (27). He says that people view the world through the lens of their false beliefs and are therefore very difficult to reach with the truth. People fear not the unknown but “the loss of the known” (29). He asks listeners to critique their own good deeds and perceive the self-interest that lies beneath such actions. Doing this will help them to reduce their sense of pride in their deeds.

De Mello roots selfishness in self-preservation and rejects guilt over it. He notes that Jesus felt at home with sinners because he saw himself as no better, only more awake. De Mello then compares enlightenment to winning a lottery, framing it as a matter of luck rather than achievement. In this context, it would be foolish to feel pride over such a lucky break, as it required no personal skills or virtues. De Mello states that achieving “enlightenment” would be a similarly lucky occurrence and should not make a person feel pride or vanity.

He then contends that the Pharisees of the New Testament were not evil but “stupid” and unthinking.

Building on the previous chapter, de Mello states that because everyone is selfish and acts in their own self-interest, there is no use in being disappointed in someone else for failing to act unselfishly. He urges people to get rid of their “false ideas” about other people, as recognizing universal self-interest is liberating. In order to illustrate the concept of awakening, he tells a story of an unhoused person who has a dream about being rescued from his plight and then abruptly awakens from this illusion. He then tells a story about a man who escapes a threatening enemy by realizing that he can wake up from the dream-like scene.

When asked if he is enlightened, de Mello calls the question irrelevant. He warns against relying on gurus or hoping for future improvements. He urges people to focus on the present and to realize that the future is a “trap.”

De Mello identifies self-observation as the key practice for “waking up” and distinguishes this concept from self-absorption. He urges people to observe inner emotions and external events as if they were happening to someone else, without judgment. In his view, suffering comes from identifying with things that are not part of the self. For example, he criticizes the statement, “I am delighted!” (36), and he comments, “You certainly are not delighted. Delight may be in you right now, but wait around, it will change” (36). Because emotions are passing events, not points of identity, he uses the analogy of the sky and clouds, casting the “I” as the unchanging sky and emotions as mere passing clouds—there and gone. He urges people to engage in observation and posits that if people understood the various matters around them, those matters will change.

De Mello urges people not to “slap” labels onto others, as passing judgment on someone or something (whether positive or negative) inhibits true understanding of that person or thing. He recommends adopting a scientific attitude of observing without trying to make the world fit a personal agenda. In this frame of mind, correct action arises effortlessly.

He describes those who live mechanically as being driven by the need for praise and the compulsion to blame others. He cites Socrates, who said, “The unaware life is not worth living” (67). He urges people not to be concerned with living up to the expectations of others, then tells a story that illustrates his belief that “psychology and spirituality […] don’t really solve your problems. They exchange your problems for other problems” (42). He believes that the only way to solve life’s (perceived) problems is to focus on “solving the problem called ‘you’” (42).

De Mello states that popular religious questions—e.g., “Who are you? Or “Who is Jesus Christ?”—are secondary to the primary question of “Who am I?” (42). He believes that anxiety about the next life indicates a failure to live this one, as those who are truly aware are unconcerned with an afterlife and focus only on the present moment.

He explains that the promise of eternal life in the Christian faith was really referring to a timeless present that is beyond the mind’s comprehension. He urges people to drop their pride or their shame about the past, then repeats the idea that repentance means waking up, not lamenting what has already happened.

De Mello insists that the “most important question in the world” is not “Who am I?” but “What is ‘I’?” (43). Most people are programmed by society, and their understanding of self is merely a random collection of social conditioning and ideas that are not theirs. Awakening starts with the painful recognition that this programming exists.

He leads an exercise in pure awareness: noticing the body, the room, and all reactions—including any self-approval or condemnation that one may feel—without attempting to change anything. He urges people to be conscious of the part of themselves that is engaged in observing—and to ask what exactly this observer is. He once again emphasizes the importance of self-observation.

After an exercise in which he instructs people to write down a one-word description of their identity, de Mello emphasizes the strangeness of the fact that the “I” can observe the “me.” He shows that the “I” is not one’s thoughts, body, name, or any other label. These belong to the changing “me,” while the observing “I” persists.

He then shares a series of whimsical stories to explain that people become so enamored of labels that they fail to see the reality that these labels attempt to describe. He concludes that suffering begins when the “I” identifies with any aspect of the “me.”

An audience member at one of de Mello’s retreats once shared that she overcame her hatred for her coworkers by observing her feelings and then speaking to them without hostility. De Mello explains that having negative feelings toward a person indicates the existence of an illusion within oneself. He contends that “[t]he world’s all right. The one who has to change is you” (51).

However, he then qualifies this declaration by acknowledging that it is important to act decisively to prevent an injustice from occurring, such as abuse of a child. Yet he still contends that maintaining a lack of “negative feelings” would allow the intervening person to be much more effective, as their ego would not be part of the equation.

In an extension of this discussion, he posits that even grief reveals the existence of an attachment, as the person who grieves the death of a friend is mourning their personal loss and approaching the situation from a stance of self-interest.

De Mello distinguishes practical interdependence from psychological dependence. In the latter, a person demands that others serve as the source of their happiness, and de Mello contends that this mindset breeds fear and the need for control. By contrast, perfect love is “non-clinging” and makes no demands. He refers to the teachings of the Bible’s New Testament—specifically Jesus’s injunction that the disciples must give up their family and everything they know in order to follow him. De Mello contends that this teaching is really telling people to “drop [their] dependency” and their “illusions.”

He describes an inner well-being that exists whether one is alone or with others, contrasting aloneness with loneliness. In his view, loneliness ends through contact with reality, not through the distraction of human company.

Happiness emerges as illusions fall away through awareness. De Mello relates a story in which a master tells a disciple that the only real wisdom in the world is “awareness.” De Mello urges reviewing past emotional episodes in order to understand their origins, as only by understanding one’s emotions can a person change them entirely. He then delivers a parable about a lion who is raised as a sheep and believes himself to be one until another lion shows him his reflection, inspiring him to discover and embrace his true nature.

De Mello states that people who are awakened act with energy but without attaching any significance to the outcomes of their actions. He cites a parable told by the Chinese sage Tranxu. In this story, an archer does his best shooting when there is no prize involved in the performance; once he becomes fixated on the possibility of winning or losing a prize, his shooting deteriorates because his attention is divided.

De Mello asserts that a person can feel depression or anxiety without identifying with it, and can paradoxically learn to be happy even during uncomfortable situations. He believes that bliss is always present, but people miss it by focusing on what they lack.