The Prayer of the Frog Called into Question

Ecumenical Review, The, April, 1999 by T.K. Thomas

Fantasy is much more than the mere recalling of events. It is reliving events, which helps us to recover the sense of God's presence then and there and at the same time to realize God's presence now and here. One of the exercises in this section invites you to look at your own body in the coffin laid out in the church for the funeral rites, to look at the people Who have come to see you off, to listen to the sermon and all the good things the preacher is saying about you, and then to become aware of your existence and the time at your disposal (Exercise 28). The exercise that comes after your funeral is a Buddhist "reality meditation", a fantasy on your corpse in which you are asked to "imagine your corpse in the grave as vividly as you can and watch it go through the nine stages of decomposition", spending a minute on each stage (Exercise 29).

While the exercises in the section on devotion are a little more traditional and scriptural, these too are drawn from many sources, including the Hindu practice of reciting the thousand names of God. The book itself is dedicated to "the Blessed Virgin Mary, who has always been to me a model of contemplation".

Sadhana was an instant best-seller, surprisingly so considering that it is presented as a way to God through the demanding discipline of spiritual exercises and not through ritual shortcuts or the mediation of affable saints. The book has been translated into 43 European and Asian languages; the Indian edition has had 22 reprints, a number of them after de Mello's death. Clearly there is a continuing demand for the book - in spite of the fact that towards the end of his life he regretted writing it.(3)

Fr de Mello's second book, The Song of the Bird, was very different from Sadhana. It is made up of stories ancient and contemporary, drawing on Buddhist, Hindu, Christian, Hasidic, Zen, Sufi, Chinese and Russian sources. Readers are warned that these are not just to be read, not even to be read over and over again; they are to be carded around so that they may "speak to your heart, not to your brain ... and make something of a mystic out of you".

Fr de Mello makes clear, however, that he is not a free-lance mystic. He is a priest of the Catholic Church, though the book "has been written for people of every persuasion, religious and non-religious".

   I have wandered freely in mystical traditions that are not Christian and
   not religious and I have been profoundly influenced by them. It is to my
   Church, however, that I keep returning, for she is my spiritual home; and
   while I am acutely, sometimes embarrassingly, conscious of her limitations
   and narrowness, I also know that it is she who has formed me and made me
   what I am today. So it is to her that I gratefully dedicate this book.(4)

At the end of the brief introduction to the book is a glossary which is worth reproducing:

   Theology: The art of telling stories about the Divine. Also the art of
   listening to them.

   Mysticism: The art of tasting and feeling in your heart the inner meaning
   of such stories to the point that they transform you.(5)