Anthony de Mello

   Every single thing is unique. Every sparrow is unlike every other sparrow despite similarities. It's a great help to have similarities, so we can abstract, so that we can have a concept. It's a great help, from the point of view of communication, education, science. But it's also very misleading and a great hindrance. If all you experience is your concept, you're not experiencing reality, because reality is CONCRETE. The concept is a help, to LEAD you to reality, but when you get there, you've got to intuit or experience it directly.

   A Hindu priest once had a dispute with a philosopher who claimed that the final barrier to God was the word "God," the concept of God. The priest was quite shocked by this, but the philosopher said, "The horse you use to travel to a house is not the means by which you enter the house. You use the concept to get there; then you dismount, you go beyond it." You don't need to be a mystic to understand that reality is something that cannot be captured by words or concepts. To know reality you have to KNOW BEYOND KNOWING.

Source: Anthony de Mello's Book Awareness

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