I write not about the famous hymn by Lutheran pastor Philipp Nicolai for his town of Unna ravaged by plague, but concerning “Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality” by the late Anthony de Mello, S.J. (1931-1987). It’s a book tough in tone, but necessarily so calling upon people to awaken from a dead slumber. Anthony de Mello was an Indian Jesuit priest and psychotherapist. “Awareness” reads as a series of lectures that are in your face and can feel harsh, and it is brilliant.

The philosophical explanations of human life that we get from Joseph Campbell (1904-1987) and Alan Watts (1915-1973) combined with the profound work by the cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker (1924-1974) which is given evidentiary support by Skidmore College’s social psychologist Dr. Sheldon Solomon provide us with a world-shaking unified theory of human consciousness. Solomon was already a professor when he discovered Becker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book “The Denial of Death.” As Solomon has said:

So when I first read “The Denial of Death” I was so literally flabbergasted by it that I took a leave of absence for a year and just like did what would be considered menial jobs. I did construction work, I worked in a restaurant; and I was just like, “Well wait a minute, if I understand what this guy is saying then I’m just a culturally-constructed meat puppet doing things for reasons that I know not in order to assuage death anxiety.” And I was like, that’s not acceptable.

If the Campbell/Watts/Becker/Solomon view of consciousness (the theory) is right, and I think it is, it leaves us with a unified theory of what to make of it all, but without much of an answer to the question: “So what?” What do we do with that information? Becker and Solomon (specifically in “The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life” with Jeff Greenberg and Tom Pyszczynski) do not offer much of a prescription for the ailment they have diagnosed and demonstrated.

This is where the work of Watts and, in my view, especially deMello shines. It seems to me that de Mello in “Awareness” confronts the concept of the “culturally-constructed meat puppet doing things for reasons that I know not in order to assuage death anxiety” head on. Wake up! Furthermore, he does so in a way that ultimately points to joy and love, but it is a necessarily bitter medicine. If the theory turns one on their head, de Mello offers a path forward. Interestingly, in 1998 then-Cardinal-Prefect Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI) found that de Mello’s books “are incompatible with the Catholic faith and can cause grave harm.” Understandably so, de Mello’s views go far beyond the understanding of any known religion. Yet, I found him to be refreshingly perceptive of the human condition.

The theory is world shaking. But knowing is not good enough; what do we do with it? I find “Awareness” second only to Lao Tzu’s “Tao Te Ching” in addressing this question.