He will dismantle your religion, your relationship dynamics, and your sense of self. He will tell you that your "love" is often just a transaction. He will argue that your sadness comes from clinging to illusions.

He blended Eastern wisdom (Zen, Advaita Vedanta) with Western psychology. His retreats in India attracted everyone from hardened atheists to Catholic nuns. His message was simple but devastatingly hard to accept: “Happiness is not something you find; it is something you allow.” The Way to Love is arguably his most poetic and direct work. It is not a book to read. It is a book to perform . Published posthumously (1989), The Way to Love contains 31 short meditations. They are designed to be read one per day, though most people devour them in a single sitting and then spend years unpacking them.

If you have landed on this search, you are likely standing at a crossroads of spiritual exhaustion. You have tried the affirmations, the goal-setting, and the relentless pursuit of happiness—only to find that peace remains elusive. This is precisely where Anthony De Mello meets you.

But on the other side of that destruction is something real: