To change, one must change. No one can change and also remain the same. To change one must leave, let go of, give up, what one was before. Yet we imagine we can take in new ideas and think in a new way and yet remain as we were formerly—a very strange view.

The first object of the Work is to make you think in a new way—to change your mind. As I said recently, you cannot do this if you persist in thinking about the Work from life—that is, with your outer mind. You must begin by thinking about life from the Work.

To be conscious of a state, to observe it, means you are not that state. This is the secret—the first secret of esotericism.

Change of being begins with changing your reactions to actual incidents of the day. This is the beginning of taking your life in a real and practical sense in a new way. If you behave in the same way every day to the same recurring events of the day, how can you believe that you can change?