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.

With our usual ideas of life gained through contact with the senses we cannot undergo the transformation or new birth that the Work indicates. New ways of thinking are necessary and the Work gives them to us, but the trouble is that we do not think with them. We just put them down in notebooks.

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.

Not realizing that some center or part of a centrer can have force, we tend to feel exhausted when we need not be exhausted, the reason being that we live in a kind of rigid pattern of life and always do the same thing over and over again—that is, we live in very small parts. At that time Mr. Ouspensky was talking a great deal about thinking differently.