Change is the only constant in life

What will make a human being change very deeply? This has been a great problem for those people who are concerned with the transformation of man. What makes us change? If you put that question to yourself seriously, and ask with all sincerity, with all depth of your being, what will make you change? Will an external event bring about a crisis in your life and that forces you to do some radical thinking — change? A death in the family, an incident or an event, or a happening that is devastating, psychologically as well as physically — will that bring about deep change?

Or must you go through great pain, great sorrow, great agony, brought about by external events, and forces you, forces a human being to alter his course, his drive, his direction, his selfishness, his limited brutal thinking? We have had several wars and most of us perhaps have lived through two wars, devastating wars, millions have been killed.

Think of the misery, the confusion, the enormous sorrow of those people who have had great losses, not only physical losses but their sons destroyed. And apparently superficial events, however great they are, don’t seem to bring about a freedom, say, ‘This cannot happen again’.

Will external events change man? That is one problem. That is, superficial events. And apparently that has not changed man — change in the sense we mean, a real deep transformation of this selfish drive, identified with groups, nations, with beliefs, dogmas, religion, all the rest of it. And apparently — please follow this — apparently some superficial event, like the death of one’s husband, wife, children, does bring through great pain and sorrow a certain change in oneself.

I do not know if you have not noticed it. Does that mean we must depend on external events — death, war, somebody leaving you and so on and so on and so on, external devastating events, will that change you? Which means that you must depend on outward things, which will then put you through great agony and suffering and out of that you come, bringing about, perhaps, a deep mutation —  all right?