Now, we have been talking about this whole process as a transformation, as an evolution of consciousness. But maybe it's less a matter of evolving or changing, than of simply acknowledging who we already are. The way I see it is that there are states of consciousness that are always available to us if we have not veiled ourselves from them through our attachment to our own thoughts. All of it is always available to all of us — but whether we know that or not (or, better, the degree to which we know it) depends on who we think we are. What the [Bhagavad] Gita does, then, is to present us with a template for expanding our definitions of who we are, and therefore for appreciating our lives in a whole new context.
P. D. Ousepensky said an interesting thing — he said: "I found that the chief difficulty for most people was to realize they really heard new things — that is, things that they had never heard before. They kept translating what they heard into their habitual language. They had ceased to hope and believe that there might be anything new." He's reminding us of how hard it is to open to something new without immediately labeling it in terms of our old formulas, our old attachments.
— Ram Dass, Paths to God