When we see the problems in our own lives and those in the world, they seem too complex, and we feel helpless and do not know how to begin to address them.

Every great human endeavour, like going to the moon, started as an idea.

On this still spring morning, with the cherry blossom in bloom outside my window, I write to you about a project that may improve not only our own lives, but the world we all live in.

The Human Enquiry Project is based on the fact that hidden from our awareness, the human mind functions in the same way in all of us, and is responsible for the world we have created, including all the problems in our own lives like loneliness, stress, sorrow, anxiety, and conflict. It is also responsible for creating all the problems we see in the world like wars, corruption, poverty, drug addiction and climate change. By studying and understanding how our minds function, we can begin to address these problems and there is the possibility of deep change.

The aim of the project is to encourage all human beings to begin their own journeys of self-enquiry and to bring this study of our inner spaces to schools, colleges and universities around the world. The other aim of the project is to explore, together, whether it is possible for human beings to change deeply.

This website has a number of resources which allow people to come together to explore what it means to be human, and share what they learn.

The book Understanding Me, Understanding You is part of this project and has been written to make it easy for everyone to begin their own journey of self-enquiry.

You can contribute to the project by beginning your own journey of self-enquiry and sharing what you learn with us all. The book and the website are there to help.

Just as many computers have different contents in their hard drives, but share the same operating system, so we humans have different contents in our memories which we think makes us unique, but in the background, our minds function in the same way. Though the cause of fear in your life and mine may be different, the underlying feeling of fear, the mechanism behind it and the way it affects our lives is the same, so we can explore it together. Similarly the mechanism behind loneliness, sorrow and anxiety will be the same is all of us.

By enquiring into the way our minds function, by asking questions and through self-awareness, we can begin to address these problems we all face. Understanding ourselves helps us to understand others, which leads to more harmonious relationships. This also leads to wisdom, intelligence, compassion and a sense of inner peace.

We human beings are astonishingly capable when we come together to tackle a problem. We have eradicated so many diseases, cracked the genetic code, created the internet and can feed 7 billion people on this planet. We are now trying to tackle climate change.

Yet, when it comes to our inner spaces, we just assume that the problems we see there like stress, loneliness, conflict and sorrow do not have a solution. We have assumed that we can never change. Why is that? In the last century alone 200 million human beings were killed by other human beings. The same consciousness, the same mind that led to those killings, is also alive in you and me today and given the right circumstances we are all capable of that violence. If we want our children to live in a peaceful world we have to investigate that shared consciousness and find out if it is possible to change.

Each of us can be a scientist and investigate the way our minds work, ask questions and share what we find with each other. If in investigating jealousy for example, you had an insight that completely ended it in you, that would help all human beings.

We can then begin to ask questions like ‘Is it possible to live without conflict in a relationship’, or ‘Can loneliness be dissolved’, or ‘How can we find love in our lives’ or ‘Is it possible to live a life based on intelligence, and not just one influenced by our past’?

Please do not think only clever people can do this or that some expert is going to solve the problem. Each of us is equally capable of this understanding.

Please join us on this journey.