Excerpt "From the Author":
"To possess the right to the name of "man," one must be one.
"And to be such, one must first of all, with an indefatigable persistence and an unquenchable impulse of desire, issuing from all the separate independent parts constituting one's entire common presence, that is to say, with a desire issuing simultaneously from thought, feeling, and organic instinct, work on an all-round knowledge of oneself--at the same time struggling unceasingly with one's subjective weaknesses--and then afterwards, taking one's stand upon the results thus obtained by one's consciousness alone, concerning the defects in one's established subjectivity as well as the elucidated means for the possibility of combating them, strive for their eradication without mercy towards oneself.
"Speaking frankly, and wholly without partiality, contemporary man as we know him is nothing more nor less than merely a clockwork mechanism, though of a very complex construction.
"About his mechanicality, a man must without fail think deeply from every aspect and with an entire absence of partiality and well understand it, in order fully to appreciate what significance that mechanicality and all its involved consequences and results may have both for his own further life as well as for the justification of the sense and aim of his arising and existence.
"For one who desires to study human mechanicality in general and to make it clear to himself, the very best object of study is he himself with his own mechanicality; and to study this practically and to understand it sensibly, with all one's being, and not "psychopathically," that is, with only one part of one's entire presence, is possible only as a result of correctly conducted self-observation.
"And as regards this possibility of correctly conducting self observation and conducting it without the risk of incurring the maleficent consequences which have more than once been observed from people's attempts to do this without proper knowledge, it is necessary that the warning must be given--in order to avoid the possibility of excessive zeal--that our experience, based on the vast exact information we have, has shown that this is not so simple a thing as at first glance it may appear. This is why we make the study of the mechanicality of contemporary man the groundwork of a correctly conducted self-observation.
"Before beginning to study this mechanicality and all the principles for a correctly conducted self- observation, a man in the first place must decide, once and forever, that he will be sincere with himself unconditionally, will shut his eyes to nothing, shun no results wherever they may lead him, be afraid of no inferences, and be limited by no previous, self-imposed limits; and secondly, in order that the elucidation of these principles may be properly perceived and transubstantiated in the followers of this new teaching, it is necessary to establish a corresponding form of "language," since we find the established form of language quite unsuitable for such elucidations.
"As regards the first condition, it is necessary now at the very outset to give warning that a man unaccustomed to think and act along lines corresponding to the principles of self-observation must have great courage to accept sincerely the inferences obtained and not to lose heart; and submitting to them, to continue those principles further with the crescendo of persistence, obligatorily requisite for this.
"These inferences may, as is said, "upset" all the convictions and beliefs previously deep-rooted in a man, as well as also the whole order of his ordinary mentation; and, in that event, he might be robbed, perhaps forever, of all the pleasant as is said "values dear to his heart," which have hitherto made up his calm and serene life.
"Thanks to correctly conducted self-observation, a man will from the first days clearly grasp and indubitably establish his complete powerlessness and helplessness in the face of literally everything around him.
"With the whole of his being he will be convinced that everything governs him, everything directs him. He neither governs nor directs anything at all.
"He is attracted and repelled not only by everything animate which has in itself the capacity to influence the arising of some or other association in him, but even by entirely inert and inanimate things.
"Without any self-imagination or self-calming--impulses which have become inseparable from contemporary men--he will cognize that his whole life is nothing but a blind reacting to the said attractions and repulsions.
"He will clearly see how his what are called world-outlooks, views, character, taste, and so on are molded--in short, how his individuality was formed and under what influences its details are liable to change.
"And as regards the second indispensable condition, that is, the establishment of a correct language; this is necessary because our still recently established language which has procured, so to say, "rights-of-citizenship," and in which we speak, convey our knowledge and notions to others, and write books, has, in our opinion already become such as to be now quite worthless for any more or less exact exchange of opinions.
"The words of which our contemporary language consists, convey, owing to the arbitrary thought people put into them, indefinite and relative notions, and are therefore perceived by average people "elastically."
"In obtaining just this abnormality in the life of man, a part was played in our opinion, by always that same established abnormal system of education of the rising generation.
"And it played a part because, based, as we have already said, chiefly on compelling the young to "learn by rote" as many words as possible differentiated one from the other only by the impression received from their consonance and not by the real pith of the meaning put into them, this system of education has resulted in the gradual loss in people of the capacity to ponder and reflect upon what they are talking about and upon what is being said to them".
However, technically Herald of the Coming Good was published first, and G gives some insights into the history of his quest and his aims in that one, so it might be a good place to start. Personally, I read them in this order: Meetings, Life is Real, Beelzebub's Tales, Herald. Perhaps that has ruined all possible development for me. We will see. 
