We have been talking over together several things which, it seems to me, are quite important. There is another thing we should consider also, which is the whole question of a mind demanding experiences.

Without understanding that question and that problem we cannot come to the next question which we shall go into a little later: whether the mind can come upon a quality of innocence. Innocence is far more important than immortality. And to go into that question very deeply, one has first to understand (obviously not intellectually) a mind demanding experiences.

Editor's note: Immortality, by itself, is not the highest prize. Endless years would become a terrible fate without a mind equal to the benefit. See the article "Will you survive the terror of living forever?"

While innocence may be – I would say -- more fundamental than immortality, I find no good reason to juxtaposition these two concepts, minimizing one in favor of the other. K didn’t like the idea of immortality, was afraid of attendant accountability it might bring, and this is why he subtly disparages living forever. See the final K lecture, at the bottom of the page.

A petty mind, a narrow, shallow mind is always seeking more and more experiences. I mean by that a mind that is always concerned with itself, its self-centred activities, a mind that is not very deep. Such a petty mind may be clever, erudite, have a great deal of technical and analytical capacity, but it still remains a petty, shallow, little mind, the very essence of a bourgeois mind. And we are not using that word 'bourgeois' in a derogatory sense. This mind, most of our minds, are very heavily conditioned and therefore rather narrow, well established in tradition, in experience, in adjusting themselves to the every day demands of a monotonous, laborious, rather useless life. Such a mind, being very limited, is always exploring wider and deeper experiences. It demands not only biological, physiological experiences of sex and so on, but also it demands wider experience of consciousness.

 

Editor’s note: K brings up an important point. Almost everyone would offer unconditional approval of experience. But there is a difference between a mind that seeks to fulfill itself and its destiny by education, by experience, as opposed to the “petty and narrow mind” which craves experience as a means to distract, and escape from, itself. This is pathological. The entire doctrine of reincarnation is built up the “sacred cow” adulation of experience. Who could speak against it? It is not our savior, ready to alchemically transform the knavish spirit into shining godhood? But this is gross illusion. Reincarnation appeals to the many as if offers the perfect venue of ridding oneself of the “spoiled self” via untold number of experiential lives. But this concept, along with the entire doctrine of R, is fantasy.

 See K's entire lecture here.

 

10.Feb.1965. Society is not transformed through any revolution, economic or social. We have seen this through the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution. The everlasting hope of man that by altering the outward things the inward nature of man can be transformed, has never been fulfilled, and it will never be… you must learn about yourself, not what you have been told about yourself, not what your sacred books have told you about yourself.   For most of us, change implies a bargaining process. I would like to change; and so I begin to bargain with myself whether it is profitable or not, whether it is worthwhile or not; so change implies a bargaining... [If we're run by the ego,] we change if it is profitable, if it is pleasurable; or we change when it is painful. But any change, with bargaining, is no change at all.