Scientists in the Service of Consciousness – A New Perspective

Osho,
Do scientists belong to the same category as politicians? Science is so excitingly interesting, but on the other hand I found that it does not transform at all. What is it good for? 
“Satyam Bhairava, the question you have asked implies many questions. First, are the scientists also of the same category as politicians? In a way, yes. The politician is one whose whole desire is to have power; hence anybody whose desire is to have power, particularly over others – they may be human beings or material objects, it makes no difference….

The politician is struggling to have power over people, the scientist is struggling to have power over matter; but the desire is the same, and the mind is the same.

“So, in one way, they both are in the same boat. But there are many other aspects in which science is totally different from politics.
“Politics enslaves living people; hence it is more violent. Science tries to conquer matter; hence it is not a violent search. But science has grown to such complexity that now it is not possible for individual scientists to work on their own; they need immense support from politicians. Their research projects are so expensive that only governments of very rich nations can afford them. So the scientist unknowingly has fallen a victim to the hands of the politicians.

Now the scientist works as a servant to nationalism, to communism, to fascism, to capitalism. He is no more an independent seeker; he is part of a certain political ideology.

“He works and discovers but he has no control over his own discoveries; the control is in the hands of the politicians. They decide in which direction he should work; otherwise they will not financially support any other kind of project – and their only project is war. So thousands of scientists of immense intelligence, talent and genius have become just slaves of a political mechanism which exploits their intelligence in the service of war and death.
“Science can be of great importance if two things are added to it: one is that it should not only be an objective search, it should also open the subjective doors of consciousness.

The scientist should not go on working only on objects. He has to work upon the scientist himself.

“Up to now the scientist has been denying his own consciousness. It is such an absurd attitude, so illogical and so unscientific, that it brings scientists closer to the so-called, superstitious religions: they believe blindly in a God they know nothing about, and the scientist goes on disbelieving in himself.
“The superstition is enormous, unbelievable. If there is nobody inside you, if there is no consciousness in you, then who is going to discover the mysteries and secrets of matter, nature, and life? At this point, science has been behaving in an old superstitious way; it has been imitating religions.
“I have been in contact with many professors of science and not a single one of them was able to give any argument in support of this superstition.

They simply go on repeating that consciousness is only a by-product of matter.

“And whenever I have asked them, ‘On what grounds are you saying it? Who is the scientist who has proved it? Which are the discoveries which have been made which support the idea?…’ It is just because a man who was not a scientist at all, who was an economist, Karl Marx, created this idea that consciousness is only a by-product of matter. He wanted to deny God and he wanted to deny soul; his approach was philosophical.
“Communism goes on believing in Karl Marx. It can be understood if in the Soviet Union the scientist has been repeating the same as Karl Marx, because to say anything against Karl Marx there is to go against the holy scripture of communism. It is the same as in a fanatic Christian society, you cannot say anything against The Bible. You may be right, that does not matter.

It is not a question of being right or wrong. The Holy Bible cannot be contradicted; that is unforgivable sin.

“But the same is the situation in the Soviet Union as far as Karl Marx and his book Das Kapital is concerned.
“But in the free world, where people are pretending to have the right of freedom of expression, there too the scientists go on repeating this superstition that consciousness is only a by-product of matter, without any understanding that Karl Marx was not a scientist and his statement is not based on any experiments.
“Karl Marx was an atheist. Just as there are people who believe in God without knowing anything about God, there are people who do not believe in God without knowing anything about God. They don’t differ basically; their quality is the same.
“So in one aspect the scientist behaves like a fanatic fundamentalist Christian…. He goes on denying consciousness.

And unless science opens up the dimension of one’s own interiority, it will not become a total subject, a whole subject. It will remain partial; its viewpoint will remain only half of the truth.

“And you should remember that a whole lie is better than half a truth. The whole lie will be detected soon; the half-truth is very dangerous because it has something of truth in it. It can keep people in darkness for centuries.
“And three centuries have already passed for scientists. They have been working but they have not dared to inquire into the innermost being of man – that is one thing that has to be added to science; then it can become of tremendous importance.

To add subjectivity to objective science means adding the methods of meditation to the methods of concentration.

“The methods of concentration take you out, they are extrovert. Science requires a mind which has the capacity to concentrate. Meditation requires the capacity to go beyond mind, to go into silence, to be absolutely a pure nothingness.
“Unless science accepts meditation as a valid method of inquiry it will remain a halfhearted search – and because of its halfheartedness, it is dangerous. It can easily serve the purposes of death because it does not believe in consciousness, it believes in dead matter – so it does not matter whether Nagasaki happens or Hiroshima happens, or even if the whole globe commits suicide. It doesn’t matter, because all is matter. There is no consciousness; nothing is lost.

The scientist will revolt against the politicians only when the dimension of meditation is added in his research, in his work.

“Secondly, the scientist has to remember now that he is providing the politicians with self-destructive nuclear weapons. He is behaving against humanity, he is behaving against the new man, the new humanity; he is behaving against his own children. He is sowing seeds of death for all.

It is time that scientists should learn to discriminate: what helps life and what destroys life?

“Just because of their salaries and comforts…they should not go on like slaves and robots working for war and a destruction which is unprecedented.
“The scientist has to be a revolutionary too. He has to be a spiritual seeker first, and second he has to be a revolutionary. And he has to remember not to serve death, whatsoever the cost. He has not to follow the directions of politicians. He has to decide himself what is helpful to the whole cosmos, what is helpful to the ecology, what is helpful to a better life, to a more beautiful existence. And he has to condemn the politicians if they force him to work in the service of death. He has to refuse totally, everywhere – in the Soviet Union, in America, in China, in every country all over the world.

Scientists need a global association of their own which can decide what research should be taken in hand and what research should be dropped.

Up to now science has been accidental.

“People have been just groping in the dark, finding something, becoming great discoverers. Now that time is over. Groping in the dark they have found atom bombs, nuclear weapons; they have done great service!
“Now it is their responsibility to destroy all the nuclear weapons, all atomic weapons, even though it goes against your so-called nationalism, your so-called communism, your so-called democracy. Nothing matters, because now even the very existence of man is at stake. Just as one day scientists revolted against religion and its dictates, now they have to revolt again against the politicians and their dictates.
“The scientist has to stand on his own and be absolutely clear that he is not being exploited. He is being exploited everywhere. Just because he is being paid great salaries, given Nobel prizes, great honor, he is ready to sacrifice the whole of humanity – for his Nobel prizes, for all those stupid awards.

Scientists should no longer behave like children. These awards and these prizes and these respectable posts are all toys to befool, and even your great scientists are behaving like fools.

“I would like my people to create an uproar all over the world against scientists who are serving governments and politicians in creating war mechanisms. The masses have to be awakened against these scientists; they have become now the greatest danger, and their association with politicians has to be broken.
“Science in itself can become both: accepting meditation it can become religion; being rebellious it can create a better life, more affluent, more abundant. It can be the greatest blessing to mankind – outwardly and inwardly. But right now it is one of the greatest dangers.
“Satyam Bhairava, you are worried and concerned that the scientists are not at all aware of the new man. They cannot be; they are in the service of the old man and the old humanity, the old politicians, the old ideologies. In fact they are preparing a funeral for the new man.

They should prepare a funeral for the old man which is already dead!

“And we are carrying its corpse – it stinks, but we have become immune, because we have been born in a society which has been carrying corpses. We have grown up in a society, in educational institutions… everywhere corpses are worshipped.
“If there is life anywhere on another planet – and scientists suspect that there is life on at least fifty thousand planets in the whole universe, and there may be planets where science has grown to far higher reaches – they may be able to observe our behavior. And they will be simply surprised:

What are our geniuses doing? It would have been better if there were more idiots and fewer geniuses – at least life would have continued. These geniuses are going to destroy the whole of life.

“The new man can be accepted only if scientists understand that the world does not consist only of dead objects, it also consists of living beings – and not only of living beings but beings who are conscious too. And there is a possibility of growing this consciousness to great peaks.
“A Gautam Buddha and a Zarathustra are like Everest, Himalayan peaks. They show, they indicate the potential of every human being; just a little effort and you can also reach their heights. You can also reach the sunlit peaks; you need not live always in the dark caves, in the valleys of misery.
“The dark night need not remain forever.
“There is a possibility to come out of the dark night into a beautiful morning with birds singing and flowers blossoming.

The scientists need a great incentive for meditation. Only then will they be able to see that what they have been doing is against the future of mankind.

“They are destroying the very hope…while with the same intelligence they could have created a paradise on earth for the new man, for their children and their children’s children to live in a better world, with more health, with more love, with more consciousness.
“Satyam Bhairava, you are right that science is ‘so excitingly interesting,’ but it can be even more interesting. It has to become religious, it has to become spiritual. It has not to exhaust all its energies on the outer world but has to penetrate into the treasures of our inner being. And you are also right that, ‘I found that it does not transform anything at all. What is it good for?’
“It has great potential, but that potential is not yet used. Just as it has been successful in penetrating into the very secret of matter, it has the capacity to penetrate into the very secret of consciousness too. Then it will be a great blessing, a great benediction.

As far as I am concerned and my vision for a new humanity is concerned, I see science as having two dimensions: one, the lower dimension, working on objects; and two, the higher dimension, working on consciousness.

“And the lower dimension has to work as a servant for the higher dimension. Then there is no need of any other religion; then science fulfills totally all the needs of man.
“But right now you are right that science transforms nothing. It cannot. Unless it approaches consciousness and works out how to develop more consciousness in man – how to make his unconscious conscious, how to transform his darkness into a noontide – it will not be of any great use. On the contrary, it is proving to be one of the greatest dangers.”
END
Excerpted and abridged from: Osho, The Golden Future, Talk #36 – Science Has to Become Religious
To read this complete talk and see all the available media formats, click here.
 
 
 

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