Technology

 

 

The West is obsessed with technology, so whatsoever comes into the hands of the west, it starts reducing it into a technology. Technology is an obsession. For the outside world, science is a valid approach, but partial, not total; not the only approach, but only one of the approaches. Poetry is as valid as science.

 

Science is knowledge without love, and that is the danger in it. Because it is knowledge without love, it is always in the service of death and never in the service of life. Hence, the whole progress of science is leading man towards a global suicide. One day when man has committed suicide -- the Third World War -- cockroaches will think, `We are the most fit to survive.' Some Darwin, some cockroach-Darwin, will prove, `We are the fittest because we have survived; the survival of the fittest.'

 

Man has committed suicide; he has destroyed himself. Knowledge without love is dangerous, because in its very root is poison.

 

Love keeps balance, never allows knowledge to go too far, so it never becomes destructive. Science is knowledge without love; that is its danger. But it is one of the valid approaches: the object, the material, can be known without love -- there is no need. But life is not only matter. Life is suffused with something tremendously transcendental. That transcendental is missed. And then science, by and by, automatically turns into a technology. It becomes mechanical. More and more it becomes a means to exploit nature, to manipulate nature. The very beginning of science has been with that idea: how to conquer nature. That's a foolish idea.

 

We are not separate from nature; how can we conquer it? We ARE nature, so who is going to conquer whom? It is absurd. With that absurdity, science has destroyed much: the whole nature is destroyed, the climate is poisoned, the air, the water, the seas, everything polluted. The whole harmony is dying, the ecology is being continuously destroyed. Please remember -- this is enough, more than enough.

 

Don't turn science inwards. If the application of scientific methodology has been so devastating for outer nature, it is going to be more devastating to the inner nature -- because you are moving towards the more subtle. Even for the outside nature, a different kind of knowledge is needed which is rooted in love; but for the innermost core of your being, the subtlest, the transcendental, knowledge is not needed at all. Innocence is needed. Innocence with love -- then you will know the inside, then you will know the interior of your being, the subjectivity.

 

But the west is obsessed with technology. It seems technology has succeeded in nature: we have become more powerful. We have NOT become more powerful! The whole idea is just fallacious; we have not become more powerful. We are becoming weaker every day because the natural resources are being exhausted. Sooner or later the earth will be empty, it will not grow anything. We are not becoming powerful, we are becoming weaker and weaker and weaker every day. We are on the deathbed. humanity cannot survive, the way it has been behaving with nature, for more than fifty years, sixty years, or, at the most, one hundred years -- which is nothing. If the Third World War does not happen, then we will be committing a slow suicide. Within a hundred years, we will be gone. Not even a trace will be left.

 

And man will not be the first to disappear. Many other animals, very strong animals, have disappeared from the earth. They used to roam the earth, they were the kings of the earth, bigger than the elephant. They are no longer anywhere. They were thinking they had become very powerful. They were very huge, with tremendous energy, but then the earth could not supply feed for them. They began to become bigger and bigger and bigger; then a moment came when the earth could not supply food for them. They had to die.

 

The same is happening with man: man thinks he is becoming more and more powerful, he can reach to the moon; but he is destroying the earth. He is destroying the whole possibility of future life. Slowly, humanity is disappearing. Please, don't turn your technology towards the inner; you have done enough harm.

 

Enlightenment cannot be reduced to a technology.

 

So the first thing: the inner journey is of innocence, not of knowledge; certainly not of science, ABSOLUTELY not of technology. It is more of love, innocence, silence. Meditation is not a technique really. Because you cannot understand anything other than technique, I have to talk in terms of technique. Otherwise, meditation is not a technique at all. Meditation is nothing that you do. Meditation is something that you fall into, just like love. Meditation is something in which you can be, but you cannot do it. Doing ceases.

 

How can there be a technology for non-doing? Technology is relevant with doing; you have to do something. Meditation is not something that you do. It is only when your doer has gone and you are totally relaxed, not doing anything, in a deep let-go, rest... there is meditation. Then meditation flowers. it is the flowering of your being. It has nothing to do with becoming. It is not an achievement, it is not an improvement; it is just being that which you already are. What technique is needed?

 

People are foolish; that's why techniques have to be talked about. If you understand, nothing is needed. Just being silent and just being yourself, not moving in any direction, not moving at all, and you will see the benediction, the meditation. When this meditation has become such a spontaneous flow that you need not even sit for it in a certain posture, that you need not find a small corner in the house where nobody disturbs you, when in the marketplace also it is there -- talking, walking, doing, eating, it is there -- when it is always there, even when you are asleep it is there, you go on feeling it, it goes on like breathing, or the beating of the heart, that's what Kabir calls SAHAJ SAMADHI, spontaneous ecstasy. it needs no technique. it needs only spontaneity, it needs only naturalness, it needs only simplicity.

 

So I say to you: Blessed are the ignorant, for theirs is the kingdom of God. Become innocent and become ignorant. Don't remain knowledgeable.

 

-Osho, "The Path of Love, #2, Q1"