The Greatest Challenge : The Golden Future

Science Serving Creativity

 

 

 

We have tried religion and it has failed.

We have tried politics and it has failed.

 

Now we have to try science. Give it a chance, because in three hundred years it has made more progress than man has made in his whole history of hundreds of thousands of years.

 

So I propose to you that the world should have one academy of sciences, so there is no Russian scientist, no American scientist, no Hindu scientist, no Christian scientist -- all that is past. This academy will have all the geniuses of the world.

 

Science has grown to such complexity that 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 in the hands of the politicians.

 

Now he 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 his project.

 

This can be changed only if two things are added to science: 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 he has been denying his own consciousness. It is such an absurd attitude, so illogical and so unscientific, that it brings scientists closer to the superstitious, so-called 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? Up to this point, science has been behaving in an old superstitious way. It has been imitating religion.

 

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.

 

Science will become of tremendous importance if it adds subjectivity, if it adds 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 half-hearted search; and because of its half-heartedness, 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, to 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 between 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 become a revolutionary too. He has to be a spiritual seeker first, and second he has to be a revolutionary.

 

The scientist 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 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.

 

Just as one day scientists revolted against religion and its dictates, now they have to revolt again -- against the politicians and their dictates. The scientists have to stand on their own and be absolutely clear that they will not be exploited. They are being exploited everywhere. Just because they are being given Nobel Prizes, great honors -- they are ready to sacrifice the whole of humanity for their Nobel Prizes, for all those stupid awards. They have no longer to 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. When the house is on fire, don't stay inside playing with toys – get out!

 

I would like all intelligent 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.

 

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.

 

Science 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. 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.

 

So as far as I am concerned, and my vision for a new humanity is concerned, I see science as having two dimensions: the lower dimension working on objects, and the higher dimension working on consciousness. 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 the whole need of man.

 

Albert Einstein said before he died: "If I had known that the atomic bomb was going to be the result of my creativity, of my whole life's work, then I would never have been a physicist. And if there is going to be another life for me, I pray to God, please make me a plumber rather than a physicist."

 

Certainly what he did was a tremendous act of creativity, unparalleled in the whole of history. He had come to an understanding of one of the most secret things in the objective world. In fact, he had discovered half of the secret – this can be looked at as the dead cell in things, the atom. The remaining half is the living cell in the human body.

 

By splitting the atom, so much energy is created -- by splitting such a small atom. You cannot see it with your bare eyes, nor can you see it by any technical means: it is only inferred; it is just in the calculations. It is only a figure of speech; you cannot pinpoint where it is, what it is. Yes, all qualities have been described, descriptions have been given, but they are all inferences. But because they work, they are accepted to be true -- not that we have come face-to-face with the atom.

 

But understanding half of the mystery of the objective world is the greatest achievement of man, of creativity, of inventiveness, of genius.

 

Certainly the other half is going to be far more difficult. But sooner or later there will be an explosion in our understanding of the mysteries of the living cell. That day will be of great rejoicing because after that we can program man -- his life, his mind, his genius, his age, his disease, his color of eyes, his color of hair, his height, his weight -- everything in detail can be programmed. Once we know all the mysteries of the living cell, then any program can be put into it.

 

But who knows whether that great creativity will also be used in the same way as atomic research has been used? If we continue on the same path as now, most probably it will be, because the people who have the power would like to program man according to their desire, and they will not miss such an opportunity. This is the opportunity they have been searching for, for millennia. This is their great opportunity; nothing can be greater than this.

 

Once they can program man then there is no revolution, no independence, no individuality, no problems, no strikes, nothing. Man then is a robot.

 

The past has done nothing but exploit man with no thought for the future.

 

Our minds are old-fashioned and the present situation is totally different. It is impossible to solve present problems with old-fashioned ideas.

 

If the politicians are going to perform experiments on human life, or the so-called religions are going to do it, then it is against nature -- they cannot do anything natural. But if it is being done by an international academy of scientists -- I say international academy of scientists -- it can be a tremendous, progressive step, and it will not be against nature, it will be nature's growth.

 

Just a great awakening is needed -- the scientist has to realize his responsibility, that he has almost become a god; either he can create or he can destroy. He has to be reminded that he is no longer the old scientist of the times of Galileo, just working in his own house, with a few tubes and a few bottles, just mixing chemicals and experimenting. Those days are gone. Now he has the power to destroy the whole life of this planet or to create a life so beautiful and so blissful that man has imagined it only in heaven.

 

It can be possible here. A few small groups of scientists have started working on those lines. Nobody believes them.

 

Japan created an artificial island, because in Japan there is so much a shortage of land that it is becoming impossible to expand industries. Japan has become the richest country in the world. It needs more and more land.

 

The old way is to conquer some other country; that is not possible anymore.

 

The fear of a third world war hangs over everybody.

 

Japan has created an artificial island which will be used for industrial development. It will be floating on the ocean. Once it becomes a success, Japan will be creating more earth than God created in those six days. There are tremendous possibilities for science -- once it no longer serves death. It can float cities on the ocean. Japan has also successfully tried to make underground cities, because why go on with the old conception that you have to live overground? You can live underground; it is more peaceful there, and you can get the right kind of light, the right kind of oxygen, because everything will be in the hands of the scientist.

 

Just as underground cities are possible, floating cities on the ocean are possible, cities under the ocean are possible, flying cities are possible.... Once science changes its attitude and stops being supportive of politicians for war, so much energy will be released that scientists can do all these things.

 

To me, all that seems to be almost predictable. It is going to happen, because the earth is going to be overburdened with population. It has already reached five billion people, and by the year 2010 it will have almost doubled. A population of ten billion people? This poor earth, which has been exploited for centuries, will not be able to support it. You will have to create new vegetables, new food, perhaps artificial food. In the Soviet Union they already have new fruits which God had not created in those six days. Just as animals can be created by crossbreeding, they are crossbreeding trees and creating new fruits, giving them the right taste, right juice...fruits which man has never eaten!

 

It has to be made common knowledge that whatever science has done has brought about a very critical moment in the life of this planet -- and only science can put it right.

 

For example, the problem of pollution and destruction of the ozone layer -- it is created by science and only science can solve it. Different methods can be discovered which don't destroy the ozone layer or create the greenhouse effect. If that is impossible, then the offending industries should be closed and their products replaced with something else. But it all has to be done by science.

 

There is no point in condemning science, because it has given better health and medicine, and has saved millions of children who would have died.... And there are hundreds of inventions which have been purchased but never marketed -- purchased only to prevent marketing, because the inventions were against the vested interests. Once there is one world government, things can have a totally different arrangement.

 

Science has great possibilities, just we have not yet been able to use those possibilities.

 

A great revolution is needed. Just as the scientists once revolted against religion, fought against religion -- now they have to fight against politics, against nationalism. Their responsibility is great.

 

The new man will need them and their revolution. The scientists are the most important people for the survival of humanity.