Question 1:

Osho,

What is your vision of a world academy of sciences for creativity?

 

 

The world has come so close to a point of crisis that the so-called thinkers of the world simply avoid talking about the coming suicide. It is not far away; by the end of the century, if we do not do anything... This has been the habit of all good people of the world - not to do anything, while the criminals and the evil continue to do all their crimes. This habit has to be broken at least this once.

 

You have raised a question which has tremendous importance and I would like to go deeper into detail about it.

 

Science is a new phenomenon compared to religion. Religion has dominated the world in some form or other as far back as we can see. Science has a history of only three hundred years. This background has to be understood; only then can the problem be seen in the right perspective.

 

These three hundred years, science has had to fight inch by inch against the deeply rooted religions, which were vast empires of power, vested interest. On the smallest things science was in difficulty:

 

if it went against religions, then science was so young that it was not possible for it to fight.

 

I am reminded of Galileo, himself a Christian, not an atheist. But because he discovered that it is not the sun that goes around the earth, but just the contrary, it is the earth that goes around the sun - and this statement is against the Bible - Galileo was condemned. In his old age, sick, almost dying, he was forced to the court of the Christian pope.

 

The pope said, "Do you think you know more than God? God has written the Bible and he says that the sun goes around the earth. You are making a statement which is dangerous to our whole structure."

 

Galileo asked, "What is the danger?"

 

The pope said, "The danger is obvious. If God can commit a mistake about his own creation, then what guarantee is there... should he be taken for granted as right about other things? Your statement creates doubt. You have to cancel that statement; otherwise death will be the only penalty."

 

Galileo was certainly a man of great humor. He said, "There is no problem, I can change the statement - and I am not in a state to fight against the idea that God has written the Bible. But remember, even if I change my statement, neither is the sun going to listen to me, nor the earth.

 

The earth will still go around the sun."

 

On such small matters science was continuously struggling against religion. That created a rift for which religions are solely responsible. But the rift had its own repercussions. Seeing the situation, science started moving more and more towards politics.

 

These have been the two powers holding humanity in their hands: religion and politics. If religion is against you, then the only way is to have some protection from politics. But again you will have to make some compromise. The compromise is that politics will provide labs, instruments, facilities - but its interest is in creating destructive weapons, which have resulted finally in nuclear weapons.

 

Now the whole world is loaded.

 

Right now there are only five nuclear nations, but by the end of this century there will be twenty-five nations with nuclear weapons. And nuclear weapons mean we have decided for death, we have decided to destroy this planet and ourselves.

 

At a late age Albert Einstein understood that it had been a tremendous mistake to take shelter in the powerful hands of politics, just to avoid religion. It was not in any way helpful in creating a better humanity, a better planet, which science is absolutely capable of.

 

I have my vision, and I want my people to be aware of the vision. This ashram is not only for the old and the retired who don't want to do anything but need shelter and food. That has been the situation with ashrams in the East. According to Hindu tradition, a man should become a sannyasin after the age of seventy-five. That means perhaps after his death, because seventy is the average age for death. But if seventy-five-year-old people gather together, it is just a home for the old, rejected, useless, somehow tolerated.

 

I want to change the whole idea of an ashram. My sannyasin is not to wait for the age of seventy-five.

 

The real sannyasin is a revolutionary, and youth is the authentic time to enter into this inquiry.

 

All the ashrams of this country, all the monasteries of the world are against this ashram for the simple reason that you are going against the traditional idea. Young men and women of intelligence are not just going to sit and do transcendental meditation; they have much more energy to be creative.

 

I want this ashram slowly to develop into a World Academy of Sciences for Creativity. This will be perhaps the greatest synthesis ever. Your search for religious truth in no way hinders your search for the objective reality, because both areas are absolutely separate; they don't overlap.

 

You can be a scientist and a meditator. In fact, the more you go deeper into meditation, the more clarity, the more intelligence, the more genius you will find flowering in you which can create a totally new science.

 

The old science was created as a reaction against religion. The new science I'm talking about is not a reaction against anything, but an overflowing energy, intelligence, creativity. Politics corrupted science because its own interest was only war. Religions could not accept science because they were all superstitious and science was going to demolish all their gods and all their superstitions.

 

Science has passed these three hundred years in a very difficult situation, fighting on the one hand with religion and on the other hand, unconsciously becoming a slave to the politicians.

 

I want this place to grow and I am making arrangements for a world academy of sciences and arts totally devoted to life-affirmative goals.

 

The science that can create Hiroshima and Nagasaki and destroy thousands of people, birds, trees - without any reason; just because the politicians wanted to see whether atomic energy works or not - the same science can create more food, more life, better health, more intelligence in all fields of life. But it should be taken out of the hands of politicians and it should not bother about religions.

 

Scientists bothered about religions in the past because they themselves were conditioned by the same religions. Galileo could not say that the Bible was not written by God, it is just a fiction; he himself believed that it was written by God.

 

[....]

 

I have been in contact with scientists, Nobel Prize winners, who have been fighting for my rights in other countries. In Italy eighty-four of the most eminent people have just signed a protest against the government. Amongst those eighty-four there are at least six Nobel Prize winners. The same is the situation in Germany and in Holland.

 

These Nobel Prize winners, eminent scientists, artists of different dimensions, will constitute the academy, and they will make efforts to change science's whole trend of being destructive.

 

Our sannyasins - and there are many who are scientists, artists, physicians - will help the academy.

 

We will arrange scholarships, and people from all over the world can come and study a new way of science, a new way of art that affirms life, that creates more love in humanity and that prepares for the ultimate revolution.

 

That ultimate revolution is a single world government - because while the world does not have one government, you cannot stop wars. Each nation has to have its own military, its own defenses, its own weapons, and there is competition as to who has more destructive power. But once there is one world government there is no need of any armies, air forces or navies; all these can be transformed into services dedicated to life, to the whole of humanity.

 

And the World Academy of Sciences will be the first step, because if we can take scientists from all over the world slowly out of the grip of the politicians, all the power of the politicians will be finished. They are not powerful; the scientist is the power behind them. And the scientist is in a difficulty, because there is no institute in the world which will give the scientist enough of the materials, instruments, machines that he needs to work with.

 

The days are long gone when Galileo could make a small lab in his own house, and scientists could work independently without any support from outside. Now, science is so complex and has grown so many branches - and each branch has become a science in itself - that unless he is supported by a government or a very powerful institution which has money, which has intelligence, which has dedicated students, the scientist cannot work.

 

It seems existence is arranging for the money that we will need to create the academy. Another very important man in Japan, who holds many foundations for humanitarian services, is also coming to see whether it is possible to bring money from those many foundations to create this world institute.

 

And it will have support from all over the world, from all the scientists without exception, because now everybody is seeing that they are serving death, not life.

 

We can have the greatest library for scientific research and we can have sannyasins working, studying. The synthesis will be that everybody who is working in the institute will also be meditating, because unless meditation goes deep in you, your love sources remain dormant. Your blissfulness, your joy remain unblossomed.

 

Man is not for science, science is for man.

 

But science can be of tremendous help if all the scientists of the world who are creating destructive power are removed. They want to move, but they have no place to move to. We have to create a place for them. They are all feeling guilty....

 

[....]

 

Scientists are in a difficulty. They cannot work individually; they have to work under a government.

 

The government's interest is war, and no religion is going to support them because their findings go on destroying religious superstitions.

 

There is an immense vacuum which I want to fill by creating a world academy absolutely devoted to life, love, laughter - absolutely devoted to creating a better humanity, a better and more pure, healthy atmosphere, to restoring the disturbed ecology.

 

[....]

 

Here is their temple of meditation. And I want all the dimensions - the best musicians to teach you music, the best artists to teach you painting, the best poets to teach you the experience of poetry and the expression of it.

 

I am an incurable dreamer.

 

But I can say to you that whatever I have dreamed in my life, I have managed it, without doing anything. Just a proposal to existence....

 

For four months a sannyasin remains here. He will learn much about natural cultivation, how to live in tune with nature, not against it; how to make your life free from all bondages that the past has imposed on you.

 

This is a strange fact that perhaps you may not be aware of: science has grown so many branches that one branch does not know anything about the other branches, and they go on researching and doing great work against each other. The most important thing for the academy will be to create pure science, just the way I am making every effort to create pure religiousness.

 

Man can have inside him a pure religiousness - that means love, that means silence, that means meditation - and also a sense of pure science, so that no branches of science go on doing work unnecessarily which is destructive to other parts.

 

The second great thing the academy has to do... Up to now science has developed accidentally.

 

There has been no sense of direction; people just went on discovering anything without any idea for what. Moving accidentally, still they have created much, but it is in the service of destruction. Pure science will give the sense of direction and a unity of all the sciences, so that science works as a whole, not as different branches.

 

[....]

 

The body is a whole organism; the disease comes from the weakest point. Man has to be taken as a whole. This is going to be one of the foundations of pure science, to look at man as a whole, to look at nature as a whole, to look at the whole cosmos as one organic unity, and work out ways how this organic unity can function in harmony in the different layers.

 

We have the source from where the money can be brought here; just we have to work out the process. This whole Koregaon Park is going to be turned into the World Academy of Creative Science and Art. It will be also a research body, and it will also have its nursing homes, hospitals.

 

Without such a thing happening, this century is going to see us finished.

 

Dr. Masashi Murakoshi was concerned that if I leave the body, then who is going to materialize the dream? They can work, but the whole dream... He wants a written promise from me, and I have given it.

 

This is twice that I have given a written guarantee that I will not leave the body - first to Nostradamus, that I will not leave the body before 2001, and now again the same guarantee is being asked. I am giving it.

 

That does not mean that after 2001 I will leave! That simply gives him the guarantee so that he can bring all the scientists and the sources and the foundations and the money. Without me, I can understand, it will be impossible to create such a vast project.

 

But it is an absolute necessity, seeing the crisis that is coming every moment closer - and people are even avoiding talking about it, afraid because they don't have any answer, or forgetting all about it, believing that some miracle will happen.

 

No miracle ever happens unless you make it happen.

 

I want this ashram to be the first synthesis between religiousness and a scientific approach to life.

 

This will fulfill my dream that the inner and the outer of man are not separate.

 

And it is absolutely possible - there is no difficulty in it. I have found the right sources, so you can rejoice in the fact that soon this place is going to become the world capital of science and religion. And once governments see their scientists disappearing, the world government will become a possibility.

 

We need three things:

 

First, a world government. The world government will be only a functional government, because there will be nobody to fight with, no need of armies, no need of any arms.

 

Secondly, one humanity with no discriminations. The most dangerous consequence of discriminations has been that man has not been able to use a very scientific method - which he is using with the animals, with the trees - with himself. I mean crossbreeding.

 

Nobody should fall in love just in the neighborhood because it is nearby. Fall in love, fall out of love, there is no problem; but find your girlfriend or boyfriend as far away as possible - some Martian...

 

Only then can we create a better, stronger, more intelligent human being.

 

Genetics is going to be the most important part of the world academy. We have not looked at all at how we go on producing children - just accidental. How many geniuses we are missing every day is impossible to imagine. In a single lovemaking the man releases millions of sperm; only one of them - that too not always, only once in a while - will reach the mother's egg. Once one sperm has reached, the mother's egg closes. What happens to those millions of people standing in the queue?

 

Their lifespan is only a few hours.

 

And my understanding is that the best, the most intelligent, will not rush into this race with all kinds of idiots and nasty people; they will stand by the side. But the criminals, the wrestlers, the politicians will do everything to reach to the mother's egg.

 

It is such a great competition, a marathon race in which certainly the best will not participate. It is just accidental that once in a while a Michelangelo, or a Socrates or a Rabindranath Tagore somehow managed to reach. My feeling is, somehow they get carried by the crowd, just pushed, and they cannot get out; they reach by chance.

 

It is a long journey for the sperm. According to sperm size, the tunnel they have to pass through before they reach the mother's egg is almost two miles long. We could have missed lazy people like Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu - and how many we have missed there is no way to know.

 

Genetics is going to be the most important science in the future. All our old habits have to be changed; they are absolutely out of date. You can go to the medical center and donate your sperm, and now we have ways to find the potentiality of the sperm in minute detail - how long he will live, whether he will be healthy, strong, intelligent or retarded. We can simply avoid nasty people like Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Benito Mussolini, Ronald Reagan. We can choose the best.

 

Just the small understanding is needed that the best sperm can be injected whenever society decides that we need a few children, we need a few scientists, a few poets, a few flute players, a few mystics - on order. For the first time we will be out of the prison of biology, which is accidental, blind.

 

There are so many things that the world academy has to do. The first thing is to spread around the world the idea that misery is unnatural, that sadness is sickness, that the lust for power needs psychiatric treatment, that a man who goes on gathering money is mad.

 

And once we make the whole of humanity aware of the dangers of our past ways of life and where the whole past is leading us - to a global suicide - it will not be difficult to convince the intelligent, the young, to drop the past and to welcome the future.

 

Amrito, the world academy, devoted in every sphere to creativity, is going to happen. I don't like to prophesy, but once in a while... This is my prophecy: the world is not going to be finished by idiot politicians. All over the world, that's all they are doing - preparing the funeral pyre for the whole of humanity. We are going to stop it. And if they insist, we will tell them, "Jump into the funeral pyre yourself!"

 

Once we can get rid of the priests and the politicians, the whole earth will become so full of peace, silence, love... so many flowers and so many rainbows. We have been in the wrong hands; the world academy has to create an atmosphere so that these wrong hands are no longer powerful.

 

We have destroyed so many trees that the oxygen layer on the earth has fallen low. That is affecting everybody's health, because without oxygen you cannot live. We have created industries, and the smoke from those industries has such chemicals that it has made holes in a certain layer around the earth, the ozone. It is oxygen, but just a little "thicker" oxygen, which was preventing any destructive rays from the sun from reaching the earth. But our industries have created holes in the ozone layer and now destructive rays are entering.

 

We have done the same stupidity by sending rockets to the moon; those rockets have also made holes. But perhaps it has all happened unconsciously. Nobody was aware what the effects were going to be.

 

The world academy is a conscious effort to do everything perfectly aware of what the consequences will be. Small experiments can be done which will give us the idea of the consequences. Right now there are thousands of inventions of scientists which have been purchased by the vested interests and are lying down in their basements; they have never been brought into the market for the people to use.

 

Because we are behaving so insanely, any invention is bound to change many things. Perhaps many industries will be closed because a better product, more life-affirmative, is available. Now those industrialists will try to purchase the rights and keep those scientific discoveries hidden from humanity.

 

[....]

 

This is going to happen. When I am saying this is going to happen, I am not saying it; I am simply a vehicle for existence. I know perfectly well that when it comes from my absolute nothingness it is a message from existence itself.

 

It is going to happen.

 

Nobody can prevent it.

 

And this is the only hope for the new man and the new humanity.

 

-Osho, “Om Mani Padme Hum, #30”