How do science and meditation relate to each other?

Science has developed tremendously in this last century, but science often seems so heartless. You talked about meditation as the inner science. Can you please talk about science and meditation. Shouldn't they go hand in hand?

They should go hand in hand, but you have to understand that neither science can become meditative nor meditation can become just science. They are two dimensions of human existence. A man can be both: he can be a scientist in his lab, and he can be a meditator in his home. While he is meditating, he has to forget all about science; while he is doing scientific research, he has to forget all about meditation. Only then can they go hand in hand. There are very complex and subtle problems in it. The problem is that science has to be objective and meditation has to be subjective. Science can experiment; in meditation you cannot experiment, you can only experience. In science the method is observation; in meditation the method is witnessing. And there is a great difference. Science has an object before it. It can dissect it, it can…

Osho, how would you like your bold experiment to be under scientific scrutiny? Also, is there any particular method of meditation useful for treatment of a particular type of mental illness?

Science HAS ITS OWN LIMITATIONS. I am ready, I can invite scientists to come here to watch what is happening. They are welcome. But they will not be able to know the real thing that is happening here. They will only be able to know the body of it, they will miss the soul -- their very methodology prevents it. Just like if you ask the scientist, "Please watch this roseflower, it is so beautiful" -- he can analyse the roseflower, he can reduce it to its constituents. He can tell you how much water is in it, and how much colour and how much perfume, and how much earth and how much air. He can tell you everything that comes within HIS vision, that which he can catch hold of by his methodology. But his methodology is limited. He will not be able to catch hold of the beauty…

Osho, meditativeness and science are difficult to reconcile. Yet painting a picture, writing a poem, and solving a scientific problem all bring the same joy. The same joy! Why is it so difficult to be meditative and a scientist? Why has there never been a society in which the inner and the outer sciences, the science of gentleness and love and the science of aggression and death, live in harmony?

Mahavira, twenty-five centuries ago, used to make each of his statements with a 'perhaps'. If you asked him, "Is there a God?" he would say, "Perhaps." In those days it was not understood at all -- because how can you say, "Perhaps"? Either God is or is not. It seems so simple and so logical: "If God is, God is; if he is not, he is not. What do you mean by 'perhaps'?" Now it can be understood. Mahavira was using the same language in religion that is being used by Albert Einstein in physics. Albert Einstein calls it the theory of relativity. Mahavira has called his philosophy exactly the same: SAPEKSHAWAD -- the theory of relativity. Nothing is certain, everything is flexible, fluid. The moment you have said something, it is no longer the same. Things don't exist, Mahavira says, but only events. That's what modern science is saying,…

Beloved Osho, the scientific vision of objective reality and the subjective experience of existence seem to be two completely separate and unbridgeable dimensions. Is this because of the nature of things, or is it only an illusion of our mind?

The scientific approach to existence and the religious approach have been in the past separate and unbridgeable. The reason was the insistence of old religions on superstitions, belief systems, denial of inquiry and doubt. In fact, there is nothing unbridgeable between science and religion, and there is no separation either. But religion insisted on belief -- science cannot accept that. Belief is covering up your ignorance. It never reveals to you the truth; it only gives you certain dogmas, creeds, and you can create an illusion of knowledge through them. But that knowledge is nothing but a delusion. Anything based on belief is bogus. Because religions insisted continuously on belief, and the basic method of science is doubt, the separation happened. And it became unbridgeable. It is unbridgeable if religion does not arise and face the challenge of doubt. The whole responsibility of the religions has been to keep these…

Osho, what is meditation?

One would think that scientists would be very open-minded. That is not the case. As far as their subject is concerned, they are absolutely open-minded: they are ready to listen to anything contrary to their theory, and with absolute fairness. But except in that particular matter, they are more prejudiced, more bigoted than the ordinary, common man, for the simple reason that they have never bothered about anything else: they have simply accepted whatsoever society believes in. Many religious people brag about it: "Look, he is such a great scientist, a Nobel prize-winner," and this and that, "and yet he comes to church every day." They forget completely that it is not the Nobel prize-winning scientist who comes to the church. It is not the scientist who comes to the church, it is the man without his scientific part who comes to the church. And that man, except for the…