What is the relationship between science and religion?

Beloved Osho, I heard you say sometime ago that science is of the head and religion is of the heart. I understand that these qualities, being of a polarity, are mutually dependent. One cannot exist without the other, just as man cannot exist without both head and heart. Would not then a world scientific community bring with it, as a necessary by-product, a world religious community? Is not the vision of a world science and a world religion synthesized in your vision of the new man?

Man is not only head and heart. There is something more than both in him -- his being. So you have to understand three things: the head, the heart and the being. I have said religion is of the heart, because religion is the bridge between head and being. The head cannot jump to the being directly unless it goes through the heart. Science is confined to the head, reason, logic. The heart is confined to feelings, emotions, sensitivities. But the being is beyond both. It is pure silence -- no thinking, no feeling. And only the man who knows his being is authentically religious. The heart is only a stopover. But you have to understand my difficulty. You are in the head. I cannot talk about the being because the head will not be able to communicate with the being. For the head there is no being; that's why…

Beloved Osho, what is the difference between the emptiness of the child before the formation of the ego and the awakened childlikeness of a buddha?

Whether you are for it or against it doesn't matter -- your concern shows where your ego is hanging. And I will include the capitalist in it also: his whole concern is how to gather money, hoard money -- because money has power over matter. You can purchase any material thing through money. You cannot purchase anything spiritual, you cannot purchase anything that has any intrinsic value; you can purchase only things. If you want to purchase love, you cannot purchase; but you can purchase sex. Sex is the material part of love. Through money, matter can be purchased, possessed. Now you will be surprised: I include the communist and the capitalist both in the same category, and they are enemies, just as I include Charvaka and Mahatma Gandhi in the same category, and they are enemies. They are enemies, but their concern is the same. The capitalist is trying…

Osho, is this also a science? Science—the supreme science! But ordinarily, in relation to religion, it is understood to be belief, faith. In my view, that is a misunderstanding. To me, religion too is another kind of knowing. And whatever principles religion has have issued from someone’s knowing, not from someone’s belief. Therefore my constant emphasis is: do not believe—try to know; and the day you know, believe that day. The acceptance that comes through knowing is called shraddha—trust; and the acceptance that comes without knowing is called belief. Shraddha is the ultimate state of knowi

Therefore, when I have said, “Do not believe in transmigration, do not believe in reincarnation,” it does not mean I am saying that transmigration does not exist. It also does not mean I am saying that reincarnation does not exist. I am saying only this: once you believe, the search stops. Try to know. And knowing happens only when right doubt is present. If you assume the opposite, even then doubt disappears. If I assume that there is no reincarnation, the search stops. If I assume that there is reincarnation, the search stops. Search is in suspension. I know neither that it is, nor that it is not. So I set out to find what is, so that I may know it. I take a religious person to be the deepest of inquirers; there is no search deeper than that. But those whom we ordinarily call religious, I do not…

Question: BELOVED OSHO, CAN SCIENCE ITSELF BE RELIGIOUS? And with God comes the priest; he becomes the mediator. He becomes more powerful than politicians. In religious countries like India, politicians go and touch the feet of Hindu priests -- of course, only before election time. Then for five years they don't bother about the priest, about the temples. But as the election comes near they start going on religious pilgrimages to temples far away in the Himalayas, touching the feet of any stupid priest, asking for blessings. The priest holds more power; the politician's power is mundane. The priest's power has entered in the very spirit of man. That's why religions did not allow science to move into their territory. First they did not allow science even to move into the objective world -- the subjective world was out of the question.

Osho, I am a scientist working on the question of how life originated from non-living matter. It seems to me that this study of how non-life is transformed into living matter is vital to understanding the relationship of science to religion. The reason is that the study is a clue to how our emotions and spirituality developed in the first place. What do you think?

Now, what kind of answer is this? But this is the answer of a mystic, not the answer of a scientist. The scientist will try to prove, will answer WHY he believes; he will argue. But Tertullian simply says, "Because God is absurd, hence I believe. I believe in the mysterious, in the miraculous, in the unanswerable, in the unknowable." If you have any interest in religion... and you can be both! I am not saying that a man who is a scientist cannot be religious -- a man who is a scientist can be religious -- but then he will have to create a dialectics in his own being. He will have to be very conscious. When he is working in the lab he has to forget all about religion; religion should not interfere in his scientific work. And when he leaves the lab and sits in his meditation…