Science, Art, and Religion

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…

Beloved Osho, when you talk about the "art" of something, and the "science" of something else, what is the essential difference? Is it that an art can only be approached and appreciated intuitively, subjectively, while a science is approached and appreciated with the help of the mind and objectively?

The scientific approach and the approach of art certainly have that difference. Art is intuitive, more of the heart, more subjective, more intimate. Science is objective, not intimate at all; it has nothing to do with your intuition or your feeling, nothing to do with your heart. In fact, it has nothing to do with you at all. If you heat water, it will evaporate at one hundred degrees. Who heats the water does not matter -- whether it is a man or a woman, whether it is a boy or an old man, a Tibetan lama or a Catholic monk. Water simply follows an objective rule; it is not concerned with the person who is boiling it. There may not be any person at all; it can be boiled just by pressing a button, a machine can do it. So that is certainly one of the differences. Art is…

Religion is the goal, science is the technique, art is the way. In a really integrated person that's how it happens: he uses all the science that is possible to move on the way. Science makes it quicker to move; it helps tremendously. If science itself does not become the end it is of great value. When the means start pretending to be the end, then the trouble arises. Science is not the goal: science cannot give any value to human life but it can enhance values. It can create a better world in which values can exist more easily. It can destroy poverty, it can destroy illness. Just by destroying illness nothing is achieved, but when you remove the weeds from the garden there is a possibility for the roses to grow better.

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.