Science knows objective reality; it does not understand consciousness. Can science serve life and man's evolution?
Every university, every science institute, should make meditation mandatory...to get a science degree. The problem with meditation is that everyone has to go into it individually. You cannot teach it like any other subject. Nor can it be tested through examinations. The method can be told collectively, but each individual has to practise the method individually.
There can be certain criteria for the person to be examined from outside, too. For example, this person will lose all possibility of anger. So you have to put him in situations where ordinarily anger would be the reaction, but he will not be angry. He will become very sensitive about everything; his listening, seeing, touch, taste, his capacity to smell - all his senses will start functioning at their highest peak. In pain or in pleasure he remains the same. His inner tranquillity is not disturbed by anything.
How can meditators help in the process of transmission of meditation to the university?
Meditators can be made available to every university. Just one meditator is enough for one university to teach meditation, because the method can be given collectively. Whenever any meditator in the university says that he has experienced it and he is now ready to go through any fire test, then situations can be created.
One of the basic problems of science is language. Can consciousness be clearly defined?
Words can be defined clearly. The difficulty is not because of the words, but because the scientist, deep down, does not believe that there is anything inner. His whole training and education makes him trust only objects which he can observe, analyse. His mind is object-oriented, and subjectivity is not an object. Consciousness is even more difficult a problem; because he cannot touch it, dissect it, find out its constituents, he simply rejects it.
Because of this prejudice, he gets confused. And this prejudice can disappear very simply, if he hypothetically accepts that if there are things outside, it is scientific to accept that there must be things which are inner, because in existence, everything is polarised by its opposite. The outer can exist only if there is an inner. Denying the inner is an unscientific attitude. You will have to find new methodology for the inner which is meditation.
Is this what you mean by religion becoming scientific?
Yes. If a new methodology is used, there is no problem. And logically i can explain to you that a new method is needed, because you are going into a new dimension. And if you find yourself that there is a vast universe inside you, far more valuable than all the stars put together... because just the feeling of love has more value than the whole universe.
But this is not available to your crude instruments. Once science moves inwards, it will become complete; till then science is half-truth. That's why it has disturbed the whole ecology. So if it moves inwards, it becomes complete.
If science becomes whole, religions have to die. They don't have any function, because science can do far better than religions have been doing.
So to me it is a double-edged sword; on the one hand it will destroy the materialistic scientist, on the other hand it will destroy the so-called organised religions. And they both need to be in their graves as soon as possible. Then science is enough.
(Excerpted from `The Last Testament', Vol 4: Courtesy Osho International Foundation. www.osho.com)