Birthday of Albert Einstein
14Th march is the day when a child with potential of extraordinary brain was born, and today we know him as Albert Einstein. He was a German-born theoretical physicist, who developed the theory of relativity. He had also received Nobel prize in 1921 especially for his discovery of the law of photoelectric effect. His intellectual achievements and originality have made the word “Einstein” synonymous with “genius”.
Osho has praised Albert einstein in the context of scientific approach towards life.
Osho says that Only Albert Einstein, through a very different path as a scientist, brought the same message, the same philosophy of the theory of relativity which Mahavira had said 25 centuries back.
Osho also qouted that Albert Einstein in his last days used to say, “Sometimes I suspect my life has been a wastage. I inquired into the farthest of stars and forgot completely to inquire into myself — and I was the closest star.
According to Osho Albert Einstein was not a mystic but got very much interested in meditation and religion in his last days of life.
Osho Says…
BELOVED OSHO,
FROM MY EARLY BOYHOOD I WAS STRONGLY ATTRACTED TO ASTRONOMY AND NUCLEAR SCIENCES; IT WAS A SEARCH FOR TRUTH. AS A RESULT, I VERY SOON REJECTED THE IDEA OF CHRISTIANITY. TODAY I UNDERSTAND THAT THE DEEPER SCIENTISTS GO INTO THE MATTER, THE MORE THEY REALIZE THAT THEY ARE THROWN BACK ON THEMSELVES, ACKNOWLEDGING THAT IT IS MAN WHO DETERMINES THE COSMOS TO APPEAR ACCORDING TO HIS OWN CONSCIOUSNESS. THAT REMINDS ME OF WHAT I UNDERSTAND YOU TO BE CONSTANTLY SAYING. ALTHOUGH THESE SCIENTISTS REALIZE THAT THE EARTH CLOCK SHOWS TWO MINUTES TO TWELVE, AND ALTHOUGH, AS SCIENTISTS, THEY SHOULD NOT HAVE PREJUDICES, YOUR VISION OF THE NEW MAN DOES NOT SEEM TO APPEAL TO THEM. DO THEY BELONG TO THE SAME CATEGORY AS POLITICIANS? SCIENCE IS SO EXCITINGLY INTERESTING, BUT ON THE OTHER HAND I FOUND THAT IT DOES NOT TRANSFORM AT ALL. WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR? BELOVED MASTER, AM I WASTING MY TIME WITH IT? WHEN I SEE YOU LAUGHING I MELT WITH JOY.
Satyam Bhairava, the question you have asked implies many questions. First, are the scientists also of the same category as politicians? In a way, yes. The politician is one whose whole desire is to have power; hence anybody whose desire is to have power, particularly over others — they may be human beings or material objects, it makes no difference…. The politician is struggling to have power over people, the scientist is struggling to have power over matter; but the desire is the same, and the mind is the same. So, in one way, they both are in the same boat. But there are many other aspects in which science is totally different from politics. Politics enslaves living people; hence it is more violent. Science tries to conquer matter; hence it is not a violent search. But science has grown to such complexity that now it is not possible for individual scientists to work on their own; they need immense support from politicians. Their research projects are so expensive that only governments of very rich nations can afford them. So the scientist unknowingly has fallen a victim to the hands of the politicians.
Now the scientist works as a servant to nationalism, to communism, to fascism, to capitalism. He is no more an independent seeker; he is part of a certain political ideology. He works and discovers but he has no control over his own discoveries; the control is in the hands of the politicians. They decide in which direction he should work; otherwise they will not financially support any other kind of project — and their only project is war. So thousands of scientists of immense intelligence, talent and genius have become just slaves of a political mechanism which exploits their intelligence in the service of war and death.
Science can be of great importance if two things are added to it: one is that it should not only be an objective search, it should also open the subjective doors of consciousness. The scientist should not go on working only on objects. He has to work upon the scientist himself.
Up to now the scientist has been denying his own consciousness. It is such an absurd attitude, so illogical and so unscientific, that it brings scientists closer to the so-called, superstitious religions: they believe blindly in a God they know nothing about, and the scientist goes on disbelieving in himself. The superstition is enormous, unbelievable. If there is nobody inside you, if there is no consciousness in you, then who is going to discover the mysteries and secrets of matter, nature, and life? At this point, science has been behaving in an old superstitious way; it has been imitating religions. I have been in contact with many professors of science and not a single one of them was able to give any argument in support of this superstition. They simply go on repeating that consciousness is only a by-product of matter. And whenever I have asked them, “On what grounds are you saying it? Who is the scientist who has proved it? Which are the discoveries which have been made which support the idea?…” It is just because a man who was not a scientist at all, who was an economist, Karl Marx, created this idea that consciousness is only a by-product of matter. He wanted to deny God and he wanted to deny soul; his approach was philosophical…
So in one aspect the scientist behaves like a fanatic fundamentalist Christian…. He goes on denying consciousness. And unless science opens up the dimension of one’s own interiority, it will not become a total subject, a whole subject. It will remain partial; its viewpoint will remain only half of the truth. And you should remember that a whole lie is better than half a truth. The whole lie will be detected soon; the half-truth is very dangerous because it has something of truth in it. It can keep people in darkness for centuries. And three centuries have already passed for scientists. They have been working but they have not dared to enquire into the innermost being of man — that is one thing that has to be added to science; then it can become of tremendous importance.
To add subjectivity to objective science means adding the methods of meditation to the methods of concentration. The methods of concentration take you out, they are extrovert. Science requires a mind which has the capacity to concentrate.
Meditation requires the capacity to go beyond mind, to go into silence, to be absolutely a pure nothingness. Unless science accepts meditation as a valid method of enquiry it will remain a halfhearted search — and because of its half heartedness, it is dangerous. It can easily serve the purposes of death because it does not believe in consciousness, it believes in dead matter –
so it does not matter whether Nagasaki happens or Hiroshima happens, or even if the whole globe commits suicide. It doesn’t matter, because all is matter. There is no consciousness; nothing is lost.
The scientist will revolt against the politicians only when the dimension of meditation is added in his research, in his work.
Secondly, the scientist has to remember now that he is providing the politicians with self-destructive nuclear weapons. He is behaving against humanity, he is behaving against the new man, the new humanity; he is behaving against his own children. He is sowing seeds of death for all. It is time that scientists should learn to discriminate: what helps life and what destroys life?
Just because of their salaries and comforts… they should not go on like slaves and robots working for war and a destruction which is unprecedented.
The scientist has to be a revolutionary too. He has to be a spiritual seeker first, and second he has to be a revolutionary. And he has to remember not to serve death, whatsoever the cost. He has not to follow the directions of politicians. He has to decide himself what is helpful to the whole cosmos, what is helpful to the ecology, what is helpful to a better life, to a more beautiful existence.
And he has to condemn the politicians if they force him to work in the service of death. He has to refuse totally, everywhere — in the Soviet Union, in America, in China, in every country all over the world. Scientists need a global association of their own which can decide what research should be taken in hand and what research should be dropped.
Up to now science has been accidental. People have been just groping in the dark, finding something, becoming great discoverers. Now that time is over. Groping in the dark they have found atom bombs, nuclear weapons; they have done great service! Now it is their responsibility to destroy all the nuclear weapons, all atomic weapons, even though it goes against your so-called nationalism, your so-called communism, your so-called democracy. Nothing matters, because now even the very existence of man is at stake. Just as one day scientists revolted against religion and its dictates, now they have to revolt again against the politicians and their dictates. The scientist has to stand on his own and be absolutely clear that he is not being exploited. He is being exploited everywhere. Just because he is being paid great salaries, given Nobel prizes, great honor, he is ready to sacrifice the whole of humanity — for his Nobel prizes, for all those stupid awards. Scientists should no longer behave like children. These awards and these prizes and these respectable posts are all toys to befool, and even your great scientists are behaving like fools. I would like my people to create an uproar all over the world against scientists who are serving governments and politicians in creating war mechanisms. The masses have to be awakened against these scientists; they have become now the greatest danger, and their association with politicians has to be broken.
Science in itself can become both: accepting meditation it can become religion; being rebellious it can create a better life, more affluent, more abundant. It can be the greatest blessing to mankind — outwardly and inwardly.
But right now it is one of the greatest dangers.
Satyam Bhairava, you are worried and concerned that the scientists are not at all aware of the new man. They cannot be; they are in the service of the old man and the old humanity, the old politicians, the old ideologies…The new man can be accepted only if scientists understand that the world does not consist only of dead objects, it also consists of living beings — and not only of living beings but beings who are conscious too. And there is a possibility of growing this consciousness to great peaks. A Gautam Buddha and a Zarathustra are like Everest, Himalayan peaks. They show, they indicate the potential of every human being; just a little effort and you can also reach their heights. You can also reach the sunlit peaks; you need not live always in the dark caves, in the valleys of misery. The dark night need not remain forever. There is a possibility to come out of the dark night into a beautiful morning with birds singing and flowers blossoming. The scientists need a great incentive for meditation. Only then will they be able to see that what they have been doing is against the future of mankind. They are destroying the very hope… while with the same intelligence they could have created a paradise on earth for the new man, for their children and their children’s children to live in a better world, with more health, with more love, with more consciousness.
Satyam Bhairava, you are right that science is “so excitingly interesting,” but it can be even more interesting. It has to become religious, it has to become spiritual. It has not to exhaust all its energies on the outer world but has to penetrate into the treasures of our inner being. And you are also right that, “I found that it does not transform anything at all. What is it good for?” It has great potential, but that potential is not yet used. Just as it has been successful in penetrating into the very secret of matter, it has the capacity to penetrate into the very secret of consciousness too. Then it will be a great blessing, a great benediction.
As far as I am concerned and my vision for a new humanity is concerned, I see science as having two dimensions: one, the lower dimension, working on objects; and two, the higher dimension, working on consciousness. And the lower dimension has to work as a servant for the higher dimension. Then there is no need of any other religion; then science fulfills totally all the needs of man. But right now you are right that science transforms nothing.
It cannot. Unless it approaches consciousness and works out how to develop more consciousness in man — how to make his unconscious conscious, how to transform his darkness into a noontide — it will not be of any great use. On the contrary, it is proving to be one of the greatest dangers.
It was Albert Einstein who wrote a letter before the second world war to President Roosevelt of America saying, “I can create atomic energy and atom bombs, and if you don’t have atom bombs I can predict that it is impossible to win against Germany in the war.” Albert Einstein was a German Jew. He was working in Germany, researching under the German government, which was under Adolf Hitler, to create an atom bomb. Just the very idea… if he was not a Jew, the whole history of the world would have been totally different. If Germany could have produced atom bombs, then there would have been no power — neither of America nor of the Soviet Union nor of England — to stand in front of Adolf Hitler; he would have conquered the whole world. But because Albert Einstein was a Jew… he was so important that he was not harassed by Adolf Hitler and his people, but he was seeing that millions of Jews were disappearing, actually evaporating as smoke in the gas chambers of the Nazi government. He would not have been killed because he was so much needed and there was nobody else to replace him, but he became afraid that if Adolf Hitler wins, then all over the world there will not be a single Jew left alive. He was not afraid about his own life; it was safe, because Adolf Hitler needed him.
Albert Einstein escaped from Germany, leaving the experiment incomplete. The German scientists did everything, but there was no other Albert Einstein to complete the experiment. And Einstein wrote a letter to the enemy of Germany, to America, saying “I have escaped from Germany and I am ready to make atom bombs for America. Without atom bombs you cannot defeat Germany. And there is also a fear that somebody may be able to complete the experiment that I have left incomplete, because there were many scientists working with me, under me.” Roosevelt immediately invited him and gave him all the facilities possible.
Truman was president at the time when the atom bombs were produced by Albert Einstein, and Einstein told Truman, “Now there is no need to use them, because Germany has committed a historical mistake.” This historical mistake has been committed many times. Anybody who wants to fight with Russia and has committed this historical mistake is doomed, because for nine months the whole country is covered with snow. Russia is so vast — it covers two continents, from one corner of Europe to the other corner of Asia. And there are only three months when the weather is clear enough to fight. And Russia has a great enough army to prevent the enemy for three months and wait for the winter. Winter lasts for nine months. Then Russia need not fight; that winter finishes the enemies without any trouble. Nobody can survive the Russian winter, except Russians — it needs a lifelong training. Napoleon got lost, in the first world war, Germany got lost, and Adolf Hitler again committed the same mistake.
But this time Truman did not even answer the letter of Albert Einstein. The first letter was received with such great joy and he was invited with great welcome, was given all the facilities that he needed, but now the bombs were already in the hands of the politicians. Who cares about Albert Einstein? And he was saying simply, “Now there is no need. Germany is finished, and within two weeks at the most, Japan will be finished, because Japan cannot stand on its own. It was the German support…. There is no need to use these bombs.” But Truman was in a hurry to use the atom bomb, because Germany has surrendered and if Japan also surrenders then there is no opportunity to see what great power America has and no opportunity to show the whole world. Nagasaki and Hiroshima were destroyed unnecessarily. Japan was ready to surrender. Preparations were being done on how the surrender should happen; negotiations were going on between the generals. And Truman ordered, “Before the surrender at least we should try out how much power we have. Once the war ends we won’t have any opportunity.” Two hundred thousand people in two great cities died within ten minutes — and not only people but trees, animals, birds, everything alive suddenly became dead.
Albert Einstein was so much shocked that before his death when somebody asked him, “If you are born again, wouldn’t you like to be a physicist in your new life?” he said, “Never! If I am born again, I would rather be a plumber than a physicist. Enough is enough. I have seen how I worked day in, day out to create the atomic weapons. They were for an emergency, but once they were created I had no power over them. I had created them, but once they were created, the politicians had the keys in their hands. And my letter was not even answered! I am dying one of the most frustrated men on the earth.” He was one of the most successful men, perhaps the greatest scientist that we have ever known, but his own feeling was far more true. He was a man of conscience; he died almost like a wounded lion, utterly frustrated with politicians and their ugliness, their murderous and criminal minds.
Up to now, science certainly has not brought much of a transformation as far as human consciousness is concerned, but it has the potential — just a great awakening is needed. The scientist has to realize his responsibility. He has almost become a god; either he can create or he can destroy.
He has to be reminded that he is no longer the old scientist of the times of Galileo, just working in his own house, with a few tubes and a few bottles, just mixing chemicals and experimenting. Those days are gone. Now he has the power to destroy the whole life of this planet or to create a life so beautiful and so blissful that man has imagined it only in heaven; it can be possible here. A few small groups of scientists have started working on those lines. Nobody believes them.
In Manali, in one of the press interviews, I was talking about the possibilities, the creative and absolutely new possibilities of doors that science can open. Neelam was there, and she reported to Nirvano in Kathmandu that I was talking “off the wall.” And I can understand that anybody will think what I was saying was “off the wall.” It will appear like that. But just the other day Japan created an artificial island, because in Japan there is so much a shortage of land that it is becoming impossible to expand industries. Japan has become the richest country in the world. It needs more and more land. The old way is to conquer some other country; that is not possible anymore. The fear of a third world war hangs over everybody. Japan has created an artificial island which will be used for industrial development. It will be floating in the ocean. Once it becomes a success, many more artificial islands… and Japan will be creating more earth than God created in those six days.
There are tremendous possibilities for science. Once it no longer serves death, it can float cities in the ocean. Japan has also successfully tried to make underground cities, because why go on with the old conception that you have to live overground? You can live underground; it is more peaceful there, and you can get the right kind of light, the right kind of oxygen, because everything will be in the hands of the scientist. I was talking about such things in that press interview, and poor Neelam thought that I am talking “off the wall.” Just as underground cities are possible, floating cities in the ocean are possible, under the ocean cities are possible, flying cities are possible…
Science has great possibilities, Satyam Bhairava, just we have not yet been able to use those possibilities. And all the scientists are in the service of politicians, of governments — that means in the service of death and war.
A great revolution is needed. Just as scientists revolted once against religion, fought against religion, now they have to fight against politics, against nationalism. Their responsibility is great. The new man will need them and their revolution. They are the most important people for the survival of humanity.
Source:
This is an excerpt from the transcript of a public discourse by Osho in Buddha Hall, Shree Rajneesh Ashram, Pune.
Discourse Series: The Golden Future
Chapter #36
Chapter title: Science has to become religious
29 May 1987 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium
References:
Osho has spoken on scientists like Aristotle, Chamberlain, Copernicus, Darwin, Descartes, Eddington, Edison, Einstein, Euclid, Galileo, Leibnitz, Kepler, Newton, Ptolemy, Pythagoras, Ramanujan, Rutherford and many others in His discourses. Some of these can be referred to in the following books/discourses:
- What Is, Is, What Ain’t, Ain’t
- One Seed Makes the Whole Earth Green
- Sufis: People on the Path Vol.1-2
- The Sun Rises in the Evening
- The Empty Boat
- Dang Dang Doko Dang
- Beyond Psychology
- Zarathustra, the laughing prophet
- From Personality to Individuality
- From Ignorance to Innocence
- Beyond Enlightenment
- The Golden Future
- Philosophia Perennis, Vol 1, 2
