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The first question
Question 1
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?
Ananda Prabhu,
THE VERY EFFORT TO RECONCILE THE POLAR opposites is wrong -- you will never succeed in it. It is like trying to reconcile day and night, it is like trying to reconcile life and death. You need not reconcile them, you have only to see that they ARE reconciled. Day and night are moving perfectly in rhythm; life and death are like two wings of existence.
Once you see that the polar opposites can't exist separately, once you have seen that reconciliation is not needed at all, that they are already reconciled, that awareness will help you to move from one pole to another without any problem. They are totally different phenomena -- polar opposites, but all polar opposites are also complementaries.
Science is concentration: it is mind, it is effort.
Meditation or religion is a totally different world: it is relaxation, it is let-go -- it is not concentration at all. It is not one-pointedness, it is no-pointedness. So how can you reconcile them? How do you reconcile work and rest? But you work hard in the day, and at night the rest comes of its own accord. You have earned it; your hard work brings rest.
Philosophically reconciliation is not possible: work cannot be rest, rest cannot be work. If you try to create a synthesis you will destroy both, the beauty of both. Work is work, rest is rest. But work done well brings rest, and if you have rested well in the night; in the morning you will feel so vital, so alive, so full of energy, that work is needed. Rest brings work, work brings rest -- it is a circle. Reconciliation is already there: day brings night, night brings day; life brings death, death brings life. They are half-circles; with both together the circle is
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