Love is a very unscientific idea

Question 1:

Science as such has no intrinsic value like life, like love, like blissfulness. These are ends in themselves. Science is only a means. This is the most essential thing to be understood.

Science is concerned with providing you the means to make life richer, profounder, more comfortable, more healthy. But science can do just the opposite too; it can be destructive, it can move in directions which are anti-life. Hence, science cannot be left only in the hands of the scientists. Something higher, something which is an end in itself must be the decisive factor in determining in what direction science should move, in what direction it should not move.

The concern of science is things, objects; it is not concerned at all with being. The word "being" is just nonexistential for the scientific mind. This is very idiotic because the scientist is a being himself.

He is not a thing amongst other things.

Have you ever seen a chair doing scientific research? or a table? The scientist has something which things do not have: consciousness, life, being. But the problem for the scientist is that his methodology limits him. He has a limitation, he can only work on something which he can dissect, which he can set to work upon, which he can put in a test-tube.

Now, you cannot put your own consciousness in front of yourself. You cannot divide your being the way you have divided matter - into molecules, then into atoms, then into electrons. And they go on dividing.

Being is indivisible. There is no sword which can cut it in two. There is no method by which we can experiment upon consciousness; hence, science completely denies the existence of consciousness - because to accept the existence of consciousness is to accept your impotence too. You cannot do anything about it. Then science becomes a very small thing, concerned only with things. And things are utilitarian, their whole purpose is to be used ... by whom?

Are things using things? clothes wearing clothes? food eating food? houses living in houses?

The scientist is in a real dilemma. If he accepts consciousness, being, life, then he is accepting something higher than his reach, something which is beyond his methodology. And of course a scientist, as a scientist, cannot accept anything which is not proved in his lab - not only by himself but by thousands of other scientists around the world.

When the same conclusion is reached through millions of experiments, always the same, without any exception, then it becomes a scientific truth. Only then can the scientist accept it - that too only temporarily because tomorrow new facts may be found and things will have to be changed.

It was not so in the beginning. Just a hundred years ago scientists were very adamant, stubborn, absolute about their findings, because whatsoever they were finding was without exception. But within these hundred years all that absoluteness has disappeared. Every day, new facts are being discovered which go on dismantling the old theories.

Now a new standpoint has arisen; that is, that science can only be temporarily, hypothetically accepted. Nobody can say of anything that the same will happen tomorrow. We can only say that, up to now, whatever we know, this is the conclusion out of it. Anything new being added to it is going to change the whole conclusion.

The dilemma is that science cannot accept being, life. You can cut a man in thousands of parts, you will not find life anywhere. In fact, you cannot put him back together again. Even if you glue him together again, life will not come back.

What is life? How can science accept it? It is beyond the scientist's grasp. So if he accepts it he accepts a limitation of science - and he accepts something higher than science. Then science cannot be the decisive factor in human life. This is against the ego of the scientist.

He can deny, as he has been doing up to now, or ignore, which is far better; but some standpoint has to be taken. Even ignoring it is a standpoint - you have accepted it; otherwise, what are you ignoring? Either reject or ignore: in each case the acceptance is there. If you reject it, if you simply say it does not exist, that it is a by-product .... Try to understand the word "by-product."

You mix a few things and out of the mixture a new thing arises; it was not there before. But if you take those things which you have mixed ... for example, water: hydrogen and oxygen are mixed.

Water is formed in a particular ratio, H2O: two parts hydrogen, one part oxygen, and water arises.

The water is a by-product. If you take oxygen out, or you take hydrogen out, the water disappears.

But the scientist cannot say even that, because when you put the hydrogen back, the water appears again; yes, it is a by-product. I accept that. But life is not a by-product, because when you put the parts together it does not appear again. You cut off the head, and then you fix it back - you can call Leeladhar, you can do perfect plastic surgery - but still life will not appear. Hence the scientist cannot even say that life is a by-product, that consciousness is a by-product. He will still have to prove both.

Karl Marx said that life and consciousness are both by-products. But he is not being logical, he is being simply a fanatic materialist. It is so clear. A by-product is something which arises out of a certain mixture; it will always arise whenever the mixture is made, it will always disappear whenever the mixture is taken away. That is not the case about life.

The second problem in the dilemma is that the scientist has to deny himself. The moment he denies being and says the world consists only of matter - that is, only of things - then who is he? He is a thing.

This is very strange: a few "things" are researching, finding great truths - dangerous, fatal, decisive - and other things are doing nothing. If we are all things, then perhaps while you are sleeping, your chair is trying to experiment upon you, looking into you, trying to find out what kind of thing this is. And the chairs must be publishing periodicals, research papers, getting PhDs, BScs ....

But it is strange that only men, not even animals, are scientists. Animals have life but they are not consciously alive; hence they simply go on living a biological program.

Man is the only living organism on the earth who has a totally new quality - consciousness. The walls in this room are not conscious of you. They are not conscious of themselves either. They don't know they exist, they don't know that anybody else exists. Man is very special; he knows others exist, he knows he exists.

The scientist has to deny the greatest prerogative of man. He has to say that he is also a thing among things. Strange! Scientists also when they are not scientists - because nobody can be a scientist twenty-four hours a day. It is not like religion. A person cannot be religious for a few hours in a day, or a few hours in a week. Either he is religious or he is not.

Religiousness is overwhelming, reaches to every pore of your being; it is not a profession like being a doctor, an engineer, a scientist.

I used to stay in Calcutta in the house of the chief justice of the Supreme Court of Bengal. His wife told me, "I cannot tell anybody, but you have become so close to us that I am daring to say it to you.

And my husband only listens to you. Otherwise he is twenty-four hours a day chief justice of the Supreme Court of Bengal; nobody is above him, he never listens to anybody. So it was pointless to tell anybody anyway, but I want to tell you that you have to tell him that to be a chief justice is a profession. He need not be chief justice twenty-four hours a day."

I said, "What do you mean 'twenty-four hours a day'?"

She said, "I mean even in bed he is the chief justice and I am the criminal. He is ordering! He can't speak in any other way. The jargon of his court has gone into his very marrow. To the children he speaks in the same way. When he is out of the house we are all so happy. And when he comes home everybody becomes serious because the chief justice is coming: not the father, not the brother, not the husband - no, no relationship exists with the chief justice. The chief justice is even required not to be friendly to anybody because that may affect his fairness. He is nobody's relation."

I talked to him. I said, "This is simply stupid. You are a chief justice between eleven to five in the court. It is a profession, it is not your religion. You need not be a chief justice in bed with your wife.

That is ugly. And if you are doing that then you are the criminal. You start behaving rightly and forget all your legal jargon. Your children want you to be their father. What do they have to do with the chief justice? Do you know the moment you enter the house the whole house becomes sad, afraid? Do you consider it something great about you?"

He said, "Perhaps you are right. I have made it my religion."

Religion can only be for twenty-four hours a day, it cannot be otherwise, remember. You cannot say, "For half an hour I am not going to be religious" - or can you? Then a Jaina for half an hour can eat meat because for half an hour he was not religious. Then a Christian, for half an hour, can kick the statue of Jesus from this corner to that corner in the room - for half an hour he is not religious! After half an hour it will be put back on the pedestal with great honor and respect and he will kneel down and pray to it. But for half an hour ....

And everybody needs a little holiday once in a while. But in religion there is no holiday. Religion is twenty-four hours, day in, day out, year in, year out, because it is just like your breathing. But science is not a religion.

So when I have talked to a scientist when he is not a scientist - and nobody can be a scientist twenty-four hours a day, remember, it will kill him. He cannot love his wife because love does not exist according to science; there is nothing like love. It is a very unscientific idea - poetic, but not scientific. Love has not been analyzed, it has not been found what constitutes it, how it can be produced on a mass scale, what taste it has, what color it has, what smell it has, whether it is tangible or not.

Nothing has been found out about love scientifically. In any scientific book you cannot find love mentioned.

When I was in my matriculation year there used to be ninety-two elements, now there are one hundred and eight; that is why I say things go on changing. Ninety-two elements constituted the whole existence. I asked my teacher, "But in this whole list many things are missing."

He said, "What do you mean?"

"For example," I said, "there is no mention of love."

He said, "Are you crazy? In a science class you inquire about love? All that kind of nonsense is okay when you are reading poetry, but in a science class ...?"

I said, "Science or not, I know that you are in love."

He was very much embarrassed because I really knew - and he knew that I knew. I had really caught him kissing a woman. And I said, "You confess; otherwise I will tell the whole class and the whole school who the woman is" - because the woman was also a teacher in the school, and this whole thing was happening behind the scientific lab.

"In these ninety-two elements where is it mentioned? If it is not mentioned, on what grounds were you kissing that woman? So unscientific, silly. You should start teaching in a poetry class - poetry, literature - and behind the poetry class you can go on kissing anybody you want. But behind the science lab ...."

He said, "I am sorry, but ...."

I said, "This won't do. Say that there are ninety-three elements in life."

He said, "That I cannot say because love is not proved scientifically."

I said, "That's true, but all scientists love. Not only that, they produce children. Not only that, they get married, they even get divorced - and everything is unscientific! In the first place, falling in love ...."

Even a man like Albert Einstein could not resist falling in love, knowing perfectly well that love does not exist. He fell in love with a woman, who later became Frau Einstein. She was an outstanding poet but it was very difficult to converse because Einstein was so stuffed with his science, and she was so stuffed with poetry. Now, with two heads stuffed with poetry and science together there is bound to be trouble.

In the beginning she used to show him poems that she was writing, and Einstein would listen, because he had to listen. But once in a while he would raise a question which would be scientific.

For example she would be comparing the face of a woman with the full moon, and he would say, "Wait. This is going too far. A woman's face, and you are comparing it to the moon? A woman's body cannot carry it, it is impossible. Secondly, what beauty do you see in the moon? No eyes, no nose, no mouth, no hair - nothing! What do you see there that you are comparing?

"And do you know that even this light that shines from the moon is not its own, it is just a reflection.

It is sun rays reflected from the moon." The moon is just as dusty as this Big Muddy Ranch. There is no light that you see; from the moon the earth also shines in the same way as the moon and looks so beautiful.

I asked Yuri Gagarin .... After he first orbited around the moon - the first man to come so close to the moon - he was invited for a tour, a welcome tour to India. I asked him, "What was your first idea, seeing the earth from that far away; for the first time, the first man, looking at the earth from that distance, what was your impression?"

He said, "I was simply mystified. I am a communist, I don't believe in mysticism, but I was mystified - what can I do? The earth looked so beautiful, so glorious, with such an aura of light. And for the first time I could not think of myself as Russian, American, Indian, Chinese. For the first time, I thought only of myself as belonging to the earth: this is my earth. That was my first feeling: this is my earth.

America was included."

I used to tell my friends in the university who were great scholars - physicists, chemists, biologists, zoologists: "You all love. You all want to live. You all want to have silence, peace. You all want, deep down, to know who you are. Still, as scientists, you go on denying these things. Have you considered that you are denying yourself, that you are turning yourself into a thing?"

Science cannot go beyond things. And there is nothing wrong about it; all that is needed is that science should understand its limitations. Everything has limitations, and one should not try to prove that that which does not exist within those limitations does not exist at all. My eyes cannot hear music - that does not mean music does not exist. My ears cannot see the light - is that enough to prove there is no light? It simply proves the limitations of the ear.

I dropped the word "limitation" because it is humiliating. I used to say to my scientist friends in the university, "It is specialization, forget the word 'limitation'. The eyes are specialized organs to see; ears, specialized organs to hear. And you will be surprised that it is the same body, consisting of the same chemicals.

"It is the same skin, the same bones, which become your ears, which become your eyes, which become your nose, which become your tongue. It is one organic unity. Ears are nothing but bones specialized for a certain purpose; your eyes are nothing but your skin specialized for a certain purpose. It is a specialization - but a specialization certainly means you will have to leave many things outside."

Specialization means knowing more and more about less and less. You go on becoming narrower and narrower and narrower and narrower. The greatest specialist is certainly bound to be knowing much about almost nothing. The ultimate logical conclusion is knowing all about nothing. That will be the greatest specialist, one who knows all about nothing.

I have heard a story about the twenty-first century. A man enters an eye specialist's office, sits down and says, "I am feeling very much troubled."

The eye specialist says, "Before we begin - because once we begin you will be charged - I would like to ask which eye you are having trouble with?"

The man said, "The left eye."

The specialist said, "Then you go to the other specialist, because I specialize only in the right eye."

In fact the right eye is in itself a world so vast that sooner or later you will find that somebody specializes only on the eastern side of the right eye, somebody else on the western side of the right eye. That's how specialization goes on.

In India you go to a physician, an Indian physician; he is not a Western doctor. You need not bother about specialization because he is still practicing something which was invented five thousand years ago when there was no specialization. And the strangest thing is that he will not ask you, "What is your trouble?" - because in India particularly, the Indian physicians think it an insult to ask the patient, "What is your trouble?" Then what kind of expert is he?

They will take your pulse with their hand, close their eyes and they will say what your trouble is. And it is almost always true. They will look at your tongue, they will see your stomach. And they are almost always right, because they have been watching the pulse for five thousand years or more - the slight changes in vibration according to each disease. Just looking at your tongue ... not at the Western tongue because from the Western tongue I don't think even an Indian physician can find out what kind of disease you are suffering from.

He will find all kinds of diseases, because in the West, for some reason, you clean everything except your tongue. It has not occurred to anyone that the tongue has to be cleaned. It is only in the East that the tongue is cleaned.

Just as toothbrushes exist, tongue cleaners exist, and only the Eastern tongue is capable of showing to the physician what the disease is. The color of the tongue, the layers of whiteness, blackness, brownness that have gathered even in spite of our cleaning show what kind of disease it is, because your tongue is connected with your stomach. It is an indicator, it goes on showing you what difficulty is there in the stomach. But if you don't clean it then of course it is a mess, you cannot figure it out.

The eastern physician ... the greater the physician, the less he will ask you. He will simply check you and will start writing the prescription. You will be puzzled that he has not even asked what disease - he need not. Specialization for thousands of years has made him know everything about very small things: the pulse rate, its very fine differences; the tongue, its color, the stuff that gathers on the tongue. But don't call it a limitation, call it a specialization.

Science is a specialization. You cannot be a scientist twenty-four hours a day.

Religion is not a specialization.

It is a way of life.

It is a way of breathing, it is a way of walking, it is a way of sitting, it is a way of sleeping.

Religion overwhelms all your life.

A religious man sits in a different way than a non-religious man.

A religious man talks in a different way than a non-religious man.

A religious man is always at ease, at home, relaxed.

A religious man knows no tensions, no anxieties.

Naturally all his functioning has a tremendous grace, a beauty. And because it is not a specialization it can spread all over his life - it has to spread.

Once Gautam Buddha's chief disciple, Ananda, asked him, "Bhante, many times I have awakened at different hours in the night just to see, are you in any need? You were always asleep, you were never in any need. But a problem has arisen for me that when you go to sleep you continue the whole night to sleep in exactly the same posture: the same hand underneath your head functioning as a pillow, one leg upon the other leg, resting - always on one side, never changing sides. This is strange."

Buddha said, "This is not strange. There is no need to move. When I was unconscious I also used to toss and turn - that was the mental turmoil affecting the body. Now if I want to change my posture I can, but there is no inner necessity. And I don't want to, I love this posture."

People have been asking me how I go on sitting with my left leg upon my right leg for hours. I can change but I don't see any need. For years I have been sitting that way and now it has become so comfortable that if I change it that will be a discomfort. In this posture I completely forget my legs; there is no need for me to remember about them. But if I want to change I can change, there is no problem in it.

Once you live consciously, every act starts taking on a different quality: the quality of relaxedness, restfulness. A religious man can be religious twenty-four hours a day. Yes, even in bed, even while making love to his wife he will be religious. His lovemaking will be of the same category as his prayer, his worship, his meditation.

Perhaps I am one of the most misunderstood men on the earth today. In my name there are more than three hundred and fifty books on all kinds of subjects; perhaps I have not left any corner of life untouched. But one book became world-famous, or world-notorious.

It is just a series of lectures on the subject FROM SEX TO SUPERCONSCIOUSNESS. It is very strange, because anybody who reads the book will be surprised ... but people believe in gossips; who wants to actually read the book? People believe the journalists. Who wants to go into anything to find out the truth?

The book is not for sex; it is the only book in the whole existence against sex, but strange .... The book says that there is a way to go beyond sex, you can transcend sex - that's the meaning of "from sex to superconsciousness." You are at the stage of sex while you should be at the stage of superconsciousness. And the route is simple: sex just has to be part of your religious life, it has to be something sacred.

Sex has to be something not obscene, not pornographic, not condemned, not repressed but immensely respected, because we are born out of it.

It is our very life source.

And to condemn the life source is to condemn everything.

Sex has to be raised higher and higher to its ultimate peak. And that ultimate peak is samadhi, superconsciousness.

But I was condemned all over the world by all the religions for preaching sex. I was amazed. I chuckled. I said to myself, "I am born in a great world, in a great time! I had never thought that the world consisted of so many idiots."

Books have been written against my book; articles in almost every language, in every newspaper, in every magazine have appeared against my book. But the fundamental of their understanding remains the same: that I am teaching sex.

I am teaching transformation of sex.

It is so clear. But no, these people were not interested in transformation of sex, they were interested in condemning sex. It was a good excuse. And who is going to read the book? Who is going to find out what I have really said in it?

It is so strange and unbelievable that Hindus have worshiped one great sexologist, the first in the world, Maharishi Vatsyayana, who has written a book KAMASUTRAS, which means "Aphorisms on sex." It is the first obscene and pornographic book, with ugly drawings - it is pictorial; photography was not in existence; otherwise it would have been like PLAYBOY. Sketches ... and he propounds eighty-four postures for intercourse.

Now many idiots must have been trying them and wasting their whole life - eighty-four postures! And a few are such that it is better if you join the gym and do some gymnastics rather than doing those postures. You will break your neck or your wife's neck. You will not believe that there is a posture - the woman is standing on her head and the man is making love to her. And this man, Vatsyayana, is respected in India as a maharishi, as a great seer. Because he was supporting Hindu ideology, Hindus - it was a mutual understanding - respected him.

Because I am not supporting anybody's ideology there is no question of respecting me for anything.

And out of three hundred and fifty books, that is the only one in which I talk about sex and its transformation. What about the three hundred and forty-nine books in which I have talked about every possible problem of human growth? Nobody bothers about all those books because nobody is concerned with human growth. Everybody is concerned that man should remain retarded.

The more retarded humanity is, the more it is in the hands of the politicians, in the hands of the priests, in the hands of all kinds of vested interests. Who is interested in transforming man? They want you to be completely blind and deaf. They want you to be just a robot: efficient, not creating any trouble - no strike, no protest, no revolution, no rebellion - just a robot who is always ready to say "Yes, sir."

The question is significant: why has it happened that there was a time, five thousand years ago in the East, when science reached to its highest peaks - then what happened? Why in the East was that whole project dropped?

When, in the East, science was at its peak the West was just barbarous. Even today Ashoka's pillar which was made to honor Gautam Buddha .... It was made two thousand years ago, and scientists have not been able to find how it was made, because to make that high a pillar of solid metal .... It has been standing in the rain - for two thousand years - in the summer, in the winter - and has not gathered any trace of the years: it is without any stain. Stainless steel is a modern phenomenon; it was not possible then - but the pillar is there.

In Egypt, the pyramids have such huge stones on the top that we don't have cranes even today to take all those huge stones to that height. And they were put there three thousand years ago.

Something must have existed, something better than our cranes.

Five thousand years ago, in India, there happened a war which must have been something like the third world war, if it happens. Millions of people died and the weapons that were used - their description is clear-cut in the scriptures - seem to be nuclear. They were not ordinary weapons.

What happened to this science? Why has it simply disappeared?

In Mexico there are triangles made on the earth so big, so vast, that you cannot see them. Wherever you are standing you will see only one line. If you are standing at the corner you will see two lines meeting, but you cannot see the whole triangle. The only way to see the whole triangle is from an airplane, there is no other way. Every way has been tried to see them but the only way is from an airplane. You cannot see it unless you are flying over it, it is so huge. It is geometrically accurate - and it is almost four thousand years old!

Why did the people create that? For what purpose? It cannot be of any use to "primitive" people - a triangle so vast and so accurate - unless it was a signal to flying machines, just the way you have lights and signals for airplanes in our airport. And just by the side of these triangles .... These triangles have been found in many places, not in just one; one may have been accidental, may have been natural, but in many places .... Just by the side of the triangle there is the runway. A runway for what purpose?

Those people had no use of a runway; unless an airplane was descending or taking off, those runways are useless. And those runways have been measured and it has been found that that length is absolutely necessary only if a flying machine is being used.

But what happened to all these scientific developments? It is significant to understand that it was a conscious decision to drop all scientific development because it was going against life. It was going against consciousness, it was going against humanity, it was going against nature.

It was a conscious decision after the Mahabharat war in India, five thousand years ago, that these arenas of science should be closed - because science is not a value in itself. Unless it serves life, unless it makes you more enriched, there is no need for so many human beings and so many geniuses to be involved in it.

It was a conscious decision. But who can make this conscious decision? That's why I have been telling you again and again that humanity can be saved only if there are enough conscious people in the world, people who are not Christians, not Hindus, not Americans, not Russians, who are simply conscious, and can create a climate of consciousness around the earth and an awareness that science should be subservient to human values.

Man is not the servant of science, but the master.

And human values should decide whether a certain scientific project is worth going into or not.

For example, when Albert Einstein wrote the letter to President Roosevelt about making the atom bomb, if President Roosevelt had any consciousness of human values he would have refused, knowing that this plaything, this atom bomb, could become the ultimate danger to humanity that it has become. Neither Roosevelt nor Albert Einstein had that consciousness.

Albert Einstein certainly repented later on when Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan were burned through atomic explosions. Within seconds hundreds of thousands of people simply evaporated. It was a shock to Albert Einstein because it was his letter that triggered the whole process; he was responsible. Roosevelt was no longer the president, the president was Truman, and you cannot find ... strange, you cannot find a more untrue man, but names are strange - just the opposite.

When Truman was asked the next morning, "Could you sleep? - because Hiroshima and Nagasaki have been burning. One hundred thousand people in Nagasaki, one hundred and twenty thousand people in Hiroshima have died. Could you sleep? - because it was your decision to drop the bomb."

He said, "I slept the best I have ever slept, because so many worries had been there, but in my dropping that bomb, all the worries finished. I slept beautifully." Can you say this man has any awareness of what he is saying, what he is doing?

The man who dropped the atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the pilot, was asked the next day, "What is your reaction?"

He said, "What reaction? I simply followed the orders; I had nothing to do with it. I was ordered to drop the bombs, I dropped the bombs. That's my profession, I am paid for it. Those who have given the order should have some responsibility or not - that is their business - but I don't have anything to do with it." Now, can you say this man is even a human being? Could he not say that, "I am not going to follow this order. Two hundred and twenty thousand people are going to be killed! It is better you shoot me; I am not going to follow this order"?

This is what I call religious disobedience. And this man would have become, in my eyes at least, the beginning of a new humanity.

But the idiot said, "I simply followed the order."

I am not saying don't follow orders. I am saying, before following orders at least think twice about what the order is.

Science is not the ultimate value, it is a means.

The scientist is an expert - specialized, limited:

He goes on knowing more and more about less and less.

The religious person is just the opposite:

He goes on knowing less and less about more and more. A day comes when he knows nothing about everything. I am in that position.

I know nothing about everything.

That is why I can speak about everything without bothering whether it is so or not. I am an ignorant man so there is no need to be worried.

Religion has values.

I have told you science is concerned with objects, things.

Religion is concerned with beings, consciousness, awareness.

Unless religion has the upper hand, science is going to destroy everything, for the simple reason that the scientist has no bird's-eye view of the whole. Of course the bird's-eye view cannot be called the expert's-eye view.

The bird flying high in the sky can see everything, but you cannot say that the man who is a biologist working on the earth, finding more and more about biology, sees more than the bird. The bird knows nothing, but the bird sees everything that is there. The bird's vision is vast. The scientist's vision is very narrow; naturally he cannot see beyond it.

Now, there is one scientist, Delgado, who has invented electrodes which can be planted in your head. You will not know - once the electrode is inside your skull you will never know that there is anything there, because inside your skull there is no sensitivity. Even a stone can be put there, you will never know about it. That electrode in your head can be controlled from anywhere, from distant control systems, remote control.

You may be going to your home and from a thousand miles away Delgado can dictate to you, "Don't go, come back!" And you will immediately turn about and start moving back. Of course you will find some excuse why you are doing it, not knowing that you are not doing it, you have been forced to do it. But man is such an egoist, he cannot accept such a thing. He will find some excuse, something or other. He will remember something that he has forgotten that has to be done first, he has to run back.

Now, Delgado is proposing - again, like Albert Einstein, to all the politicians of the world - "If you want humanity to behave rightly then put electrodes in their heads."

For example, he says there is no need for a criminal to be kept for thirty or fifty years in a jail. Fix an electrode - it is just a five-minute operation. Put him under anesthesia, and within five minutes the electrode will be inside his skull and he will never know about it. And you have the remote control; you can always tell him what to do, what not to do.

If he is a murderer you can program him not to murder again. If he is a thief, you can program him not to steal again. What is the point of putting these people in jail for fifty years when just a simple electrode can do the work? Sensible ... the suggestion is perfectly sensible, but Delgado is a scientist: he knows more and more about only the electrode; he has no conception of any of its other implications.

In Russia, what will they do? An electrode will be put in every child's mind the moment he is born.

In Russia, no child is allowed to be born in a house, the child has to be born in the hospital. And that is the best time; the skull is not hard, the operation is very simple. You just push the electrode in and the child will never know for his whole life. He cannot disobey the communist party, he cannot disobey the state, he cannot disobey DAS KAPITAL. He cannot do anything that you don't want him to do, he will do only whatever you want.

You can have in the Kremlin a central remote-control system for two hundred million people. You just push one button and they will all be ready to fight, to give their life - for any purpose.

And this is not going to happen only in Russia - because this is the problem: if it happens in Russia it is bound to happen in America on a wider scale, a bigger scale, because America cannot be number two. If Russians orbit around the moon, then Americans have to step on the moon. If they put in an electrode, America is going to put in two electrodes - in case one fails. Why take chances?

But Delgado is not aware of all these implications.

In the East, science came to a point where it was clear that it would destroy ecology, it would destroy man's dignity, it might destroy the whole planet; it was better to shut it down. That is why in the East almost everything that you know of has been invented but stopped because there were superior beings available, enlightened people available who could be asked whether this line would be right.

If Delgado asks me, I will say, "You are wasting your genius and you are wasting it in such a dangerous project, one which can destroy the whole of humanity, one which is worse than nuclear weapons." It is better to kill the whole of humanity than to put electrodes in human minds and make them slaves.

Only through deep meditation, silence, compassion, love, intelligence, will you be able to direct science.

In the West, science right now is going wild. It is time, there is still time - not much of course, but still time to put a stop, a full stop, and move scientific research into helping human growth: to make man more loving, more caring, more alive; to give him something to sing and dance about; to make him celebrate, so that this whole earth becomes a rejoicing.