Science is based on doubt: doubt is its method, its climate, its very soul. Science cannot exist without doubt. It is only through questioning, and constant questioning, that science comes to know about the facts of existence. Its world of enquiry is objective.
The object cannot be trusted. The object is dead. You have to penetrate the object with as many questions and doubts as possible; only then will the object reveal its mysteries.
Religion, on the contrary, is trust. Religion’s method is trust. Trust is its climate, its philosophy, its very being, because religion is not concerned with objects but with your own subjectivity. The journey of science is outwards, the journey of religion is inwards. Science means going outward, religion means going inward; their directions are diametrically opposite. Although they are diametrically opposite they are complementary too, as all opposites always are.
There is a harmony between the opposites. The inner and the outer are not enemies, they are in utter coordination. The body and the soul are not enemies, they befriend each other; in fact they cannot exist separately, they can exist only in a togetherness. Man and woman, darkness and light, summer and winter, positive and negative – they are all together, although they are opposites. But they are not enemies, this has to be understood: opposites and yet complementaries … and there is utter harmony in existence.
It is like inhalation and exhalation: you breathe in, you breathe out. When you breathe in it is one process, the breath goes inwards; when you breathe out it is just the opposite process, the breath goes outwards, but it is the same breath. Inhalation and exhalation are two aspects of the same phenomenon, opposites and yet complementary; so are religion and science, so are doubt and trust.
Because it has not been understood in the past a great calamity has happened to humanity, the greatest calamity, I call it – the calamity that has kept religion and science not only separate but inimical. In the past we have not been able to bring a synthesis between science and religion.
Because of that incapability the world has become split and the man who is trained in science becomes anti-religious; and vice versa, the person who moves into the world of religion becomes anti-scientific. This need not happen, this should not happen.
If you are really. intelligent you will be able to coordinate between these opposites. You will be able to bring a harmony between these two, doubt and trust, and then arises the real total human being.
What do I mean when I say a great harmony has to be achieved? I mean that when you are moving outwards, use doubt as your methodology, trust doubt when you are moving outwards. When you are enquiring into the world of objects trust doubt. Doubt is beautiful, immensely beautiful. And when you are moving inwards put your doubt aside: trust trust. And the man who can manage this I call a really intelligent person.
It is like you are seeing me, you are seeing me through your eyes, but you are also listening to me, you are listening to me through your ears. The ears cannot see and the eyes cannot hear, but still there is a tremendous coordination happening in you: you know you are hearing the same person that you are seeing. This is intelligence, this coordination is intelligence. Deep down a synthesis is happening constantly. The ears are pouring one information, the eyes are pouring another information; both are unrelated – as far as ears and eyes are concerned, both are unrelated – but your intelligence is creating a relationship between them: you are hearing the same person you are seeing.
Exactly in the same way, doubt cannot know the subject and trust cannot know the object. Doubt can know the object, trust can know the subject; and intelligence is when both pour their information into one pool and truth is known in both its aspects, as inner, as outer.
That is the real religion humanity needs now – or, the real science – which will not divide man and which will not cripple man. Up to now, hitherto, man has been crippled.
If you trust you forget the language of doubt. The society becomes unscientific, becomes incapable of tackling so many problems that man has to encounter, becomes poor, impoverished, ill, ugly. If you start only using doubt the society becomes better, scientifically better, technologically better, affluent, but the inner world simply is forgotten. Then you don’t have a soul; inwards you remain fast asleep. In both ways man remains lopsided. In both ways man remains partial and cannot become total.
The religions of the past have failed in creating a total man. And so has been the case with modern science; modern science has also failed in creating the total man. And the total man is the need because only the total man can be contented, only the total man can be richer inwards, outwards.
Only the total man can be really in a celebration – his body satisfied, his soul satisfied, his senses contented, his spirit contented.
-Osho
From The Secret, Discourse #15
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