Whatsoever science has done can be undone only by science

Osho: (to Peter, the brother of an English sannyasin) Is there anything about you you would like to say to me?

Peter: I’m thinking of doing a course in science and the environments, and I wonder if I could ask you what should be done. It’s about the affects of science on the environments, and I wonder if I could ask you what could be done about this problem. What would be the best thing to do?

It is almost too late… and the way that people are thinking to do something is not the way. The problem is very complicated and complex. If we can destroy all technology and we can de-school society, and universities are closed for one hundred years at least and people are again allowed to become absolutely ignorant and primitive, then only….

This is one possibility – which doesn’t seem possible, because we cannot afford it. We cannot drop technology now because dropping technology will mean reducing the world population to such a drastic extent that the whole world will be full of corpses.

If India wants to remain natural, with a pure climate, the population has to go back at least two thousand five hundred years. In Buddha’s time only twenty million people were in India; now there are six hundred million people.

If technology is dropped only twenty million people will be saved out of six hundred million people just in India, so that is not possible; technology cannot be dropped.

All the people who are thinking about how to save the environment and the ecology are against technology, but it cannot be dropped. It is almost impossible, it is not feasible.

We have gone too far in technology; we didn’t listen to Lao Tzu. He said three thousand years ago, ‘Don’t move into any technology,’ but for three thousand years we have denied him. Now it is too late. Now going back is not possible.

The only thing that I think is possible is to go into technology even more, because now to go back to nature is not possible. To go into technology to such an extent that technology itself starts cleaning the atmosphere – that is the only possibility.

If technology has polluted the atmosphere then a technology can be found which can de-pollute the whole atmosphere. Now the way goes through technology, not against technology.

If rivers are polluted and oceans are polluted and the air is polluted, we have to develop super-technology to purify the air, to purify the rivers, to purify the oceans. Now this is the only possibility! The other alternative looks easier but is impossible. And that’s what is being proposed all over the world. It seems simple – Gandhi proposed it in India: to go back, just live like primitive people, to drop all machines, railways, airplanes, everything! Seems simple but seems to be very suicidal. We cannot afford so many deaths; and what is the point?

If out of six hundred million people only twenty million people can be saved, what is the point? Then why not destroy all? Let things take their own shape if that seems meaningless.

Education cannot be stopped, and we have depended so much on technology now. Now it is impossible to think of living without electricity, impossible to think of living without allopathic medicine, impossible to think of living without cars, aeroplanes.

All these things dropped, nature can come back; but how to drop it? It is impractical. So the only possibility is: create better cars which don’t pollute – which is simple, not impossible.

If man can go to the moon it is just absurd why we cannot create better cars which don’t pollute. Why can’t cars run on electricity or on solar energy? Why should they continue to run on petrol? Why can’t we create aeroplanes which don’t pollute, ships which don’t pollute? That can be done. It is just that we have not looked in that direction. And we have not looked because our whole concentration has been on war – how to create more death in the world; that has been our whole effort. That’s why absurd things have happened.

We know how to destroy a city within a second but we don’t know how to cure a common cold. It looks so foolish! We know how to reach the moon and we don’t know how to create a fountain pen which doesn’t leak! It is simply absurd! But we have not looked into these things. Who is worried about a fountain pen which doesn’t leak and who is worried about the common cold? We should orient our science more towards life and less towards war and death.

Now whatsoever science has done can be undone only by science. Gandhi is irrelevant, so is Tolstoy, so is Kropotkin. Now the only way left is to go into technology far more deeply but with a new orientation.

So think about it; it is a good subject. Go into it, study it! Mm?

Peter: Thank you very much!

Osho: Good!

Osho, The Zero Experience, Ch 7