Far Beyond the Stars

The Great Synthesis

Religion is the goal, science is the technique, art is the way. In a really integrated person that's how it happens: he uses all the science that is possible to move on the way. Science makes it quicker to move; it helps tremendously. If science itself does not become the end it is of great value. When the means start pretending to be the end, then the trouble arises.

Science is not the goal: science cannot give any value to human life but it can enhance values. It can create a better world in which values can exist more easily. It can destroy poverty, it can destroy illness. Just by destroying illness nothing is achieved, but when you remove the weeds from the garden there is a possibility for the roses to grow better.

Just by removing the weeds, roses will not grow -- that's true: you will have to bring the roses too. Just removing the weeds is not enough; it is necessary but not enough Then you have to bring the rose bushes, you have to plant the rose bushes. But once the weeds are removed there is more possibility of bigger roses flowering.

Religion is the ultimate goal. Science can make the earth so beautiful, so happy, that prayer will become easier. When a person is starving it is difficult for him to pray. In fact to expect prayer from a starving person is cruel; it is hard. When the person is well-fed, well-sheltered, lives in convenience and comfort, it is easier for prayer to arise. Prayer is like a rose, it is the ultimate luxury, but the basic necessities religion cannot provide. That's why religious countries have remained poor, the east has remained poor.

That's a great experience for the whole world: why has the east remained poor? Religion cannot provide the basic necessities, it has nothing to do with them; to ask that from religion is nonsense.

If you want to make a house you have to ask the architect, not the mystic. If you want to grow more food you have to ask the agriculturist, not the mystic. And if you want to create factories to produce more things, to help people live better, if you want a better standard of life you have to ask the scientist.

When all have done their work -- the architect has made the house and the road, the scientist has made the factory and the technology, the agriculturist has done farming -- when all have done their work, then comes the mystic; only then can he come! He is the last! Only then does prayer and god become meaningful and significant.

You don't play a guitar before a starving and dying man. He will kill you, he will destroy your guitar; he is not ready to listen to music. You are offending him by playing music.

So there is not necessarily any conflict, not for me at least. My whole approach is that science is the servant and religion is the master; religion should remain the ultimate value. It is not against science: science paves the way for it. And art should be the middle-man between the master and the servant... the manager.

Art is the bridge. When somebody lives comfortably, when basic necessities are fulfilled, then art is needed. Look at it in this way: science is like the body, art is like the mind, religion is like the soul. When the body has its desires fulfilled the mind starts asking for something -- good music, painting, art, sculpture, novels, poetry. When the body is fulfilled the mind starts asking for new things. When the body is fulfilled the desires of the mind arise, never before it. That is a higher desire, the desire of the mind.

To ask for Beethoven, Wagner, Mozart or to ask for Shakespeare or Milton, is a higher need; to ask for bread is a lower need. That's what Jesus means when he says 'Man cannot be satisfied by bread alone.' Yes, bread is needed -- he is not saying that man can be satisfied without bread; nobody can be, even Jesus needs bread -- but that cannot be enough.

Once bread is there, once your stomach is contented, a new desire, a higher desire, arises in your mind; you start desiring beautiful music and poetry and song and dance. Now what else is there to do? The body is fulfilled; psychological need arises.

When psychological needs are fulfilled -- you have Beethoven, Mozart and Wagner and Shakespeare and Milton and Tennyson -- then suddenly a still higher need, the spirit, the spiritual need, arises. You start asking, 'What is prayer? What is meditation? What is god? What is the ultimate meaning of life?' Now, even music is not enough, painting is not enough; you want the ultimate meaning of life.So there is a hierarchy: the science is the base, art is the structure of the temple and religion is the golden peak. There is no need to be worried. Don't look at them as if they are enemies; they are not.

Look at life with a total vision and let everything be absorbed in it; then you have a richness. There are religious people who are against science. They are foolish people -- I don't give much value to their standpoint: they have been the cause of the east's misery, starvation, poverty, ugliness. And there are scientists who are against religion. They also are foolish, they are saying that bread alone is enough. A good house is needed, bread is needed, wife, children -- finished; there is no higher need. They don't know anything about man, they are utterly ignorant of man's real needs. Both are wrong.

A great synthesis is needed between religion and science and art, between east and west, between man and woman... between all, a great synthesis is needed.