"And it is absolutely necessary for science to be defined, otherwise there would be no difference at all between science and meditation, between science and religious consciousness.

"Science means being definite, being absolutely definite, about facts. And if you are very definite about facts then you cannot feel mysterious – the more definite you are the more mystery evaporates. Mystery needs a certain vagueness; mystery needs something undefined, undemarcated. Science is factual. Mystery is not factual, it is existential.

"A fact is only a part of existence, a very small part, and science deals with parts because it is easier to deal with parts. They are small, you can analyze them. You are not overwhelmed by them, you can possess them in your hands. You can dissect them, you can label them, you can be absolutely certain about their qualities, quantities, possibilities – but in that very process mystery is being killed.

"Science is the murder of mystery.

"If you want to experience the mysterious you will have to enter through another door, from a totally different dimension. The dimension of the mind is the dimension of science, and the dimension of meditation is the dimension of the miraculous, the mysterious.

"Meditation makes everything undefined. Meditation takes you into the unknown, the uncharted. Meditation takes you slowly, slowly into a kind of dissolution where the observer and the observed become one. Now, that is not possible in science. The observer has to be the observer and the observed has to be the observed and a clearcut distinction has to be maintained continuously. Not even for a single moment should you forget yourself, not even for a single moment should you become interested, dissolved, overwhelmed, passionate, loving towards the object of your inquiry. You have to be detached, you have to be very cold – cold, absolutely indifferent. And indifference kills mystery.

"Between the world of meditation and the mind there is a bridge: that bridge is called the heart. The heart is just exactly in between the two. Hence, the poet lives in a twilight land: something of him can be scientific and something of him can be mystic. But that is the anxiety of the poet also, because he lives in two dimensions, diametrically opposite to each other."