Positive thinking can be defined as a discipline that trains the mind to change a perceived reality by repeatedly making positive mental statements or affirmations. Looking on the bright side is all very well, but the less bright side is always there. Understand this and you can create your own reality.

“Life is absolutely balanced between the positive and the negative. Now it is your choice which side you want to be, in heaven or in hell. Wherever you want to be, try to find it in your life, every moment. And whenever you have found something positive, pour all your attention and all your love on it. That will make it grow; that will make it more and more important in your life, more and more taking the space of your being.

“Remain absolutely indifferent about the negative. I am not saying it is not there. It is there because a few people need it. A few people are so much in love with the negative that if there is no negative they will die out of sheer agony: ‘Now there are roses and no thorns, what am I going to do? Everybody looks so beautiful, nothing ugly, everything seems to be so right, nothing is wrong.’ They will lose all interest in existence. Their only interest was in the negative.

“But they are both there. There are positivist thinkers in the world, particularly in America, who say, ‘Go on thinking about the positive because the negative does not exist. It is always the positive; the negative is your imagination.’ I don’t agree with them.

The negative is not your imagination, neither is the positive your imagination. They both are there, absolutely balanced. It is up to you to choose.

“I have heard about a young man meeting an old lady. That old lady belonged to a positivist group that was very prominent fifty years ago in America – the Christian Scientists. They believe there is no negative. Everything is divine. There is nothing wrong; everything is right. They forget completely that if there is nothing wrong, how are you going to define right? If there is nothing negative, how are you going to define positive? If there is no darkness, how are you going to define light? But it was a very interesting, attractive philosophy.

“The old woman asked the young man, ‘I have not seen your father coming to our weekly meetings.’

“The young man said, ‘He is very sick.’

“The old woman said, ‘All nonsense! Has he forgotten our philosophy? Sickness is your imagination. Just go home and tell him, “Sickness is your imagination.” There is no sickness, no death, nothing wrong in the world. It is God who created the world. How can there be wrong?’

“The young man said, ‘I will convey your message.’

“Three weeks passed and the old man still did not turn up. Again the woman encountered the young boy and asked him, ‘Did you convey my message?’

“He said, ‘I did.’

“The old woman said, ‘But he has not turned up to the meeting.’

“The young man said, ‘I am sorry to tell you that now he imagines he is dead!’

“He could not say that he is dead because that woman will immediately bounce on him with all kinds of positive philosophy – how can he be dead? So he managed to say that now he imagines himself to be dead.

“’What can we do? We had to put him in a grave. He is so certain of it that he does not speak, he does not breathe. He believes so much that he is dead that his pulse has gone, his heartbeat has gone. We tried hard your way. I told him, I whispered in his ear, “It is all imagination; remember your positivist philosophy.” But his imagination is so strong.’

“You live in a world, in an existence that has both. Out of sheer necessity it needs balance in opposite polarities. But you need not be worried about that which makes you miserable.

“Choose the flowers and leave the thorns.”

To continue reading and see all available formats of this talk:
Osho, Satyam Shivam Sunderam: Truth Godliness Beauty, Talk #15 – Attention Is Nourishment