Osho, do positive thoughts bring happenings too, like wishing for enlightenment?
“That is too much to ask from positive thoughts because enlightenment is beyond duality, it is neither negative nor positive. When both the polarities are dropped, it happens. With positive thoughts many things are possible – not enlightenment. You can be happy, but not blissful. Happiness comes and goes; the opposite always exists with it. When you are happy, just by the side, unhappiness is waiting for its own time. It is standing in the queue. When you are loving it is positive, but hate is waiting for its own time.
“The positive cannot go beyond duality. It is good as far as it goes, but to ask enlightenment from it is too much. Never expect that. The negative has to be dropped to attain the positive. The positive has also to be dropped to attain the beyond. First drop the negative, then drop the positive. Nothing is left. That nothingness is enlightenment; there is no more mind.
“The mind is either negative or positive; happy, unhappy; loving, hateful; angry, compassionate. Day and night, birth and death – all belong to the mind. But you don’t belong to mind. You are beyond it, encased in the mind but beyond it.
Enlightenment is not of the mind, it is of you. The realization that ‘I am not the mind’ is enlightenment. If you remain negative, you remain in the valley part of the mind. If you are positive, you attain the peak part of the mind. But neither transcends the mental plane of your being. Drop both.
“It is difficult to drop the positive; it is easy to drop the negative because it gives you misery. It is hell, you can drop it. But look at misfortune – you haven’t even dropped that! You cling to the negative. You cling to misery as if it is a treasure. You cling to your unhappiness because it has become an old habit and you need something to cling to. Not finding anything, you cling to your hell. But remember, to drop the negative is easy however difficult it seems. Compared to the positive it is very easy because it is misery.
“To drop the positive means to drop the happiness; to drop the positive means to drop all that looks like flowers, all that is beautiful. The negative is the ugly, the positive is the beautiful. The negative is death, the positive is life. But you can drop the negative, so take the first step. First feel the misery, how much it is given to you by the negative. Watch how the misery arises out of it, just watch and feel. The very feeling that the negative is creating the misery will become the dropping.”
To continue reading and see all available formats of this talk:
Osho, Yoga: The Science of the Soul, Talk #10 – It’s Difficult to Be Attracted to a Buddha