From Ignorance to Innocence - Osho - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 29. POSITIVE THINKING: PHILOSOPHY FOR PHONIES
Belief is to cover something. If the doubt is too big then you have to stretch the belief into a firm
belief. You have to repress your doubt very strongly, because you know that if it is not repressed
strongly it will throw off the cover of belief and you will be naked before your own eyes – hence the
shock. The shock is not irrelevant.
If I criticize Mother Teresa, why should you be shocked? Either you see that what I am saying is
right and there is no question of shock, or you see that what I am saying is wrong; then too there is
no question of shock. From where comes the shock?
Shock needs two things: one part of you – the deeper part of you, the repressed part of you – sees
the truth of what I am saying, and the repressor part of you does not want to see it. This conflict
creates the shock.
You may be a firm believer in the philosophy of positive thinking, but I don’t think you understand
what the philosophy of positive thinking means.
First, the philosophy of positive thinking means being untruthful; it means being dishonest. It means
seeing a certain thing and yet denying what you have seen; it means deceiving yourself and others.
Positive thinking is the only bullshit philosophy that America has contributed to human thought –
nothing else. Dale Carnegie, Napoleon Hill, and the Christian priest, Vincent Peale – all these
people have filled the whole American mind with this absolutely absurd idea of a positive philosophy.
And it appeals particularly to mediocre minds.
Dale Carnegie’s book, HOW TO WIN FRIENDS AND INFLUENCE PEOPLE, has been sold in
numbers just next to the Christian Bible. No other book has been able to reach that popularity.
The Christian Bible should not be a competitor in fact, because it is more or less given free, forced
on people. But Dale Carnegie’s book people have been purchasing; it has not been given to you
free. And it has created a certain kind of ideology which has given birth to many books of a similar
kind. But to me it is nauseating.
The very idea that you want to influence people is the idea of a salesman, and that’s what Dale
Carnegie was – salesman turned philosopher. It has happened many times. Just recently Werner
Erhard, the founder of EST.... He was a salesman of encyclopedias, dictionaries, but in trying to
sell enclyclopedias and dictionaries he became aware of salesmanship. Then why bother about
encyclopedias? Why not sell ideas directly? – which are a more invisible commodity.
People can’t see an idea and yet they go on purchasing it. And once you have paid two hundred and
fifty dollars for a certain idea which you can’t see, you have to pretend that you have got it; otherwise
people will think you are a fool. Two hundred and fifty dollars, and you have not ”got it”...? It is very
simple.
In the East there is an old story. A king caught his prime minister fooling around with his wife.
Naturally he was mad. In those days, this was a common punishment: he cut off the nose of the
prime minister. And the nose was cut off only when somebody was caught fooling around with
somebody else’s wife, so that became a signboard. Wherever you went, your missing nose went
ahead of you as a declaration.
From Ignorance to Innocence 424 Osho