From Ignorance to Innocence - Osho - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 29. POSITIVE THINKING: PHILOSOPHY FOR PHONIES
and investigate the whole thing before you lose your nose and realize God. Give me just a little
time.”
He enquired of the other king. He said, ”That man is really a nasty man. It is my fault because I cut
off his nose. I should have cut off his head. I never thought that he would do such a thing as cutting
the noses off thousands of people. Every night hundreds of people are turned into awakened souls,
enlightened people, God-realized.”
He got the whole information and then he said to his king, ”This is the information I have got. Now I
will invite the great saint to the palace and give him a good beating.”
The saint was invited and of course he was very happy; and all the other saints also were very
happy that now even the king was becoming interested in the positive philosophy. That’s what he
was saying: ”This is simply positive philosophy. Now, bothering about the missing nose is a negative
approach. It is gone; what is the point of all this crying over spilled milk? Why not make something
positive out of it? And I am giving you the ultimate truth, just for the price of a nose.
They were all happy. They all went and waited outside the palace. The great sage entered – by now
he had become a great sage. The prime minister closed the doors. He had two wrestlers, strong
men, there, and they started beating the man. The sage said, ”What are you doing?”
The prime minister said, ”Now tell the truth, otherwise the beating will continue. We will not kill you,
but we will not allow you to live either. We will keep you hanging between death and life. It is better
that you say it quickly.”
Seeing the situation he said, ”Okay, the truth is that my king has cut off my nose because I was
fooling around with his wife. Now what do you suggest? What should I have done? In this situation,
with a nose missing, wherever I went I would have been condemned, boycotted. So I found this
positive philosophy. In the same position, wouldn’t you have done the same?”
The prime minister said, ”Of course I would have done the same – but now it is time that you move
from this kingdom, because even my king is becoming interested, and I don’t want his nose to be
removed by you and him to become a sage. You move from this country to another. The world is
large; there are fools everywhere, and you will find them everywhere. Right now, already you have
a great following.”
When Werner Erhard or people like him found that they could sell encyclopedias, worthless
encyclopedias which nobody is going to read, and nobody is going to look into.... Encyclopedias
people simply keep for show, in their study or in their sitting room. They look beautiful. They are not
to be read, they are to be looked at. If you can sell encyclopedias – and people are so foolish that
they will purchase useless books, highly-praised but meaningless books, at a high cost – why not
sell ideas? Once you know the simple technique of salesmanship you can sell anything.
Positive thinking is just deceiving people.
If influencing people and winning friends becomes your ideology, you will have to do two things. One
is you will have to act, behave the way people like you to act and behave. That’s the simple way to
influence them, there is no other way.
From Ignorance to Innocence 426 Osho