From Ignorance to Innocence - Osho - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 29. POSITIVE THINKING: PHILOSOPHY FOR PHONIES
But it has done one thing certainly: it has taken away the guts of the poor man. His rebellious spirit
has been poisoned. And on one thing only I agree with Karl Marx – that religion is nothing but opium
for the poor people. I have to agree with him because that’s what all the religions in the world have
done. They have given opium, a drug, so you can have beautiful dreams.
In India it is a common routine. In Indian villages poverty is such that if only the man goes to work,
it is not enough; the wife also has to go. It is against the Indian idea which is that women should not
go to work; their place is the home, and they have enough work there. But even if it goes against the
Indian culture, the Indian civilization, the poverty is so great that just the man earning cannot feed
the whole family – the woman has to go.
And the woman may be carrying a small child, because Indian women are constantly either pregnant
or getting ready to be pregnant again; meanwhile they raise the other child. They have to carry the
child to the place where they are working, maybe on the road, making the road, or in the field or in
the garden, or in construction, anywhere. But what to do with the child? They will be continuously
at work and the child will be Lying down by the side of the road.
So the routine method is that they give a little opium to the child. All over India that is done, even
though opium is now illegal; but nothing can be done about it. And everybody understands that that
is the only way. The child remains hungry but happy. Just a little opium and for six to eight hours he
is floating in the lotus paradise. He will not cry, he will not weep; he will not disturb the mother.
Religions have done the same to the whole of humanity.
Be hungry, be uneducated, be sick, suffer every kind of misery possible – but take it positively.
No. I do not believe in any philosophy of positive thinking; nor do I believe in the opposite, in the
philosophy of negative thinking – because both are there. The positive and the negative make one
whole. My philosophy is holistic – neither positivist, nor negativist, but holistic, realistic. You see the
whole in its totality, whatever it is. Good and bad, day and night, life and death, they both are there.
My approach is to see exactly what is the case.
There is no need to project any philosophy on it.
Mother Teresa says to these people in Bhopal, – ”Take it positively.” Two thousand people
dead!certainly through some mistake of some lazy Indian. And it has been happening in many
places all over India; it is not a singular case. Bridges fall down after millions of rupees have been
put into years of construction. The first day the train passes by... and with the bridge, the train and
the passengers all go down into the river – but take it positively.
Dams continually go on flooding thousands of miles because they break. India goes on borrowing
money from all over the world, from the world bank and from other sources, to make new dams.
And with all the engineers and all that expertise, what happens? It does not happen anywhere else
in the world, it happens only in India! India is a very positive country because the people who are
responsible are not punished; otherwise it would stop.
From Ignorance to Innocence 431 Osho