Osho Quotes on Negativity

Osho Quotes on Negativity

1. Hell means nothing but misery; it is a psychological state of misery, a state of negativity, a state of darkness, of utter loneliness.
2. If you feel negative about yourself, you will automatically feel negative about others.
3. Man’s consciousness is absolute freedom. If you are negative, you have continuously to take the decision to remain negative. How the negativity was created is irrelevant, it is meaningless. It has happened; it is a given fact now, that you are negative, that you.don’t have any positive flowing energy. You have just a closing energy, which closes up on you, caves in upon you; and you have no door to move out from. The sky is lost, and you live in a dark cave. It is irrelevant how it happened: there is no need to go into the past. I am telling you this is the foundation of Eastern esoteric psychology, that a man, whatsoever he is, has continuously to decide to be that way — only then can he remain that way. It is like pedalling a cycle. You are pedalling a bicycle — you have pedalled for miles, but if you want to continue the journey you have to go on pedalling. If you stop pedalling, the bicycle is going to stop. Maybe through past momentum it may go on a little, a furlong or two at the most. But it is going to stop. And there is no need to go into research on how you started pedalling in the first place, because that is an absurd research. You cannot go into that, because go on and on and you cannot find the beginning. The past is eternity; you cannot find the beginning, and the whole search will stop your growth. I tell you: you just stop pedalling, and the bicycle is going to stop. If you are negative, you are pedalling negativity continuously. If you take the decision just this moment not to pedal any more… your mother, or God — nobody is there to prevent you. It is your decision. But if you don’t want to take the decision, then you can find a thousand and one excuses. Freud gives you a very wonderful excuse, very scientific-looking. But don’t be deceived by the appearance. Freud has created a new myth. It is not science yet; in fact, the science of human consciousness is impossible, because the science is possible only in the world of cause and effect. And human consciousness is freedom; it has no cause and effect chain — science cannot be created in it. Religion is not science; it cannot be. More or less, religion is an art. It has no causality in it. So if you feel negative, that means somehow or other, knowingly or unknowingly, you have invested much in your negativity.
4. If you arc honest, you will see that through your negativity you are creating a hell. Only you are suffering, nobody else.
5. Remember one thing: never do anything in the mood when the poison is possessing you; just wait. When the poison has started changing into its other…. This is one of the basic laws of life: that everything continuously changes into its other. Just as I told you that man changes into woman, woman changes into man, there are periodical changes in you — the good man becomes the bad, the bad man becomes the good; the saint has sinner’s moments and the sinner has saintly moments… one has just to wait. Act when the saint is uppermost — that’s all. Don’t act when the sinner is uppermost, don’t act when anger is uppermost, otherwise you will repent and you will create a chain of reactions and you will get into karma. That’s the whole meaning of getting into karma. Do anything when you are in a negative moment and you will be in a chain, and there is no end to it. When you are negative you do something, the other becomes negative, the other is ready to do something — negativity creates more negativity. Negativity provokes more negativity, anger brings more anger, hostility brings more hostility, and things go on and on and on… and people have been entangled with each other for LIVES together. And they continue! Wait. When you are angry, this is the moment to meditate. Don’t waste this moment anger is creating such great energy in you — it can destroy. But energy is neutral — the same energy that can destroy, can be creative. Wait. The same energy that can shatter, can shower life — just wait. Waiting and not doing anything in a hurry, one day you will be surprised, seeing the inner change. You were full of anger, and then anger goes on and on and comes to a climax… and then the wheel turns. And you can see the wheel is turning, and the anger is relaxing, and energy is released, and now you are in a positive mood — the creative mood. Now you can do something. Now do. Always wait for the positive.
6. With negativity you feel powerful. Whenever you say no, you feel powerful; the ego is enhanced. Whenever you say yes, you feel humble; the ego is destroyed. That’s why you don’t want to say yes, and you go on saying no. When you love, you become humble; when you are angry, you become powerful. Have you watched? When you are angry, you have four times more energy than you ordinarily have. In anger, in rage, you can throw a rock, a big rock. Ordinarily, if somebody tells you to, you cannot even push it, you cannot even move it.
7. Religion is not renouncing, religion is rejoicing. Rejoice in the world, rejoice in your family; rejoice in all that is available to you. Rejoice simply because so much has been given by nature to you. And in this rejoicing can you think of hatred, of anger, of negativity, of any dark holes? When you are at your very center, everything is light, everything is love, everything is as it should be. You are not to do anything. This is the most difficult thing, to stop doing anything.
8. Why should you be negative? Look deep into it. Why are you negative? What is the negativity? What is the cause? Life has given you so much. It has given you life, which cannot be purchased, which is invaluable. It has given you the capacity to love. It has given you the capacity to grow in consciousness. it has made available the whole opportunity to become enlightened one day. And you are full of negativity! Against whom? For what? You should be full of gratefulness. Have you ever thought, do you deserve life? What have you done to deserve it? Do you deserve love? What have you done to deserve it? Do you deserve enlightenment? You deserve nothing. It is all a gift from existence. Out of abundance existence goes on giving to you — and you are negative. Existence goes on giving things to you, but because of your negativity you don’t receive them. You are not available, you are closed. Just try to look at your negativity. Try to understand, see the foolishness of it. Don’t force yourself to be positive, that is not the right way; the negativity will remain repressed. Go deep into your negativity and find that there is no reason to be negative. And the moment you have found there is no reason to be negative, negativity disappears; and what remains is positivity. Positivity is not something to be imposed. Negativity has to be understood. In that understanding is its disappearance, its death. And when that corpse of negativity is no longer there occupying you, a silence, a deep yes — not for any belief, religion, but for the sheer joy existence makes available to you — arises. Not with any effort — you just see it arising in you. That is one of the most beautiful moments in life — when you see the yes arising in you. You cannot remain without dancing, without singing. You have to show your yes in some way. Language is too small. You have to say it with your whole being — that is the dance. You are saying yes with your whole being. Every pore of your being is involved in it. It is not a phony yes said by your mouth, which may not have any meaning at all. Go deep into your despair. What is making you so desperate? There are certain reasons for your despair. One is — the most basic — that you have not been true to your nature. You have listened to all kinds of nonsense from the priests, pedagogues, politicians, saints, and all kinds of people who are really parasites. They suck your blood.
9. Just watch where you are going against your nature. Change your course, be in tune with nature. Be truly animals. Man is the highest animal in existence. He has to be really a more authentic animal than anybody else. In your being natural, despair is not found. And the moment despair disappears, negativity disappears, that will be the moment when the honeymoon begins. It can begin — it is never too late.
10. Negative things have a way of their own: they spread more easily, faster, quicker, because the whole of humanity lives in negativity.
11. Mind is very much afraid of doing good. Why is mind afraid of doing good? For two reasons. One: to do good is nonnourishing to the mind; mind is nourished by doing evil, by doing bad. For example, if you say no, mind is strengthened; if you say yes, mind is not strengthened. Hence mind is never interested in saying yes to anything. Mind is basically atheistic. It enjoys saying no; no is its power. Negativity is its food; it eats negativity. Positivity is its death. Try to say no and you start feeling powerful. Whenever you say no, whenever you can manage to say no, you feel powerful. Whenever you have to say yes you feel humiliated, as if something has been done against yourself. To say a total yes is to destroy the mind totally, and to remain in a total no is to remain in the mind, in the ego.
12. With negativity you feel powerful. Whenever you say no, you feel powerful; the ego is enhanced. Whenever you say yes, you feel humble; the ego is destroyed. That’s why you don’t want to say yes, and you go on saying no. When you love, you become humble; when you are angry, you become powerful. Have you watched? When you are angry, you have four times more energy than you ordinarily have. In anger, in rage, you can throw a rock, a big rock. Ordinarily, if somebody tells you to, you cannot even push it, you cannot even move it.
13. When one feels negative about oneself, one feels negative about everything else. One’s attitude becomes negative, that of a NO. And if the negative person is taken to the rosebush he will count the thorns, he will not look at the rose flower — he cannot. He is not capable of that. He will simply ignore the roseflower, he will count the thorns.
14. I tell you that even negative emotions are good, if real; and if they are real, by and by, their very reality transforms them. They become more and more positive and a moment comes when all positivity and negativity disappears. You simply remain authentic: you don’t know what is good and what is bad, you don’t know what is positive and what is negative. You are simply authentic. This authenticity will allow you to have a glimpse of the real. Only the real can know the real, the true can know the truth, the authentic can know the authentic that surrounds you.
15. For thousands of years buddhas have been always teaching: “Know thyself,” but nobody listens to them. To know oneself seems to be such a difficult thing. Why? — because you have to encounter ugly phenomena. They are there, one has to pass through them. You have a beautiful being within you, but that beautiful being is not on the periphery, it is at the center. And to reach the center you have to pass through the periphery. And you cannot escape, there is no way to escape, one has to pass through it. You have to pass through all the ugliness, all the negativity, hatred, jealousy, violence, aggression, and if you are ready and mature enough to pass through the periphery, only then will you reach the center. Then the scene changes. At the center you are God. At the periphery you are the world — and the world is ugly. At the periphery you are nothing but a miniature society, and the society is ugly. At the periphery you are a Napoleon, a Hitler, a Genghis Khan, a Tamerlane,  and all the politicians, and all the mad people of the world. At the periphery you are a miniature of all that; you are the whole history of aggression, violence, oppression, slavery. At the periphery, remember, you are the history that belongs to this world. Everything is involved; it has to be so because mind is not your own, it is a social product. Mind carries all the germs of the past, all the diseases of the past, all the ugliness of the past, because mind belongs to the collective. There are certain moments when you can see and watch your own Genghis Khan, your own Hitler. There are certain moments when you can see that you would like to murder and kill and destroy the whole world. You have to be very courageous to pass through the periphery, to be a witness. And if you can enter this periphery, this society, the history, then at the center you are God himself. Then there is infinite beauty — but that infinite beauty is untouched by the society, it is not the periphery. Then you are innocent like a newborn baby, fresh as the dewdrop in the morning, uncontaminated. But to reach that, you have to pass through all the ugliness. The whole history of man has to be crossed. You cannot simply avoid it.
16. A master is always ready to bring all that is in you out, even your negativity. Even if you are going to hit him he will allow you to. Who knows — in hitting the master you may become aware of your negativity; you may become aware of your illness, your disease, your madness. Hitting the master may become a sudden enlightenment — who knows. And a master is to help you in every way.
17. Nothing can be only negative; every negativity has a positive aspect too. Every dark cloud has a silver lining, and every night is followed by a dawn.
18. In fact, all these believers in positive philosophy are basically negative. To hide that negativity they believe firmly in the positive philosophy.
19. Negativity is a method of suicide. By and by, you die; in fragments you kill yourself, then you are frozen. But this is no achievement, in fact it is falling down.
20. Pessimism simply means looking at life negatively, always searching for the flaw, for the loophole, for something negative, and accumulating all those negativities. And when you look at the dark side, always, of course, there are two nights and only one small day sandwiched between the two nights — dark dark nights. Optimism ends into pessimism. Every pessimist has been an optimist once — he is an ex-optimist. He hoped too much and because those hopes were not fulfilled he has become sour, angry, enraged. Now he cannot see the flowers and the stars. He can’t see anything beautiful; he goes on looking for the ugly. And when you look for the ugly you will find it on every step. Whatsoever you look for you are bound to find it, remember, because life consists of both — positivity and negativity — in the same quantity. Life cannot exist without the other; the other pole is a must.
21. Positive thinking is appealing only to negative people, because they know their negativity continuously. But without enlightenment, you cannot have positive energy. So I saw throw away all those books on positive thinking. They are deluding you. They are giving you a sense as if without being enlightened you can be positive. That is impossible.
22. The person who is negative about himself cannot be positive about anybody else either, because the faults that he finds in himself he will find in others — in fact he will magnify them in others. He will take revenge. Your parents have made you negative about yourself, you will take revenge on your children you will make them even more negative. Hence, negativity goes on growing with each generation. Each generation becomes more and more pathological. If the modern man is suffering psychologically so much it has nothing to do with the modern man himself: it simply shows that the whole past has been wrong. It is all accumulation of the whole past. The modern man is suffering from the past; the modern man is not suffering from his own sins as the so-called religious preachers go on saying to you. You are suffering from the sins of centuries… but now things have come to a peak. Man is falling apart. Up to now somehow we have managed to keep ourselves together, but now things have come to such a point that either man has to change totally and has to change his vision of life, or man has to commit suicide.