According to Osho, he has no single approach: both affirmation and negation are valid, equal paths to the same goal. The path is secondary; the primacy is the disciple's temperament and the ultimate goal. Choose the approach that fits your mind - positive or negative. Existence is polar, like male and female; a truly world-comprehensive spirituality embraces all approaches.
Both yes and no can take you home - pick the road that suits your nature; you matter more than the method.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved Osho, this morning you said that the upanishadic sages had a positive approach towards life, and that buddha and mahavira had a negative approach towards life. Which is your approach -- affirmation or negation of life? Which approach would you have your disciples take?
In the beginning, millions of years ago in the past, only twins were born, a boy and a girl. They were the natural wife and husband, and the world was very peaceful. It must have been, because if you could get a natural wife and a natural husband, life would be totally different -- because it is always the wrong person that you choose. It is so difficult to choose a right wife and a right husband -- almost impossible! How can you choose? Just think of another thing: if you had had to choose the right father and the right mother it would have been impossible. Where to choose and how to choose? And whosoever you had chosen, you would have felt frustrated in the end. But nature chooses for you, so the mother and father are always almost okay; you cannot do anything about it. The Jaina myth…
Osho, that was about interpretation. What is your positive philosophy of life?
In fact, in fact, you have asked a very good question. As I see it, religion is a negative philosophy of life. Religion simply does not have a positive philosophy. In truth, the religious mind is a negative mind. What do I mean? Imagine a man in chains who says, “I want to break these chains and be free.” Someone asks him, “What is the positive meaning of your freedom? What do you mean by positive freedom?” He will say, “If my chains are broken—if all the chains fall away—I will be free.” But that is a negative statement. Freedom, in its essence, has no positive content. Freedom means the absence of bondage. And religion is liberation—the search for absolute freedom, where we are utterly free: no limits, no bonds, no obstacles. So religion is basically negative: wherever there is bondage, break it. I hold that orthodoxy is a bondage;…
A wandering seeker saw a dervish in a rest-house and said to him, "I have been in a hundred climes and have heard the teachings of a multitude of mentors. I have learnt how to decide when a teacher is not a spiritual man. I cannot tell a genuine guide, or how to find one, but half the work completed is better than nothing."
THE DERVISH RENT HIS GARMENTS AND SAID, "MISERABLE MAN! BECOMING AN EXPERT ON THE USELESS IS LIKE BEING ABLE TO DETECT ROTTEN APPLES WITHOUT LEARNING THE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE SOUND ONES. "BUT THERE IS A STILL WORSE POSSIBILITY BEFORE YOU. BEWARE THAT YOU DO NOT BECOME LIKE THE DOCTOR IN THE STORY. "IN ORDER TO TEST A PHYSICIAN'S KNOWLEDGE, A CERTAIN KING SENT SEVERAL HEALTHY PEOPLE TO BE EXAMINED BY HIM. TO EACH THE DOCTOR GAVE MEDICINE. WHEN THE KING SUMMONED HIM AND CHARGED HIM WITH THIS DECEIT, THE LEECH ANSWERED, 'GREAT KING! I HAD FOR SO LONG SEEN NOBODY BUT THE AILING THAT I HAD BEGUN TO IMAGINE THAT EVERYONE WAS ILL AND MISTOOK THE BRIGHT EYES OF GOOD HEALTH FOR THE SIGNS OF FEVER!' " And that's what Freud says, that there is no hope for man, that at the most man can endure but cannot enjoy. In…
Osho, if an extrovert, through practice, keeps turning inward and becomes introverted, should he change his path later in life?
Now this is difficult. There is a Socrates who draws certainty from the atheist and from the theist. And there is this friend—the anti-Socrates—who draws anxiety from Buddha and Mahavira, and also from Bertrand Russell. He draws anxiety from both opposites. What does this mean? It means we draw out only what we can draw out. Yet we think my anxiety is because of Bertrand Russell, or because of Mahavira. The truth is: I am anxious, I am uncertain. I will extract uncertainty from Mahavira, and I will extract uncertainty from Russell. Arjuna says, “Tell me something by which I may go beyond all uncertainty and become steady.” Arjuna’s demand is right; but he is not clear about the cause. This is our state too. We go to temple, to mosque, to a guru or a saint—to find certainty, to become definite. Nowhere will it become definite. With an uncertain…
Question: Osho, in what we discussed the other day, the central question that arose for us—and about which we want to learn from you—is this: the influence of “nihilism” that we seem to find in Buddhism and Jainism… Perhaps the interpretation of shunya can be made as positive as one likes, yet the very word, through usage, creates a general interpretation in people’s minds. You can’t give everyone a new formula for an old word; but perhaps a more proper word could be used. From this perspective it appears—many people feel this too—that “shunya is the only word which can describe your approach to truth.” Or is there some other term, path, or way of speaking so that the general public does not get the impression that you have a tendency toward negativism? So there is no misunderstanding. Who knows? Yesterday there was love; today, perhaps there may not be!