Positive thinking is simply the philosophy of hypocrisy

The technique of positive thinking is not a technique that transforms
you. It is simply repressing the negative aspects of your personality.
It is a method of choice. It cannot help awareness; it goes against
awareness. Awareness is always choiceless.

Positive thinking simply means forcing the negative into the
unconscious and conditioning the conscious mind with positive
thoughts. But the trouble is that the unconscious is far more
powerful, nine times more powerful, than the conscious mind. So once a
thing becomes unconscious, it becomes nine times more powerful than it
was before. It may not show in the old fashion, but it will find new
ways of expression.

So positive thinking is a very poor method, without any deep
understanding, and it goes on giving you wrong ideas about yourself.

… Positive thinking came out of Christian Science. It talks now more
philosophically, but the base remains the same – that if you think
negatively, that is going to happen to you; if you think positively,
that is going to happen to you. And in America that kind of literature
is widely read. Nowhere else in the world has positive thinking made
any impact – because it is childish.

“Think and grow rich” – everybody knows this is simply foolish. And it
is harmful, and dangerous too.

The negative ideas of your mind have to be released, not repressed by
positive ideas. You have to create a consciousness which is neither
positive nor negative. That will be the pure consciousness.

In that pure consciousness you will live the most natural and blissful life.

If you repress some negative idea because it is hurting you.... For
example: if you are angry, and you repress it and try to make an
effort to change the energy into something positive – to feel loving
towards the person you were feeling angry with, to feel compassionate
– you know you are deceiving yourself.

Deep down it is still anger; it is just that you are whitewashing it.
On the surface you may smile, but your smile will be limited only to
your lips. It will be an exercise of the lips; it won’t be connected
with you, with your heart, with your being. Between your smile and
your heart, you yourself have put a great block – the negative feeling
that you have repressed.

And it is not one feeling; in life you have thousands of negative
feelings. You don’t like a person, you don’t like many things; you
don’t like yourself, you don’t like the situation you are in. All this
garbage goes on collecting in the unconscious, and on the surface a
hypocrite is born, who says, ”I love everybody, love is the key to
blissfulness.” But you don’t see any bliss in that person’s life. He
is holding the whole of hell within himself.

He can deceive others, and if he goes on deceiving long enough, he can
deceive himself too. But it won’t be a change. It is simply wasting
life – which is immensely valuable because you cannot get it back.

Positive thinking is simply the philosophy of hypocrisy – to give it
the right name. When you are feeling like crying, it teaches you to
sing. You can manage if you try, but those repressed tears will come
out at some point, in some situation. There is a limitation to
repression. And the song that you were singing was absolutely
meaningless; you were not feeling it, it was not born out of your
heart.

It was just because the philosophy says to always choose the positive.

I am absolutely against positive thinking. You will be surprised that
if you don’t choose, if you remain in a choiceless awareness, your
life will start expressing something which is beyond both positive and
negative, which is higher than both. So you are not going to be a
loser. It is not going to be negative, it is not going to be positive,
it is going to be existential.

Positive thinking is simply the philosophy of hypocrisy – to give it
the right name. When you are feeling like crying, it teaches you to
sing. You can manage if you try, but those repressed tears will come
out at some point, in some situation. There is a limitation to
repression. And the song that you were singing was absolutely
meaningless; you were not feeling it, it was not born out of your
heart. It was just because the philosophy says to always choose the
positive.

I am absolutely against positive thinking. You will be surprised that
if you don’t choose, if you remain in a choiceless awareness, your
life will start expressing something which is beyond both positive and
negative, which is higher than both.

Osho,
The Transmission of the Lamp, chapter 36