Negativity came to some sort of a disrepute in the spiritual circles, thanks to the positivity being hyped up – and it’s not only in the 1990s, because I know that Yogananda, who preceded this trend by decades, gave his contribution. So, let me explain why negativity is a legitimate and useful thing.

First of all, Vedanta insists on it – “neti, neti” means “not this, not that”, and it’s one of the primary ways of discarding non-brahman entities from the mind. Also, Vedanta defines things negatively – brahman is “acintya” and “nirguna”. Acintya means “inconceivable” or “unimaginable”, and nirguna means “attribute-less” or “devoid of worldly qualities”. Those are all negative designations.

Buddhism, also, approaches things negatively, by deconstructing attachments and spiritual constructs, not even bothering to say that something will eventually arise that can’t be deconstructed – essentially, your job is to assume that everything you encounter is a compound structure that can be dissolved, and if there is a positive underlying principle, such as nirvana, that will be revealed in due course without any attempt on your behalf to visualize the goal.

So, the most intellectually and spiritually authoritative religious systems of the East couldn’t care less about positivity, and in fact promote negativity in a very obvious way. We know that Christianity couldn’t care less about the concepts such as “positive” or “negative”, and instead focuses on spiritually and morally relevant terms such as “good” and “evil”, or “truth” and “falsehood”. There’s no concept of a “negative person” in Christianity – a person is either good or evil. If someone’s words are unpleasant to you, the question is whether he’s right or wrong. If he’s right and his words are unpleasant to you, saying he’s “negative” doesn’t allow you to dismiss him out of hand, and instead it is quite obvious that you’re the problem.

So, if Christianity doesn’t recognize those designations as valid, if Buddhism and Vedanta use negativity as one of the primary instruments of detachment, deconstruction and discernment (all three words being negative, by the way), where did all the idolatry of positivity and contempt of negativity come from?

The answer is obvious – not from the ancient, traditional sources. It’s all New Age nonsense. By all means, you can believe in that stuff, just don’t try to convince people that it’s the spiritual main stream and something self-evident, because it’s not. In fact, it stands in opposition to all the religious philosophies I find compelling and impressive.