WHAT IS CREATIVITY? – CREATIVITY IS A QUALITY

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WHAT IS CREATIVITY? – CREATIVITY IS A QUALITY

Postby Ghanshyam Savani » Fri Jan 06, 2017 10:09 pm

WHAT IS CREATIVITY? – CREATIVITY IS A QUALITY


Questioner:

I believed I was uncreative. What else can be creativity besides dancing and painting and how to find out what my creativity is?

Osho:

"Creativity has nothing to do with any activity in particular – with painting, poetry, dancing, singing. It has nothing to do with anything in particular.
"Anything can be creative – you bring that quality to the activity. Activity itself is neither creative nor uncreative. You can paint in an uncreative way. You can sing in an uncreative way. You can clean the floor in a creative way. You can cook in a creative way.

"Creativity is the quality that you bring to the activity you are doing. It is an attitude, an inner approach – how you look at things.

"So the first thing to be remembered: don't confine creativity to anything in particular. A man is creative – and if he is creative, whatsoever he does, even if he walks, you can see in his walking there is creativity. Even if he sits silently and does nothing, even non-doing will be a creative act. Buddha sitting under the Bodhi Tree doing nothing is the greatest creator the world has ever known. Once you understand it – that it is you, the person, who is creative or uncreative – then this problem disappears.

"Not everybody can be a painter – and there is no need also. If everybody is a painter the world will be very ugly; it will be difficult to live. And not everybody can be a dancer, and there is no need. But everybody can be creative.

"Whatsoever you do, if you do it joyfully, if you do it lovingly, if your act of doing it is not purely economical, then it is creative. If you have something growing out of it within you, if it gives you growth, it is spiritual, it is creative, it is divine.

"Love what you do. Be meditative while you are doing it – whatsoever it is! Irrelevant of the fact of what it is.

"Creativity means loving whatsoever you do – enjoying, celebrating it, as a gift of existence! Maybe nobody comes to know about it. Who is going to praise Paras for cleaning this floor? History will not take any account of it; newspapers will not publish her name and pictures – but that is irrelevant. She enjoyed it. The value is intrinsic.

"So if you are looking for fame and then you think you are creative – if you become famous like Picasso, then you are creative - then you will miss. Then you are, in fact, not creative at all: you are a politician, ambitious. If fame happens, good. If it doesn't happen, good. It should not be the consideration. The consideration should be that you are enjoying whatsoever you are doing. It is your love-affair.

"The questioner asks: 'I believed I was uncreative.' If you believe in that way, you will become uncreative – because belief is not just belief. It opens doors; it closes doors. If you have a wrong belief, then that will hang around you as a closed door. If you believe that you are uncreative, you will become uncreative – because that belief will obstruct, continuously negate, all possibilities of flowing. It will not allow your energy to flow because you will continuously say: 'I am uncreative.'

"This has been taught to everybody. Very few people are accepted as creative: A few painters, a few poets – one in a million. This is foolish! Every human being is a born creator. Watch children and you will see: all children are creative. By and by, we destroy their creativity. By and by, we force wrong beliefs on them. By and by, we distract them. By and by, we make them more and more economical and political and ambitious. "When ambition enters, creativity disappears – because an ambitious man cannot be creative, because an ambitious man cannot love any activity for its own sake. While he is painting he is looking ahead; he is thinking, 'When am I going to get a Nobel Prize?' When he is writing a novel, he is looking ahead. He is always in the future – and a creative person is always in the present.

"We destroy creativity. Nobody is born uncreative, but we make ninety-nine percent of people uncreative. "But just throwing the responsibility on the society is not going to help – you have to take your life in your own hands. You have to drop wrong conditionings. You have to drop wrong, hypnotic auto-suggestions that have been given to you in your childhood. Drop them! Purify yourself of all conditionings, and suddenly you will see you are creative.

"To be and to be creative are synonymous. It is impossible to be and not to be creative. But that impossible thing has happened, that ugly phenomenon has happened, because all your creative sources have been plugged, blocked, destroyed, and your whole energy has been forced into some activity that the society thinks is going to pay.

"Our whole attitude about life is money-oriented. And money is one of the most uncreative things one can become interested in. Our whole approach is power-oriented and power is destructive, not creative. A man who is after money will become destructive, because money has to be robbed, exploited; it has to be taken away from many people, only then can you have it. Power simply means you have to make many people impotent, you have to destroy them – only then will you be powerful, can you be powerful. Remember: these are destructive acts.

"A creative act enhances the beauty of the world; it gives something to the world, it never takes anything from it. A creative person comes into the world, enhances the beauty of the world – a song here, a painting there. He makes the world dance better, enjoy better, love better, meditate better. When he leaves this world, he leaves a better world behind him. Nobody may know him; somebody may know him – that is not the point. But he leaves the world a better world, tremendously fulfilled because his life has been of some intrinsic value.

"Money, power, prestige, are uncreative; not only uncreative, but destructive activities. Beware of them! And if you beware of them you can become creative very easily. I am not saying that your creativity is going to give you power, prestige, money. No, I cannot promise you any rose-gardens. It may give you trouble. It may force you to live a poor man's life. All that I can promise you is that deep inside you will be the richest man possible; deep inside you will be fulfilled; deep inside you will be full of joy and celebration. You will be continuously receiving more and more blessings from God. Your life will be a life of benediction.

"But it is possible that outwardly you may not be famous, you may not have money, you may not succeed in the so-called world. But to succeed in this so-called world is to fail deeply, is to fail in the inside world. And what are you going to do with the whole world at your feet if you have lost your own self? What will you do if you possess the whole world and you don't possess yourself? A creative person possesses his own being; he is a master.

"Be a giver. Share whatsoever you can. And remember, I am not making any distinction between small things and great things. If you can smile whole-heartedly, hold somebody's hand and smile, then it is a creative act, a great creative act. Just embrace somebody to your heart and you are creative. Just look with loving eyes at somebody; just a loving look can change the whole world of a person.

"Be creative. Don't be worried about what you are doing. One has to do many things, but do everything creatively, with devotion. Then your work becomes worship. Then whatsoever you do is prayerfulness. And whatsoever you do is an offering at the altar.

"Drop this belief that you are uncreative. I know how this belief is created: you may not have been a gold medallist in the university; you may not have been top in your class; your painting may not have won appreciation; when you play on your flute, neighbours report to the police. Maybe – but just because of these things, don't get the wrong belief that you are uncreative. That may be because you are imitating others.

"People have a very limited idea of what being creative is – playing the guitar or the flute or writing poetry – so people go on writing rubbish in the name of poetry. You have to find out what you can do and what you cannot do. Everybody cannot do everything. You have to search and find your destiny. You have to grope in the dark, I know. It is not very clear-cut what your destiny is, but that's how life is. And it is good that one has to search for it – in the very search, something grows.

"If you don’t love your life and you love something else, then there is a problem. If you love money and you want to be creative, you cannot become creative. The very ambition for money is going to destroy your creativity. If you want fame, then forget about creativity. Fame comes easier if you are destructive. Fame comes easier to an Adolf Hitler; fame comes easier to a Henry Ford. Fame is easier if you are competitive, violently competitive. If you can kill and destroy people, fame comes easier.

"If you want fame, don't talk about creativity. I am not saying that fame never comes to a creative person, but very rarely it comes, very rarely. It is more like an accident, and it takes much time. Almost always it happens that by the time fame comes to a creative person, he is gone – it is always posthumous; it is very delayed.
"The greater a person is, the more time it takes for people to recognize him – because when a great person is born, there are no criteria to judge him, there are no maps to find him. He has to create his own values; by the time he has created the values, he is gone. It takes thousands of years for a creative person to be recognized, and then too it is not certain. There have been many creative people who have never been recognized. It is accidental for a creative person to be successful. For an uncreative, destructive person it is more certain.

"So if you are seeking something else in the name of creativity, then drop the idea of being creative. At least consciously, deliberately, do whatsoever you want to do. Never hide behind masks. If you really want to be creative, then there is no question of money, success, prestige, respectability. Then you enjoy your activity; then each act has an intrinsic value. You dance because you like dancing; you dance because you delight in it. If somebody appreciates, good, you feel grateful. If nobody appreciates, it is none of your business to be worried about it. You danced, you enjoyed – you are already fulfilled.

"But this belief of being uncreative can be dangerous – drop it. Nobody is uncreative – not even trees, not even rocks. People who have known trees and loved trees, know that each tree creates its own space, each rock creates its own space. It is like nobody else's space. If you become sensitive, if you become capable of understanding, through empathy, you will be tremendously benefited. You will see each tree is creative in its own way; no other tree is like that, each tree is unique; each tree has individuality, each rock has individuality. Trees are not just trees, they are people. Rocks are not just rocks, they are people. Go and sit by the side of a rock – watch it lovingly, touch it lovingly, feel it lovingly.

"Even trees are creative, rocks are creative. You are man, the very culmination of this existence. You are at the top, you are conscious. Never think with wrong beliefs, and never be attached to wrong beliefs, that you are uncreative. Maybe your father said to you that you are uncreative, your colleagues said to you that you are uncreative. Maybe you were searching in wrong directions, in directions in which you are not creative, but there must be a direction in which you are creative. Seek and search and remain available, and go on groping – unless you find it.

"Each man comes into this world with a specific destiny: he has something to fulfil, some message has to be delivered, some work has to be completed. You are not here accidentally, you are here meaningfully. There is a purpose behind you. The whole intends to do something through you."

-OSHO
A Sudden Clash of Thunder, Talk #4
(The answer is summarised)
Ghanshyam Savani
 
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Re: WHAT IS CREATIVITY? – CREATIVITY IS A QUALITY

Postby Ganesh H Shankar » Sat Jan 07, 2017 9:29 am

Ganesh H. Shankar
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Re: WHAT IS CREATIVITY? – CREATIVITY IS A QUALITY

Postby Ghanshyam Savani » Mon Feb 20, 2017 10:09 pm

BELOVED OSHO,

COULD YOU SPEAK OF THE CREATIVE FEMALE? I AM A WOMAN, AND THE CREATIVE SPIRIT BURNS STRONGLY IN ME. RECENTLY, YOU MENTIONED THAT THERE SHOULD BE MUCH ART AND MUSIC, BUT IT WAS IN REFERENCE TO MEN. I KNOW WOMEN CAN OFFER A VISION, AN INSIGHT, A SOFTNESS TO THE WORLD OF ART THAT HAS NEVER BEFORE BEEN SEEN. I FEEL IT HAS A DIFFERENT BASE TO START FROM. PERHAPS IT IS BECAUSE ART CAN BE BORN OUT OF LOVE AND NO LONGER NEEDS TO BE CONQUERED.

Creativity is not concerned whether you are man or woman. If you feel to be creative, do it. But don’t think that you are going to give creativity something higher, something that man has failed to do.

Why always go on putting dividing lines between man and woman? The truth is that every man carries a woman within him, and every woman carries a man within her. And it is bound to be so, because whether you are man or woman, you are created by one man, one woman. They have contributed to you half and half. Your father and your mother both are alive in you. It is only a question of which side of the coin is facing up and which side is underneath.

Certainly, it will be a better art if both men and women are creating from their different angles. But the way you say it, you don’t understand creativity at all. You say creativity can be out of love; painting, sculpture and dancing need not be conquered. But the possibility is ninety-nine percent that love is so fulfilling you will not bother to paint. You will not bother to waste your time in making a statue.

Love is so fulfilling that who cares about writing poetry? Poetry is written by people who have missed the train. Now they are somehow consoling themselves by writing poetry about love – love they do not know.

It is very difficult to be creative out of love. Yes, a different kind of creativity will be there. If you love a man, perhaps your kitchen will become the field of your creativity. You would like your man to have the best food. You would like the man to have the best clothes. Just look at my clothes! This is creativity out of love.
Rarely is it possible for a woman who loves, to be bothered about painting, poetry, dancing, et cetera. It is really man’s inferiority complex – that he cannot love so deeply, that he cannot give birth to a child – that makes him have to find some substitutes to compete with the woman. He creates painting, he creates sculpture, he creates architecture, he creates the landscape for a garden. He wants to feel that he can also create. It is basically coming out of his inferiority. He can see the woman and her immense power of creating life. He creates a dead statue – howsoever beautiful it is, it is dead.

Whoever has asked the question seems to be against men, and any woman who is against men is herself becoming something unnatural. Being against men, she is becoming a man herself. Psychologically she is now feeling inferior because the man can paint and create music and dance. Naturally, she will have to stop giving birth to children so her own creativity can be directed towards these things: painting, poetry, music.

But I would like you to know you that will be a loser. You are competing with man, and you need not compete; you are already superior. You need not write poetry, you are poetry. Your love is your music. Your heart throbbing with your lover is your dance!

But if you want to create poetry, music and dance, you will have to deprive yourself of love. You will have to be in the same space where man is: feeling inferior and then finding substitutes for creativity. That is ugly. I cannot give my support to it. The woman is the superior sex; she need not prove it.

But if she feels that she has no desire for children, and she wants to paint and she wants to compose music, it is perfectly good.

In fact, many women should do that, because the earth is so overpopulated. You will be a great help if you divert your creativity from children to paintings, because paintings don’t need food. Dancing is perfectly good. Dance as much as you want, it creates no Ethiopia. Write poetry. Because of your poetry, perhaps a few people will have to suffer listening to it, getting bored with it, but that is not much of a problem. They can manage to avoid you.

But if there is no desire to give birth to children, it is absolutely right. Certainly you will have to create something else. Do it, but don’t think that your creativity will be higher than that of man. It cannot be, for the simple reason that you are the superior sex, you don’t have that inferiority in you which is the incentive for man to put all his life into his painting.

He is competing with your baby! And even if he is a Picasso, he dies in despair. His whole life he tried to paint something, but no painting can be alive, no poetry can be alive. So remember that a woman can create, but most probably her creativity will be just third-rate. But it is good for the world. We don’t want any more population, we want to cut the population to one-fourth of what it is today. So you will be helping a great project. You will be a blessing not giving birth to a child.

But drop the idea that you will be creating something superior out of love. If you really want to create something, don’t think of love either, because love is so satisfying, so fulfilling. It is such a miracle, who wants to write poetry?

I have never come across a single lover, man or woman, who has created poetry, who has created paintings, who has created sculptures, for the simple reason that they are so contented. All these creative things need a discontent, a wound which you have to cover up.

I am perfectly happy with your idea. Just do whatever creative endeavor you want to; but remember, you don’t have the inferiority complex of man, so you cannot compete with man in any way. You are already in a better position. Man is poor; just have compassion on the poor guy.

Osho:
From the Book: From Death to Deathlessness
Ghanshyam Savani
 
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