Osho on creativity, fame and the need for approval, meditation, and how the ego is your disease.
A brief overview of Osho before delving into his own words:
| Who (Identity) | Osho, born Chandra Mohan Jain, later known as Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, an Indian spiritual leader and guru known for his provocative teachings and establishment of a global movement. |
| What (Contributions) | Osho was a controversial yet influential spiritual teacher who propagated a synthesis of Eastern mysticism and Western philosophy. He emphasized meditation, mindfulness, love, celebration, courage, creativity, and humor. He authored numerous books and gave thousands of discourses on various spiritual traditions. |
| When (Period of Influence) | Osho’s teachings were prominent from the 1960s until his death in 1990. His influence continues posthumously through his discourses and the international community of followers and meditation centers. |
| Where (Geographic Focus) | Born in Kuchwada, Madhya Pradesh, India, Osho gained a significant following in India before establishing a commune in Oregon, USA. His teachings attracted a global audience. |
| Why (Artistic Philosophy) | Osho’s philosophy was a blend of Eastern spirituality and Western ideologies, focusing on individual consciousness, freedom, and self-realization. He was critical of traditional religions and encouraged personal transformation through meditation and self-awareness. |
| How (Technique and Style) | Osho was known for his charismatic and unorthodox approach to spirituality. He employed a variety of meditation techniques, including dynamic meditation and Kundalini meditation, to help followers experience spiritual awakening and emotional catharsis. |
The following posts are a collection of selected quotes and excerpts from secondary sources used for educational purposes, with citations found at the end of the article.
Drop The Belief That You Are Uncreative
Drop this belief that you are uncreative. I know how this belief is created: you may not have been a gold medalist 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, neighbors 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.
But this belief of being uncreative can be dangerous — drop it! Each man comes into this world with a specific destiny — he has something to fulfill, 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. 1
The Need For Approval And Recognition
It has to be remembered that the need to have approval and be recognized is everybody’s question. Our whole life’s structure is such that we are taught that unless there is a recognition we are nobody, we are worthless. The work is not important, but the recognition. And this is putting things upside down. The work should be important — a joy in itself. You should work, not to be recognized but because you enjoy being creative; you love the work for its own sake.
There have been very few people who have been able to escape from the trap the society puts you in, like Vincent Van Gogh. He went on painting — hungry, without house, without clothes, without medicine, sick — but he went on painting. Not a single painting was being sold, there was no recognition from anywhere, but the strange thing was that in these conditions he was still happy — happy because what he wanted to paint he has been able to paint. Recognition or no recognition, his work is valuable intrinsically.
You work if you love it. Don’t ask for recognition. If it comes, take it easily; if it does not come, do not think about it. Your fulfillment should be in the work itself. And if everybody learns this simple art of loving his work, whatever it is, enjoying it without asking for any recognition, we would have a more beautiful and celebrating world. As it is, the world has trapped you in a miserable pattern: What you are doing is not good because you love it, because you do it perfectly, but because the world recognizes it, rewards it, gives you gold medals, Nobel prizes.
They have taken away the whole intrinsic value of creativity and destroyed millions of people — because you cannot give millions of people Nobel prizes. And you have created the desire for recognition in everybody, so nobody can work peacefully, silently, enjoying whatever he is doing. And life consists of small things. For those small things there are not rewards, not titles given by the governments, not honorary degrees given by the universities.
Jean-Paul Sartre, one of the great novelists, and a man of tremendous insight into human psychology, refused the Nobel prize. He said, “I have received enough reward while I was creating my work. A Nobel prize cannot add anything to it — on the contrary, it pulls me down. It is good for amateurs who are in search of recognition; I am old enough, and I have enjoyed enough. I have loved whatever I have done. It was its own reward, and I don’t want any other reward, because nothing can be better than that which I have already received.” And he was right. But the right people are so few in the world, and the world is full of wrong people living in traps.
Why should you bother about recognition? Bothering about recognition has meaning only if you don’t love your work; then it is meaningful, then it seems to substitute. You hate the work, you don’t like it, but you are doing it because there will be recognition; you will be appreciated, accepted. Rather than thinking about recognition, reconsider your work. Do you love it? — then that is the end. If you do not love it — then change it!
Learn one basic thing: Do whatever you want to do, love to do, and never ask for recognition. That is begging. Why should one ask for recognition? Why should one hanker for acceptance?
Deep down in yourself, look. Perhaps you don’t like what you are doing, perhaps you are afraid that you are on the wrong track. Acceptance will help you feel that you are right. Recognition will make you feel that you are going towards the right goal. The question is of your own inner feelings; it has nothing to do with the outside world. And why depend on others? All these things depend on others — you yourself are becoming dependent.
I will not accept any Nobel prize. All this condemnation from all the nations around the world, from all the religions, is more valuable to me. Accepting the Nobel prize means I am becoming dependent — now I will not be proud of myself but proud of the Nobel prize. Right now I can only be proud of myself; there is nothing else I can be proud of.
This way you become an individual. And to be an individual living in total freedom, on your own feet, drinking from your own sources, is what makes a man really centered, rooted. That is the beginning of his ultimate flowering.
These so-called recognized people, honored people, are full of rubbish and nothing else. But they are full of the rubbish which the society wants them to be filled with — and the society compensates them by giving them rewards.
Any man who has any sense of his own individuality lives by his own love, by his own work, without caring at all what others think of it. The more valuable your work is, the less is the possibility of getting any respectability for it. And if your work is the work of a genius then you are not going to see any respect in your life. You will be condemned in your life… then, after two or three centuries, statues of you will be made, your books will be respected — because it takes almost two or three centuries for humanity to pick up that much intelligence that a genius has today. The gap is vast.
Being respected by idiots you have to behave according to their manners, their expectations. To be respected by this sick humanity you have to be more sick than they are. Then they will respect you. But what will you gain? You will lose your soul and you will gain nothing. 2
Move Between Disciplines
The greatest creativity happens in people whose training is of some other discipline.
For example, if a mathematician starts playing music he will bring something new to the world of music. If a musician becomes a mathematician he will bring something new to the world of mathematics. All great creativity happens through people who move from one discipline to another.
My suggestion is that people should go on moving from one discipline into another discipline. When you become accustomed to one discipline, when you become imprisoned with the technique, just slip out of it into another discipline. You will find yourself becoming more and more creative. 1
The Ego Is Your Disease
This is the state of creativity: being in harmony with nature, being in tune with life, with the universe. Yielding to a power not of your own, surrendering to a power that is beyond you, is creativity.
Meditation is creativity. And when the ego disappears, the wound in you disappears; you are healed, you are whole. The ego is your disease. And when the ego disappears you are no more dormant, you start flowing. You start flowing with the immense flow of existence.
Norbert Weiner has said, “We are not stuff that abides, but patterns that perpetuate themselves; whirlpools of water in an ever-flowing river.” Then you are not an ego but an event or a process of events. Then you are a process, not a thing. Consciousness is not a thing, it is a process; and we have made it a thing. The moment you call it “I” it becomes a thing – defined, bounded, dormant, stagnant. And you start dying. The ego is your death. And the death of the ego is the beginning of your real life. And real life is creativity.
You need not go to any school to learn creativity. All that you need is to go inwards and help the ego dissolve. Don’t support it, don’t go on strengthening and nourishing it. And whenever the ego is not, all is truth, all is beautiful. And then whatsoever happens is good.
And I am not saying that you all will become Picassos or Shakespeares, I am not saying that. A few of you will become painters, a few of you will become singers, a few of you will become musicians, a few of you dancers – but that is not the point. Each of you will become creative in his own way. You may be a cook, but then there will be creativity. Or you may be just a cleaner, but then there will be creativity. There will be no boredom.
So whatsoever you do then will have the taste of creativity. And we don’t need many painters – if all turn out to be painters, life will become very difficult. We don’t need many poets; we need gardeners too, we need farmers too, and we need all kinds of people. But each person can be creative. If he is meditative and egoless then God starts flowing through him. According to his capacities, according to his potential, God starts taking forms.
And then all is good. You need not become famous. A really creative person does not care a bit about becoming famous; there is no need. He is so tremendously fulfilled in whatsoever he is doing, he is so content with whatsoever he is and wherever he is, that there is no question of desire. When you are creative, desires disappear. When you are creative, ambitions disappear. When you are creative, you are already that which you always wanted to be. 3
Meditation Is The Greatest Source Of Creativity
There is nothing more creative than meditation. Each art and each creativity can be tremendously enhanced by meditation. If somebody is a painter and he starts meditating, his painting will have a sudden jump, it will become tremendously profound – because whatsoever you paint reflects your mind. If the mind goes deeper, your painting will go deeper. You paint your mind. What else can you paint? You paint yourself.
So if something deep happens in you, your painting will immediately start moving in a deeper dimension. Or if you sing, with meditation your song will have a totally different quality to it. It will not be superficial; it will start moving vertically – in depth and in height.
Meditation is the greatest source of creativity. It releases tremendous energy, because tensions are less, anxieties are less, so the energy that was involved in tension and anxiety is no more involved there. It is available. You can create better.
And your art will become more objective. It will become more real. It will not be just a dreamy thing that you are doing not knowing why, that you are doing not knowing what, that you are doing because you feel restless, so you need to do something.
Once you become settled, centred, then art is not like an obsession; it is not an occupation. You do it for a clear-cut purpose… it becomes purposive. It has a direction, it has a message to deliver. And when somebody looks at the painting, or listens to the song, or looks at the dance or the sculpture, he will have a glimpse of what you wanted to convey to him.
Somewhere creativity and meditation have to meet, otherwise both can be dangerous. It has happened in the east. Meditation took a very different route to creativity – it moved away from creativity. It lost all track of creativity. It became escapist.
If meditation loses track of creativity, it becomes escapist. One starts renouncing the world – it becomes suicidal. And if creativity is without meditation – as it is happening in the West – then the creativity goes insane. Both are not good alternatives – suicide and insanity. Many great painters, at sometime or other in their life, were put into the mad asylum. Or even if they were not put, they were insane, people tolerated them. Their painting and their work are enough proof that they were not in their senses. They were possessed, as if by some evil force, or by many forces together, and they were torn apart.
In the West, creativity has taken a route totally different to meditation; in the east, meditation took a route absolutely negating creativity – both have failed. Both had to fail – and it is good that both have failed. Now a totally new world, where creativity and meditation meet together and go hand in hand, is possible in the future. That will be the greatest synthesis between the east and the west, between the active mind and the passive mind, between male and female, Yin and Yang.
Meditation is Yin, creativity is Yang. Meditation is passive, creativity is active. Meditation is female, creativity is male. They both have to meet. And when they both meet, something beautiful happens. 4
If You Want Fame, Don’t Talk About Creativity
Love what you do. Be meditative while you are doing it — whatsoever it is! Creativity means loving whatsoever you do — enjoying, celebrating it, as a gift of God. Maybe nobody comes to know about it.
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. If your act is your love-affair, then it becomes creative. Small things become great by the touch of love and delight.
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.
A man who is after money and power and prestige is a beggar, because he continuously begs. He has nothing to give to the world.
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.
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 by, there are no maps to find him with. 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. 5
Allow The Work To Flow Through You
An artist is an artist only in so far as he allows creation to happen. It is not that he creates. If he creates he is not a creator. He may be composing things but he is not a creator. He may be a technician but he is not an artist.
For example, if you create some poetry, you can create absolutely according to the rules of the poetics, there may not be a single error in it – but it will not be poetry. The grammar may be perfect, the language absolutely right, the rhythm, the metre – and everything okay but it will be just like a dead body; everything perfect, but the body dead. No soul in it. You are not a poet, you may be a technician. You can compose your poetry, you cannot create it.
Because when you create you have to disappear from the scene completely. When you create the Creator creates through you, it is not you. All great poets know it, all great scientists know it – that when they are not, something starts flowing through them; they are taken possession. Something greater than themselves flows through, filters through; they are no more than a passage.
An artist is an artist in so far as he allows creation – not that he does it, it is not an act. That’s why all old poetry is anonymous. Nobody knows who created the Upanishads – so beautiful, so tremendously sublime. Nobody knows who created the caves of Ajanta and Ellora – anonymous. Nobody knows who created the poetry of Khajuraho in stone. Anonymous. The old artists understood it well – it was not their creation, their names should not be there. They had not signed it.
God is the creator, they were just vehicles he used, and they were grateful that they were chosen as vehicles to be used. First-rate poets, artists, painters, musicians, scientists, all know; only the second rate don’t know it. The second rate is an imitator. He imitates the first rate people. Then he is the ego: I am creating. No artist worth the name has ever claimed that he is the creator. 6
ORDINARILY the artist is the most egoistic person in the world. But then he is not a true artist either. He has used art as a means for his ego trip. Artists are VERY egoistic, constantly bragging about themselves, and constantly fighting with each other. And everybody thinks that he is the first and the last. But this is not true art.
The true artist disappears utterly. These people are only technicians; I will not call them artists but technicians. I will not call them creators; I will only call them composers. Yes, to compose a poem is one thing, to create a poem is quite another. To compose poetry one needs to know language, grammar, rules of the grammar – rules of poetics. It is a game with words. And if you know the whole game, you can create poetry. It will not be very poetic, but it will have the appearance of poetry. Technically, it may be perfect, but it will have only the body – the soul will be missing.
The soul happens only when the artist disappears into his art – he is no more separate. When the painter paints with such abandon that he is not there, that he even feels guilty to sign his painting – because he knows he has not done it. Some unknown force has done it through him. He knows that he has been possessed – that has been the experience of all the really great artists down the ages: the feeling of being possessed. The greater the artist, the more clear the feeling is.
And those who are the greatest – a Mozart, a Beethoven, a Kalidas, a Rabindranath – these who are the greatest, they are absolutely certain that they have been nothing but hollow bamboos, and God has been singing through them. They have been flutes, but the song is not theirs. It has flowed through them, but it comes from some unknown source. They have not hindered – that’s all they have done. But they have not created it. The paradox!
The real creator knows that he has not created it. God has worked through him. He has possessed him, his hands, his being, and he has created something through him. He has been instrumental.
This is real art, where the artist disappears – then there is no question of ego. And then art becomes religion. Then the artist is a mystic – not only technically right but existentially authentic. 1
Action is not creativity, inaction also is not creativity. Creativity is a very paradoxical state of consciousness and being: it is action through inaction, it is what Lao Tzu calls WEI-WU-WEI.
It is allowing something to happen through you. It is not a doing, it is an allowing. It is becoming a passage so the whole can flow through you. It is becoming a hollow bamboo, just a hollow bamboo.
And then immediately something starts happening, because hidden behind man is god. Just give him a little way, a little passage, to come through you. That is creativity: allowing God to happen is creativity.
Creativity is a religious state. That’s why I say that a poet is far closer to God than a theologian, a dancer even closer. The philosopher is the farthest away, because the more you think, the greater the wall you create between you and the whole. The more you think, the more you are. The ego is nothing but all the thoughts accumulated in the past.
When you are not, God is. That is creativity.
Creativity simply means you are in a total relaxation. It does not mean inaction, it means relaxation, because out of relaxation much action will be born. But that will not be your doing, you will be just a vehicle. A song will start coming through you – you are not the creator of it, it comes from the beyond. It always comes from the beyond. When you create it, it is just ordinary, mundane. When it comes through you it has superb beauty, it brings something of the unknown in it. 3
Don’t Confine Creativity To Anything In Particular
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.
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. 7
Using Art As Therapy
When people are ill, mentally ill, art can be of help. A mentally ill person can be given canvasses and colours and brush and told to paint whatsoever he wants to paint. Of course, whatsoever he paints will be mad, maddening. But after painting a few mad things, you will be surprised that he is coming back to sanity. That painting has been like a catharsis; it was a vomit. His system has thrown it out.
Now, the so-called modern art is nothing but that. Picasso’s paintings may have saved Picasso from becoming mad, but that’s all there is to it. And they are dangerous for you to meditate upon because if you meditate upon somebody’s vomit, you will go mad. Avoid! Never keep a Picasso painting in your bedroom, otherwise you will have nightmares.
Just think: keep the Picasso painting for fifteen minutes in front of you and go on looking at it… and you will start feeling restlessness, discomfort, giddy, nauseous. What is happening? It is somebody’s vomit! It has helped him, it was good for him, but it is not good for others.
Look at a Michelangelo and you can meditate for hours. And the more you meditate, the more silent and peaceful you will become. It is not a vomit. He has brought something from the unknown. It is not his madness that he has thrown out of his system through the painting or through the sculpture or through the poetry or through music. It is NOT that he was ill and that he wanted to get rid of his illness. No. It was just the opposite. Something had taken root into his being and he wanted to share it. It is a fruitfulness, a fulfillment.
If the ninety percent of so-called art disappears, the world will be far richer – because then there will be real art. If these mad pretenders go… and I am not saying that they should not paint – they should paint, but as therapy. It IS therapeutic. Picasso needs therapy; he should paint, but those paintings should not be on exhibition – or if they are, then only in madhouses. They may help a few mad people to have a release; they are cathartic.
Remember, to me, creativity means meditativeness, creativity means a state of no-mind – then God descends in you, then love flows out of you. Then something happens out of your well-being, overflowing well-being. It is a blessing. Otherwise it is a vomit.
You can paint, you can write, as a therapy, but burn your paintings and burn your poetry. You need not go on exhibiting your vomit to people.
And the people who become interested in your vomit must be ill themselves; they also need therapy – because if you become interested in something, you show who you are, where you are.
I am all for objective art, I am ALL for a meditative art, I am all for something from God to descend. You become the vehicle. 1
Objective vs Subjective Art
Art can be divided into two parts. Ninety-nine percent of art is subjective art. Only one percent is objective art. The ninety-nine percent subjective art has no relationship with meditation. Only one percent objective art is based on meditation.
The subjective art means you are pouring your subjectivity onto the canvas, your dreams, your imaginations, your fantasies. It is a projection of your psychology. The same happens in poetry, in music, in all dimensions of creativity – you are not concerned with the person who is going to see your painting, not concerned what will happen to him when he looks at it; that is not your concern at all. Your art is simply a kind of vomiting. It will help you, just the way vomiting helps. It takes the nausea away, it makes you cleaner, makes you feel healthier. But you have not considered what is going to happen to the person who is going to see your vomit. He will become nauseous. He may start feeling sick.
Look at the paintings of Picasso. He is a great painter, but just a subjective artist. Looking at his paintings, you will start feeling sick, dizzy, something going berserk in your mind. You cannot go on looking at Picasso’s painting for long. You would like to get away, because the painting has not come from a silent being. It has come from a chaos. It is a byproduct of a nightmare. But ninety-nine percent of art belongs to that category.
Objective art is just the opposite. The man has nothing to throw out, he is utterly empty, absolutely clean. Out of this silence, out of this emptiness arises love, compassion. And out of this silence arises a possibility for creativity. This silence, this love, this compassion – these are the qualities of meditation.
Meditation is absolute necessity for any art; then the art will be objective.
Unless you are a creator, you will never find real blissfulness. It is only by creating that you become part of the great creativity of the universe. But to be a creator, meditation is a basic necessity. Without it you can paint, but that painting has to be burned, it has not to be shown to others. It was good, it helped you unburden, but please, don’t burden anybody else. Don’t present it to your friends, they are not your enemies.
Objective art is meditative art, subjective art is mind art. 8
Become A Child Again
Become a child again and you will be creative. All children are creative. Creativity needs freedom – freedom from the mind, freedom from knowledge, freedom from prejudices.
A creative person is one who can try the new. A creative person is not a robot. Robots are never creative, they are repetitive. So become a child again.
And you will be surprised that all children are creative; all children, wherever they are born, are creative. But we don’t allow their creativity, we crush and kill their creativity, we jump upon them. We start teaching them the right way to do things.
Remember, a creative person always goes on trying the wrong ways. If you always follow the right way to do a thing you will never be creative – because the right way means the way discovered by others. And the right way means that of course you will be able to make something, you will become a producer, a manufacturer, you will be a technician, but you will not be a creator.
What is the difference between a producer and a creator? A producer knows the right way of doing a thing, the most economical way of doing a thing; with the least effort he can create more results.
He is a producer. A creator fools around. He does not know what is the right way to do a thing so he goes on seeking and searching again and again in different directions. Many times he moves in a wrong direction, but wherever he moves, he learns. He becomes more and more rich. He does something which nobody has ever done before. If he had followed the right way to do things he would not have been able to do it.
A creator has to be able to look foolish. A creator has to risk his so-called respectability. That’s why you always see that poets, painters, dancers, musicians, are not very respectable people. And when they become respectable, when a Nobel Prize is given to them, they are no longer creative. From that moment creativity disappears.
What happens? Have you ever seen a Nobel Prize winner writing another thing which is of any value? Have you ever seen any respectable person doing something creative? He becomes afraid. If he does something wrong, or if something goes wrong, what will happen to his prestige? He cannot afford that. So when an artist becomes respectable he becomes dead.
Only those who are ready to put their prestige, their pride, their respectability, again and again at stake, and can go on into something which nobody thinks is worth going into…. Creators are always thought to be mad people. The world recognises them, but very late. It goes on thinking that something is wrong. Creators are eccentric people.
And remember again, each child is born with all the capacities to become a creator. Without any exception all children try to be creators but we don’t allow, them. Immediately we start teaching them the right way to do a thing – and once they have learned the right way to do a thing they become robopaths. Then they go on doing the right thing again and again and again, and the more they do it, the more efficient they become. And the more efficient they become, the more respected they are.
The creator cannot be efficient, he has to go on experimenting. The creator cannot settle anywhere. The creator is a vagabond; he carries his tent on his shoulders. Yes, he can stay for an overnight stay, but by the morning he is gone again – that’s why I call him a vagabond. He is never a householder. He cannot settle. Settling means death to him. He is always ready to take a risk. Risk is his love affair.
Down the ages we have learned the trick of how to shift the energy from the right hemisphere to the left hemisphere; how to put a stop to the right hemisphere and how to start the left hemisphere. That’s what our whole schooling is. From kindergarten to university that’s what our whole training and so called education is. It is an effort to destroy the right hemisphere and to help the left hemisphere. Somewhere between the ages of seven and fourteen we succeed and the child is killed, the child is destroyed.
Then the child is wild no more – he becomes a citizen. Then he learns the ways of discipline, language, logic, prose. He starts competing in the school, becomes an egoist, starts learning all the neurotic things that are prevalent in the society, becomes more interested in power, money, starts thinking how to become more educated so that he can become more powerful, how to have more money, how to have a big house, and all that. He shifts.
You ask me: “I want to be creative, what should I do?”
Undo all that the society has done to you; undo all that your parents and your teachers have done to you; undo all that the policeman and the politician and the priest have done to you – and you will again become creative, you will again have that thrill that you had in the very beginning. It is still waiting there, repressed. It can uncoil.
And when that creative energy uncoils in you, you are religious. To me a religious person is one who is a creative person. Everybody is born creative but very few people remain creative.
It is for you to come out of the trap. You can. Of course, you will need great courage because when you start undoing what the society has done to you, you will lose respect. You will not be thought to be respectable. You will start becoming bizarre; you will look bizarre to people. You will look like a freak. People will think, ‘Something has gone wrong with the poor man.’ This is the greatest courage – to go into a life where people start thinking you are bizarre. 9
Technique
In Zen they have an ancient tradition. They say if you want to become a painter, for twelve years learn as perfectly as possible the technique of how to paint, and then for twelve years forget all about the technique and painting; do something else. Turn your back on painting completely; forget all about it, as if you have nothing to do with it. And then one day start painting again.
This is something significant. For twelve years you have to learn the technique, because without the technique your painting will be childish; but if it is just the technique, then technically it will be perfect but it will not have any life, it will not be creative. So you have to learn the technique, let it soak in and then forget all about it so it becomes part of your blood, of your bones, of your marrow. And then after twelve years, one day suddenly start painting again. Now you don’t know the technique. In a way you know, existentially it has become part of you; it is no longer knowledge. So your painting will not be just technical and it will not be childish either.
First learn the technique and then unlearn the technique. Only then one day does creativity explode. First learn the technique of how to dance, then forget all about technique and become spontaneous.
And there are two types of people – one who will think that there is no need to learn the technique: “I want to be a creative person, not a technician.” Then their painting, their music, their dance, will remain just a childish effort, amateurish; cannot be of much value. And then there are the opposite people who will learn the technique as much as they can and then they are caught in the technique. They paint perfectly but something is missing: the soul is missing, the spirit is missing; it is a dead corpse. So you have to drop all knowledgeability. You have to unlearn so again you can become fresh, innocent. 1
The Real Artist Never Thinks Of Perfection
First, the less of the artist is in it, the more perfect it is. When the artist is absolutely absent, then the creativity is absolutely perfect. In THIS proportion, you have to remember. The more the artist is present, the less perfect the product will be. If the artist is too much present, the product will be nauseating, it will be neurotic. It will be just ego – what else can it be? Ego is neurosis.
And one thing more to be remembered: ego always wants to be perfect. Ego is a very perfectionistic one. Ego always wants to be higher and better than others. Hence it is perfectionist. But through ego perfection is never possible. So the effort is absurd. Perfection is possible only when the ego is not. But then one never thinks of perfection at all.
So the real artist never thinks of perfection. He has no idea of perfection. He simply allows himself into a surrender, into a let go , and whatsoever happens happens. The real artist thinks certainly of totality, but never of perfection. He wants to be totally in it, that’s all. When he dances, he wants to disappear into the dance. He does not want to be there, because the presence of the dancer will be a disturbance in the dance. The grace, the flow, will be disturbed, obstructed. When the dancer is not there, all rocks have disappeared, the flow is very silent, smooth.
The real artist certainly thinks of totality – how to be total? – but never thinks of perfection. And the beauty is: those who are total, they are perfect. And those who think of perfection are never perfect, never total. Rather, on the contrary: the more they think of perfection, the more neurotic they become. They have ideals. They are always comparing, and they are always falling short!
If you have an ideal that unless this ideal is fulfilled, you will not think yourself perfect, how can you be total in your act? If you think, for example, that you have to be a dancer like Nijinsky, then how can you be total in your dance? You are constantly looking, watching yourself, trying to improve, afraid to commit any fault… you are divided. A part of you is dancing, another part of you is there – judgemental, standing by the side condemning, criticizing. You are divided, you are split.
Nijinsky was perfect because he was total. It used to happen that when he danced and he would take leaps in his dance, people could not believe their eyes, even scientists could not believe their eyes. His leap was such that it was against the law of gravitation – it should not happen! And when he fell back, he would come so slowly, like a feather… that too is against the law of gravitation.
He was asked about it again and again. The more people asked, the more he became conscious of it, the more it started disappearing. A moment came in his life when it stopped completely, and the reason was that he became conscious of it – he lost his totality. Then he understood it, why it had disappeared. It used to happen, but it used to happen only when Nijinsky was completely lost into the dance. In that complete loosening, in that complete relaxation, one functions in a totally different world, according to different laws. 1
The Difference Between Intellect And Intelligence
Intellect is egoistic; intelligence is humble, egoless. The difference is subtle; because both the words come from the same root, hence one can easily be deceived. Beware, be alert! Intellect is not intelligence. Intelligence is creative, intellect is only a pretender. In the name of creativity it goes on producing rubbish.
But your universities don’t create Shakespeares, Miltons, Dostoevskys, Tolstoys, Rabindranaths, Kahlil Gibrans. Your universities create just junk, utterly useless. This is intellectual activity that goes on in the universities. Intelligence creates a Picasso, a Van Gogh, a Mozart, a Beethoven.
Intelligence is a totally different dimension. It has nothing to do with the head; it has something to do with the heart. Intellect is in the head; intelligence is a state of heart- wakefulness. When your heart is awake, when your heart is dancing in deep gratitude, when your heart is in tune with existence, in harmony with existence, out of that harmony is creativity.
There is no possibility of any intellectual creativity. It can produce rubbish, it is productive; it can manufacture, but it cannot create. And what is the difference between manufacturing and creating? Manufacturing is a mechanical activity. Computers can do it – they are already doing it, and doing it in a far more efficient way than you can hope from man. Intelligence creates, it does not manufacture.
Manufacturing means a repetitive exercise; what has already been done, you go on doing again and again. Creativity means bringing the new into existence, making a way for the unknown to penetrate the known, making a way for the sky to come to the earth.
When there is a Beethoven or a Michelangelo or a Kalidas, the skies open, flowers shower from the beyond. I am not telling you anything about Buddha, Christ, Krishna, Mahavira, Zarathustra, Mohammed, for a certain reason: because what THEY create is so subtle that you will not be able to catch hold of it. What Michelangelo creates is gross; what Van Gogh creates can be seen, is visible. What a buddha creates is absolutely invisible. It needs a totally different kind of receptivity to understand.
To understand a buddha you have to be intelligent. Not only that Buddha’s creation is of tremendous intelligence, but it is so superb, it is so supramental, that even to understand it you will have to be intelligent. Intellect won’t help even in understanding.
Only two kinds of people create: the poets and the mystics. The poets create in the gross world and the mystics create in the subtle world. The poets create in the outer world: a painting, a poem, a song, music, a dance; and the mystic creates in the inner world. The poet’s creativity is objective and the mystic’s creativity is subjective, totally of the interior. First you have to understand the poet, only then can you understand one day – at least HOPE to understand one day – the mystic. The mystic is the highest flower of creativity. But you may not see anything that the mystic is doing.
You cannot be a spectator with a buddha; you have to be a participant, because it is a mystery to be participated in. Then you will see what he is creating. He is creating consciousness, and consciousness is the purest form, the highest form possible, of God’s expression.
A song is beautiful, a dance is beautiful, because something of the divine is present in it.
But in a buddha the whole of God is present. That’s why we have called Buddha “Bhagwan,” we have called Mahavira “Bhagwan” – the whole of God is present.
But students won’t be able to see it. Disciples will be able to decipher a little bit, and devotees will be able to drink out of it.
Intellectual activity can make you experts in certain things, useful, efficient. But intellect is a groping in the dark; it has no eyes, because it is not yet meditative. Intellect is borrowed, it has no insight of its own.
The expert, the knowledgeable, the intellectual, has no insight of his own. He depends on borrowed knowledge, on tradition, on convention. He carries libraries in his head, a great burden, but he has no vision. He knows much without knowing anything at all.
And because life is not the same ever – it is constantly changing, moment to moment it is new – the expert always lags behind, his response is always inadequate. He can only react, he cannot respond, because he is not spontaneous. He has already arrived to conclusions; he is carrying ready-made answers – and the questions that life raises are always new.
Moreover, life is not a logical phenomenon. And the intellectual lives through logic; hence he never fits with life and life never fits with him. Of course life is not at a loss; the intellectual himself is at a loss. He is always feeling like an outsider – not that life has expelled him; he himself has decided to remain outside life. If you cling too much to logic you will never be able to be part of the living process that this existence is.
Life is more than logic: life is paradox, life is mystery.
Intelligence is awakening, and unless you are fully awake, whatsoever you decide is bound to be wrong somewhere or other. It is bound to be so, it is doomed to be wrong, because it is a conclusion arrived at by an unconscious mind.
To bring intelligence into activity you don’t need more information, you need more meditation. You need to become more silent, you need to become more thoughtless.
You need to become less mind and more heart. You need to become aware of the magic that surrounds you: magic that is life, magic that is in the green trees and the red flowers, magic that is in people’s eyes. Magic is happening everywhere! All is miraculous, but because of your intellect you remain closed inside yourself, clinging to your stupid conclusions arrived at in unconsciousness or given to you by others who are as unconscious as you are.
Intelligence is certainly creative because intelligence brings your totality into functioning – not only a part, a small part, the head. Intelligence vibrates your whole being; each cell of your being, each fiber of your life starts dancing, and falls in a subtle harmony with the total.
That’s what creativity is: to pulsate in absolute harmony with the total. 10
A Creator Should Not Carry Any Beliefs
A creator will not carry many beliefs; in fact, none. He will carry only his own experiences. And the beauty of experience is that the experience is always open, because further exploration is possible. And belief is always closed; it comes to a full point. Belief is always finished. Experience is never finished, it remains unfinished. While you are living how can your experience be finished? Your experience is growing, it is changing, it is moving. It is continuously moving from the known into the unknown and from the unknown into the unknowable.
Mind is all your beliefs collected together. Openness means no-mind; openness means you put your mind aside and you are ready to look into life again and again in a new way, not with the old eyes. The mind gives you the old eyes, it gives you again ideas: “Look through this.” But then the thing becomes colored; then you don’t look at it, then you project an idea upon it.
Then the truth becomes a screen on which you go on projecting. Look through no-mind, look through nothingness. When you look through no-mind your perception is efficient, because then you see that which is. And truth liberates. Everything else creates a bondage, only truth liberates.
In those moments of no-mind, truth starts filtering into you like light. The more you enjoy this light, this truth, the more you become capable and courageous to drop your mind. Sooner or later a day comes when you look and you don’t have any mind. You are not looking for anything, you are simply looking. Your look is pure. In that moment you become avalokita, one who looks with pure eyes. That is one of the names of Buddha – Avalokita: he looks with no ideas, he simply looks. 1
Find Meaning By Creating It
LIFE IN ITSELF HAS NO MEANING. Life is an opportunity to create meaning. Meaning has not to be discovered: it has to be created. You will find meaning only if you create it. It is not lying there somewhere behind the bushes, so you can go and you search a little bit and find it. It is not there like a rock that you will find. It is a poetry to be composed, it is a song to be sung, it is a dance to be danced.
Meaning is a dance, not a rock. Meaning is music. You will find I only if you create it. Remember it! Millions of people are living meaningless lives because of this utterly stupid idea that meaning has to be discovered. As if it is already there. All that you need is to just pull the curtain, and behold, meaning is here! It is not like that.
So remember: Buddha finds the meaning because he creates it. I found it because I created it. God is not a thing but a creation. And only those who create find. And it is good that meaning is not lying there somewhere, otherwise one person would have discovered it – then what would be the need for everybody else to discover it?
So the first thing: religion has to be creative. Up to now, religion has remained very passive, almost impotent. You don’t expect a religious person to be creative. You just expect him to fast, sit in a cave, get up early in the morning, chant mantras… and this kind of stupid thing. And you are perfectly satisfied! What is he doing? And you praise him because he goes on long fasts. Maybe he is a masochist; maybe he enjoys torturing himself. He sits there when it is icy cold, naked, and you appreciate him. But what is the POINT, what is the value in it? All the animals of the world are naked in the icy cold – they are not saints. Or when it is hot, he sits in the hot sun, and you appreciate him.
You say, “Look! here is a great ascetic.” But what is he doing? What is his contribution to the world? What beauty has he added to the world? Has he changed the world a little bit? Has he made it a little more sweet, more fragrant? No, you don’t ask that.
Now, I tell you, this has to be asked: Praise a man because he has created a song. Praise a man because he has created a beautiful sculpture. Praise a man because he plays such a beautiful flute. Let these be religious qualities from now onwards. Praise a man because he is such a lover – love is religion. Praise a man: because of him the world is becoming more graceful.
Forget all these stupid things! – fasting and just sitting in a cave, torturing oneself or Lying down on a bed of nails. Praise a man because he has cultivated beautiful roses. The world is more colorful because of him. And then you will find meaning. Meaning comes out of creativity. Religion has to become more poetic, more aesthetic.
Drop knowledge and become more creative. Remember, knowledge is gathered – you need not be creative about it; you have only to be receptive. And that’s what man has become: man is reduced to being a spectator. He reads the newspapers, he reads the Bible and the Koran and the Gita; he goes to the movie, sits there and sees the movie; he goes to the football match, or sits before his TV, listens to the radio… and so on and so forth. Twenty-four hours a day he is just in a kind of inactivity, a spectator. Others are doing things, and he is simply watching. You will not find meaning by watching.
You can see a thousand and one lovers making love and you will not know what love is – you will not know that orgasmic abandonment by watching. You will have to become a participant. Meaning comes through participation. Participate in life! Participate as deeply, as totally, as possible. Risk all for participation. If you want to know what dance is, don’t go and see a dancer – learn dancing, be a dancer. If you want to know anything, participate! That is the true and the right way, the authentic way, to know a thing. And there will be great meaning in your life. And not only one-dimensional – multi-dimensional meanings. You will be showered by meanings.
And life has to be multi-dimensional, then only is there meaning. Never make life one-dimensional. That too is a problem. Somebody becomes an engineer, and then he thinks all is finished. He becomes identified with being an engineer. Then his whole life he is just an engineer. And there were millions of things available. But he moves only on one track, becomes bored. Is fed up. Is tired, wearied. Goes on dragging. Waits only for death. What meaning can there be?
Have more interests in life. Don’t be always a businessman. Sometimes play too. Don’t be just a doctor or an engineer, or a headmaster, or a professor – be as many things as possible! Play cards, play the violin, sing a song, be an amateur photographer, a poet…. Find as many things as possible in life, and then you will have richness. And meaning is a by-product of richness.
Don’t allow your life to become just a dead ritual. Let there be moments, unexplainable. Let there be a few things which are mysterious, for which you cannot supply any reason. Let there be a few doings for which people will think you are a little crazy. A man who is a hundred percent sane is dead. A little bit of craziness by the side is always a great joy. Go on doing a few crazy things too.
And then meaning will be possible. 11
Surpassing Yourself
Simone de Beauvoir has said, “Life is occupied both in perpetuating itself and in surpassing itself; if all it does is maintain itself, then living is only not dying.”
And the man who is not creative is only not dying, that’s all. His life has no depth. His life is not yet life but just a preface; the book of life has not yet started. He is born, true, but he is not alive.
When you become creative, when you allow creativity to happen through you, when you start singing a song that is not your own – that you cannot sign and you cannot say, “It is my own,” on which you cannot put your signature – then life take wings, it upsurges.
In creativity is the surpassing. Otherwise, at the most we can go on perpetuating ourselves. You create a child – it is not creativity. You will die and the child will be here to perpetuate life. But to perpetuate is not enough unless you start surpassing yourself. And surpassing happens only when something of the beyond comes in contact with you. That is the point of transcendence – surpassing. 3
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References and Related Resources
- Creativity: Unleashing the Forces Within, Osho, 1999
- Life Consists Of Little Things, Beyond Psychology, Osho
- The Bridge of Love and Laughter, Unio Mystica Volume 1, Osho
- This Night let Christ be Born to You, Blessed Are The Ignorant, Osho
- A Sudden Clash of Thunder, Talk #4, Osho
- Tao: The Three Treasures, Vol. 3, #4, Osho
- A Sudden Clash of Thunder, Talk #4, Osho
- A Genius In Exploitation, The Last Testament, Vol. 3, Osho
- A Certain Milieu, Sufis The People of the Path Volume 1 Osho, 1999
- The Dhammapada, Vol 5, 02, Osho
- The Perfect Master, Volume 2, Chapter 4, Osho