Creativity: Unleashing the Forces Within

Creativity is the greatest rebellion in existence.

Life in itself has no meaning. Life is an opportunity to create meaning.

Be the celebrators, celebrate! Already there is too much—the flowers have bloomed, the birds are singing, the sun is there in the sky—celebrate it! You are breathing and you are alive and you have consciousness, celebrate it!

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.

Don’t allow your life to become just a dead ritual. Let there be moments, unexplainable.

Creativity is the fragrance of individual freedom.

A creative person is one who has insight, who can see things nobody else has ever seen before, who hears things that nobody has heard before—then there is creativity.

Have you ever thought about it? If somebody asks, “Who are you?” what do you answer? You say your name. The name is not yours, because you came into the world without a name. You came nameless; it is not your property, it has been given to you. And any name, A-B-C-D, would have been useful. It is arbitrary. It is not essential in any way. If you are called “Susan” good; if you are called “Harry” good, it makes no difference. Any name would have been as applicable to you as any other. It is just a label. A name is needed to call you by, but it has nothing to do with your being. Or you say, “I am a doctor” or you say, “I am an engineer”—or a businessman, or a painter, or this and that—but nothing says anything about you. When you say, “I am a doctor,” you say something about your profession, not about you. You say how you earn your living. You don’t say anything about life, you say something about your living. You may be earning your living as an engineer, or as a doctor, or as a businessman—it is irrelevant. It does not say anything about you. Or you say your father’s name, your mother’s name, you give your family tree—that too is irrelevant because that doesn’t define you. Your being born in a particular family is accidental; you could as well have been born in another family and you would not even have noticed the difference. These are just utilitarian tricks—and man becomes a “self.” This self is a pseudoself, a created, manufactured self, homemade. And your own real self remains deep down hidden in mist and mystery. I was reading:

The whole of history is the history of murderers. If you become a murderer, fame will be very easy. You can become a prime minister, you can become a president—but these are all masks. Behind them you will find very violent people, terribly violent people hiding, smiling. Those smiles are political, diplomatic. If the mask slips, you will always see Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, Nadir Shah, Napoleon, Alexander, Hitler, hiding behind.

And that is the essence of wisdom—to be in harmony with nature, with the natural rhythm of the universe. And whenever you are in harmony with the natural rhythm of the universe, you are a poet, you are a painter, you are a musician, you are a dancer.

ACT IN HARMONY WITH NATURE 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.

Dreams have to be made real, not reality changed into dreams.

The creative person has to dissolve all should and should nots. He needs freedom and space, vast space; he needs the whole sky and all the stars. Only then can his innermost spontaneity start growing.

The great appeal of drugs in the West is only because the West has succeeded in destroying the right hemisphere completely because of compulsory education.

Everybody is born creative, but very few people remain creative.

Misery is an indication that you are in conflict.

If you are miserable, you and only you are responsible. Neither the past nor the social structure nor the economic system—nothing is going to help. If you remain you, in any sort of a society, you will remain miserable. In any economic system you will remain miserable, in any world you will remain miserable—if you remain you.

Buddhas also have to be swept away, because the door can become a hindrance if you cling to it.

Ego is very perfectionistic. 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.

True art means if it helps you to become silent, still, joyous; if it gives you a celebration, if it makes you dance—whether anybody participates with you or not is irrelevant. If it becomes a bridge between you and God, that is true art. If it becomes a meditation, that is true art. If you become absorbed in it, so utterly absorbed that the ego disappears, that is true art.

Two silences cannot remain two. They become one.

Now let me tell you the last thing. If nirvana becomes a great goal for you to achieve, then you will be in a nightmare. Then nirvana can become the last and the greatest nightmare.

This should be the way to look at things—you work if you love it, don’t ask for recognition. If it comes, take it easily; if it does not come, don’t think about it.

Whatsoever you do, if you do it joyfully, if you do it lovingly, if your act of doing it is not purely economic, then it is creative. If something grows out of it within you, if it gives you growth, it is spiritual, it is creative, it is divine. You become more divine as you become more creative.

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.

Nobody can say anything about you. Whatsoever people say is about themselves.

Patiesi dzīvs cilvēks ir tāds, kurš ir - šeit un tagad. Viņš nedzīvo no pagātnes un viņš nedzīvo no nākotnes. Viņš dzīvo šajā mirklī, šī mirkļa dēļ. Šis mirklis ir viss.