Question 2 :

What is creativity? does it correspond more to the path of awareness or to the path of love? or is it a child of both?

 

 

CREATIVITY is when you are not, because creativity is the fragrance of the creator. It is the presence of God in you. Creativity belongs to the creator, not to you. No man can ever be creative. Yes, man can compose, construct, but can never be a creator.

 

When man disappears, when man becomes utterly absent, a new kind of presence enters his being — the presence of God. Then there is creativity. When God is inside you His light that starts falling around you is creativity. The climate that arises around you because of the presence of God within you is creativity.

 

It has nothing to do with awareness or love, although the creative person is both. The creative person is aware, the creative person is loving, but the creative person is neither a meditator nor a lover — loving yes, but there is no lover; meditativeness yes, but there is no meditator.

 

And when there is nobody inside you, that very nobodiness brings creativity. It springs, it wells up, you become full of it. Whatsoever you touch becomes gold. It is not your touch, remember; the miracle is always God’s. It has nothing to do with the path of love or with the path of awareness. The path of love and the path of awareness bring you to God because they help you to disappear.

 

When God is there, then creativity is simply a consequence of His presence, just His presence. You can attain to His presence through love or awareness, it doesn’t matter. How you annihilate yourself is irrelevant; the only thing is that you should be annihilated, that you should not be. Do it through love, that will do. How you commit suicide does not matter, with what kind of poison. Whether you jump from a cliff, or you lie down in front of a railway train, or you shoot yourself, or you hang yourself, it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that you should have committed the suicide of the ego: through love, through awareness; through Yoga, through Tantra, Taoism, Zen, Sufism, Hassidism. It doesn’t matter; these are different ways of committing suicide. I don’t mean the physical, I mean the metaphysical. Once you are not there, all that is left is God.

 

You ask me, “DOES IT CORRESPOND MORE TO THE PATH OF AWARENESS OR TO THE PATH OF LOVE? OR IS IT A CHILD OF BOTH?”

 

It has nothing to do with the path. Creativity is possible only when the goal is achieved; it is a by-product of the goal. And don’t start thinking in terms of a cross-breeding; cross-breeding is dangerous. You are thinking, “Or is it a child of both?”

 

Just the other day I was reading… A farmer was very fond of cross-breeding. First he crossed a chicken with a goose and got a ‘choose’. Then he crossed a pheasant with an eagle and got ‘pheagle’. Then he crossed a road with a bicycle and got killed.

 

Beware of cross-breeding. If you feel at home with love, it will do; or if you feel at home with awareness it will do. Just remember one thing: that somehow, manage to disappear.

 

There are people who need not even go on any path, love or meditation. Just the sheer intelligence is enough, just seeing the point is enough. Just seeing, “How can I be? I cannot exist alone, separate. I cannot exist as an island. I am continuously connected with the whole. I am breathing from every pore of my body; even if for a few seconds the breathing stops, I will be no more.”

 

You are continuously eating, drinking. What are you eating? — the universe, that’s what you are eating. What are you breathing? — the universe, that’s what you are breathing. What are you drinking? — the universe, that’s what you are drinking. Continuously, the universe is going in and passing out. You are just a passage. The breath comes in, refreshes you, rejuvenates you, goes out, another breath comes in…. We are in a continuous relationship with existence. In fact, to say it is a relationship is not right: we are one with existence.

 

If one is REALLY intelligent, then neither love nor meditation — just intelligence is enough. Just to see the point that we are one with existence, hence there is nobody separate, and the ego is gone. And the going of the ego is the coming of God. In fact, God is always there; just because of the ego you cannot see Him. And to see yourself as divine, as part of this immense existence, is the beginning of creativity.

 

And this is not only the experience of the mystics. Of course this is the experience of all the mystics of the world: you can ask Kabir or Eckhart, you can ask Farid or Mansoor, you can ask Lieh Tzu or Rinzai. You can ask different kinds of mystics, born in different times, to different races, in different countries, unaware of each other’s existence, and they will all say one thing: “The moment I disappeared, God came in. Or maybe He was already there; just my presence was not allowing Him to express Himself, to become manifest. I was obstructing the way.”

 

But this is not only the experience of the mystics. Even the poets, the musicians, the painters, have a few glimpses of it — of course only glimpses, then they fall back to the ordinary world. They rise to the sacred for a few moments.

 

Whenever Rabindranath would have the visitation, would have creativity arising in him, he would not eat, he would not drink, he would not sleep for days together. He would lock himself in his room, he would not come out. He would come out only when the glimpse had disappeared.

 

And those who saw him coming out after three, four days of remaining in some other world all noted one fact: he looked so different, so fragile, so unearthly, so light, as if not made of matter, so subtle, nothing gross in him, his eyes so clear and so deep and his whole being so transparent. But after a few hours he would be back again, settled in the gross body, would be his old self again.

 

People used to ask him, “What happens when you close yourself in?” He would say, “I close myself in, I lock myself in, so that nobody disturbs me, because I am no more here. Any disturbance can be a very shattering experience. I am so fragile that I would not like to be disturbed. Even a little sound is enough to bring me back to the earth, and those are the moments when I am flying high, when great poetry arises in me.”

 

That’s how GITANJALI was born, the book for which he got the Nobel Prize. Many, many people have been given the Nobel Prize, I have seen almost all the books for which a Nobel Prize has been given, but there is no comparison with Rabindranath’s GITANJALI. ‘Gitanjali’ means ‘offering of songs’. It has some totally different quality, not of this world. It echoes something of the Upanishads. It has some reflections of Buddha, Jesus, Zarathustra, Lao Tzu. But Rabindranath was not a mystic, he was only a poet.

 

A poet is one who becomes a mystic once in a while, who enters into the world of the mystic once in a while but comes back because he has not yet become capable of remaining there forever. He cannot abide there, he can only have a visit. The poet is very close to the mystic.

 

These three words have to be remembered. The scientist is the farthest from the mystic because he lives with the gross matter, he works with the gross matter. The poet is closer to the mystic. The scientist functions from the head, the poet from the heart, and the mystic lives in the being. When you are in the being, creativity is simply your nature.

 

You ask me, ” WHAT IS CREATIVITY?”

 

For the mystic, his very existence is creativity. He walks, and that is creativity. He talks, and that is creativity. He remains silent, and that is creativity. Buddha, sitting in silence, is far more creative than Rabindranath writing poetry, far more creative than Picasso doing his painting, far more creative than Moore working on his sculpture… just sitting silently!

 

So creativity has nothing to do with creating something, creativity is simply the presence of God. Those who are fortunate enough to come in contact with a buddha’s silence will be transformed; they will know what creativity is. He has not done a thing and miracles have happened. He has not uttered a word and the message has been heard. He has not moved, but he has transformed you. He has not even touched you, and you are no longer the same.

 

At the ultimate peak of being a mystic, creativity is just a climate. Lower than that is the poet; then creativity brings great songs, sculpture, architecture, poetry, music, painting. And even the scientist, the lowest in this categorization — lowest because he works with the lowest form of existence, matter — even the scientist, when he is creative, has a few glimpses like the mystic.

 

For example, Albert Einstein: he has said many times that “All my insights happened when I was not working at all, in fact when I was not. All my great insights came to me from some unknown source.”

 

The great scientist, Eddington, has said, “When I started working as a scientist I used to think of the world as matter, as only matter. But the more deeply I went into it, the more a few things started happening to me which are incomprehensible in terms of science, mathematics, calculation, measurement. And those things have revealed one thing to me: now I can say that the world resembles more a thought than a thing.”

 

All the great scientists… I am not talking about the technicians: they are lower than the scientists, the fourth category, the last, the SUDRAS, the untouchables. I am not talking about the technician. The technician has no flight, no insight, no visitation from the beyond. He simply knows how to do a certain thing, he is an adept in ‘how-toism’. He turns everything into a method. The technician is not a scientist.

 

The scientist is one who very rarely, but still, reaches to the peaks of the mystic. The poet is a visitor there more often, and the mystic remains there. For the mystic creativity is a climate, for the poet it is great activity, for the scientist even moreso: it is materialization of something which is immaterial, great work. It took almost twenty years for Albert Einstein to formulate the Theory of RelativitY — GREAT work. The insight happens in a split second, but then you have to work it out, you have to prove it through experimentation.

 

The poet needs no proofs; you never ask for proof The scientist is asked for proofs, experimental proofs, and the experiments may take years. Sometimes it has happened that the insight is there but the experimentation has taken years and years. Still a few of Albert Einstein’s theories are not yet proved by experimentation. They are just theories, with every possibility of being proved true, but with no way to prove them this way or that, for or against. Still no experiment is possible.

 

For example, Albert Einstein said that time is such a relative phenomenon that if a passenger leaves the earth on a spaceship at the speed of light — the speed of light is immense,’almost inconceivable: one hundred and eighty-six thousand miles per second… if a spaceship leaves the earth at that speed, then the person who is moving in that spaceship will never age. If he is young, twenty-five years old, he will remain twenty-five years old. Even if he comes back after twenty-five years, all his friends on the earth will be fifty years old, he will simply be twenty-five, because at that speed time stops.

 

Now this is simply a theory, an insight; we have not yet been able to devise a spaceship which can move with that speed. But scientists say that theoretically it seems right — but only theoretically. Now how did Einstein arrive at it? — because there is no possibility for experimentation. Obviously, it is not the conclusion of an experiment; you cannot do any experiment. No spaceship is there which moves with such speed. In fact, it may never be possible to have such a spaceship; there are difficulties.

 

The most difficult thing is: whenever a thing moves at that speed it turns into light. At that speed the heat is so much that no spaceship can move at that speed, because the heat would burn it out. Just the friction — one hundred and eighty-six thousand miles per second — the very friction would be enough, and the spaceship and the passengers would all be reduced to light, they would burn out. But maybe some day we can find something which does not burn out, which remains intact, and the passenger can move at that speed.

 

Then scientists think that Einstein is right: at that speed, time stops. And if time stops you cannot age, so it is possible that a man may leave on a spaceship, and when he comes back his children will be older than him, or even his grandchildren will be older than him. If he comes after eighty years, all his children will be gone, his children’s children will be older than him, and he will have remained exactly at the same age, with no change, with no difference, as if not a single moment had passed.

 

Now this is a pure theory; they call it ‘pure physics’. How did Einstein arrive at it? It is an insight, it is a mystical experience. Albert Einstein had a few mystical experiences. All his other theories were also conceived in the same way; they have all been proved right, slowly slowly, by experiments. Maybe this too is right.

 

Even the scientist comes to truth only when he is not, the poet comes to beauty when he is not, and the mystic comes to God when he is not. The scientist can only be approximately true, because the moments are very rare and very fleeting. The poet can be a little more sure, on a more firm ground, because the moments come often. But the mystic is absolutely certain, hence his declarations.

 

The Upanishads say AHAM BRAHMASMI, I am God! Al Hillaj Mansoor declares ANA EL HAQ! I am the Truth! These are not conclusions, these are not arrived at through thought processes. These are intuitions, experiences of the ultimate revelation. Mansoor had become one with truth; he was no more separate.

 

So creativity has three layers; the ultimate is the mystic: he lives in a climate of creativity. The poet, once in a while, brings some treasures from the beyond; the scientist, also very rarely, but whenever he can visit the ultimate he brings something precious to the world. But one thing is certain — mystic, scientist or poet, whatsoever comes into this world comes from the beyond.

 

To bring the beyond is creativity. To bring the beyond into the known is creativity. To help God to be manifested in some form is creativity.

 

– Osho, “The Guest, #11, Q2”