v 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.
vii Five Obstacles [to creativity]: Self-Consciousness, Perfectionism,
Intellect, Belief, The Fame Game
Four Keys [to creativity]: Become a Child Again, Be ready to Learn,
Find Nirvana in the Ordinary, Be a Dreamer
ix The creator cannot follow the well-trodden path. He has to search
out his own way, he has to inquire in the jungles of life. He has to go alone; he has to be a dropout from the mob
mind, from the collective psychology.
p.4 Action is when the situation demands it and you act, you respond...
Action comes out of a silent mind... Action is when it has relevance... Action is moment to moment, spontaneous... Action
is creative.
p.6 action comes as a spontaneous response. Life needs response, every moment
you have to act, but the activity comes through the present moment. You are hungry and you seek food, you are thirsty and
you go to the well. You are feeling sleepy and you go to sleep. It is out of the total situation that you act. Action is spontaneous
and total.
p.39 Nature gives everybody energy that is creative. It becomes destructive
only when it is obstructed, when no natural flow is allowed.
p.53 Try to make something perfect and it will remain imperfect. Do it naturally
and it is always perfect.
p.54 When you are self-conscious you are really showing symptoms that you
don't know who you are.
p.65 The first step is receptivity, because in receptivity ego cannot exist
- it can exist only in conflict. And when you are receptive, suddenly your faculty of imagination becomes tremendously powerful.
p.73 The soul happens only when the artist disappears into his art - he
is no longer separate. 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 clearer
the feeling is.
p.74 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.
p.80-81 You can go and look in the university and see what kind of creative
work goes on there. Thousands of treatises are being written; PhDs, DLitts, great degrees are conferred on people. Nobody
ever comes to know what happens to their PhD theses; they go on becoming rubbish heaps in the libraries. Nobody ever reads
them, nobody is ever inspired by them - yes, a few people read them; they are the same type of people who are going to write
another thesis. The would-be PhDs will of course be reading them.
But your universities don't create Shakespeares... Your universities
create just junk, utterly useless. This is intellectual activity that goes on in the universities... There is no
possibility of any intellectual creativity. It can produce rubbish - it is productive, it can manufacture - but it cannot
create. [JLJ - ouch. Your universities create just junk, utterly useless. Osho doesn't like universities, does he?]
p.105 Learn one basic thing: do whatever you want to do, love to
do. And never ask for recognition
p.109 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.
p.109 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 does something that nobody has ever done before. If he had followed
the right way to do things he would not have been able to do it.
p.110 You will be afraid to do it, afraid you will look foolish.
A creator has to be able to look foolish. A creator
has to risk his so-called respectability... 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.
p.111 Only those who are ready to put their prestige, their pride,
their respectability at stake again and again, and can go on into something that nobody thinks is worth going into...
Creators are always thought to be mad people. The world recognizes them, but vary 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 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 robots.
p.112 The creator cannot settle anywhere... He is always ready to take a
risk. Risk is his love affair.
p.123 What matters is, are you putting your very soul into what you are
creating? ... Whatsoever you do can become creative. Whatsoever you do can become creative if you know what creativity means.
p.165 Try something new that nobody has ever done. The
greatest creativity happens in people whose training is of some other discipline.
p.182 If you can't see any meaning in life, you must be waiting passively
for the meaning to come... it will never come... Freedom is there to create it, energy is there to create it... but the meaning
has to be created. That's why to create it is such a joy, such an adventure, such an ecstasy.
p.183 You get the life that you create, you get out of life that which you
put into it. First you have to pour meaning into it... you have to be creative. Only then will you be alive.
[Back Cover] Creativity is a handbook for those who understand
the need to bring more creativity, playfulness, and flexibility to their lives. It is a manual for thinking "outside the box"
- and learning to live there, as well.
