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CHAPTER 1
PREPARING THE CANVAS
Once pathology disappears, everybody becomes a creator. Let it be understood as deeply as possible: only ill people are destructive. The people who are healthy are creative. Creativity is a fragrance of real health. When a person is really healthy and whole, creativity comes naturally to him, the urge to create arises.
THE THREE C'S
Humanity has come now to a crossroads. We have lived the one-dimensional man, we have exhausted it. We need now a more enriched human being, three-dimensional. I call them three C's, just like three R's — the first C is consciousness, the second C is compassion, the third C is creativity.
Consciousness is being, compassion is feeling, creativity is action. My vision of the new human being has to be all the three simultaneously. I am giving you the greatest challenge ever given, the hardest task to be fulfilled. You have to be as meditative as a Buddha, as loving as a Krishna, as creative as Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci. You have to be all together, simultaneously. Only then your totality will be fulfilled; otherwise something will remain missing in you. And that which is missing in you will keep you lopsided, unfulfilled. You can attain a very high peak if you are one-dimensional, but you will be only a peak. I would like you to become the whole range of the Himalayas, not just a peak but peaks upon peaks.
The one-dimensional man has failed. It has not been able to create a beautiful earth, it has not been able to create paradise on the earth. It has failed, utterly failed! It created a few beautiful people but it could not transform the whole humanity, it could not raise the consciousness of the whole humanity. Only a few individuals here and there became enlightened. That is not going to help anymore. We need more enlightened people, and enlightened in a three-dimensional way.
That is my definition of the new man.
Buddha was not a poet — but the new humanity, the people who will become buddhas now, are going to be poets. When I say "poets" I don't mean that you have to write poetry — you have to be poetic. Your life has to be poetic, your approach has to be poetic.
Logic is dry, poetry is alive. Logic cannot dance; it is impossible for logic to dance. To see logic dancing will be like Mahatma Gandhi dancing! It will look very ridiculous. Poetry can dance; poetry is a dance of your heart. Logic cannot love — it can talk about love but it cannot love; love seems to be illogical. Only poetry can love, only poetry can take the jump into the paradox of love.
Logic is cold, very cold; it is good as far as mathematics is concerned but it is not good as far as humanity is concerned. If humanity becomes too logical, then humanity disappears; then there are only numbers, not human beings — replaceable numbers.
Poetry, love, and feeling give you a depth, a warmth. You become more melted, you lose your coldness. You become more human. Buddha is superhuman, about that there is no doubt, but he loses the human dimension. He is unearthly. He has a beauty of being unearthly, but he does not have the beauty that Zorba the Greek has. Zorba is so earthly. I would like you to be both together — Zorba the Buddha. One has to be meditative but not against feeling. One has to be meditative but full of feeling, overflowing with love. And one has to be creative. If your love is only a feeling and it is not translated into action, it won't affect the larger humanity. You have to make it a reality, you have to materialize it.
These are your three dimensions: being, feeling, action. Action contains creativity, all kinds of creativity — music, poetry, painting, sculpture, architecture, science, technology. Feeling contains all that is aesthetic — love, beauty. And being contains meditation, awareness, consciousness.
RELAX IN ACTION
First, the nature of activity and the hidden currents in it have to be understood; otherwise no relaxation is possible. Even if you want to relax, it will be impossible if you have not observed, watched, realized, the nature of your activity, because activity is not a simple phenomenon. Many people would like to relax, but they cannot. Relaxation is like a flowering, you cannot force it. You have to understand the whole phenomenon — why you are so active, why so much occupation with activity, why you are obsessed with it.
Remember two words: one is action, another is activity. Action is not activity; activity is not action. Their natures are diametrically opposite. Action is when the situation demands it and you act, you respond. Activity is when the situation doesn't matter, it is not a response; you are so restless within that the situation is just an excuse to be active.
Action comes out of a silent mind — it is the most beautiful thing in the world. Activity comes out of a restless mind — it is the ugliest. Action is when it has relevance; activity is irrelevant. Action is moment to moment, spontaneous; activity is loaded with the past. It is not a response to the present moment, rather, it is pouring your restlessness, which you have been carrying from the past, into the present. Action is creative. Activity is very destructive — it destroys you, it destroys others.
Try to see the delicate distinction. For example, you are hungry, then you eat — this is action. But you are not hungry, you don't feel any hunger at all, and still you go on eating — this is activity. This eating is a kind of violence: you destroy food, you crush your teeth together and destroy food; it gives you a little release of your inner restlessness. You are eating not because of hunger, you are simply eating because of an inner need, an urge to be violent.
In the animal world violence is associated with the mouth and hands, the fingernails and the teeth; these two are the violent things in the animal kingdom. While you are eating, both are joined together; with your hand you take the food, and with your mouth you eat it — violence is released. But if there is no hunger it is not an action, it is a disease. This activity is an obsession. Of course you cannot go on eating like this because then you will burst, so people have invented tricks: they will chew tobacco or gum, they will smoke cigarettes. These are false foods, without any nutritious value in them, but they work well as far as violence is concerned.
A man sitting and chewing gum, what is he doing? He is killing somebody. In the mind, if he becomes aware, he may have a fantasy of murdering, killing — and he is chewing gum, a very innocent activity in itself. You are not harming anybody — but very dangerous for you, because you seem to be completely unconscious of what you are doing. A man smoking, what is he doing? Very innocent in a way, just taking the smoke in and bringing it out, inhaling and exhaling — a sort of ill pranayama, and a sort of secular transcendental meditation. He is creating a mandala: he takes smoke in, brings it out, takes it in, brings it out — a mandala is created, a circle. Through smoking he is doing a sort of chanting, a rhythmic chanting. It soothes; his inner restlessness is relieved a little.
If you are talking to a person, always remember — it is almost hundred percent accurate — if the person starts reaching for his cigarette, it means he is bored, you should leave him now. He would have wanted to throw you out; that cannot be done, that will be too impolite. He is finding his cigarette; he is saying, "Now, finished! I am fed up." In the animal kingdom he would have jumped on you, but he cannot — he is a human being, civilized. He jumps on the cigarette, he starts smoking. Now he is not worried about you, now he is enclosed in his own chanting of the smoke. It soothes.
But this activity shows that you are obsessed. You cannot remain yourself; you cannot remain silent, you cannot remain inactive. Through activity you go on throwing out your madness, insanity.
Action is beautiful, 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.
Activity is never spontaneous, it comes from the past. You may have been accumulating it for many years, and then it explodes into the present — it is not relevant. But mind is cunning; the mind will always find rationalizations for the activity. The mind will always try to prove that this is not activity, this is action; it was needed. Suddenly you flare up in anger. Everybody else becomes aware that it was not needed, the situation never demanded it, it was simply irrelevant — only you cannot see. Everybody feels, "What are you doing? There was no need for it. Why are you so angry?" But you will find rationalizations, you will rationalize that it was needed.
These rationalizations help you to remain unconscious about your madness. These are the things that George Gurdjieff used to call "buffers." You create buffers of rationalization around you so you don't come to realize what is the situation. Buffers are used in trains, between two compartments; buffers are used so that if there is a sudden stopping there will not be too much shock to the passengers. The buffers will absorb the shock. Your activity is continuously irrelevant, but the buffers of rationalizations don't allow you to see the situation. The buffers blind you, and this type of activity continues.
If this activity is there, you cannot relax. How can you relax? — because it is an obsessive need, you want to do something, whatsoever it is. There are fools all over the world who go on saying, "Do something rather than nothing." And there are perfect fools who have created a proverb all over the world, "An empty mind is a devil's workshop." It is not! An empty mind is God's workshop. An empty mind is the most beautiful thing in the world, the purest. How can an empty mind be a workshop for the devil? The devil cannot enter into an empty mind, impossible! The devil can enter only into a mind which is obsessed with activity — then the devil can take charge of you, he can show you ways and means and methods to be more active. The devil never says, "Relax!" He says, "Why are you wasting your time? Do something, man — move! Life is passing by, do something!" And all the great teachers, teachers who have awakened to the truth of life, have come to realize that an empty mind gives space to the divine to enter in you.
Activity can be used by the devil, not an empty mind. How can the devil use an empty mind? He will not dare to come near because emptiness will simply kill him. But if you are filled with a deep urge, a mad urge to be active, then the devil will take charge. Then he will guide you — then he is the only guide.
I would like to tell you that this proverb is absolutely wrong. The devil himself must have suggested it.
This obsession to be active has to be watched. And you have to watch it in your own life, because whatsoever I say will not be of much meaning unless you see it in yourself that your activity is irrelevant, it is not needed. Why are you doing it?
Traveling, I have seen people continuously doing the same thing again and again. For twenty-four hours I am with a passenger in the train. He will read the same newspaper again, again, not finding what else to do. Enclosed in a railway compartment there is not much possibility to be active, so he will read the same newspaper again and again. And I am watching ... what is this man doing?
A newspaper is not a Gita or a Bible. You can read the Gita many times because each time you come to it a new significance is revealed. But a newspaper is not a Gita; it is finished once you have seen it! It was not even worth reading once, and people go on reading it. Again and again, they will start again. What is the problem? Is it a need? No — they are obsessed; they cannot remain silent, inactive. That is impossible for them, that looks like death. They have to be active.
Traveling for many years gave me many opportunities to watch people without their knowing, because sometimes only one person was with me in the compartment. And he would make all sorts of efforts to bring me to talk to him and I would say only yes or no; then he would drop the idea. Then I would simply watch — a beautiful experiment, and without any expense! I would watch him: he would open the suitcase — and I would see that he was not doing anything — then he would look in it, close it. Then he would open the window, and then would close it. Then again he would go to the newspaper, then he would smoke, then again open the suitcase, rearrange it, go and open the window, look out. What is he doing? And why? An inner urge, something is trembling within him, a feverish state of mind. He has to do something, otherwise he will be lost. He must have been an active man in life; now there is a moment to relax — he cannot relax, the old habit persists.
It is said that Aurangzeb, a Moghul emperor, imprisoned his father in his old age. Aurangzeb's father, Shah Jehan, built the Taj Mahal. The son imprisoned him, dethroned him. It is said, and it is written in the autobiography of Aurangzeb, that after a few days Shah Jehan was not worried about imprisonment because every luxury was provided. It was a palace, and Shah Jehan was living as he was living before. It was not like a prison; absolutely everything that he needed was there. Only one thing was missing and that was activity — he couldn't do anything. So he asked his son Aurangzeb, "It is okay, you have provided everything for me and everything is beautiful. Just one thing I will be grateful forever and ever if you can do and that is, send thirty boys. I would like to teach them."
Aurangzeb could not believe it: "Why would my father like to teach thirty boys?" He had never shown any inclination to be a teacher, was never interested in any type of education, what has happened to him? But he fulfilled the desire. Thirty boys were sent to Shah Jehan, and everything was okay — he became again the emperor, thirty small boys. You go into a primary school, the teacher is almost the emperor. You can order them to sit and they will have to sit; you can order them to stand and they will have to stand. And he created in that room with thirty boys the whole situation of his court — just old habit and the old drug addiction to ordering people.
Psychologists suspect that teachers are in fact politicians. Of course, not self-confident enough to go into politics — they move to the schools and there they become presidents, prime ministers, emperors. Small children — and they order them and they force them. Psychologists also suspect that teachers have an inclination toward being sadistic, they would like to torture. And you cannot find a better place than a primary school. You can torture innocent children — and you can torture them for their own sake, for their own good. Go and watch! I have been in primary schools, and I have been watching teachers. Psychologists suspect — I am certain they are torturers! And you cannot find more innocent victims, unarmed completely, they cannot even resist. They are so weak and helpless — and a teacher stands like an emperor.
Aurangzeb writes in his autobiography: "My father, just because of old habits, still wants to pretend that he is the emperor. So let him pretend and let him fool himself, there is nothing wrong. Send him thirty boys or three hundred, whatsoever he wants. Let him run a small school and be happy."
Activity is when the action has no relevance. Watch in yourself and see: ninety percent of your energy is wasted in activity. And because of this, when the moment for action comes you don't have any energy. A relaxed person is simply non-obsessive, and the energy starts accumulating within him. He conserves his energy, it is conserved automatically, and then when the moment for action comes his total being flows into it. That's why action is total. Activity is always halfhearted, because how can you befool yourself absolutely? Even you know it is useless. Even you are aware that you are doing it for certain feverish reasons within, which are not even clear to you, very vague.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Creativity"
by .
Copyright © 1999 Osho International Foundation.
Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
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