Poets, painters and dancers are never quite respectable. And when they are recognised, they are no longer creative. OSHO tells us why
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 robopath. Robopaths are never creative, they are repetitive. So become a child again to regain your creative spirit.
Creativity is a basic virtue of children. But we don’t allow their creativity to bloom or survive; we crush and kill their creativity. We start teaching them the right way to do things. Remember, a creative person always keeps trying the wrong ways. If you 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 you will be able to make something — you will become a producer, a manufacturer, — but you will not be a creator.
Now, what is the difference between a producer and a creatorIJ A producer knows the right way of doing a thing; a creator fools around. He does not know what is the right way to do a thing; so he goes on seeking and searching in different directions. Often he moves in a wrong direction, but wherever he moves, he learns. He does something which nobody has ever done before. 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 are not very respectable. And when they become respectable, when a great prize is given to them, they are no longer creative. From that moment, creativity disappears. Why does this happenIJ Well, the reason is fear. Because, the person becomes afraid: If he does something wrong, or if something goes wrong, what will happen to his prestigeIJ He cannot afford that. So when an artist becomes respectable he becomes dead dead creatively.
Somewhere between the age of seven and 14 a great change happens in a child. Psychologists have been analysing the phenomenon: Why does it happen and what happensIJ
You have two minds, two hemispheres. The left hemisphere of the mind is uncreative. It is technically capable but as far as creativity is concerned it is impotent. It can only do a thing once it has learned it, and it can do it very efficiently or perfectly; it is mechanical. This left hemisphere is the hemisphere of reasoning, logic and mathematics. It is the hemisphere of calculation, cleverness, discipline and order.
The right hemisphere is just the opposite of it. It is the hemisphere of chaos, not of order; it is the hemisphere of poetry, not of prose; it is the hemisphere of love, not of logic. It has a great feeling for beauty, it has a great insight into originality — but it is not efficient. A creative person cannot be efficient, he has to keep experimenting. Such a person cannot settle anywhere. He is a vagabond. He is always prepared to take a risk. Risk is his love affair. But this is the right-side hemisphere. The right-side hemisphere is functioning when the child is born. Then we start teaching the child — unknowingly, unscientifically. Down the ages we have learned the trick of how to shift the energy from the right hemisphere to the left hemisphere. Then the child is not wild any more — he becomes a citizen. Then he learns the ways of discipline, language, logic and prose. He starts competing in the school, becomes an egoist, begins learning all the neurotic things that are prevalent in the society, and becomes more interested in power and money.
Excerpts from the book,
Sufis: The People on the Path