:: CREATIVITY ::

ONLY CREATORS ARE SANE

Creativity, you call craziness. Playfulness, you call craziness. Joyfulness, you call craziness. Then what is sanity?
So first, drop that word `craziness'.

Only the creators are sane. What they create does not matter. In India, there have been a few great mystics whose creativity cannot even be recognized as creativity.

Kabir remained for his whole life spinning, weaving. He was a weaver. He had thousands of disciples, and they would tell him, "You have become old, and you are unnecessarily tiring yourself. We can take care of you; you stop this weaving, and then making clothes, and going to the market and selling them."

But Kabir always said, "You do not understand. You think I am just a weaver. I am not just like other weavers -- it is not my business, it is my love affair. I make these clothes for nobody other than God himself. And naturally, when I am making things for him they have to be perfect."

And he treated his customers as gods. He used to say to his customers, "You take this piece of cloth, but be very careful, Ram" -- for every customer he had only one name, Ram; Ram means God -- "I have taken so much trouble in making it. Be careful, be respectful. It is not my business; it is my prayer, it is my worship."

Another great mystic, Gora, was a potter, and he continued to make beautiful pots for his whole life. And he had disciples -- rich disciples, even kings -- and they would say, "It is embarrassing for us that our master is just making pots and selling pots on his donkey in the market. Please stop doing this."

But Gora would say, "It is difficult... it is part of my creativity. Nobody else can make these pots, only Gora can -- because all others are making them for money, and I am pouring my whole love, my whole heart. It is a meditation to me."

A third great mystic was Raidas, who continued to make shoes. In India particularly, to make shoes is thought to be one of the worst professions. It is only for the sudras, the untouchables. He was an untouchable, but high caste brahmins started coming to him. He was uneducated, but what he was saying was pure scripture. And everybody was trying to convince him, "You stop making shoes. It doesn't fit. It doesn't look right that a mystic of your caliber should make shoes" -- but Raidas refused.

He said, "That is the only art I know. I am a poor shoemaker. This is the only creative talent through which I can serve existence."

Don't call creativity, playfulness, joyousness, cheerfulness, `craziness'. These are the sanest dimensions of your being. Let your whole life become sane, full of songs, full of flowers, full of love. The world may call you crazy, but please, you should not call it crazy. Let the world call it crazy -- it doesn't matter -- but I cannot allow you to call it crazy.

It is going to happen to every meditator. What is happening to you, I would love it to happen to everybody. Create something. And whatever you are doing, do it playfully, not seriously. And wherever you are, be in a celebration. Forget words like `business'. Let your life be simply a festival.

To me, only those few people who attain to this state are capable of calling themselves religious -- not the Hindus, not the Mohammedans, not the Christians, but the creative people -- enriching existence, beautifying existence.

Don't leave this world without making it a little more beautiful than you found it when you came into it.


The Osho Upanishad
# 6, Q-3

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