According to Osho, the urge to “create” can be twofold: often it’s an escape from the uneasiness of doing nothing—a work-conditioned compulsion that produces clever compositions but no originality. Authentic creativity arises from deep inner silence—when thought stops, something new is born. This ‘objective’ creativity, like meditative architectures (Taj Mahal, pyramids), carries presence and transforms the beholder. So the drive can be avoidance, unless rooted in stillness.
Sometimes we make things just to avoid sitting still; real making happens after we become very quiet inside.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Is the drive towards creativity only another expression of our inability to sit quietly and do nothing?
You will not see any logical connection. There is no logical connection, but there is something more fundamentally connected. What he is saying is, "Bodhidharma came to teach suchness. This bamboo is long, so what? This bamboo is short, but there is no problem. I have never heard these bamboos discussing, `Why are you long and why am I short?' Neither does the short one feel inferior, nor the long one feel superior. They are both enjoying existence in their totality. "So just be, without comparing. Settle down in your own consciousness, and you will know the answer, the answer that cannot be given from outside." Issa wrote: <q>AROUND THE HEARTH -- THE SMILE THAT BIDS US WELCOME IS ALSO A FAREWELL!</q> He is saying, the beginning is also the end, the meeting is also a departing. One has to understand this contradictoriness, this paradoxical nature of existence. The welcoming…
What is creativity?
That's the paradox of creativity. If you see a painter painting, certainly he is active, utterly active, madly active -- he is all action. Or if you see a dander dancing, he is all action. But still, deep down there is no actor, no doer; there is only silence. Hence I called creativity the state of paradox. All beautiful states are paradoxical. The higher you go, the deeper you go into the paradox of reality. Supreme action with supreme relaxation: on the surface great action is happening, in the depth nothing is happening, or ONLY nothing is happening. Creative quietude is the supreme action -- the precious suppleness, simplicity, spontaneity and freedom that flows from us, or rather through us, when our private egos and conscious efforts yield to a power not their own. Yielding to a power not of your own, surrendering to a power that is beyond you,…
So the difference between a creative and a non-creative person has to be understood. And it is good that one is a creative person. Your meditation, your growth is through creativity. These groups are not just groups -- these are your canvases on which you are painting. These are your poems that you are composing. When you see somebody flowering, somebody radiant, a poem is born and you feel fulfilled. You suddenly feel enhanced. You recognise, you realise your worth, mm? -- this man has flowered, this woman is smiling so beautifully. Then you are happy. This is the happiness of a creative person. A creative person is happy only when something beautiful is created. A creative person's heaven is in creativity.
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?
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…
It is a strange phenomenon that the uncreative people are the people who are lacking in energy, the destructive people are the people who are lacking in energy. They are impotent people. Because they cannot create they start destroying. Destruction is easy -- anybody can do it. How much energy is needed to destroy a painting? A painter may have worked on it for months, but to destroy it... just a child can destroy it. How much energy is needed to destroy a flower? The gardener may have worked for years... Destruction needs no energy; hence my observation is that Adolf Hitler and Mussolini and Josef Stalin are not really powerful people, they are people who are lacking in energy, they are impotent people. Because they cannot create they have to destroy, that seems to be the only way to prove themselves.