According to Osho, ‘creative indifference’ is a contradiction: creativity is love, care, and passionate flow, while indifference is negative, desensitizing, and a slow suicide. Indifference makes life dull and ordinary—like sleeping through existence in a dark cell. Creativity is wakefulness and participation with the Whole, bringing attention and love to whatever you do so life becomes prayerful and alive.
You can’t be creative and indifferent at the same time—creativity is caring and alive, while indifference is like falling asleep to life.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
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,…
Osho, in a lecture you spoke about non-identification, that one should become a witness. But in the west many people are alienated, they cannot get involved. They are simply indifferent to everything. That is also my experience. Please can you make clear the difference between non-identification and alienation?
The sannyas that teaches you how to live in the world and yet float above it like a lotus flower, like a lotus leaf, remaining in the water and yet untouched by the water, remaining in the world and yet not allowing the world to enter into you, being in the world yet not being OF the world, that is true renunciation. That true renunciation comes through witnessing; it is not indifference. Indifference will make you alienated, being alienated you will feel meaningless, joyless, accidental. Feeling accidental, the desire to commit suicide will arise, is bound to arise. Why go on living a meaningless life? Why go on repeating the same rut, the same routine, every day? If there is no meaning, why not end it all, why not be finished with it all? Hence many many more people are committing suicide every day, many many people are going mad…
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…
How to be creative while doing jobs which seem not to leave any space for creativity, like cleaning, etc.?
It is from Krishna Radha. She cleans. But I also do the same thing: every morning, every evening, twenty-four hours -- cleaning your mind, cleansing. But I never feel that there is any need for any other creativity. Cleaning a floor can be a tremendously creative act. Remember, creativity has nothing to do with any particular work. Creativity has something to do with the quality of your consciousness. Whatsoever you do can become creative. Whatsoever you do can become creative if you know what creativity means. Creativity means enjoying any work as meditation; doing any work with deep love. If you love me and you clean this auditorium, it is creative. If you don't love me then of course it is a chore, it is a duty to be done somehow, it is a burden. Then you would like some other time to be creative. What will you do in…