What should I do to be creative?

Question: I WANT TO BE CREATIVE. WHAT SHOULD I DO? 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. And you will be surprised that all children are creative; all children, wherever they are born, are creative. But we don't allow their creativity, we crush and kill their creativity, we jump upon them. We start teaching them the right way to do things. Remember, a creative person always goes on trying the wrong ways. If you always follow the right way to do a thing you will never be creative -- because the right way means the way discovered by others.

Question: I BELIEVED I WAS UNCREATIVE. WHAT ELSE CAN BE CREATIVITY BESIDES DANCING AND PAINTING AND HOW TO FIND OUT WHAT MY CREATIVITY IS? This has been taught to everybody. Very few people are accepted as creative: A few painters, a few poets -- one in a million. This is foolish! Every human being is a born creator. Watch children and you will see: all children are creative. By and by, we destroy their creativity. By and by, we force wrong beliefs on them. By and by, we distract them. By and by, we make them more and more economical and political and ambitious. When ambition enters, creativity disappears -- because an ambitious man cannot be creative, because an ambitious man cannot love any activity for its own sake. While he is painting he is looking ahead; he is thinking, 'When am I going to get a Nobel Prize?

Question: 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.

Question: OSHO, IN THE PAST ALL FAMOUS ARTISTS HAVE BEEN WELL-KNOWN FOR THEIR BOHEMIAN SIDE OF LIFE. OSHO, PLEASE CAN YOU SAY SOMETHING ABOUT CREATIVITY AND DISCIPLINE? Discipline has been misinterpreted. People have been telling others to discipline their life, to do this, not to do that. Thousands of shoulds and should-nots have been imposed on man, and when a man lives with thousands of shoulds and should-nots he cannot be creative. He is a prisoner; everywhere he will come across a wall. The creative person has to dissolve all shoulds and should-nots. He needs freedom and space, vast space, he needs the whole sky and all the stars, only then can his innermost spontaneity start growing.

Question: 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.