A Mystic’s Insight into CREATIVITY
If you look at human beings, no one has horns, an extra arm, or three eyes. Everything is the same, but everything is different. This is creativity. If you want to describe the characteristics of human beings in simple terms, everyone has two legs, two hands, one nose, two eyes, and so on. But just see what a unique happening each one of them is in every way. This is the nature of creation.
[The following is a transcription of a spoken discourse. To maintain the style and authenticity of Sadhguru’s spoken words, we have retained the original language instead of conforming it to our standard style book.]
I do not believe a human being can be creative. If we perceive creation around us with a certain profoundness, we can imitate it in many different permutations and combinations, and seem creative in society; but actually, we are not really creative.
Everything that can be created has already been done in creation. We are clever craftsmen at the most. If you define the word “creativity” as really creating something—whether you make a movie, paint something, build a building, speak, or whatever else— this is not really creativity—it is clever imitation. Anything you create—a piece of jewelry or clothing, a building, or whatever else—already exists somewhere in nature. Because we have paid attention to different aspects of life, we are able to imitate it in ways that others have not thought possible. If you do not like the word “imitate,” you could say “replicate.”
Creative process: A mystic’s insight
If you look at human beings, no one has horns, an extra arm, or three eyes. Everything is the same, but everything is different. This is creativity. If you want to describe the characteristics of human beings in simple terms, everyone has two legs, two hands, one nose, two eyes, and so on. But just see what a unique happening each one of them is in every way. This is the nature of creation.
You have taken in so many impressions, though not all of them consciously. Some of these forms and colors and shapes that are there in your mind may find unconscious expression. Once it happened, Shankaran Pillai came to the Isha Yoga Center, and he wanted a room with a view. We gave an appropriate room in the Chitra block. Then he complained, reiterating, “I wanted a room with a view.” We said, “This is the room that has the best view.” He said, “The goddamn mountains are in the way.”
This is what has happened to a lot of human beings. They do not see things as they are. Instead, they have ideas. If you want to make something beautiful, the first thing is that you should not have any idea. If instead of having an idea, you have perception, and you simply drink life all the time, then if you want to make something happen, it will all be with you—in terms of shapes, forms, colors, sounds, or whatever else. Whether you want to create music, clothing, or a building, if you pay enough attention, it will all be there.
Can creativity be developed or is it an inherenttrait?
What we are looking at as creativity is essentially coming from keenness of attention. Certain people are very attentive to words and meanings, so they bounce back certain things. Certain people are very attentive to forms and colors; they will find expression in a different way. Certain people are very attentive to sounds; they may be able to produce music very effortlessly. How keen and profound your attention is reflects in you in some way.
The essence of what I have been trying to do is to get millions of people to really pay attention without intention. If people can do this one thing, multidimensional creativity is very much possible. It is not that they have to practice. What is lacking in human beings is attention.
What is taking away human attention is simply their own cerebral activity. People do not know how to handle their memory and their attention separately. Their memory always floods into their attention and clouds it all the time. People may call this clouding of the memory as thought or emotion, but it is essentially the accumulated memory which interferes with one’s attention. Otherwise, it is very natural for you to be attentive.
This is the fundamental work that I have always been trying to do that people should be able to separate their memory, attention, and imagination. Imagination is not a problem, because imagination is an extrapolation of one’s memory in many ways. But instead of using this memory as a phenomenal capability, most people use this to cause misery to themselves. Most of the time human beings are suffering what happened ten years ago, and they may be also suffering what may happen day after tomorrow.
All the animals have very keen attention, but they do not have a vivid sense of memory like us. Animals have their struggles, but they are not suffering their memory.
Can anxiety fuel creativity?
Question: Is creativity born out of a certain restlessness or anxiety? Is it important for creative work, ideas, poetry, music to come out of turbulence?
Sadhguru: The problem with most human beings is that unless you poke them with a pin, they will be half alive most of the time. Inertia is a choice that people have made. People who are in that state, only when a threat like a war, a pandemic, or some tragedy comes in their life, they will become concerned about life. It is an unfortunate way to be. You must have this concern every moment of your life. Concern should be because of involvement, not because of being instigated by some situation.
What is the depth of your attention? Only to that extent do you experience life. If your attention is very profound, your experience of life is very profound. When your experience of life is very profound, it may find some expression in just the simple work that you are doing, or it may find expression in poetry, music, or whatever else.
Most people can pay attention only to a certain thing that they think is of interest. What is worth your attention and what is not—this is a wrong way to look at life. The source of creation did not pay any less attention to creating an ant than creating a human being. When this is the nature of creation, who are you to decide what is worth paying attention to and what is not?
| Sadhguru is a yogi, mystic, and visionary, and a prominent spiritual leader. An author, poet, and internationally renowned speaker, Sadhguru is the founder of Isha Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to human wellbeing. (www.isha.sadhguru.org) |
Enjoyed reading Khabar magazine? Subscribe to Khabar and get a full digital copy of this Indian-American community magazine.
