creativity

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 robot. Robots 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. And the right
way means that of course you will be able to make
something, you will become a producer, a manufacturer,
you will be a technician, but you will not be a
creator.

What is the difference between a producer and a
creator? A producer knows the right way of doing a
thing, the most economical way of doing a thing; with
the least effort he can create more results. He is a
producer. A creator fools around. He does not know
what is the right way to do a thing so he goes on
seeking and searching again and again in different
directions. Many times he moves in a wrong direction
-- but wherever he moves, he learns. He becomes more
and more rich. He does something that nobody has ever
done before. If he had followed the right way to do
things he would not have been able to do it.

Listen to this small story....

A Sunday school teacher asked her students to draw a
picture of the Holy Family. After the pictures were
brought to her, she saw that some of the youngsters
had drawn the conventional pictures -- the Holy Family
in the manger, the Holy Family riding on the mule, and
the like.
But she called up one little boy to ask him to explain
his drawing, which showed an airplane with four heads
sticking out of the plane windows.
She said, "I can understand why you drew three of the
heads to show Joseph, Mary, and Jesus. But who's the
fourth head?"
"Oh," answered the boy, "that's Pontius the Pilot!"


Now this is beautiful! This is what creativity is. He
has discovered something. But only children can do
that. You will be afraid to do it, afraid you will
look foolish.

A creator has to be able to look foolish. A creator
has to risk his so-called respectability. Only those
who are ready to put their prestige, their pride,
their respectability at stake again and again, and can
go on into something which nobody thinks is worth
going into.... Creators are always thought to be mad
people. The world recognizes them, but very late. It
goes on thinking that something is wrong. Creators are
eccentric people.


'Creativity' By Osho