Wednesday 14 April 2010 photo 14/23
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Be creative. Don't be worried about what you are doing -- one has to do many things --but do everything creatively, with devotion. Then your work becomes worship. Then whatsoever you do is a prayer. And whatsoever you do is an offering at the altar.
Drop this belief that you are uncreative. I know how this belief is created: you may not have been a gold medalist in the university; you may not have been top in your class; your painting may not have won appreciation; when you play on your flute, neighbors report to the police. Maybe -- but just because of these things, don't get the wrong belief that you are uncreative. That may be because you are imitating others.
People have a very limited idea of what being creative is -- playing the guitar or the flute or writing poetry -- so people go on writing rubbish in the name of poetry. You have to find out what you can do and what you cannot do. Everybody cannot do everything! You have to search and find your destiny. You have to grope in the dark, I know. It is not very clear-cut what your destiny is -- but that's how life is. And it is good that one has to search for it -- in the very search, something grows.
If God were to give a chart of your life to you when you were entering into the world -- this will be your life: you are going to become a guitarist -- then your life would be mechanical. Only a machine can be predicted, not a man. Man is unpredictable. Man is always an opening... a potentiality for a thousand and one things. Many doors open and many alternatives are always present at each step -- and you have to choose, you have to feel. But if you love your life you will be able to find.
If you DON'T love your life and you love something else, then there is a problem. If you love money and you want to be creative, you cannot become creative. The very ambition for money is going to destroy your creativity. If you want fame, then forget about creativity. Fame comes easier if you are destructive. Fame comes easier to an Adolf Hitler; fame comes easier to a Henry Ford. Fame is easier if you are competitive, violently competitive. If you can kill and destroy people, fame comes easier.
The whole history is the history of murderers. If you become a murderer, fame will be very easy. You can become a prime minister; you can become a president -- but these are all masks. Behind them you will find very violent people, terribly violent people hiding, smiling. Those smiles are political, diplomatic. If the mask slips, you will always see Genghis Khan, Timur Leng, Nadir Shah, Napoleon, Alexander, Hitler, hiding behind.
If you want fame, don't talk about creativity. I am not saying that fame never comes to a creative person, but very rarely it comes, very rarely. It is more like an accident, and it takes much time. Almost always it happens that by the time fame comes to a creative person, he is gone -- it is always posthumous; it is very delayed.
Jesus was not famous in his day. If there were no Bible, there would have been no record of him. The record belongs to his four disciples; nobody else has ever mentioned him, whether he existed or not. He was not famous. He was not successful. Can you think of a greater failure than Jesus? But, by and by, he became more and more significant; by and by, people recognized him. It takes time.
The greater a person is, the more time it takes for people to recognize him -- because when a great person is born, there are no criteria to judge him by, there are no maps to find him with. He has to create his own values; by the time he has created the values, he is gone. It takes thousands of years for a creative person to be recognized, and then too it is not certain. There have been many creative people who have never been recognized. It is accidental for a creative person to be successful. For an uncreative, destructive person it is more certain.
OSHO
Drop this belief that you are uncreative. I know how this belief is created: you may not have been a gold medalist in the university; you may not have been top in your class; your painting may not have won appreciation; when you play on your flute, neighbors report to the police. Maybe -- but just because of these things, don't get the wrong belief that you are uncreative. That may be because you are imitating others.
People have a very limited idea of what being creative is -- playing the guitar or the flute or writing poetry -- so people go on writing rubbish in the name of poetry. You have to find out what you can do and what you cannot do. Everybody cannot do everything! You have to search and find your destiny. You have to grope in the dark, I know. It is not very clear-cut what your destiny is -- but that's how life is. And it is good that one has to search for it -- in the very search, something grows.
If God were to give a chart of your life to you when you were entering into the world -- this will be your life: you are going to become a guitarist -- then your life would be mechanical. Only a machine can be predicted, not a man. Man is unpredictable. Man is always an opening... a potentiality for a thousand and one things. Many doors open and many alternatives are always present at each step -- and you have to choose, you have to feel. But if you love your life you will be able to find.
If you DON'T love your life and you love something else, then there is a problem. If you love money and you want to be creative, you cannot become creative. The very ambition for money is going to destroy your creativity. If you want fame, then forget about creativity. Fame comes easier if you are destructive. Fame comes easier to an Adolf Hitler; fame comes easier to a Henry Ford. Fame is easier if you are competitive, violently competitive. If you can kill and destroy people, fame comes easier.
The whole history is the history of murderers. If you become a murderer, fame will be very easy. You can become a prime minister; you can become a president -- but these are all masks. Behind them you will find very violent people, terribly violent people hiding, smiling. Those smiles are political, diplomatic. If the mask slips, you will always see Genghis Khan, Timur Leng, Nadir Shah, Napoleon, Alexander, Hitler, hiding behind.
If you want fame, don't talk about creativity. I am not saying that fame never comes to a creative person, but very rarely it comes, very rarely. It is more like an accident, and it takes much time. Almost always it happens that by the time fame comes to a creative person, he is gone -- it is always posthumous; it is very delayed.
Jesus was not famous in his day. If there were no Bible, there would have been no record of him. The record belongs to his four disciples; nobody else has ever mentioned him, whether he existed or not. He was not famous. He was not successful. Can you think of a greater failure than Jesus? But, by and by, he became more and more significant; by and by, people recognized him. It takes time.
The greater a person is, the more time it takes for people to recognize him -- because when a great person is born, there are no criteria to judge him by, there are no maps to find him with. He has to create his own values; by the time he has created the values, he is gone. It takes thousands of years for a creative person to be recognized, and then too it is not certain. There have been many creative people who have never been recognized. It is accidental for a creative person to be successful. For an uncreative, destructive person it is more certain.
OSHO