Question – What is this urge to Create?
Osho – The urge to create is the first stirring of the divine within you. The urge to create is the presence of God. You have the first message, the first ripple has reached to you. It is the beginning and the birth of prayer. Follow it. To be creative is to be religious. What you create is not the point – you create. In that very creativity something starts happening which is not of the world.
When you create you are lost into your creation. For example, if you are painting or singing or playing on an instrument or dancing, you start disappearing. The dance is really when the dancer is no more. If the dancer is still there then it is not a creative act, then it is at the most a skill. The technician is there but not the dancer – one who knows how to dance is there but not the dancer.
Because the dancer knows nothing; the dancer remains in a state of not knowing. He forgets all his skill, he forgets all the techniques that he has learnt, he forgets himself, he is utterly lost. He is in the hands of God. He cannot even say ’I am dancing’ – he can only say ’God has taken possession of me, I am possessed. God is dancing in me. I am the field where God is dancing, I am the hollow bamboo and Gd is singing. He has made a flute of me.’
The creator knows God. Only the creator knows God. And all other prayers that you go on doing in the temples and the churches are just impotent, meaningless, unless your life learns how to create. Then no other prayer is needed. Then the very phenomenon of creativity is enough religion for you. More than that is unnecessary – you need not go to any church, any temple, any gurudvara, any mosque. You have to go into creativity.
The question is asked by Gyan Bhakti. She is a creator. Hence the question has arisen in her – ’What is this urge to create?’ She is possessed by that desire. I have seen it in her, aflame. She wants to explode in many many ways, she wants to create. God has knocked at her door. But when the knock comes it is natural not to understand it, because we have never heard it before. It is so new, it cannot be reduced to our old mind. It is coming from the unknown – there is no way to figure it out, what it is. Hence the question.
Go with the unknown, go with the new. Always remember: If there is a choice between the old and the new, choose the new. Howsoever dangerous it is, howsoever insecure it is, choose the new. And you will be always moving closer and closer to God. Choose the old, and you will be moving away from God. Choose the old mind, and you will sooner or later become destructive. And these are the only two ways to live: either be creative or be destructive. There is no other possibility, there is no third possibility. If your energies are not moving into creation they will still be moving, but then they will become destructive. Destruction is creativity standing on its head; something has gone wrong, something has taken a wrong turn.
All destructive people could have been great creators. But if the energy is not allowed, if you become afraid and frightened with the new…. And when the creativity possesses you it is fearful. It looks terrible, it is a kind of tremendum. It takes you so far away from your known and the familiar. It takes you to the uncharted sea, without any maps. It is dangerous. One shrinks back from it.
But once you start shrinking back from it, what will you do with your energy which God goes on pouring into you? Something has to be done. The energy cannot wait, the energy needs expression. So if you avoid creativity you will become destructive. Whenever creativity calls you, go with it. It is God calling you.
Source – Osho Book “This Very Body the Buddha”