Beloved Master,
Can intellectual activity be creative?
Intellect is something pseudo, something false. It is a substitute for intelligence. Intelligence is a totally different phenomenon – the real thing.
Intelligence needs tremendous courage, intelligence needs an adventurous life. Intelligence needs that you are always going into the unknown, into the uncharted sea. Then intelligence grows, it becomes sharpened. It grows only when it encounters the unknown every moment. People are afraid of the unknown, people feel insecure with the unknown. They don’t want to go beyond the familiar. Hence they have created a false, plastic substitute for intelligence – they call it intellect.
Intellect is only a mental game; it cannot be creative. Intellect is imaginative, but not creative. Intelligence is creative. Intelligence creates because intelligence makes you capable of participating with God. God is the source of all creativity. You can be creative only when you are en rapport with God, when you are rooted in the very existence, when you are part of divine energy. You cannot be creative on your own; you can be creative only as a medium of God.
Creativity means you have to disappear, you have to allow God to be, you have to get out of the way. Intellect is egoistic; intelligence is humble, egoless. The difference is subtle; because both the words come from the same root, hence one can easily be deceived. Beware , be alert! Intellect is not intelligence. Intelligence is creative, intellect is only a pretender. In the name of creativity it goes on producing rubbish.
Intelligence is a totally different dimension. It has nothing to do with the head; it has something to do with the heart.Intellect is in the head; intelligence is a state of heart-wakefulness. When your heart is awake, when your heart is dancing in deep gratitude, when your heart is in tune with existence, in harmony with existence, out of that harmony is creativity.
There is no possibility of any intellectual creativity. It can produce rubbish, it is productive; it can manufacture, but it cannot create. And what is the difference between manufacturing and creating? Manufacturing is a mechanical activity. Computers can do it – they are already doing it, and doing it in a far more efficient way than you can hope for man. Intelligence creates, it does not manufacture.
Manufacturing means a repetitive exercise; what has already been done, you go on doing again and again. Creativity means bringing the new into existence, making a way for the unknown to penetrate the known, making a way for the sky to come to the earth.
Only two kinds of people create: the poets and the mystics. The poets create in the gross world and the mystics create in the subtle world. The poets create in the outer world: a painting, a poem, a song, music, a dance; and the mystic creates in the inner world. The poet’s creativity is objective and the mystic’s creativity is subjective, totally of the interior. First you have to understand the poet, only then can you understand one day – at least hope to understand one day – the mystic. The mystic is the highest flower of creativity. But you may not see anything that the mystic is doing.
Intellectual activity can make you experts in certain things, useful, efficient. But intellect is a dropping in the dark; it has no eyes, because it is not yet meditative. Intellect is borrowed, it has no insight of its own.
Moreover, life is not a logical phenomenon. And the intellectual lives through logic; hence he never fits life and life never fits with him. Of course life is not a loss; the intellectual himself is at a loss. He is always feeling like an outsider – not that life has expelled him; he himself has decided to remain outside life. If you cling too much to logic you will never be able to be part of the living process that this existence is.
Life is more than logic: life is paradox, life is mystery.
To bring intelligence into activity you don’t need more information, you need more meditation. You need to become more silent, you need to become more thoughtless. You need to become less mind and more heart. You need to become aware of the magic that surrounds you: magic that is life, magic that is God, magic that is in green trees and the red flowers, magic that is in people’s eyes. Magic is happening everywhere! All is miraculous, but because of your intellect you remain closed inside yourself, clinging to your stupid conclusions arrived at in unconsciousness or given to you by others who are as unconscious as you are.
Intelligence is certainly creative because intelligence brings your totality into functioning – not only a part, a small part, the head. Intelligence vibrates your whole being: each cell of you being, each fiber of your life starts dancing, and falls in a subtle harmony with the total.
That’s what creativity is: to pulsate in absolute harmony with the total. That’s how one becomes a Buddha, Crist, Zarathustra. These are the real creative people.
Something like this is happening right now, here. If you are a disciple you will be able to feel something of it. If you are a devotee you will be able to drink out of this source that has become available to you. And then the creativity will come to you, things will start happening on their own. Your heart will start pouring songs of joy, your hands will start transforming things. You will touch mud and it will become a lotus. You will be able to become an alchemist. But it is possible only through great awakening of intelligence, great awakening of the heart.
Osho, From the book ‘Ten Non-Commandments’
