1. Creativity is the greatest rebellion in existence.
2. The collective mind is the lowest mind in the world—even so called idiots are superior to the collective idiocy.
3. Humanity will really be born only the day the individual is respected in his rebellion.
4. Creativity is the fragrance of individual freedom.
5. A creative person is one who has insight, who can see things nobody else, has ever seen before, who hears things that nobody has heard before— then there is creativity.
6. Creativity is a fragrance of real health. When a person is really healthy and whole, creativity comes naturally to him, the urge to create arises.
7. We need now a more enriched human being, three-dimensional. I call them three C’s. The first is consciousness, the second C is compassion, and the third C is Creativity.
8. Consciousness is being, compassion is feeling, creativity is action. My vision of the new human being has to be all three simultaneously.
9. We need more enlightened people, and enlightened in a three-dimensional way.
10. Logic is dry, poetry is alive. Logic cannot dance; it is impossible for logic to dance.
11. Logic cannot love—it can talk about love but it cannot love; love seems to be illogical.
12. Only poetry can love, only poetry can take the jump into the paradox of love.
13. Poetry, love, and feeling give you a depth, a warmth.
14. One has to be meditative but not against feeling
15. One has to be meditative but full of feeling, overflowing with love.
16. If your love is only a feeling and it is not translated into action, it won’t affect the larger humanity.
17. Being contains meditation, awareness, consciousness.
18. The nature of activity and the hidden currents in it have to be understood; otherwise no relaxation is possible.
19. Relaxation is like flowering; you cannot force it.
20. Relaxation is like a flowering; you cannot force it. You have to understand the whole phenomenon—why you are so active, why so much occupation with activity, why you are obsessed with it.
21. When action comes out of a silent mind—it is the most beautiful thing in the world.
22. Buddha has the beauty of being unearthly, but he does not have the beauty that Zorba is so earthly. I would like you to be together—Zorba the Buddha. One has to be meditative but not against feeling.
23. Action is beautiful, action comes as a spontaneous response. Life needs response, every moment you have to act, but the activity comes through the present moment.
24. There are fools all over the world who go on saying, “Do something rather than nothing.”
25. There are perfect fools who have created a proverb all over the world, “An empty mind is a devil’s workshop.” It is NOT!
26. An empty mind is God’s workshop. An empty mind is the most beautiful thing in the world, the purest.
27. The devil never says, “Relax!” He says, “Why are you wasting your time? Do something, man—move!
28. An empty mind gives space to the divine to enter in you.
29. When you want to climb to the highest peak of the mountains, it is arduous. And when you have reached the peak and you lie down, whispering with the clouds, looking at the sky, the joy that fills your heart—that joy always comes whenever you reach any peak of creativity.
30. Activity is when the action has no relevance.
31. A relaxed person is simply non-obsessive, and the energy starts accumulating within him. He conserves his energy, and then when the moment for action comes his total being flows into it.
32. If you are afraid of silence that means you have an obsessive, feverish, diseased mind inside, which is continuously asking to be active.
33. Activity is your escape from yourself. It is a drug. When you forget yourself there are no worries, no anguish, no anxiety. That’s why you need to be continuously active, doing something or other, but never in a state when non doing flowers in you and blooms.
34. If you are aware, activity ceases. Energy is preserved, and the same energy becomes action.
35. Let things drop. Don’t drop them.
36. Act more, and let activities drop of their own accord. A transformation will come to you and by and by. It takes time, it needs seasoning, but there is no hurry.
37. You are at ease with yourself. Relaxation is to be at home.
38. Relaxation is not only of the body, it not only of the mind. It is of your total being.
39. The mind should remain alive, and creative, and yet should be capable of moving into silence whenever it wants to. That’s mastery. When you want to think, you can think, when you don’t want to think you can go into non-thinking. A real master is one who can do both.
40. There is not book that can help you to relax—unless you read your own inner being, and then relaxation is not a “MUST.”
41. Relaxation is not a state. You cannot force it.
42. To go into sleep all that is needed is, the continuity in the mind of the activities of the day has to discontinue. When the activity is not there in the mind, the mind relaxes and goes into sleep.
43. Only absence of activity is need. And how will come by understanding. Understanding is the only discipline.
44. What is relaxation? It is a state of affairs where your energy is not moving anywhere—not to the future, not to the past, it is simply there with you. In the silent pool of your own energy, in the warmth of it, you are enveloped. This moment is all. There is no other moment, time stops—then there is relaxation. If time is there, there is no relaxation. Simply the clock stops; there is no time; this moment is all. You don’t ask for anything else, you simply enjoy it.
45. Relaxation is a state. You cannot force it. You simply drop the negativities, the hindrances, and it comes it bubbles up by itself.
46. What more do you need? A deep gratitude arises. That is relaxation.
47. Relaxation means this moment is more than enough, more than can be asked and expected.
48. Relaxation is not a posture; relaxation is a total transformation of your energy.
49. Energy is good, energy is delight, energy is divine. Once energy is released one can become creative. It brings intelligence, creativity, sensitivity, it brings all that is beautiful.
50. Energy needs work, otherwise the energy will become restlessness. Energy needs expression, energy needs to be creative. Otherwise the same energy, coiled up within you, will become diseased, an illness.
51. You are breathing you are alive, you have consciousness, celebrate it!
52. When you celebrate your whole heart goes on beating with deep gratitude, with deep thankfulness—that is prayer.
53. All prayer is about, is a heart beating with a deep thankfulness.
54. No need to do anything. Just understand the movement of energy, the unmotivated movement of energy.
55. Thankfulness flows, but not toward a goal, it flows as a celebration. It moves, not toward a goal, it moves because of its own overflowing energy.
56. Act unmotivated, just an overflow of your energy. Share but don’t trade, don’t make bargains. Give because you have, don’t give to take back—because then you will be in misery. All traders go to hell.
57. If you become more and more involved in action, and less and less occupied in activity, your life will change and it will become a deep relaxation. Then you ‘Do’ but you remain relaxed. A Buddha is never tired. Why? Because he is not a doer. Whatsoever he has, he gives, he overflows.
58. Be a passive watcher—Empty your mind and think of naught.
59. Like a hollow bamboo rest at ease with your body.
60. Once you are empty than there is no barrier for the divine to enter in you.
61. Like a hollow bamboo rest at ease with your body. Giving not nor taking, put your mind at rest.
62. The very effort to ‘Become’ is a barrier because you are already carrying your being with you. You need not become anything—simply realize who you are, that’s all. Simply realize who is hidden within you.
63. Desiring, you miss. Let desiring subside, become a silent pool of non-desiring and all anxiety will vanquish.
64. What is to be practiced then? To be more and more at ease. To be more and more here and now.
65. Be more and more in action and less in activity. To be and more hollow, empty passive. Be more and more a watcher—indifferent, not expecting anything, not desiring anything.
66. Be happy with yourself as you are. Celebrating.
67. Creativity is a very paradoxical state of consciousness and being.
68. That is creativity—allowing God to happen is creativity. Creativity is a religious state.
69. Creativity means you are in total relaxation.
70. To be possessed by God is creativity.
71. Nature gives everybody energy which is creative. It becomes destructive only when it is obstructed, when no natural flow is allowed.
72. Surpassing happens only when something of the beyond comes in contact with you.
73. The essence of wisdom is to act in harmony with nature.
74. In deep sleep you fall in harmony with nature. That’s why deep sleep is so rejuvenating, so relaxing.
75. Once you don’t feel responsible you become natural.
76. After going through psychoanalysis you become less burdened, you become more natural, and you are more in harmony with nature and with yourself. That is the meaning of being healthy.
77. You can surpass yourself being in contact consciously with nature.
78. The essence of wisdom—to be in harmony with nature, with the natural rhythm of the universe.
79. The basic state of creativity is being in harmony with nature being in tune with life, with the universe.
80. Whenever you are in harmony with the natural rhythm of the universe you are a poet, you are a painter, you are a musician, you are a dancer.
81. The higher you go, the deeper you go into the paradox of reality.
82. Supreme action with supreme relaxation— on the surface great action is happening, in the depth nothing is happening, or only nothing is happening.
83. Meditation is creativity.
84. When ego disappears the wound in you disappears; you are healed, you are whole—the ego is your disease.
85. Conscious is not a thing, it is a process. The moment you call it “I” it becomes a thing—defined, bounded, dormant, stagnant, and you start dying.
86. You don’t need to go to school to learn creativity. All that you need is to go with inward and help ego dissolve.
87. If you see a painter, painting, certainly he is active, utterly active, madly active—he is all action. Or if you see a dancer dancing, he is all action. But still, deep down there is not actor, no doer, there is only silence. Hence I say creativity is a state of paradox.
88. Each person can be creative. If he is meditative and egoless then God starts flowing through him.
89. When you are creative, desires disappear. When you are creative, ambitions disappear.
90. When you are creative, you are already that which you always wanted to be.
91. Nature gives everybody energy that is creative. It becomes destructive only when it is obstructed, when no natural flow is allowed.
92. Consciousness has no idea of “I”, of ego. It has no idea of one’s separation from existence.
93. Consciousness does not know any barrier. It knows no boundaries—it is one with existence, it is in a deep at-onement.
94. A self is a dead thing, alive only in name. Consciousness is infinite life, life abundant. It knows no boundaries.
95. To be self-conscious is to be unconscious.
96. To be self-conscious is to be unconscious and to be unselfconscious—or to be self-unconscious—is to become conscious.
97. You become just a passage, empty, nothing of your own—that is what I call surrender.
98. If you are fighting with existence you will be self-conscious and, of course, you will be defeated again and again and again.
99. So if you are frustrated, in deep misery, remember: you are creating that misery. And you are creating it by a subtle trick: you are fighting against the whole.
100. Watch your own life—many things you are doing only because of ego.
101. You can succeed only with God, never against him. You can succeed only with the whole, never against it.
102. People don’t like to do easy things. Before they can do them they want to make them hard, difficult.
103. People enjoy doing hard things. Why? Because when you face a hard thing, your ego becomes subtle, sharp, there is a challenge.
104. If you are miserable you and only you are responsible. Neither the past nor the social structure nor the economic system—nothing is going to help.
105. Change happens when you start dropping the conflict with existence. That is the only meaning of all the great religions when emphasize, “Drop the ego.” They are saying “Drop the conflict.”
106. Harmony naturally results in a deep silence, joy, delight. Conflict results in anxiety, anguish, stress, tension.
107. The real self never becomes absolutely known; it remains mysterious, it remains effable, indefinable.
108. The real self is so vast that you cannot define it, and the real self is to mysterious that you cannot penetrate it to the very core.
109. The ego is nothing but all the tensions that you have created around yourself.
110. There is no way to define the real self.
111. If somebody asks, “Who are you.” What do you answer? You say your name. The name is not yours, because you came into the world without a name.
112. A name is needed to call you by, but it has nothing to do with your being.
113. To grow real roses is difficult, you can purchase plastic roses. They will not deceive you, but they will deceive the neighbors—that is the point of the ego.
114. Your own real self remains deep down hidden in the mist of mystery.
115. We have come out of some mysterious life source. Your self is not yours! This false self is not yours because you have created it; and your real self is not yours because it is still in God, you are still rooted in God.
116. How can make something deathless? He himself has to pass through many deaths, so whatsoever he produces is always mortal.
117. If you know your real self, you will never be afraid of death.
118. You are more graceful when you are alone—because you are not worried. Nobody is there to see you.
119. Try to make something perfect and it will remain imperfect.
120. Do something naturally and it is always perfect. Nature is perfect; effort is imperfect.
121. Whenever you try to perform something, you are seeking food for the ego.
122. A person who is unselfconscious is strong, but his strength has nothing to do with himself—it comes from beyond.
123. When you are self-conscious you are really showing symptoms that you don’t know who you are. Your very self-consciousness indicates that you have not come home yet.
124. Nobody can say anything about you. Whatsoever people say is about themselves.
125. You are always trying to be respectable, you are always trying to decorate your ego. This is suicidal.
126. Rather than being disturbed by what others say, you should start looking inside yourself.
127. When you drop the ego, you drop a whole world that you have created around it. For the first tie you are able to see things as they are—not as you would like them to be.
128. God is closer than you breathing, closer than you are to yourself.
129. In privacy he must have been completely forgetful of his own self, the ego. Then he was tremendously powerful. In public he must have become too self-conscious. Then he was weak.
130. Self-Consciousness is weakness. Self-Forgetfulness is strength.
131. A master is one who can create devices for everybody. A master is one who has no fixed device.
132. Listening is one of the basic secrets of entering into the temple of god.
133. Listening means forgetting yourself completely—only then can you listen.
134. When you listen attentively to somebody, you forget yourself. If you cannot forget yourself, you can never listen.
135. If you are too self-conscious about yourself, you simply pretend that you are listening—you don’t listen. You may not your head say yes and no—but you are not listening.
136. When you listen, you become just a passage—a passivity, a receptivity, a womb. You become feminine. And to arrive one has to become feminine.
137. One has to become more of the ears and less of the eyes.
138. You just become ears. You just listen. There is nothing else to do—just go listening with no idea why, with no idea what is happening.
139. Just go on listening with no interpretation, with no activity on your part.” And then “Imagine you are those waves.”
140. When you are receptive suddenly your faculty of imagination becomes tremendously powerful.
141. Receptive people, sensitive people are imaginative people.
142. The poets, painters, dancers, musicians absorb the universe in deep receptivity and then they pour whatsoever they have absorbed into their imagination.
143. The world is God’s dream, his imagination. The world is his magic, his imagination. He is dreaming it; we are part of his dream.
144. Only a creative person knows how to drop boredom, the creative person knows no boredom at all. He is thrilled, enchanted he is constantly in a state of adventure.
145. First you become receptive and then you become creative. And once you have dropped your ego, you become so flexible, that whatsoever you imagine will happen. Then your imagination will become your reality.
146. If he had been too much attached to his religion, that would have been the point where he would have been the point where he would have been completely cut off from his imagination.
147. Once you have dropped ego (Conflict) you have dropped the ego you have dropped all defeat all failure, all frustration.
148. Carry the ego and you are doomed in failure.
149. Drop the ego and infinite strength starts flowing in you.
150. By dropping the ego, you become a river, you start flowing, you start melting, you start streaming—you become alive.
151. All life is of the whole. If you are trying to live on your own, you are simply being stupid. It’s as if a leaf on a tree is trying to live on its own—not only that but fighting the tree, fighting the roots, thinking that those are all inimical to him.
152. We are just leaves on a tree, great tree—call it god, or the whole, or you name it but we are all small leaves on an infinite tree of life.
153. There is no need to fight. The only way to come home is to surrender.
154. God has never been known to create two persons alike; he always creates the unique.
155. God never believed in any routine, he is not like an assembly line. He is absolutely against carbons, he creates only originals.
156. The key is to finding the real among the unreal.
157. The soul happens only when the artist disappears into the art—he is no longer separate.
158. Those who are the greatest are absolutely certain that they have been nothing but hollow bamboos and existence has been singing through them. They have been flutes but the song is not theirs, it has flowed through them, but it comes from some unknown source.
159. The real creator knows that he has not created anything. Existence has worked through him. It has possessed his hands, his being, and it has created something through him. He has been instrumental. This is real art, where the artist disappears. Then there is no question of ego. And then art becomes religiousness.
160. In that complete loosening, in that complete relaxation, one functions in a totally different world according to totally different laws.
161. The law of gravity lifts things downward. The law of grace lifts things upward.
162. There are moments when you have a kind of weightlessness. You walk on earth but still your feet don’t touch the earth, you are six inches above. Moments of joy, moments of prayer, moments of meditation, moments of celebration, moments of love and you are weightless, you are uplifted.
163. Mind is past—past and past and nothing else.
164. Mind means memory, there can no contemporary mind. To be contemporary is to be without mind.
165. If you are here now, then you are contemporary. But then, don’t you see your mind disappears! No thought moves, no desire arises; you become disconnected with the past and disconnected with the future.
166. Mind is never original, cannot be. No—Mind is original, fresh, young; mind is always old, rotten, stale.
167. All mind is old. Mind as such is old, and there can be no modern mind; the most modern mind is still is of the past.
168. The really alive person is a herenow person. He does not live out of past, he does not live for the future.
169. The really alive person only lives in the moment for the moment. The moment is all.
170. A really alive person is spontaneous; that spontaneity is the fragrance of no-mind.
171. Mind is repetitive, mind always move in circles. Mind is a mechanism: you feed it with knowledge it repeats the same knowledge. It goes on chewing the same knowledge again and again.
172. No—Mind is clarity, purity, innocence. No—mind is the real way to live, the real way to know, the real way to be.
173. Intelligence needs tremendous courage; intelligence needs an adventurous life. Intelligence needs that you are always going into the unknown, into the unchartered sea. Then intelligence grows, it becomes sharpened. It grows only when it encounters the unknown every moment. They don’t want to go beyond the familiar; hence they have created a false, plastic substitute for intelligence—they call it intellect.
174. Intellect is only a mental game. It cannot survive.
175. Intelligence is a totally different dimension. It has nothing to do with the head; it has something to do with heart.
176. 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 you heart is in tune with existence, in harmony with existence, out of that harmony is creativity.
177. 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 that you can hope from 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.
178. 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.
179. The mystic is the highest form of creativity.
180. Consciousness is the purest form, the highest possible of expression.
181. Intellectual activity can make you experts in certain things, useful efficient. But intellect is groping in the dark. It has no eyes, because it is not yet meditative. Intellect is borrowed, it has no insight of its own.
182. The expert, the knowledgeable, the intellectual, has no insight of his own. He depends on borrowed knowledge, on tradition, on convention. He carries libraries in his head, a great burden, but he has no vision.
183. Life is not the same, ever—it is constantly changing, moment to moment is a new—the expert always lags behind, his response is inadequate.
184. Life is not a logical phenomenon, and the intellectual lives through logic; hence he never fits with life, and life never fits with him.
185. If you cling too much to logic you will never be able to be part of living process that this existence is.
186. Life is more than logic. Life is paradox, life is mystery.
187. Perfectly mathematical, perfectly logical! —but life is not so logical, life is not so mathematical. And people go on living in their intellects very logically. Logic gives them a feeling as if they know—but it is big “as if” and one tends to forget it completely. Whatsoever you go on doing through intellect, it is only inference. It is not an experience of truth, but just an inference based on your logic—and your logic is your invention.
188. 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.
189. You need to become less mind and more heart.
190. Intelligence is certainly creative, because intelligence brings your totality into functioning—not only a part, a small part, the head.
191. Intelligence vibrates your whole being; each cell of your being, each fiber of your life start dancing and falls into a subtle harmony with the total.
192. Creativity is to pulsate in absolute harmony with the total. 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.
193. 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.
194. Your experience is growing it is changing, it is moving. It is continuously moving from the known into the unknown and from the unknown into the unknowable.
195. Experience has beauty because it is unfinished.
196. It is so finished that is dead.
197. No story can beautiful if it is utterly finished. It will be utterly dead. Experience always remains open—that means unfinished.
198. The first quality of consciousness is an openness to experience.
199. Mind is all your beliefs collected together. Openness means no-mind.
200. Openness means you put your mind aside and you are ready to look into life again and again in a new way, not with the old eyes.
201. The mind gives you old eyes, it gives you again ideas. “Look through this,” But then the thing becomes colored; then you don’t look at it, then you project an idea upon it. Then the truth becomes a screen on which you go on projecting.
202. Look through no-mind, look through nothingness.
203. Sooner or later a day comes when you look and you don’t have your mind. You are not looking for anything; you are simply looking. Your look is pure.
204. Creativity is the quality that you bring to the activity you are doing. It is an attitude, an inner approach—how you look at things.
205. Don’t confine creativity to anything particular.
206. It is the person who is creative—and if a man is creative than whatsoever he does…even if he walks you can see walking there is creativity.
207. Whatsoever you do, if you do it joyfully, lovingly, if your act of doing is not purely economic then it is creative.
208. If something grows out of it within you, it gives you growth, it is spiritual, it is creative, it is divine.
209. You become more divine as you become more silent more creative.
210. The more creative you become, the godlier you become.
211. When your creativity comes to a climax, when you whole life becomes creative, you live in god.
212. Love what you do. Be meditative while you are doing it—whatsoever it is, irrespective of that fact of what it is. Then you will know that even cleaning can become creative. With what Love! — almost singing and dancing inside. If you clean the floor with such love, you have done an invisible painting. You lived that moment in such delight that it has given you some inner growth. You cannot be the same after a creative act.
213. If your act is your love affair, then it becomes creative. Small things become great by the touch of love and delight.
214. Every human being is born creator. Watch children and you will see: all children are creative.
215. When ambition enters, creativity disappears. — because an ambitious man cannot be creative, an ambitious man cannot love any activity for its own sake. While he is painting he is looking ahead; he is thinking, “When am I going to get a Nobel prize? When he is writing a novel he is looking ahead, he is always in the future— and a creative person is always present.
216. You have to drop wrong, hypnotic suggestions that have been given to you in your childhood. Drop them! Purify yourself of all conditionings. And suddenly you will see you are creative.
217. Our whole attitude about life is money oriented. And money is one of the most uncreative thigs one can become interested in. Our whole approach is power oriented and power is destructive, not creative.
218. Belief is not just belief. It opens doors, it closes doors. If you have a wrong belief, then that will hang around you as a closed door. If you believe that you are uncreative, you will become uncreative because that belief will obstruct, continuously negate, all possibilities of flowing.
219. A creative act enhances the beauty of the world; it gives something to the world, it never takes anything from it.
220. A creative person comes into the world, enhances the beauty of the world.
221. A creative person makes the world dance better, enjoy better, love better, meditate better
222. If you are creative deep inside you will you be fulfilled with joy, deep inside you will you be full of joy and celebration. You will be continuously receiving more and more blessings; your life will be a life of benediction.
223. It is possible that outwardly you may not be famous, you may not have money, you may not succeed in this so called world is to fail deeply, is to fail in the inside world. And what you are going to do with the whole world at your feet if you have lost your own self? What will you do if you possess the whole world and you don’t possess yourself? A creative person possesses his own being; he is a master.
224. Drop all beliefs that you are uncreative.
225. If you can smile whole heartedly, hold somebody’s hand and smile, then it is a creative act, a great creative act.
226. Just embrace somebody to your heart and you are creative. Just look with loving eyes at somebody……just a loving look can change the whole world of a person.
227. You have to find out what you can do and what you cannot do. Everybody cannot do everything!
228. You have to search and find your destiny. You have to grope in the dark. It is not very clear what your destiny is—but that’s how life is.
229. It is good that one has to search for their destiny. In the very search something grows.
230. 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.
231. 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.
232. The very ambition for money is going to destroy your creativity. If you want fame, then forget about creativity.
233. The greater a person is the more time it takes for people to recognize him—because when a great person is born, there is 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 those values he is gone.
There have been many creative people who have never been recognized. It is accidental for a creative person to be successful.
234. If you really want to be creative, then there is no question of money, success, prestige, respectability—then you enjoy your activity, then each act has an intrinsic value. You dance because you like dancing; you dance because you delight in it.
235. If you are loving, you will see that the whole existence has individually.
236. Each person comes into this world with a specific destiny—he has something to fulfill, some message has to be derived, some work has to be completed. You are not here accidentally—you are here meaningfully. The whole intends to do something through you.
237. Each person comes into this world with a specific destiny— he has something to fulfill, some message has to be delivered, some work has to be completed. You are not here accidentally—you are here meaningfully. There is a purpose behind you. The whole intends to do something through you.
238. The work should be important, a joy in itself. You should work not to be recognized, but because you enjoy being creative; you love the work for its own sake.
239. This should be the way to look at things—you work if you love it, don’t ask for recognition.
240. Your fulfillment should be in the work itself.
241. If everybody learns this simple art of loving his work, whatever it is, enjoying it without asking for any recognition, we would have a more beautiful and celebrating world.
242. You have created the desire for recognition in everybody, so nobody can work peacefully, silently, enjoying whatever he is doing. And life consists of small things. For those small things there are no rewards, no titles given by the governments, no honorary degrees given by the universities.
243. Why should you bother about recognition? Bothering about recognition has meaning only if you don’t love your work; then it is meaningful, then it seems to substitute.
244. Rather than thinking about recognition, reconsider your work. Do you love it? Then that is the end if you don’t love it, change it!
245. The parents, the teachers are always reinforcing that you should be recognized, you should be accepted. This is a very cunning idea strategy to keep people under control.
246. Learn one basic thing: do whatever want to do, love to do. And never ask for recognition, that is begging.
247. Deep down in yourself, look. Perhaps you don’t like what you are doing, perhaps you are afraid you are doing, perhaps you are afraid that you are on the wrong track, so acceptance will help you feel that you are right. Recognition will make you feel that you are going toward the right goal.
248. The question is of your own inner feelings; it has nothing to do with the outside world. And why depend on others? All these things depend on others—you yourself are becoming dependent.
249. To be an individual living in total freedom, on your own feet, drinking from your own sources, is what makes a man really centered, rooted. That is the beginning of his ultimate flowering.
250. Any man who has any sense of his own individuality lives by his own love, by his own work without caring what others think of it.
251. Become a child again.
252. Creativity needs freedom—freedom from the mind, freedom from knowledge, freedom from prejudices.
253. 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.
254. A creator has to be able to look foolish. A creator has to risk his so-called respectability.
255. So when an artist becomes respectable he becomes dead.
256. Only those who are ready to put their prestige, their pride, their respectability at stake again and again, and can go on into something that nobody thinks is worth going into.
257. Creators are always thought to be mad people.
258. Without any exception all children try to be creators, but we don’t allow them. Immediately we start teaching them the right way to do a thing—and once they have learned the right way to do a thing they become robots.
259. The creator cannot be efficient; he has to go on experimenting.
260. The creator cannot settle anywhere. The creator is a vagabond; he carries his tent on his shoulders.
261. The creator cannot settle; settling means death to him. He is always ready to take risks. Risk is his love affair.
262. How can humanity go on living without love and without poetry and without joy and without celebration?
263. Drugs can be dropped only if better ways can be found that can release your poetry. Meditation is a better way—less destructive, less harmful than any kind of chemical.
264. A great calamity that is going to arise in the world through drugs can be avoided by only one thing—that is meditation. There is no other way, if meditation becomes more and more prevalent and enters people’s lives more and more, drugs will disappear.
265. You earn money only because you want to enjoy your life and celebrate your life. You want a certain bank balance only so that you can love. You work only so that you can play—play remains the goal. You work only so you can relax. Relaxation remains the goal work is not the goal.
266. What is your education? Have you ever looked into it? Have you ever pondered over it? It is simply a training in memory. You don’t become intelligent through it, you become more and more unintelligent.
267. The work ethic is a hangover from the past. It has to be dropped. And he educational world has to go through a real revolution. Children should not be forced into repetitive patterns.
268. That’s what your examinations are—a person is thought to be very intelligent if he can vomit all that has been thrown into him. First he has to be forced to swallow, go on swallowing, and then in then in the examination papers, vomit. If you can vomit efficiently, you are intelligent if you can vomit exactly that which has been given to you, you are intelligent.
269. Naturally, you have to risk. If you want to be creative, you will have to risk all. But it is worth it. A little creativity is more worthwhile than this whole world and its kingdom.
270. One who is ready to learn is a disciple, and the process of being ready to learn is discipline.
271. Whatsoever you learned has to be dropped continuously; otherwise it will become knowledge, and knowledge will prevent further learning.
272. The real man of discipline never accumulates; each moment he dies to whatsoever he has come to know and again become ignorant.
273. When you are in a state of not knowing you are open, there is no barrier, you are ready to explore.
274. The creative person has to dissolve all should and should nots. He needs freedom and space, vast space; he needs the whole sky and all the stars. Only then can his innermost spontaneity start growing.
275. Your discipline has to come from your very heart, it has to be your own—and there is a great difference.
276. The real man of discipline never accumulates, each moment he dies to whatsoever he has come to know and again becomes ignorant. That ignorance is really luminous.
277. A discipline is an individual phenomenon; when-ever you borrow it you start living according to set principles, dead principles.
278. Life is never dead; life is constantly changing each moment. Life is flux.
279. One thing may be right this moment and may become wrong the next moment.
280. Don’t try to be consistent, otherwise you will be dead. Only dead people are consistent.
281. Try to be alive, with all its inconsistencies, and live each moment without any reference to the past and without reference to the future.
282. Live the moment in the context of the moment, and your response will be total. And that totality has beauty and that totality is creativity. Then whatsoever you do will have beauty of its own.
283. Find nirvana in the ordinary.
284. Every creative soul—it does not matter what he creates—should be respected and honored.
285. In a real, honest human society, creativity will be honored, respected, because the creative soul is participating in the work of god.
286. Every creative soul—it does not matter what he creates—should be respected and honored, so that creativity is honored. But even politicians get Nobel prizes—who are nothing but clever criminals.
287. Creativity has something to do with the quality of your consciousness. Whatsoever you do can become creative.
288. Creativity means enjoying any work as meditation, doing any work with deep love.
289. It does not matter whether you paint, sculpt, or make shoes, whether you are a gardener, a farm a fisherman, a carpenter—it does not matter.
290. What matters are you putting your very soul into what you are creating? Then your creative products have something of the quality of them. Then your products have something of quality of divine. Life consists of small things, just your ego goes on saying these are small things. You would like some great thing to do—a great poetry. You would like to become Shakespeare or Kalidas Milton. It is your ego that is creating the trouble. Drop the ego and everything is creative.
291. Life consists of small things. They become great if you love.
292. A holy man is an ordinary man who love ordinary life. Chopping wood, carrying water from the well, cooking—whatsoever he touches becomes holy. Not that he is doing great things, but whatsoever he does, he does it greatly.
293. The greatness is not in the thing done. The greatness is in the consciousness that you bring while you do it.
294. Each moment of your life has to be transformed by your meditative love.
295. When I say be creative, I don’t mean that you should all go and become great painters and great poets. I simply mean let your life be a painting, let your life be a poet.
296. Never allow yourself this tendency for being great, famous, someone bigger than life size—never. Life=size is perfect. To be exactly life-size, to be just ordinary, is perfectly as it should be. But live that ordinariness in an extraordinary way. That is what nirvanic consciousness is all about.
297. Nirvana is in small things, the way you live them the way you transform ever small activity into a holy act, into a prayer…your house becomes a temple, your body becomes the abode of God, and wherever you look and whatsoever you touch is tremendously beautiful, sacred—then nirvana is freedom.
298. Nirvana is to live the ordinary life so alert, so full of consciousness, so full of life, that everything becomes luminous.
299. Love life, trust life, and life will give you all that you need. Life will become a blessing for you, a benediction.
300. The whole evolution of man is because man has dreamed about it.
301. The whole existence is one organic unity. You are not holding hands only with each other, you are holding hands with the trees. You are not only breathing together; the whole universe is breathing together.
302. And just to be silent, just to be joyful, just to be—in this silence, you will feel you are joined with others. When you are thinking, you are separate from others because you are thinking some thoughts and the other person is thinking different thoughts. But if you are both silent, then all the walls between you disappear.
303. Two silences cannot remain two. They become one.
304. All great values of life—love, silence, blissfulness, ecstasy, godlikeness—make you aware of an immense oneness.
305. There is nobody else other than you; we are all different expressions of one reality, different songs of one singer, different dances of one dancer, different paintings—but the painter is one.
306. Reality is more psychedelic, more colorful, more joyful, more dancing than you can ever imagine.
307. When you are thinking you are separate from others because you are thinking some thoughts and the other person is thinking different thoughts. But if you are both silent, then all the walls between you disappear. Two silences cannot remain two. They become one.
308. The word religion is beautiful. It comes from the root that means bringing together those who have fallen apart in their ignorance; bringing them together, waking them up so that they can see they are not separate.
309. If love is discipline, it is false. If nonviolence is cultivated, it is false. If compassion is nurtured, it is false. But if they come spontaneously, without any effort of your own, then they have a reality so deep, so exquisite.
310. Man has fallen far away from reality. He has to be awakened to the truth that we are all one. And it is not hypothesis; it is the great experience of all the meditators, without exception, down the ages, that the whole existence is one, organic unity.
311. So don’t mistake any beautiful experience as a dream. To call it a dream cancels its reality. Dreams have to be made real, not reality changed into dreams.
312. Consciousness is continuous river.
313. Your present moment contains your whole past. Your present moment contains your whole future—because the past as it has happened has been changing you, it has been preparing you. And the future that is going to happen will happen from the way you live in the present. The way you live herenow will have a great impact upon your future.
314. In the present moment all past is contained, and in the present moment all future is potential.
315. The present moment contains all. Now is eternity.
316. The more memory you have the less creative you will be—because you will go on repeating the memory, and creativity means allowing the new to happen. Allowing the new to happen means putting aside your memory so the past does not interfere.
317. When you the rose opening in the early morning sun, see it. Let it have an impact, allow it to go deep in you. Let its rosiness overpower you, overwhelm you. Don’t say anything, wait. Be patient be open. Absorb. Let the rose reach you, and you reach the rose. Let there be a meeting, a communion of two beings—the rose and you. Let there be a penetration, an interpenetration.
318. While the experience is happening, don’t go on talking inside yourself. The inner talk will be an interference You will never know the rose in its intensity and depth. You will know only the superficial, that shallow. And if you know the shallow, the shallow is going to be your expression; your art will not be of much value.
319. Creative means the new, the novel, the original. Creative means the fresh, the unknown. You have to be open for it, vulnerable for it.
320. Put the whole mind aside.
321. You don’t allow the mind rest; that’s why your mind remains mediocre.
322. Creative imagination has nothing to do with memory—only then is it creative.
323. Once you drop psychological memory you will become creative.
324. The creative person is one who brings something from the unknown into the world of the known, who brings something from God into the world, who helps God to utter something—who becomes a hollow bamboo and allows God to flow through him.
325. Creativity is from the creator; creativity is not of you or from you. You disappear, then creativity is—when the creator takes possession of you.
326. A creative person is one who has insight, who can see things that nobody has ever seen before, who can see things that no eye has ever been able to see, who hears things that nobody has heard before. Then there is creativity.
327. Jesus statements are creative.
328. What is Jesus secret? He has insight He has looked into God; he has looked into the unknown. He has encountered the unknown and the unknowable. He has been into that space, and from that space he brings a few fragments.
329. Only fragments can be brought, but when you bring some fragments from the unknowable you transform the whole quality of human consciousness on the earth.
330. The impossible is meeting the known with the unknown, the meeting of the mind with no-mind—that is impossible. Make it happen.
331. The real creators know it perfectly well, that they are not the creators—they were just instrumental, they were mediums. Something happened through them, true, but they are not the doers of it.
332. The modern mind is an angry mind—angry because you cannot contact your being, angry because you have lost all meaning, angry because you don’t know what significance is.
333. A world without God is bound to be an insane world—because a world without God will not have any context in which to become significant.
334. Meaning is always in reference to something bigger than you.
335. Without God man cannot have any significance, because man is a small word in the great epic of God, man is a small note in the great orchestra of God.
336. There are a few things that give you joy and a few things that make you miserable, a few things that create ecstasy and a few things that create only agony, a few things that create only hell and a few things that take you to a world of paradise.
337. No, all things are not the same. But once God is thought to be dead, once you lose contact with the totality—and God is nothing but the totality.
338. Remember: the real art arises out of real religiousness, because religiousness is finding a communion of reality. Once you are in communion with reality, then real art arises.
339. Real art means something that helps you to be meditative.
340. On a full—moon night, just sitting there and looking at that beautiful masterpiece you will be filled with the unknown. You will start feeling something from the beyond.
341. How could he create a whole image of the woman just by touching her hand once? He must have been in a different kind of space. He must have been in that moment without mind. That moment must have been a moment of great meditation. In that moment he touched the energy, and just by feeling the energy he created the whole shape.
342. Your face is not accidental; your face is there because you have a particular energy pattern. Your eyes, your hair, your color—all are there because you have a particular energy pattern.
343. Once you know the energy pattern, you know the whole personality. You know in an out, all—because it is energy pattern that creates everything.
344. Once the energy pattern has been understood, there is the key, the nucleus, of all that has happened to you and all that is going to happen.
345. Creativity means meditativeness, creativity means a state of no—mind then God descends in you, then love flows out of you.
346. You can paint, you can write as a therapy, but burn your paintings and burn your poetry. You need not go on exhibiting your vomit to people.
347. One has to look into emptiness. Don’t say that you are empty, because each emptiness also has a fullness in it. You are looking from the wrong end.
348. You come into a room, there is furniture, pictures on the walls and things. Then those things and the pictures are removed and you come into the room—now what will you say? Will you call it empty or will you call it a full room? Room means ‘Emptiness”; rooms means ‘space.” With the furniture removed the room is full. When furniture was there the room was not full; much of it was missing because of the furniture. Now the room is complete, the emptiness is total.
349. If you have a book in your mind, it has to be written to get rid of it. It is a catharsis; it is unburdening yourself.
350. Creative people almost always go mad. Mediocrities never go mad—they have nothing to go mad over, they have nothing maddening in their lives.
351. Why does it happen creative people go mad? Because they are so occupied, so many things are happening in the mind. They don’t have a space of their own within themselves. You need a rest period.
352. A lion gives birth to only one child, because the whole being is involved in it. And then there is a rest period, long rest period to recoup, to regain the energy that you have given to the child—to regain yourself again so that something can be born out of you.
353. The deeper your creation, the great will be your emptiness afterward. The great the storm, the great will be the silence that comes in its wake. Enjoy it.
354. The storm is good, enjoy it; and the silence that comes that follows it is also good. The day is beautiful, full of activity; night is also very beautiful, full of inactivity, passivity, emptiness.
355. Enjoy the emptiness, feel blissful and blessed.
356. In India, we have better words for emptiness. We call it Shunya. The very word is positive; it has nothing of negativity in it. It is beautiful, it simply means space, with no boundaries—shunya. And we have called the ultimate goal Shunya.
357. Don’t call it emptiness, call it wholeness, call it truth, call it God. And then you will be able to feel the benediction of it.
358. The paradox of art is that first you have to learn its discipline and then you have to forget it totally.
359. Don’t be bothered too much about the technique otherwise you will never be spontaneous. Be a little innovative—that’s what creativity is. Innovate new ways, new means. Try something new that nobody has ever done. The greatest creativity happens in people whose training is of some other discipline.
360. All great creativity happens through people who move from one discipline to another.
361. Children who come out of crossbreeding are far healthier, far more beautiful.
362. It will be good if people from one race marry into another race–and if someday we discover people on some other planet, the best way will be crossbreeding between earth and the other planet. Then newer kinds of people will be coming into existence.
363. People are so much against each other. They have been conditioned for this antagonism for so long that they have forgotten completely that we are all human beings, that we belong to the same earth, to the same planet.
364. When you become accustomed to one discipline, when you become imprisoned with the technique, just slip out of it into another discipline. It is a good idea, a great idea to go on moving from one discipline into another. You will find yourself become more and more creative.
365. One thing has to be remembered: if you are really creative you may not become famous. A really creative person takes time to become famous because he has to create the values—new values, new criteria, only then can he be judged.
366. If you want fame, then forget all about creativity.
367. When you bring something new into the world you are bound to be rejected.
368. The world never forgives a person who brings anything new to the world.
369. The creative person is bound to be punished by the world, remember it.
370. To bring something new into the world means nobody will be able to appreciate it; it is so new that there are not any criteria against which it can be valued. No means are yet in existence that can help people to understand it.
371. Vincent Van Goh was not appreciated in his day. Not even a single painting was ever sold. Now each of his paintings is sold for millions of dollars—people were not even ready to receive them same paintings as gifts—the same paintings!
372. If you really want to be creative you will have to accept that you can’t be famous, you can’t be well known. If you really want to be creative, then you have to learn the simple phenomenon of “art for art’s sake.” For no other motive.
373. Enjoy whatsoever you are doing. If you can find a few friends to enjoy it, good; if nobody is there to enjoy, then enjoy it alone. If you are enjoying it, that is enough. If you feel fulfilled though it, that is enough.
374. True art means if it helps you to become silent, still, joyous; if it gives you celebration, if it makes you dance—whether anybody participates with you or not is irrelevant. If it becomes a bridge between you and God, that is true art. If it becomes a meditation, that is true art. If you become absorbed in it, so utterly absorbed that the ego disappears, that is true art.
375. Don’t be worried what true art is. If you rejoice in doing it, if you feel lost in doing it, if you feel overwhelmed with joy and peace in doing it, it is true art.
376. People who don’t know how to create become critics—so don’t be worried about them.
377. So this is my criterion: if it leads you toward God, it is true art, it is authentic art.
378. Almost everything can be purchased except those spiritual values like love, compassion, enlightenment, freedom.
379. To learn, you will need to be free from hunger, free from poverty, free from all kinds of prejudices.
380. All religions together have made man as poor as possible. They have condemned money so much, and praised poverty so much, that as far as I am concerned, they are the greatest criminals the world has known.
381. Perhaps I am the first person who is respectful of money, of wealth, because it can make you multidimensional rich.
382. Wealth is as significant as beautiful music, as great literature, as masterpieces of art.
383. There are people who have a born capacity to be musician. Mozart started playing beautiful music at the age of eight. When he was eight, other great masters of music were not anywhere near him. Now this man was born with creativity.
384. Vincent Van Gogh was born of a poor father who worked in a coal min. He never got educated, he never knew any art school, but he became one of the greatest painters in the WORLD!
385. Perhaps a few more centuries may be needed for scientists to discover that certainly the trees are the ambitions of the earth. One thing is certain, that trees are moving against gravitation. The earth is allowing them to move against gravitation—supporting, helping them.
386. The earth is alive, and life always want to go higher and higher and higher. There is no limit to its aspirations.
387. Just as there are born poets, born painters, I would like you to remember there are born wealth creators. They have never been appreciated.
388. I respect money. Money is one of the greatest inventions of man.
389. Money is a tremendous invention. It makes people richer, it makes people capable of having things that they don’t have. But all the religions have been against it.
390. Drop all ideas that have imposed about money. Be respectful to it. Create wealth, because only after creating wealth do many other dimensions open up for you.
391. The ultimate creativity is the meaning of your life.
392. Life in itself has no meaning. Life is an opportunity to create meaning. Meaning has not to be discovered: it has to be created.
393. You will only find meaning when you create it.
394. Meaning is a dance, not a rock. Meaning is music. You will find it only if you create it.
395. God is not a thing but a creation. And only those who create find.
396. It is good that meaning is not lying around somewhere, otherwise one person would have discovered it—then what would be the need for everybody else to discover it?
397. Millions of people are living meaningless lives because of this utterly stupid idea that meaning has to be discovered. As if it is already there all that you need is to just pull the curtain, and behold! Meaning is there. It is not like that.
398. Each individual has to give birth to God, to meaning, to truth; each man has to become pregnant with it and pass through the pains of birth. Each one has to carry it in one womb, feed it by one’s own blood, and only then does one discover.
399. If you can’t see any meaning of life, you must be waiting passively for the meaning to come…it will never come.
400. False is the idea that meaning is already there. It is not! Freedom is to create it; energy is there to create it. The field is there to sow the seeds to reap the crop. All is there—but the meaning has to be created. That’s why to create it is such a joy, such an adventure, such an ecstasy.
401. Life is not there readymade, available. You get the life that you create, you get out of life that which you put into it. First you have to pour meaning into it. You have to give color and music and poetry, you have to be creative. Only then will you be alive.
402. Praise a man because he has created a song. Praise a man because he has beautiful sculpture. Praise a man because he plays such a beautiful flute. Let these be religious, qualities from now onward. Praise a man because through him, the world is becoming more graceful.
403. Meaning comes out of creativity.
404. Let your inquiry be pure. Don’t move with any fixed idea, go naked and nude. Go open and empty. And you will find not only one meaning, you will find a thousand and one meanings. Then each thing will become meaningful. Just a colored stone shining in the rays of the sun. . . or a dewdrop creating a small rainbow around itself….or just a small flower in the win.
405. Don’t start with a conclusion, otherwise you have started wrongly from the very beginning. Go without conclusion! That’s what I mean when I say against and again, go without knowledge if you want to find truth. The knowledgeable person never finds it, his knowledge is a barrier.
406. Don’t move with any fixed idea. Go naked and nude. Go open and empty. And you will find not only one meaning, you will find a thousand and one meanings.
407. Meaning has to be created. And meaning has to be searched for without any conclusions. If you can drop your knowledge, life will suddenly take on color—it will become psychedelic.
408. Your mind is a mess. Clean it! Make it blank. The empty mind is the best mind.
409. Those who have been telling you an empty mind is the devil’s workshop are the devil’s agents. The empty mind is closer to God than anything.
410. So many thoughts in the mind, mixed up; nothing seems to be clear; you have heard so many things from so many sources—your mind is a MONTER! Clear it.
411. Unless you say something on your own, you will miss the meaning.
412. Drop the knowledge and become more creative. Remember, knowledge is gathered—you need not be creative about it; you have only to be receptive.
413. You will not find meaning by watching. You can see thousand and one lovers making love and you will not know what love is—you will know that orgasmic abandonment by watching.
414. Meaning comes through participation. Participate in life! Participate as deeply, as totally, as possible. Risk all your participation.
415. If you want to know anything, participate.
416. Life has to be multidimensional, then only is there meaning. Never make life one-dimensional.
417. Have more interests in life.
418. Find as many things as possible in life, and then you will have richness. And meaning is a by-product of richness.
419. Let there be moments unexplainable. Let there be a few things that are mysterious, for which you cannot supply any reason. Let there be a few doings for which people will think you are a little crazy.
420. Don’t allow your life to become just a dead ritual. Let there be moments, unexplainable. Let there be a few things that that are mysterious, for which you cannot supply any reason. Let there be a few doings for which people will think you are a little crazy. A man who is a hundred percent sane is dead. A little bit of craziness by the side is always a great joy. Go on doing a few crazy things, too. And then meaning will be possible.
