Jiddu Krishnamurti Quotes on Creativity, J Krishnamurti Sayings on Creativity

Jiddu Krishnamurti

Jiddu Krishnamurti Quotes on Creativity

The state of creativity the absence of the ''I''
Creativeness comes into being when there is constant awareness of the ways of the mind, and of the hindrances it has built for itself.
The freedom to create comes with self-knowledge; but self-knowledge is not a gift. One can be creative without having any particular talent. Creativeness is a state of being in which the conflicts and sorrows of the self are absent, a state in which the mind is not caught up in the demands and pursuits of desire.
Fear, which is the result of our desire to be secure, makes us conform, imitate and submit to domination, and therefore it prevents creative living. To live creatively is to live in freedom, which is to be without fear; and there can be a state of creativeness only when the mind is not caught up in desire and the gratification of desire. It is only by watching our own hearts and minds with delicate attention that we can unravel the hidden ways of our desire. The more thoughtful and affectionate we are, the less desire dominates the mind.
As long as the mind is merely seeking a permanent state in which it will have no disturbance of any kind, it is closed, and therefore it can never be creative. It is only when the mind is free of the desire to become something, to achieve a result, and hence free of fear, that it can be utterly quiet; and only then is there a possibility of that creativeness which is reality.
It is only when the mind does not seek stimuli in any form, whether outward or inward, that it can be completely quiet, free, and only in that freedom is there creation.
To be creative is not merely to produce poems, or statues, or children; it is to be in that state in which truth can come into being. Truth comes into being when there is a complete cessation of thought; and thought ceases only when the self is absent, when the mind has ceased to create, that is, when it is no longer caught in its own pursuits. When the mind is utterly still without being forced or trained into quiescence, when it is silent because the self is inactive, then there is creation.
A musician who says, ''I love music'', but who is watching how many titled people there are in the audience, how much money he is going to make, he is not creative, he is not a musician; he is using music in order to become famous, to have money. So there can be no creativity if there is a motive behind it. See this for yourself.
An ambitious person is never a creative, joyous person; he is always tortured. But a man who feels the love of anything, the being of anything, is really creative; such a person is a revolutionary. A person who is a communist, a socialist, a congressman, or an imperialist cannot be revolutionary. The creative human being is inwardly very rich, and out of that richness, he acts and has his being.
The creative state does not demand struggle; on the contrary, when there is struggle, there is no creative state. When the self, the 'me', is totally absent, there is a possibility for that creative state to come into being. And as long as idea predominates, there must be struggle, there must be conflict. That is, to shape action according to idea must further conflict. So, if we can understand why idea predominates in our minds, then perhaps we shall be able to approach action differently.
When there is creativeness, when we have that creative feeling, there is no struggle, there is absence of struggle, which means that the self, the 'me', with all its prejudices, its conditioning, is not there. In that state when the self is not, there is creativeness; and that creative feeling, that creative state, we try to express in action - through music, painting, or what you will. Then the struggle begins - the desire for recognition, and so on.
To find out what is true, the mind must first be free, and to be free is extraordinarily hard work, harder than all the practices of yoga. Such practices merely condition your mind, and it is only the free mind that can be creative. A conditioned mind may be inventive; it may think up new ideas, new phrases, new gadgets; it may build a dam, plan a new society, and all the rest of it, but that is not creativity. Creativity is something much more than the mere capacity to acquire a technique. It is because this extraordinary thing called creativity is not in most of us that we are so shallow, empty, insufficient, and only the mind that is free can be creative.
Creativity is possible only when the mind is not occupied with the machinery of memory. I think this is very clear if you will follow it, though verbally it may be difficult. If you observe your own mind in operation, you will see that it is continually responding from the background of memory, and such a mind cannot know the state of freedom, in which alone there is creativity. To me, this is the supreme problem because it is only at the instant of being free that the mind is capable of discovering something totally new, unpremeditated, uncontaminated by the past.
When the mind is aware of its own movement, mind comes to an end. It is only then that the creative state can be; it is the only salvation because that creative state is love. Love has nothing to do with sentiment. It has nothing to do with sensation. It is not a product of thought, nor can the mind manufacture it. Mind can only create images, images of sensation, of experience; and images are not love.
For a man who is living fully, completely, for a man who is truly cultured, beliefs are unnecessary. He is creative. He is truly creative, and that creativeness is not the outcome of a reaction to a belief. The truly cultured man is intelligent. In him there is no separation between his thought and his emotion, and therefore his actions are complete, harmonious. True culture is not nationalistic nor is it of any group. When you understand this, there will be the true spirit of brotherhood; you will no longer think in terms of Roman Catholicism or Protestantism, in terms of Hinduism or Theosophy. But you are so conscious of your possessions and your struggle for further acquisition that you cause distinctions, and from this there arise the exploiter and the exploited.
Authority prevents the understanding of oneself, does it not? Under the shelter of an authority, a guide, you may have temporarily a sense of security, a sense of well-being, but that is not the understanding of the total process of oneself. Authority in its very nature prevents the full awareness of oneself and therefore ultimately destroys freedom; in freedom alone can there be creativeness. There can be creativeness only through self-knowledge. Most of us are not creative; we are repetitive machines, mere gramophone records playing over and over again certain songs of experience, certain conclusions and memories, either our own or those of another. Such repetition is not creative being - but it is what we want. Because we want to be inwardly secure, we are constantly seeking methods and means for this security, and thereby we create authority, the worship of another, which destroys comprehension, that spontaneous tranquillity of mind in which alone there can be a state of creativeness.
To be creative does not mean that we must paint pictures or write poems and become famous. That is not creativeness - it is merely the capacity to express an idea, which the public applauds or disregards. Capacity and creativeness should not be confused. Capacity is not creativeness. Creativeness is quite a different state of being, is it not? It is a state in which the self is absent, in which the mind is no longer a focus of our experiences, our ambitions, our pursuits and our desires. Creativeness is not a continuous state, it is new from moment to moment, it is a movement in which there is not the 'me', the 'mine', in which the thought is not focused on any particular experience, ambition, achievement, purpose and motive. It is only when the self is not that there is creativeness - that state of being in which alone there can be reality, the creator of all things. But that state cannot be conceived or imagined, it cannot be formulated or copied, it cannot be attained through any system, through any philosophy, through any discipline; on the contrary, it comes into being only through understanding the total process of oneself.
Creation is not of the mind. Creation is never a product of the mind, a product of thought.
When there is awareness of emptiness without choice, without condemnation or justification, then in that understanding of what is there is action, and this action is creative being. You will understand this if you are aware of yourself in action. Observe yourself as you are acting, not only outwardly but see also the movement of your thought and feeling. When you are aware of this movement you will see that the thought process, which is also feeling and action, is based on an idea of becoming. The idea of becoming arises only when there is a sense of insecurity, and that sense of insecurity comes when one is aware of the inward void. If you are aware of that process of thought and feeling, you will see that there is a constant battle going on, an effort to change, to modify, to alter what is. This is the effort to become, and becoming is a direct avoidance of what is. Through self-knowledge, through constant awareness, you will find that strife, battle, the conflict of becoming, leads to pain, to sorrow and ignorance. It is only if you are aware of inward insufficiency and live with it without escape, accepting it wholly, that you will discover an extraordinary tranquillity, a tranquillity which is not put together, made up, but a tranquillity which comes with understanding of what is. Only in that state of tranquillity is there creative being.