Love, Opinions, Creativity || Acharya Prashant, with youth (2014)
Questioner: What is the difference between ‘what I love to do’ and ‘what I want to do’?
Acharya Prashant: How are they different? How can you want to do something that you do not love? How can you have two exclusive sets? You are saying that these are two different choices; my love and my want. You are saying that I want that which I do not love.
How can you not want to do that which you love? Then you don’t know love. You know what is love? It is unstoppable. Once you taste love, you will forget all these questions, that you know I love something but I want to do something else. Love is such a powerful current. You are helpless in front of it.
Listener : But it is not necessary that we will get that.
AP : The lover does not think that way. The lover says, ‘This is it and I am jumping into it. I do not bother what will happen. The businessman thinks this way: ‘whether I will get it? What will be the cost? What will be the benefit?’ This is the language of a businessman, not the language of a lover.
L : Sir you said that opinions are of no value. How can we create new things then?
AP : Ah! Creativity. Is creativity something that comes from thinking, opinions, ideas?
Understand the difference between building and creating.
Building happens when you sit down and think. That’s why all buildings are a repetition of the past. Creativity is so fresh that it can’t be captured in an opinion. If it is born out of opinion, it can’t be creative. Creativity is absolutely new. It can’t come from opinions because opinions are old. Opinions arise from conditioning .
L : To think differently.
AP: You can’t think differently. You only think what you have been conditioned to think. Who told you that one can think differently? Nobody can think differently. One can realize differently. Thinking differently is not possible. Nobody ever thought differently. There is nothing called ‘a new thought’, ‘a different thought’. Last night there was some food left in the house, a little bit of Dal (pulses), and some curries. And what does the lady of the house do? Next day she mixes all of them up and it starts tasting like something new. Now is this really new? Is this really new?
Thought is like this. One thought, second thought, third thought and you combine them. There is nothing new in them actually. Creativity is beyond all old thoughts. Creativity can’t come from thought.
L : Sir, this means that creativity comes from a free mind.
AP : Wonderful. And a free mind is not caught in thinking.
-Excerpts from a Samvaad session. Edited for clarity.
