Youth and Creativity-3 || Acharya Prashant, with youth (2013)
Speaker: Both are extremely dependent beings, the child has no freedom and the old man has no freedom, then, who is a young man?
Listener 1: Sir, there is a saying that ”Yesterday is History, Tomorrow a Mystery, Today is a Gift, that’s why it’s called the Present”.
Speaker: Yes, that brings us to the young man. The child says I cannot know, the old man says that I already know. What does the young man says?
Listeners: I want to know
Speaker: I want to know and the moment he says I want to know, knowing begins, this is real learning. I am learning and I am learning every moment, I am not drawing from memory. What does a child say? I cannot know, my apparatus is yet not ripe enough. What does an old may say? I already know, I have so much of experience, he never sees anything new, everything that comes to it he looks at it in terms of past. So, he actually stops seeing at all. The old man turns totally blind, he does not see anything, and all he sees is his past projected as a present. The young man says I have the capacity to know and I don’t already know. It’s a beautiful state to be in. Repeat with me “*I have the capacity to know*”. Deep trust in myself that, I can know. My mental faculties are active, I do not need to depend, I can know. At the same time I don’t already know. I have trust but I am not avail. I have trust in whom? I have trust in society, parents, and legends; is that where a young man places his trust? Where does a young man place his trust?
Listener 2: In himself.
Speaker: In himself! I am not dependent on anybody, I place my trust within me, I can know. After all these legends were the first one that’s why they became legends, no one became a legend by borrowing somebody else experience. There has to be a first one so why I can’t I be the first one? I trust myself to be the first one, that’s a young man . I am not born to imitate some legend, I am not here to further some tradition. If somebody could be the first one then why can’t me? After all, a series starts somewhere so why can’t it start with me? Youngman doesn’t hate legends, he has great respect for legends and why he has great respect for legends? Because they were the….
Listeners: First one.
Speaker: First one, and when you have tremendous respect for the first one, you want to become a puppet? What do you want to become?
Listeners: First one.
Speaker: You say I have great respect for you because you are the first one and because I have great respect, I also want to be the…..
Listeners: First one
Speaker: That is what is meant by considering somebody legend. But when you respect somebody, you fall on his feet. Did that legend fall at somebody’s feet? Is that why he was a legend because he was crawling on his knees? But when you call somebody a legend, you crawl on knees in front of that person. You say, oh! They are great names, unbreakable like Mount Everest, who am I in front of them? If you say this then you don’t respect the legend, to respect a legend is to become a legend. That is real respect.So, who is a young man? I have the capacity to know, I am full of trust, I have a deep faith that I am placing in myself. At the same time I have not become arrogant, I have not become full of myself, I am open, I am inviting the world from everywhere to come to me, I want to taste the world, I want to know; real knowing not second-hand knowing, not something that I had read from books. That is a young man and yes you can be eighty years of age, physical age and still very young in mind. The body age cannot be controlled but you can remain very fresh and young on mind right till your last breath. That is the charm, the beauty of youth and that is why youth is so rare because we are eighty when we are twenty. Now you understand what I meant when I said that you never attained to youth? We are born a kid and we straight away become old. Young age never really descends upon us. Our body will look young but that does not matter, the mind becomes old very quickly. Bodily you may be twenty or twenty-five but mentally you are already eighty-five and that’s a tragedy. We don’t want that tragedy to happen. Right? We want to remain young, as we said till your last breath.Now we come to second part, youth and architecture.
I am not an architect, I am an engineer, I am Masters in Business Administration but I am not really an architect. But what I understand is, what you people are doing is tremendously important and very beautiful. Just a few days back, at some point in the night I was in a building and looking at all the pieces of art that you have created and it was beautiful, I can’t claim that I understood everything but I could sense a particular aesthetic beauty in it. So, for me, architecture is creativity. Does that put us on the same platform? Instead of saying youth and architecture, I will say youth and creativity. Or, in the field of architecture there is anything other than creativity?
Listener 4: It is much more.
Speaker: It is much more than creativity, for example?
Listener 4: For example, in architecture we work on references, without references none of our client is going to give us a project. If I don’t know how to use a material how I can use it in my project, so it’s just not creativity, it’s the experience of using the material from past.
Speaker: You see there is nothing here which says that knowledge is useless. It is just that knowledge must be in its proper place and not encroach on something else, that the proper place of knowledge must be known. Obviously an engineer must know the proper use of chemicals, it needs to know present techniques but there are lakhs and lakhs of engineers who know just the same things, which does not make them any special. Knowledge is necessary but not sufficient and knowledge comes cheap. You know what; today medical science had reached a stage where, just as you transfer data from one computer to other, knowledge too can be immediately implanted in your minds. So cheap is knowledge. Two electrodes can be fit here (pointing towards head ) and within a matter of two hours, knowledge will be available in your brain. Knowledge can be downloaded to your brain. So use of concrete, use of cement, knowing what that person and this person did, increasingly you will find that the function of education that deals only with accumulation of knowledge is becoming redundant. You don’t need that anymore, medical science will take care of that.
Listener 4: So, Sir what do you suggest? We should forget what we have done till now?
Speaker: I am not suggesting anything because whatever I will suggest will become another redundancy for you. That’s what your mind wants, quick suggestions for everything. I refuse to suggest anything; I just want to talk so that together we come to something. What we just said “*I am capable*” and I place all my faith in myself. My suggestions have very little value but this environment has great value. In this environment you can think for yourself and not depend on my suggestions. By talking we are creating a particular environment.We have looked at what is it to be young? Now I am going to ask you what is creativity?
Listener 4: Making new and different things.
Speaker: When you say different, you say creativity in about being different, you have already compared it. Can you say I am different from somebody without comparing yourself to that person? Even to say I am different you have to make a comparison and if this creativity is coming out of that comparison.What is creativity?
Listener 5: Making something unique.
Speaker: Again comparison, how you know you are unique? You look at others and say I am not like them hence I am unique, so there is again comparison.What is creativity?
Listener 6: Innovation
Speaker: What is Innovation?
Listener 6: My question is how do you decide that something is creative or not? An X object is creative for me but for somebody else it is not.
Speaker: You are assuming that a piece of work is creative.Understand this: what is creativity has nothing to do with what you have created. Creativity has nothing to do with that object that you are calling as piece of work. What you call as creation comes from two different cases:The first is creating from something and that something is always either the influence of others or the influence of your own past. This strictly is not creation; this is just modification of reproduction, this cannot be called as creation. When you are creating from something and that something happens to be as we said either others or your own past. Then, this creation is only mistakenly being called as creation, it is not really creation, it is modification.There is another creation where creation happens from nothing. This is real creation but this creation is equally rare. It is real, rare and the only thing that makes the world go round. Creating not from your accumulated knowledge or influence of others but, from a very still and silent mind. If somebody asks you that how this idea come to you? You would not be able to tell its source. In fact if it’s really creative, you would not even be able to say that it’s an idea, it will just be a happening. It is so daring that this creation does not happen from background, only a young man can do it. That is why youth and creativity always go together. Creativity is the most daring adventure. It’s a complete break from the past. It is something so new that it cannot be compared.
Listener 6: It is like this that one fine day I wake up in the night and I just have a being happening and I decide tomorrow this is what I have to do and a thing is created.
Speaker: Not really, for two reasons.One, what came to you in the night, must result in the happening in the night itself. If you reserve it as a thought and want to do it later then it is no more a creation.Second, creativity does not suddenly happen. It is not an insight, it is not a flash. Creativity is a way of living. If you are living an entirely un-creative way, one cannot suddenly become creative. You cannot suddenly have such thought when your entire life in un-creative.
Listener 7: Sir, you said if we are dependent on other people or on our past experiences then we are not creative, now you are saying that if we are un-creative all our life then we cannot be creative all our life. These two things I am not able to connect, they are very contradictory.
Speaker: where you had seen a contradiction?
Listener 7: Sir, if I am creative in life, then that life is past, so you said if in past I am creative then I am creative now. So my creativeness is coming from past.
Speaker: There would be lot of happening in your life of creativeness but there would be no dependency.Understand this: To say I will make creativity my lifestyle is not a proper statement; you do not make creativity your lifestyle. It’s not something that you borrow from somewhere, a training you take from somewhere.
Listener 7: I can turn my lifestyle creative.
Speaker: Yes, you are saying a creative person too have experiences? That’s what you are saying?
Listener 7: Yes
Speaker: Obviously, it has experiences but those experiences will have no role. I am having experiences right now as I talk to you and in afternoon I will talk to some other people, this would be stored in memory somewhere, this would not interfere with that afternoon discussion. In that discussion I would not be dependent on that discussion. Are you getting it?As you are listening to me right now, what will happen if you start thinking of the experiences in the morning? Would you even be able to listen? The experience was there in the morning but is the experience really present right now? It is stored somewhere in the memory, let it be there. That experience is not influencing my life and if the experience is really not needed the brain will not store it for long, it will be deleted. Not everything that you come across remains in the brain.
Listener 7: Sir, as you said creativity is a way of living life. I don’t think imagination comes in a flash.
Excerpted from a ‘Shabd-Yog’ session. Edited for clarity.
