Youth and Creativity-4 || Acharya Prashant, with youth (2013)

Acharya Prashant

6 min
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Youth and Creativity-4 || Acharya Prashant, with youth (2013)

Listener 1: One morning I woke up and I had a creative thing that I saw in the night. Secondly, whatsoever somebody is saying is coming from past maybe from unconscious. For each of your sentences I had so many flashes from the past. Actually I’m not ignoring knowing, it actually helped in knowing.

Speaker: Alright, let’s look at the validity of this. You said that next morning I woke up and I had a creative thing that I saw in the night. Can you dream of something of that you had no experience in the past, what you have not experienced, can it be present in your dreams?

Listener 1: Sir, actually I feel yes.

Speaker: Do you feel French. Can you ever dream in which you are speaking French? What is not present in your mind, cannot be even present in your dreams? Whatever dream you have is somehow modification of the experiences that you have had. Something picked from here, something picked from there and all mixed together. There is nothing new there. Second thing that you said is ultimately coming from some experience, so there is nothing called creativity from nothingness. It is always creativity from something, that’s what you are asserting on. Let’s look at this, A is dependent on B, B is dependent on C. If creativity is always from something, then everybody is dependent on somebody, now then where will you, then place the first one. Or, do you want to say that there is never any first one?

Listener 1: Sir, I think that we can innovate only when we are in dreams. For example Sir, first of all shelters were made by human and it depends on the need.

Speaker: And who was the first man who made the shelters? Who did he copy?

Listener 1: Sir, it was his need.

Speaker: The need was for all the men in his tribe. Who was the first one who made the shelter? Whom did he copy?

Listener 1: Sir, I don’t know.

Speaker: You must know. You must ask this question to yourself. The need was there in front of all 500 members of his tribe. Who was the first one who said, “*We can have shelters*” You must ask this question.

Listener 1: Sir, for this I would like to say that the first one is a very greedy man.

Speaker: All 500 are greedy. Why only one person?

Listener 1: Sir, if I’m living in a place where there is no roof but some really one would be saying that no I need a shelter.

Speaker: Every single human being is experiencing that need. Why does only one man come up with the realization that it is possible to create a shelter? Why does that happen with that one man, why can’t you be that man?

Listener 1: The first instinct that came to make the cliff of the shelter because of the natural things like rain, heat etc.

Speaker: Obviously, every animal does that.

Listener 1: Now, that is what is an animalistic experience. Now, if we talk about the first person who designed the statue.

Speaker: Who designed it? Yes, when you make it there is a design behind it. But, why not those 500. Why that one, that is the question that you need to answer.

Listener 2: It could have been a cumulative process.

Speaker: All you want to say is, it would have happened simultaneously to 50 – 60 people.

Ask yourself. See, it is very easy to hide behind saying it was a group phenomena but you need to ask yourself, are you afraid to accept that I can be one and that’s why you say no, no… nothing great is ever collective . Something like this happened, there were 499 people who were alright, satisfied, thinking that this is the way our, fathers, fore-fathers, legends have done. They too have their legends. And when the legends couldn’t create anything new, who am I to create something new. Me, this small piece, unless there are 40 – 60 people with me, if it is a collective effort, who am I to think? They even didn’t pay attention to their condition and then there was that one who was not afraid, who didn’t buy the argument that if nobody could do it in the past then how could I do it, who didn’t buy the argument if 50 – 60 people are not with me then I cannot do it. He was not dependent, he was not a child, he was not an old, he was really, really young. He looked, what was happening, it is not difficult, it is obvious, right. It is sun, it is rain, it is obvious that what needs to be done. And very simply, almost effortlessly he created. He created because he was not thinking of the past, that all my fore-fathers, all great members of my tribe never raised a shelter, who am I to raise a shelter? And then he may take use of his knowledge. He has a knowledge and more can be accumulated but what is certain is that this needs to happen. And out of that attention, out of that realization, creativity happens. That is creativity and this creativity applies to architecture as it applies to reasoning, as it applies to medical science and as it applies to entire expanse of life. In your moments of aloneness, in your moments of deep attention and fearlessness, you are creative, deeply creative, then you are not dependent, then you don’t convince someone that I’m small, incapable, unworthy and inadequate When you are not deeply convinced that you are born to be a dwarf, then creativity happens. But if you are already old, then all possibilities of creativity are closed upon you. I hope that is not the case.

Youth and creativity go together and only youth and creativity can go together. An afraid man cannot be creative, a mind that thinks in the terms of collective can’t be creative. Only an individual can be creative, crowd cannot be creative. Right. Alright.

Excerpted from a ‘Shabd-Yog’ session. Edited for clarity.

This article has been created by volunteers of the PrashantAdvait Foundation from transcriptions of sessions by Acharya Prashant
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