With the limitations of the mind, we tend to believe that ‘creativity’ means art, literature, dance or music. But once we transcend the mind then we realize that right from the smallest speck of dust to the largest volumptuous sized planet in cosmos, each and every area is part of creativity

The infinite spectrum of creativity has often been perceived as limited to the fields like art and literature. It is because when we think from limited mind, things look in a very small bracket, as our conscious mind is not bigger than a bubble. The scientists have proved that the capacity of human brain is immense but we are using only 3% of our brain; this means even Einstein used just close to 6% of his capacity.

With the limitations of the mind, we tend to believe that ‘creativity’ means art, literature, dance or music. But once we transcend the mind then we realize that right from the smallest speck of dust to the largest volumptuous sized planet in cosmos, each and every area is part of creativity; even a glade of grass is so immaculately designed and shaped, has been given a specific color, identity, and consciousness, but which is in sleep mode. When we say ‘creativity’ then whatever our senses can perceive and whatever is beyond the perception, whatever we can think about and whatever is beyond thinking comes in the region of creativity. So, we cannot use a marker and boldly say that this is a part of the creativity, and rest is not.

Nothing in this universe is mundane. The flawless beauty of trees and plants, the blossoming of flowers, the chirping of birds, all is happening because of creativity. Just have a look at your hands; they are so intricately, beautifully, and creatively aligned. Can this be compared with something lesser than an art? The way your eyes and ears are working; the way the dance of the blood is happening in your body; it’s more of a “dance” as it is going against the gravity, rushing all towards the head and it’s coming back down. So, we cannot limit creativity to art, literature, music or dance. Creativity is much bigger and we need to broaden up our vision to really understand this.

In Mythology, we say that the creator has created this creation, the world, which we are seeing, but if you go more into the depth, then there is no creator but creativity is happening. It’s a constant process; the nature is working constantly & persistently.

Creativity is a continuous process and you cannot put it in a bracket that these things alone fit into the label of creativity and rest does not. Creativity is something which is an ‘integral part’ of us. The only thing is that we have to open-up our eyes to see, admire and enjoy the creativity.

Every human being is born with great capacities: capacity to think, to create, to admire beauty, to write beautiful poetry, painting, dancing, cooking, mothering, fathering. There are scores of people who are painters but they don’t know that they have this capacity or ability in them.

Society at large is more concerned for pleasing the senses. So, there is a non-ending list of materials which people long and dream to possess, including the hunger to get recognition, name and fame. They go on praying to God for fulfillment of their wants and wishes. Now actually it’s not what they want, it is what they are seeing that people have it and now they too want to have what others have.

We can say that creativity exists in every person. Cooking is an expression of creativity; keeping your books neatly on the book-shelf is creativity. Beauty too is an expression of creativity. Move into the tribal areas where there is no reach of any cosmetic industries and neither do they have money to spend on products, but yet all these women have innovative ways to beautify their bodies. They might use the chalk or mix ash or use some dye made by crushing some plant leaves, and make a paste to then beautify her body. This too is creativity.

Now, creativity is being lost in these mundane activities. Right from the tribal woman, to that upscale New York cosmopolitan educated woman who has loads of money to spend and buy those expensive things from 52nd Avenue, both these women have their own versions of creativity but both of them are concerned with their body alone. Their expression of creativity is too much limited to the matter, their body, which is mortal. So we can say that it is not the optimum or real creativity. But everyone has it, in one proportion or degree.

Love brings out all Creativity

We need to relate and spend more time with our own self; Relating with one self means relating with breath, mind, brain and then consciousness. The more you bring this “pranic energy” in your body, higher will be the degree of your consciousness.

The higher the degree of consciousness, there will be more possibilities for the higher intuitions to happen to you. And when you are in the range where mind has been uncluttered, body has been energized with “Prana Energy”, with the “Cosmic Energy”, you are more at an receiving end, where you’ll be able to imbibe the knowledge, the wisdom from your own higher regions.

This is the best thing which one can do and this means you need to learn “yoga”. You need to learn to meditate. You need to learn the value and the celebration of ’singing’, the ‘kirtan’. You need to learn to be in ‘love’. Love brings out all creativity. You need to be in love with your own true self, your own ‘higher self’ and those who will begin to move in this direction, their personalities get shaped up.

There is a long list of mystic masters viz Sant Kabir, Baba Sheikh Farid, and more, who never went to any school or university, but a mystical thing happened to them, and that’s their master happened to them. This one meeting with the master inspired divine love in their hearts, and this small light of divine love grew so big that their personalities were transformed. Then this love pushed them to such a state where poetry began to flow through; not any ordinary poetry, but the poetry in which the truth was being depicted. If the master wouldn’t have come in their life, they would have ended up being just a very ordinary person.

Meditation inspires Creativity

Every meditator is definitely a creator because he or she is creating the higher levels of consciousness within, and with this higher level of consciousness, all beautiful things will happen.

There is a profound relationship between meditation and creativity. A non-meditative person cannot be really a creative person. Now sometimes people are allergic to the word “Meditation”. What they don’t understand is that the real objective of meditation is to be in the right state of mind where concentration, contemplation and awareness manifest in the being.

But what is meditation - it’s a state of mind where thoughts are not clattering, you are not being bombarded with your memories of past life time, where you are not wasting your time in speculations, about your uncertain future. Meditation is when you are in a state where mind is quiet but you are not sleeping; you are fully awake, very vigilant, and very agile. There the level of the awareness is high and this is the time where all inventions happen.

When a painter is painting, he gets so absorbed that he is lost for whole world and the whole world is lost to him. When a potter is working on his wheel, and shaping up things from the loose earth & mud-then for him the world doesn’t exist. They are very much involved in the work and this involvement shows the optimum level of their concentration.

The matured level of the concentration changes into ‘Dharana’, the nearest word in English can be ‘Contemplative and the mature contemplation changes into ‘Meditation’. No painter or a writer or dancer or scientist can work minus the concentration, can they? Can anyone? No, even if a doctor wishes to examine his patient and he is holding the pulse, he has to concentrate or else he will miss the beats. How can concentration be achieved? By ‘Pranayama’ as it consolidates the scattered mind. This will further result in higher level of awareness, and creativity will happen to you.

Be Open to Receive

All great revolutions that happen through artists, poets, painters, dancers, writers, and even scientists happen when they are in a state of sheer relaxation. Relaxation doesn’t mean just physical relaxation but encompasses psychological, emotional, and spiritual relaxation. They are in that state of meditativeness when the super sub-conscious mind which is part of the macro-cosmic mind starts functioning and creativity dawns upon.

Rabindra Nath Tagore, the noble prize winner from India, was asked how and what did he do to write ‘Gitanjali’. Tagore gave a very beautiful answer. He said, ‘I never wrote Gitanjali’, it got written through me. I am not the writer; I am the one who received it. But this capacity to receive is missing in many people. Ironically, it’s there for everyone but we are not prepared to receive; because all of our energies are being wasted in the false pursuits: How good I look? How much money do I have? How many club memberships do I have?

In any field from science, to art, to philosophy, one tends to put all energy in understanding, working, and thinking incessantly but nothing comes up. The time comes when thinking stops and when thinking stops, real knowledge is received. Why is meditation important? Well for this very reason, that it helps you to reach that stage, where you don’t have to make any extra effort but where you are in such a wavelength that the knowledge begins to open up all of its charms to you.

So, every creative person is a meditator, even if that person is not doing traditional meditations. Every scientist comes close to that moment, very close to that moment where a Yogi is, but he never enjoys that state because he was not looking for that. Whatever the problem or whatever the subject, he or she was focused upon, they are thinking on those lines, the mind gets exhausted -mind becomes still, and revelation happens. Then they come back to their normal state of mind. They go very close to that door, so close that if they would have opened the door, the whole spiritual world would have sprung up in front of them. But they go only for the specific thing and just come back. So, these doors remain close for them. But for a mystic, these doors open-up.

Creative Intelligence

Intelligence is just one faculty and creativity is far another one. They have no relationship at all. Was Einstein intelligent? Was Edison intelligent? Was Newton intelligent? The answer is ‘yes’ and ‘no’. ‘Yes’, because in their respective fields, they did a lot of deep work and gave great inventions to the world. ‘No’, because they knew so much about the matter but they were absolutely ignorant about their own real-self.

Creativity is very different from intelligence. You can be a high IQ person, but a very clumsy one when it comes to creativity, and vice-a-versa. You can be intelligent but not creative. But you cannot be a fool and yet creative. However, when we talk about the complete person, who is living with higher level of consciousness, will be intelligent and creative also. And this is the perfect harmony of intelligence and creativity, which can occur to an individual but only to that individual who has lost its individuality and has merged with the infinity.

When you are one with the infinity, your source of intelligence and your source of creativity will never wither away. It’s an “everyday evolution”, which is happening and this evolution happens to those who are experiencing the evolution.

‘Creativity’ and ‘True Intelligence’ go hand in hand. But the intelligence which is being accepted by people as intelligence will not go hand in hand with the creativity. Intelligence and creativity should be an integral part of your life and both should be in harmony, which can be brought by “meditativeness”. Meditativeness will give you both, creativity and intelligence. ‘Not meditation, but Meditativeness.’

Spark of Creativity

We should learn to live our life in appreciating everything, which is done with precision. But never measure creativity with a scale When a child makes a house of sand on the river bank, and gives the finishing touches, there is a beaming smile and a proud feeling that brightens his face, and he goes yelling ’see what I have made’. Now, if an architect has made a hundred storey building, he too feels very proud and says, ’see my building’. What’s the difference between the sand-house made by the child and a spectacular building built by an architect? Creativity can not be measured on these levels because this kind of comparison is too worldly and creativity is beyond all this.

There are not any peaks or lows, we can only say that sometimes the spark of creativity is small and sometimes the spark is very big but every spark has the capacity to burn-out.

Even a match-stick is very thin and all, but little flame on the head of this etch stick can burn the whole city. Creativity is just like that; it is just a spark which has the capacity to ignite fire.

Creativity & Negativity

One can be a great painter, a great dancer and yet be filled with all negativities. The biggest negativity which most of these artists, who are not real artists, have is that they are always dying for name & fame. Sometimes when they are not bothered about money, they have another added value i.e. their ‘huge egos.’ The biggest pitfall for artists is their ego. So, negativity can exist even if you are a creative person. These are very dramatically opposite things.

It’s only the master who can really kick them and straighten them up. And if the master is real, humble and a true master in every way, he/she will make sure that his/her disciple does not end up being only a perfect artist but also becomes a perfect human being.

A real artist has to be a real human being and you cannot be a real human being if you don’t have passion, love, and prayer in your heart; prayerfulness completes you as a human being. And once you are a complete human being then you can be a perfect artist.

Only a real human being, who has humbleness, love, nobility, purity can be really called an ‘artist’. A real artist should have all of the humane qualities like love, compassion, egoless ness, no competitiveness, not being over-ambitious, not dying to get recognition or name or fame or money or credits. Those who don’t have these attributes, and those who don’t give credit of their all achievements to the divinity, can not be called real artists. If you are a meditator, a real meditator, negativities just vanish; they just melt away from you. And when these melt, true creativity happens to you.

Balanced living

You must excel in your fields, be rich, but don’t remain a pauper in spiritual world. Be a software engineer or a doctor but never loose your grip on your awareness. Be rich both ways; live your life in abundance, not only in possessions but also in spirituality.

Money, fame and success are not adversaries to spiritual life, they are not enemies but if we have the insight, the wisdom, then we can use all the success, all the money, all the prosperity in uplifting not only our state but also the state of the world, the state of the people.

You and then only you can really make a difference in life of other people. To gift something, to donate something, or to do a charity, you first have to have money; if you don’t have it, you can’t do all these things.

To bring some meaning in life of other people, you have to be in a position to do that. You cannot be a failure and claim that you can bring some good change in someone’s life; Be successful, be rich, live in abundance, but remember, all these outer things are not eternal. So, be focused and bring harmony in your inner and outer pursuits. There should be this right balance, where you are focused inwards and outwards. This will be the real definition of true creativity, that you are not living lop-sided. We should not be living in extremes; we should be living with great balance and create harmony in our inner & outer pursuits.