Customer Reviews

Creativity: Unleashing the Forces Within (Osho Insights for a New Way of Living)

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4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Osho turns his wisdom to the art of being Creative. In exquisite and precise language, he explains how we often are our own greatest hindrance. It is as if he is there inside your mind banging away with his Zen stick. Such insight! You find yourself wanting to immediately start expressing and in a new way - YOUR WAY!

I've read a great deal of Osho's teachings, and I'm really impressed by the editing of the Insights series. You can tell a lot of care went into the selections for these books, considering Osho's talks were transcribed into over 400 volumes during his lifetime.

Creativity was one thing Osho continually emphasized, saying your life isn't going to achieve a real sense of fulfillment unless you have an outlet for your natural creative energy. Having a comfortable home and a family is not enough! Every person needs a way, or several ways, of self-expression. He wasn't just talking about creating art to be displayed for the public, but doing any old thing--but with sincerity and love. Osho spends time talking about how just cleaning the floor can be an immensely fulfilling and enjoyable act, if genuine care and interest are put into it.

He made clear that creativity should be a passion not reserved for impressing others or receiving any particular reward, other than your own enjoyment in the present moment. Creativity is a way to live in the moment, and for a time be free of the future and past--major themes in Osho's teachings.

I could go on, but why? Just buy the book and live out some creativity of your own. For those of you who have never read Osho, all of his books are transcriptions of his spoken discourses, so they have a casual, effortless flow. It's not like reading a proper essay style. In fact, he takes two or three times the amount of space to say something! But you don't mind. He also intersperses his talks with ridiculous jokes. Try one of the books sometime, they're great.

I'm in high school and this was the first Osho book and only book so far that I have read. It did help me understand how to think more creatively and has several great quotes that will leave you analyzing everything you do in your life from the day you put the book down. He encourages an open mind yet is very direct on his religious beliefs at times which may be hard for some people to get around. I'm not too religious myself, but I did enjoy the different spiritual interpretations and comparisons. His action vs. activity section will leave you asking yourself why you ever watch tv or do anything non-creative at all. It will motivate you to not only do more with your life, but also help you think more outside the box. He does like to repeat himself a little bit which I actually liked instead of a beginning to end straight and narrow approach.

Creativity, Unleashing the Forces Within, Osho
New York: St.Martin's Griffin, 1999.
194 pages

Creativity, Unleashing the Forces Within, is my first bout with Osho and his writings. As the title suggests the purpose of the book is to aid the reader onto a creative path. This is done firstly by introducing the reader to the five obstacles that inhibit creativity, each obstacle having a chapter to its own, and then followed by a presentation of the four keys which are to be used in overcoming these obstacles. Each key has a chapter as well and the entire book is rounded off with a few questions followed by Osho's written response to them. The first question I am going ask myself now that I'm finished with the book is...

Did this book succeed in unleashing my creative forces?

I wish the answer could be a simple yes or no, but it isn't. If I had read this book by itself, without any supplementary literature - I think my answer would be a definitive no. Yes, I would have had gained intellectual insight into what creativity is according to Osho, but I don't believe I would have become more creative for having read it.

Overall Osho's book was a frustrating and disappointing read, I would have tossed the book after page ten had not a friend so deviously put it in my hand. Incidentally I've plucked out her eyes, lopped off her hands substituting them with tree branches, taken away her touch tone phone and replaced it with an old school rotary, and alas moved to a fourth floor cubicle of a DMV (department of motor vehicles) office somewhere across the country. In other words she does not have a chance in hell of ever recommending a book to me again.

But now having read the book in connection with some other literature on a similar subject matter my answer is a bit different. It's different in that yes, I feel that reading this book has been a catalyst for unleashing a creative event. But I don't think it's the type the author had anticipated. The thing is if I make you aware that this book frustrated me to the point that not only did I decide to write this review, but I went out of my way to research the manner at which to write a proper review, and you consider this to be a form of unbridled creativity well then yes... Osho has succeeded indirectly in unleashing my creativity. Notice the term, indirectly, because the direct credit really goes to a few other books I've recently picked up and will list later in this review. The source of `inspiration' I have received from Osho's book comes in the form of disdain for this type of book and others of its sort.

From looking at a table of contents I'm sure the individual who is seeking enlightenment will find the concepts attractive and logical to agree with. The taxonomy of the book breaks down into four major sections. First the introduction of the three c's; consciousness, compassion, and creativity. Then the five obstacles of which are:

*self-consciousness
*perfectionism
*intellect
*belief
*and the fame game.

Thirdly it discusses the four keys, which are:

*become a child again
*be ready to learn
*find nirvana in the ordinary
*and be a dreamer.

And finally the last section has four questions with lengthy commentary which are not as integrated as the chapters prior.

By scanning the contents above a person could say to herself, "wow I see where he's coming from... being a child again, being ready to learn, perfectionism and fame - obstacles ... yeah... he's so right. I've got to get this book."

But when I read the book. I was none the wiser. For example let's look at how he deals with becoming a child again which is the first of the four keys and spans about ten pages from pp. 109-118. Bear with me this may be a little tough to follow. If you want to jump over it jump past the second grouping of four stars.

****

First he introduces to us what a child is. And that there is a direct link between being a child and being creative.

"All children, wherever they are born, are creative - but we don't allow their creativity."

Later he moves on to explain how we crush and kill their creativity by teaching them the `right' way to do things. Then a parable and a criticism of the Nobel prize system and a few blurbs about how the only respectable artists are the dead ones because their art wasn't appreciated in their time. It continues with a one paragraph primer on what happens with the behavioral patterns of children between the ages of seven and fourteen year old, followed by a couple paragraphs of right and left hemisphere functionality description with neither a footnote, nor any form of bibliography at the end of the book. He then moves on to discuss his ethical views on drugs in the West and compulsory education.

And then he throws outs statements of desperation of this sort...

"How can humanity go on living without love and without poetry and without joy and without celebration."

The section is then directed back to the right/left brain discussion and onwards to how treatises and discourses are just another form of vomit (his term). Vomit in the sense that the perpetrator of the work is vomiting undigested knowledge.

And alas, at the very end he comes with the recipe.

*Undo all that your parents and your teachers have done to you.
*Undo all that the policeman and the politician and the priest have done to you.
*And you will again become creative.

That's it. That's the advice.

***

What? That was my reaction. You mean I had to listen to your moralizing, put up with your condescension and have to suffer through your pseudoscience and incessant complaining for you to tell me this. It's sort of like saying to a person who is overweight and has an eating disorder, "well if you want trim up... undo the excess poundage."

It is a worthless piece of advice and can only be expected from a book of this caliber. Not that it's wrong, because it's not. It's very right but it's useless in the sense that it's only given you the destination from a limited perspective and not the tools to help you make the travel. It is a judgmental patriarchal attitude that unfortunately is still prevalent in our society today but slowly losing ground to more applicable solutions.

I sort of want to stop this review here, but I can't because there is something with this book that strikes me at a personal level and I think it is the root of my frustration. It is oddly enough the honesty of the book, the so incredible lack of political correctness which in a sense is very childlike. In a world where psychologists, marketing experts, psychoanalysts, anthropologists, social scientists, and more are working under a corporate umbrella to appease and sway consumers towards their products Osho certainly stands out in the crowd as a person who is straight up. Not straight up about the facts, just straight up about how he feels.

An example follows here:

"Ninety-nine percent of art is just not art at all; it is rubbish. Rarely is there a work of art, very rarely. Others are just imitators, technicians - skillful people, clever people, but not artists. And that ninety-nine percent of art disappearing from the earth will be a blessing, because it is more like a vomit rather than anything creative."

Wow. Try saying that, to the artist showcasing, the next time you're invited to her premier art exhibit.

Or try this one:

"Ninety-nine percent of modern art is pathological. If it disappears from the world it will be very healthy, it will be helpful. It will not harm."

I wonder if Osho feels his art falls into the 1%.


There is a brief discussion in the book about Michelangelo, Van Gogh and Picasso, which I will spare you the details of, but to sum it up, in Osho's eyes, Michelangelo and Van Gogh are 'da man's' while Picasso plain and simply sucks. If Michelangelo's Pieta is so divine why didn't the Osho foundation choose a photo of the infamous sculpture or a Van Gogh print for the cover instead of a terrible functionalistic abstract of Osho's own artwork. Notice the word terrible. It's terrible because I don't like it... and that's the only reason why. To someone else it might be beautiful. So when Osho says something like this...

"Now, the so-called modern art is nothing but that. Picasso's paintings may have saved Picasso from becoming mad, but that's all there is to it...

... Just think: keep the Picasso painting for fifteen minutes in front of you and go on looking at it... and you start feeling restlessness, discomfort, giddy, nauseous. What is happening? It is somebody's vomit..."

What Osho fails to realize is that Picasso's art is not very comfortable to look at because it exemplifies reality on a different level then Van Gogh's. Picasso's art has movement and it is a disturbing movement as is movement on the quantum level or the movement of an electron, or even movement in a fast moving vehicle for some, but it doesn't make it any less aesthetic. Aestheticism has for millions of years been a function of evolutionary development and is primed to be utilized in a fight or flight world. Insects to most people are repulsive. It's in our genes to follow this repulsion to a certain extent, because insects often follow carnage and death. They are the cleanup crew. They are the guys that put up the yellow and black sign that says do not enter, this food is contaminated, this zone has been declared as biohazardous. Pass through it at your own risk. The species that weren't programmed to appreciate this warning died off and never reproduced.

Knowledge, however, has brought with it a new form of aestheticism, an appreciation of beauty on many different levels, reaching beyond immature forms of aestheticism rooted in our fundamental evolutionary desire. And if anything is important in the realization of an individual's creativity it is that. That the old adage, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, is more true than ever. If you get a chance, check out the movie Microcosms and you'll see what I mean about how beautiful insects can be. Beauty not only in color and in shape but in movement.

This book has molested my contemplation as Titus might have put it and caters to an outdated aristocracy that embraces a fading form of aestheticism. The idea that there is an absolute beauty and this beauty is divine and once in a great moon this divinity can be channeled through `special' individuals. One of those individuals, in this particular case, being `Osho' of course.

You might be thinking that I'm saying, "don't read this book," but oddly enough I'm not. I'm saying this is my experience with this book and then you can simply go from there. It's not a black and white experience. It's deeper than that and my personal experience with this book is important for the review in that it will hopefully give you more insight into me and your manner of weighing this critique. My frustration with this book I think ultimately boils down to that I can identify with Osho on a certain level. I can identify with this contempt. I can identify with this envy. I can identify with the underlying bitterness. But these are aspects of me I'm slowly letting go and in losing them I become more childlike. It's not because of this book I wrote this review however. It wasn't this book that gave me the strength to write a review I know I will never get paid for or get recognized for. It was a few others which are listed below. Books that give me faith in myself as creative entity, not books that destructively criticize me and everything outside their norm.

Before pointing out the books that did influence me to write this review I would like to tie the knots. Creativity, Unleashing the Forces Within is a book filled with parables, contradictory knowledge, prose and an underlying contemptuous tone that attempts to market the reader to something bigger. It creates a sense that there should be something more after this book. To me the book reads like an extremely long spam mail promising you the world and delivering nothing. Well not nothing... it does deliver an odd form of aggravation because of Osho's flagrant honesty and stupidity. It's odd that this honesty, this condescending attitude towards that which does not fit into his worldview, is what ends up making this book entertaining.

Literature of this sort I think is dangerous and in a sense should come with a disclaimer in that it I think it creates a possible world but it offers very little help telling you how to get there. A book like this ultimately I think will make a person depressed or falsely hopeful, leading them to spend more dollars on more books in finding their creative path.

My recommendation, do not buy this book. Borrow it if you really feel you have the time and effort to read it, but I really think in the long run it will not have the same effect on you as it did me in that I wasn't prepared before I read it. I didn't know somebody was going to throw up on me. Some times good things come of bad things. Osho's vomit has instigated me to write this review but I don't think I would have spent such an enormous time on it if I hadn't read the books in the paragraph to follow.

To close I would like to recommend the books which I feel and know of are really great for unleashing creativity.

*The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron
*Writing from the Inside Out by Dennis Palumbo
*Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards

Now I'm not going to go into details on any of the books here. You'll have to check out other people's reviews and make your decision based on that. I will, however, leave you with a quote from Palumbo's book...

"You, everything you are, all your feelings, hopes and dreads, fears and fantasies - you are enough."

It's taken me thirty seven years to realize this and still I don't feel I know that completely to the core. Some day I'm hoping I will. Thank you for taking the time to read such an incredibly lengthy review, hopefully the chunks I spewed will come off in the first wash.

Osho's philosophy always hits home. By the time I'd finished reading this book, my view of creativity had changed completely. I was both exhilarated and in despair at the insights revealed to me. Exhilarated, because some force - some unknown thing -- inside me found freedom to breathe with every page I read. In despair because, as I realised I had the key to my personal creative freedom in my hand, I knew that the chances of me getting published in the traditional way was even more remote.

This book pulls no punches when it forces you to understand what true creativity is: a fragrance of freedom that blends together both feeling and action into an awareness that translates into a uniquely individual creative expression. I was reminded that each and every one of us comes into this world with a specific destiny; the Divine has a task for us and, whether that task (in my case, writing my novels) is recognised by the collective is less important that whether I love what I do for the sake of doing it.

From now on, I'll never wash the kitchen floor again...I'll be painting an invisible picture with my mop! My enthusiasm for my chosen craft--one in which the odds *against* success are overwhelming--has been restored. And my creative forces have truly been unleashed with the simple wisdom contained in this volume.

Osho gives it to you straight. There are many great observations in this book and they are very direct. He's not a gentle kind of lama, but tells it like it is and makes you wake up.

American pop idol Lady Gaga revealed in a first press conference on her India visit her love for books by Osho.

Creativity and rebellion go hand in hand for American singer, song writer and pop icon Lady Gaga. Arriving on her first India visit she was warmly welcomed and available for TV and the press. After she had sent in August a quote about creativity from the book "Creativity" by Osho via her Twitter account to her 15 millions followers on Twitter, the press followed up and she was asked about her connection to the Indian mystic Osho. The 25 year old singer from New York responded: "Oh yes Osho! I read a lot of Osho's books ....I read Osho because not only do I love his work and what he writes about, but I guess I am kind of an Indian hippie!"

Such a worthwhile book and another one that should be read by teachers to bring about a shift in our stagnant world.
We live in such a world of left brain thinking that all creativity is frowned upon. Yet it is only with creativity that we can then engage the left brain to carry through these ideas. Osho is asking of us to dare to unleash the forces within ourselves and to dare to dream our world into possibilities. We are too afraid of our own greatness as Marianne Williamson says so well.
Dr Gunta Krumins-Caldwell author of On Silver Wings

Change your thoughts, change your life;Osho will show you the way, in this, and in all his writings.

In my humble opinion every book of Osho is a treasure and give you very important arguments for your personal growing.

Tiziano