The second question:

Question 2

PLEASE SAY MORE ABOUT WHAT INVENTING/DISCOVERING/ CREATING IS. WHAT CONNECTION IS THERE? AND YOU SAY SOMETIMES ALL IS ALREADY HERE IN EXISTENCE, AND THEN YOU ALSO SAY IT HAS TO BE CREATED: THE SOUL HAS TO BE CREATED, THE MEANING OF LIFE -- EVEN GOD. IS CREATING AND DISCOVERY THE SAME?

They are not the same, they are similar. They have something like a common thread running through them, but they are different. These three things are different: inventing, discovery, creation.

Inventing is imagination, feeling, heart. Inventing creates art in the world. If Picasso had not invented his paintings, they would not have existed at all. And nobody else could have done that. Only he was able to do it, only he could have done them. They are inventions: they never existed before. They are not discoveries. He has not discovered them, they were not there to be discovered or uncovered. They were non-existential. But still it is not creation; it is just imaginary. Those paintings simply say something about the dream of Picasso -- nothing much. They don't become real, they NEVER become real. They become actual, but never real. A painting can be non-actual when it is only in your imagination. And when it comes on the canvas it becomes actual, but never real. It has no reality. It has not a reality like water, H20. It has not a reality like sunlight. It is not part of the real world; it is somewhere between the real and the unreal. It is actual. It is a fantasy, invented. It has no fundamental law behind it. God is not behind it: that's what I mean when I say it is not real. Only man s inventiveness, innovativeness, is behind it. All art is invention.

Invention is introvert: you have to look for your inner dreams and then project those dreams outside. It may be poetry, it may be painting, it may be music, whatsoever. And only man is the inventing animal in the world. That is man's prerogative, his dignity, his grandeur.

A society is cultured if it is artistic. It shows that the humanity has started functioning, that the man has come beyond the animal. The animal lives only in the real; he knows nothing of the actual because he knows nothing of the imaginary. Man creates a world of the actual. It almost looks like the real. That's why artists are so egoistic: they are inventors -- they have done something, they have created something. But remember, there is a distinction between creation and invention.

The second thing is discovery. Science discovers, art invents. Art actualizes fantasies, science simply discovers that which is. It does not interfere with it, it does not project. The whole scientific methodology is to keep yourself aloof, detached, indifferent. You should not interfere. You have only to report what is the case. You are not to come into it, you are not to color it in any way. In art just the opposite is the case: you are not to report what is the case. If a painter simply reports what is the case, then he is a camera, not a painter. Then the thing that he has produced is a photograph, not a painting. That can be done by a machine. Where is the invention?

So modern art is right when it says that in the past, in old days, there was not much art because it was more or less reporting. The artist was doing the work of the camera. With the camera coming into existence, the artist has to do real art. He has to invent, he cannot just go on reporting. That can be done better, more skillfully, more truthfully by mechanism, by machines, by technology. Then where does the artist come in? He colors reality. If he simply reports the flower that is on the tree, it is photography. If he invents the flower, if he improves upon the flower, if he gives new qualities to the flower that don't exist there but are produced by him, if the real flower functions only like a screen and he projects all his fantasies on the flower, then he is an artist.

Have you seen van Gogh's paintings? Trees go so high that they almost touch stars. Now you have not seen trees go so high. No tree has ever touched any star.

Somebody asked van Gogh, "Why are these trees going so high? These are untrue." He said, "No! I have seen trees touching stars. Whenever I see a tree I see the desire of the earth to have a meeting with the stars. Each tree is a desire of the earth to have a meeting, a love-affair with the sky. That's why trees go on moving upwards, upwards, upwards. Trees are longings of the earth to have a meeting, to make love with the sky. They are on the way; I have simply depicted the final state. I have seen the final state where everything is moving, reaching. My painting is the painting where the whole earth is trying to reach. I can see beforehand, I can predict."

Now this is not real, this is invention -- beautiful in itself. And man would be at a great loss if inventive people disappeared. They make life more tasteful. They make life more fun. They make life worth living.

Science discovers. Art is feminine, science is male. The artist simply waits in his passivity; he dreams, desires, longs, and out of that dreaming, desiring and waiting something is invented. The scientist penetrates the reality. He is almost a rapist. He goes and uncovers. He throws all the clothes away, he makes reality nude, HE FORCES it to be nude.

Invention, inventing, is of the feeling. Discovery is of thought, of mind. Invention is through the heart, discovery is through the head.

Then what is creation? Creation is beyond both. When a man is no more identified with the head or with the heart, he becomes a mystic. A mystic creates, a poet invents, a scientist discovers.

A mystic creates. He is no more extrovert, no more introvert. He is no more man, no more woman; he has transcended all duality. He has dissolved himself into God; God is the creative energy. He is no more functioning separately, he has become part of the creative energy; he has become God. That is the meaning when we say Jesus is God, or Buddha is God -- they are no more separate.

The painter is separate, the poet is separate, the physicist is separate, the chemist is separate, but the mystic is one with the whole. He has dissolved himself into the creativity of this existence. Then out of him something is born that is creative -- out of him reality is born. That's what I mean w hen I say, "Create God, create soul." Buddha created enlightenment,Jesus created God, Mahavira created MOKSHA. These are different names. But they dissolved themselves into the whole, and out of that dissolution comes creation. Not that they create -- they are no more, hence the creation.

Art is invention, science is discovery, religion is creation.

To create you will have to disappear. Only when you disappear is creation possible. You will have to make way for God. When you are not there to do anything, to be anything, you become a hollow bamboo, a flute... and the song starts descending through you.