Creation can take place only in the mind that is totally empty

The cup is useful only when it is empty.  With most of us, the mind is clouded, cluttered up with so many things - pleasant and unpleasant experiences, knowledge, patterns or formulas of behaviour, and so on.  It is never empty.  And creation can take place only in the mind that is totally empty.  Creation is always new, and therefore the mind is made constantly fresh, young, innocent; it doesn't repeat, and therefore doesn't create habits. I don't know if you have ever noticed what sometimes happens when you have a problem, either mathematical or psychological.  You think about it a great deal, you worry over it like a dog chewing on a bone, but you can't find an answer.  Then you let it alone, you go away from it, you take a walk; and suddenly, out of that emptiness, comes the answer.  This must have happened to many of us.  Now, how does this take place?  Your mind has been very active within its own limitations about that problem, but you have not found the answer, so you have put the problem aside.  Then your mind becomes somewhat quiet, somewhat still, empty; and in that stillness, that emptiness, the problem is resolved.

Krishnamurti in Saanen 10th Public Talk 1st August 1965