According to Osho, to prepare the ground for ideas is to cultivate inner receptivity: clear the mind of second‑hand beliefs, relax into silence, become alert, sensitive and playful, and trust the unknown. You don’t force ideas; you create the right climate—like a gardener removing weeds and watering the soil—through meditation, love and watchfulness, and then insights sprout by themselves.
Make your mind quiet and open, like soft soil, so new ideas can grow on their own.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Question: Osho, you once said that within fifty years, if there are not people like Krishna, Christ, Buddha, and Mahavira on the earth, the whole of humanity could be destroyed. And, like Vivekananda, you said that you are searching for a hundred individuals who can courageously experiment and rise to the highest peaks of the soul; then it will be possible to save this land and all humanity. For this you go from village to village, looking for eyes that can become a flame. You said, I am ready to make the total effort. On my side, the preparation is complete to take one inward. Let me not, at the time of dying, have to say that I was looking for a hundred people and I did not find them. If your readiness is there, come. Please clarify the meaning of “my preparation” and “your preparation.” What preparations are needed?
Please, Osho, what is receptivity?
RECEPTIVITY is a state of no-mind. When you are utterly empty of all thought, when consciousness has no content, when the mirror reflects nothing, it is receptivity. Receptivity is the door to the divine. Drop the mind and be. In the mind, you are miles away from being. The more you think, the less you are. The less you think, the more you are. And if you don't think at all, those are the moments when being asserts itself in its totality. Receptivity simply means dropping the garbage that you go on carrying in your head. And much garbage is there, utterly useless. The mind means the past. Now the past is no more of any use; it has happened, and it is never going to happen again, because in reality nothing ever repeats. Even when you think, feel, that this is the same situation, it is never the same…
Mahesh has the greatest number of temples. It shows one thing, that the East understood very correctly the beauty of destruction. To worship the god of destruction is to accept the fundamental of revolution . (The light your eyes perceive is not real illumination, Osho tells us.) It only reveals objects. It only reveals the superficial, it does not reveal the innermost core of things; the subjectivity remains unrevealed by it. The definition of true light is that which reveals your interiority -- and it is possible only through meditation. There is no other way to reveal your inner world, to make it full of light, to see what it is. And once you have seen your inner world you have seen everybody else's inner world too, because it is the same reality. If you have seen one rose flower you have seen all rose flowers.
A friend has asked: Osho, if one enters oneself with preconceived notions, the revelation of the simple Self is not possible. Tell us, is a movement toward self-knowing possible without preconceptions? Is not the very root of curiosity a prior knowledge of the object’s essence?
This is precisely what is called a preconception. The question itself is full of preconception. As you say, “Entering oneself with a preconception is not possible.” That has already been assumed. Have you entered and seen? You have formed the notion, without entering, that it is not possible. Now possibility will become very difficult. This very notion will be the obstacle: “It is not possible.” Why would you even attempt what you believe to be impossible? If it is impossible, you have shut the door. Now it will be hard. To be free of notions means: keep the mind open without knowing in advance; do not bind it. Do not decide whether it is possible or impossible. Experiment—do not decide. Experience—do not decide. Let decision arise from experience; do not manufacture experience out of decision. Because if you have decided beforehand, the scientific quality of the experiment is finished. You…
Osho, then I think many things will clear up on their own.
Yes, they will clear up on their own; there’s not much to it. Take this common notion that one must be silent in meditation—there is no need for such a notion. We are silence already, and whatever is happening is happening outside us. Thoughts are happening too; they are happening outside us. We do not have to become silent; we are silence already. Whatever is moving is moving outside us. By mistake we made it one with ourselves; there the error occurred. When you sit in meditation, thought is moving. We made the mistake of taking up an identity, an identification: “This thought is me, it is mine.” That was the error. This is a thought, and I am I. And this thought is circling around me—like a fan whirring, like a fly buzzing… this thought is circling. This is this, and I am I; what have I to do…