It’s when you stop carrying thoughts and memories, stay quietly alert like a child, and let life and the divine be felt directly right now.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
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…
Osho, what is being open?
Devena, BEING OPEN SIMPLY MEANS being without mind. If the mind is there you are closed. Mind is a wall surrounding you. It is a transparent wall, hence you can see through it and you can go on living behind it without ever becoming aware that you are living in a prison cell. Prisons should be made of glass, then very few people will suffer so much in prisons. They will be able to see the people walking on the road, talking; they will be able to see everything, and they will believe that they are free. If they are not going out and mixing with the people, that is simply their own decision that they don't want to mix with the crowds. They are "aristocrats," they are not ordinary people, they are "special" people. And these walls which cannot be seen will not be thought of as walls, they…
Beloved Osho, what is it to give and what is it to receive? I understand now that I am only just beginning to glimpse these. Receptiveness feels like dying to me, and automatically everything inside goes on red alert! Help! Existence seems so huge.
You don't know anything about existence; you don't know anything about yourself -- which is the closest point of existence to you. Unless you start from your own being, you will never know existence. That is the starting point, and everything has to begin from the very beginning. Knowing yourself, you will know your existence. But the taste and the fragrance of your existence will give you courage to go a little deeper into the existence of others. If your own existence has made you so blissful... it is a natural longing to enter into other mysteries that surround you: human mysteries, mysteries of the animals, mysteries of the trees, mysteries of the stars. And once you have known your existence you are no longer afraid of death. Death is a fiction; it does not happen, it only appears... It appears from the outside. Have you ever seen your own…
Osho, you are continuously pouring out the Lord’s prasad; a rain of divine grace is falling, yet we go on missing. How can worthiness—receptivity—become possible?
Someone once asked Mulla Nasruddin, “What is the secret of your success?” “Working on right decisions,” Mulla replied. “But how are right decisions made?” the man asked. “On the basis of experience,” said Mulla. “And how is experience obtained?” the man asked again. Mulla thought for a moment and then said, “By working on wrong decisions.” I’m telling you something: don’t wait for the day when you’ll first have the right decision and then you’ll act. Drop the worry about right and wrong for now. If you wait to decide first and only then do, decision will never arrive. Do something—and out of doing, decision is born. Don’t just keep listening to me. Whatever delights you—do it quickly. Bring it into your life. Even if I were to pour an ocean into you, it would be of no use; if you can bring a single drop into use, it will…
Thus, through the statements like tattvamasi, that art thou, to pursue the meanings such as oneness of jiva, the embodied soul, and brahma, the absolute reality, is shravana, the listening. And to reasonably pursue the meaning of whatever has been listened to is manan, contemplation. Establishing your mind in the indubitable meaning attained through this listening and contemplation, attunement with it is nididhyasan, assimilation. Dropping the meditator and the meditation respectively, when the meditated-upon, the goal, remains as the only objective and the mind becomes still like the flame of
But no, people make simultaneous claims from both sides. If you are right, if you think you know, then there is nothing left to seek, the matter is over. Every person moves with the presumption of "I am right" and then says, "I want to seek the truth." If one is to seek the truth, the decision must be clear before the consciousness that "I don't know." Only then is the search possible. When I don't know, my entry into some truth is possible; if I know from the very beginning, the truth itself will appear to be wrong, because when a person who does not know believes that he knows, he can never see the truth as it is. The very working of the mind is to move with the assumption that "I am right" -- my idea, my viewpoint, my religion, my scripture. If you have to begin…