Chapter 10. Receptivity: Opening to the Light

The more you can offer gratitude to the Supreme Pilot within you, the more and the sooner you will increase your receptivity.

WHAT IS RECEPTIVITY?

Receptivity is the flow of cosmic energy and cosmic light. Receptivity is the capacity to absorb and hold the divine gifts that the Supreme showers upon you during your meditation. If you want to be receptive, when you sit down to meditate, consciously try to bring light into your being. Once you have brought light inside, direct it to the right place, the spiritual heart. Then try to grow into that light.

If you feel that you have a little receptivity, then cry for more. Do not be satisfied with the receptivity that you have. Today if it is a tiny pool, then make it into a pond, then into a lake, and finally into a vast ocean. Receptivity can be expanded gradually and endlessly. But without receptivity you will not be able to achieve anything in your spiritual life, even from countless hours of meditation.

One way to increase your receptivity is to be like a child. If the mother says to the child, “This is good,” the child has no tendency to think it is bad. No matter how advanced you are in the spiritual life, you can make the fastest progress by having a childlike attitude, a sincere and genuine childlike feeling.

Gratitude

The easiest and most effective way to increase your receptivity is to offer your deepest gratitude to the Supreme each day before you meditate. Many of your near and dear ones are not following the spiritual life, but you have accepted the spiritual life. How is it possible? It is possible because the Supreme inside you has given you the aspiration, whereas there are many, many people who are still not aspiring. You should feel that He has selected you to be spiritual. Because He has given you aspiration, you have every reason to offer Him your gratitude. He will be able to give you more receptivity if He sees that every day you are increasing your gratitude-capacity.

When you offer gratitude to God, immediately your inner vessel becomes large. Then God is able to pour more of His blessings into you or enter more fully into you with His own divine Existence. God is infinite, but only according to our receptivity can He enter into us. God is like sunlight. If I leave the curtains open, sunlight will come in. If I keep all the curtains closed, it cannot come in. The more curtains we open, the more God enters into us with infinite light. When we offer gratitude, immediately God’s light comes pouring into our being.

Gratitude means self-offering to one’s highest self. Your gratitude is not going to somebody else; it is going to your own highest self. Gratitude helps you identify and feel your oneness with your own highest reality.

You should always be grateful to the Inner Pilot, the Supreme. When you are grateful, your receptivity automatically increases.

HOW TO

1. A receptive place. One way to get immediate receptivity is to repeat the word “Supreme” in silence over and over again, as fast as possible. First select one place in your body—let us say your third eye—and concentrate there while repeating “Supreme” as fast as possible. Then select another spot and do the same thing. It is better to go from the top downward than from the bottom upward. The place you concentrate on does not have to be a psychic centre. It can be any place you want. If you can do this in seven different places in your body, at one particular place you are bound to find yourself receptive.

2. A child’s cry. To create receptivity when you do not have it, try to make yourself feel that you are only three years old—a mere baby. You have no mother, no father, nobody at all to protect you, and you are alone in a forest on a very dark night. All around you is darkness. Death is dancing right in front of you, and nobody is there to help you. Then what will you do? You will cry to God from the very depths of your heart, with absolute sincerity. When that kind of inner cry comes, the Supreme is bound to open your heart and make you receptive.

3. Depend on God. You can increase your receptivity if you feel that you are extremely helpless without the Supreme, and that with the Supreme, you are everything. This idea, this truth you can write on the tablet of your heart. Try to feel that your inner existence and your outer existence entirely depend on the Supreme. If you feel that your entire existence is meaningless and useless if He is not within you to guide you, to mould you, to shape you, and at the same time to fulfil Himself in you and through you, then your receptivity will expand. Try to feel that you are the chosen child of the Supreme just because He is utilising you, but if you are utilising yourself with your own ego and pride, then you are thousands of miles away from Him. The moment you are away from Him, you are nothing; but the moment you are one with Him with your dedication, devotion and surrender, you are everything. When you feel that you are one with Him, automatically your receptivity expands.

4. Inner joy. Another way to expand your receptivity during your meditation is to try to consciously feel inner joy. If you cannot feel inner joy immediately, then try to imagine for a few seconds or a few minutes that you have it. This will not be false. Your imagination will intensify your aspiration and help you to bring forward true inner joy in the course of time. The very nature of inner joy is expansion. When you expand, your receptivity will automatically increase, like a vessel that keeps getting larger.

Q&A

Question: l’m not as receptive in meditation as I would like to be. Why is this?

Sri Chinmoy: Sometimes this happens because our consecration to the Supreme is not yet complete. Sometimes the mind resists, sometimes the vital resists and sometimes the physical or even the subtle physical resists. If there is any such resistance, negative forces can enter us, and our receptivity is lessened. Until we are really sure whether we want the life of desire or the life of aspiration, negative forces will stand between our desire and our aspiration. These forces are always on the alert. They try to separate our aspiration from our desire. Then they try to strengthen our desire and kill our aspiration, and very often they succeed. But a spiritually alert person will take aspiration and enter into desire in order to transform it. If desire enters into aspiration, then aspiration is ruined. If aspiration enters into desire, at that time desire is transformed.

At other times you may not be receptive because you have become too secure; you have become complacent. You do not feel an inner cry because you are satisfied with your material possessions or with the things that you already have in your inner life. Once you are satisfied with what you have, why should you cry for something more? When you have this kind of complacent feeling, your inner cry ceases, and your receptivity also comes to an end.

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Every morning try to greet God with only one thing: an ever-increasing gratitude-gift.

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If you say no to your wrong thoughts and yes to your inspiration to become God’s perfect instrument, then boundless receptivity will immediately be yours.