Q&A: Receptivity

I am not as receptive in meditation as I would like to be. Why is this?

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.

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.

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.

page created by Sri Chinmoy — last modified 2006-08-26 10:08 AM
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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 can feel that He is 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.

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.

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.

Two Roads to Realisation

Prayer and meditation are like two roads. Prayer is always for our own sake, for our own life, for the near and dear ones in our own small world. If we pray well, God will give us two wings to fly above. But meditation is for the entire world. When we meditate well, we feel our oneness with our own expanded reality. If we can follow the road of meditation, we are hero-warriors. At that time we can carry on our giant shoulders the entire burden of humanity. When we fulfil our meditation-life, we fulfil not only God but also ourselves and the entire world.

For those who want to realise the Highest, I always say that meditation is of paramount importance. But there have been saints in the West who have realised God through prayer only. They did not know the concept of meditation. But the intensity of their prayers and their aspiration carried them into the world of meditation and beyond. Both approaches are effective. When we pray, we go up to God; when we meditate, God comes down to us. Ultimately the result can be the same.

Thy Will be done

When we pray, often there is a subtle desire for something, a hankering to get something or to become something. We may call it aspiration because we are praying to become good, or to have something divine which we do not have, or to be free from fear, jealousy, doubt and so forth. But there is always a subtle tendency on our part to push or pull from within.

Also, there is always the feeling of being-let us use the term 'a divine beggar'. We feel that God is high above, while we are down below. We see a yawning gulf between His existence and ours. We are looking up at Him and crying to Him, but we do not know when or to what extent God is going to fulfil our prayers. We feel that we are helpless. We just ask, and then we wait for one drop, two drops or three drops of compassion, light or peace to descend upon us. Sometimes there is a feeling of give-and-take. We say, "Lord, I am giving You my prayer, so now You please do something for me. You please help me, save me, fulfil me."

But in meditation we do not ask God for any help, boon or divine quality; we just enter into the sea of His Reality. At that time God gives us more than we could ever imagine. In prayer we feel that we have nothing and God has everything. In meditation we know that whatever God has, either we also have or we will someday have. We feel that whatever God is, we also are, only we have not yet brought our divinity forward. When we pray, we ask God for what we want. But when we meditate, God showers on us everything that we need. We see and feel that the whole universe is at our disposal. Heaven and earth do not belong to someone else; they are our own reality.

The highest prayer is, "Let Thy Will be done." This is absolutely the highest reach of prayer, and it is also the beginning of meditation. Where prayer stops its journey, meditation begins. In meditation we say nothing, we think nothing, we want nothing. In the meditation-world the Supreme is acting in and through us for His own fulfilment. The prayer-world is always asking for something. But the meditation-world says, "God is not blind or deaf. He knows what He has to do to fulfil Himself in and through me. So I shall just grow into the highest in soulful silence."

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