Receptivity. This is the virtue we are taking a look at in this issue of our Newsletter. The word “receptivity has a Latin base. The root word of receptivity and receive is recipere which means "bring back, recover, take in, or admit." (Source: http://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/receptivity).
We can spend a few seconds quietly visualizing the word, “receiving”. Immediately, as it were, like a mirror image, another appears. It is the idea of “opening”. One cannot admit or take in without opening the portal. In fact, the very idea of “admitting” means there is a screen or an obstruction before the admittance, which needs parting or opening or removing.
In the integral yoga, the virtue of receptivity is like a key with opens the door to the steps of progress on the path. Sri Aurobindo explains “openness” thus: “… openness is a state of consciousness which keeps it turned to the Mother, free from other movements, expecting and able to receive what may come from the Divine.” And The Mother elaborates, “…receptivity, something that opens in order to receive..” and Mother too emphasizes the source from which one should be naturally open too, “Now, instead of opening and receiving from all sides and from everyone,… one opens only to the Divine to receive only the divine force.”
There is another insight into receptivity. The Mother makes a direct and binding connection between aspiration and receptivity. She says, “When you have an aspiration….It is going to call down the answer to what you aspire for.” However, there are some who may say, “..I aspire all the time and still I receive nothing.” The Mother asserts, “…the answer is sure to come. But it is they who do not receive. The answer comes but they are not receptive, so they receive nothing…”
Now, turning our attention to our lives, in a deeper contemplation on our dealings with ourselves and others, how do we relate with “receptivity”? Do we see ourselves as open or closed? When are we open and when closed? What are the conditions that make us open and what conditions, closed? How do we feel when we are open and how do we feel when we are closed? What consequences do we face in the external realm when we are open and vice-versa?
These questions may be answered best when one sincerely spends some time visiting one’s inner realms and facing oneself honestly, truthfully as they are, poring and sieving through plane after plane of one’s being, starting with the surface being that is most in contact with the outer world in most of us. It also requires a good power of relentless self-observation in order to arrive at the truth of who we really are. This process is facilitated when the will turns towards going through the work of constant self-observation just to find out one’s true nature about how open or closed we are and to what or whom we open to, and why and to what effect.
Once genuine answers to these few questions are surfaced, then one is able to make decisions about the state one wants to be in, either in a receptive state or in a non-receptive state and if the former, then contemplate on the object to which one would want to turn to receive. Ultimately, one’s idea or perception of one’s raison d’etre or reason for being drives the process of decision making about one’s stance on receptivity. Anyone aspiring for the Divine to drive one’s life instead of one’s ignorant ego would be probably driven to work on his or her receptivity to the Divine working. We each will know what this entails in our own lives.
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