Question: What are the ways that we can expand our receptivity to the Supreme?

Sri Chinmoy: You can expand your receptivity, you can enlarge yourself in receiving the Supreme in your inner life as well as your outer life just by feeling that you are extremely helpless. You are a babe in the woods without the Supreme. Again with the Supreme, you are everything. Without the Supreme, you are nothing, nothing, nothing. With the Supreme, you are everything. This thought, this idea, this truth must be implanted on the tablet of your heart all the time. You are nothing without the Supreme; you are everything with Him. In this way, your receptivity automatically increases because you have already realised the real Truth in your inner life as well as in your outer life. You know that your entire existence depends on Him, your inner existence as well as your outer existence. Your outer existence depends on Him; your inner existence also depends on Him. If you feel that your entire existence is meaningless, useless, absurd if He is not inside you and 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. Receptivity is bound to come the moment you feel that the Supreme is the only object of your life and it is He who is meaningful, essential, and inevitable in your life, both the inner and the outer life.

Always try to see, from now on please, that you are the chosen child of the Supreme just because He is utilising you. But if you feel that you are utilising yourself with your own ego and pride, then you are thousands of miles away. The moment you are away from Him, you have to feel that you are nothing, you are useless. The moment you are one with Him with your dedication, devotion and surrender you will feel that you are everything. When you feel that you are everything, automatically your receptivity expands.

Then there is another way to expand your receptivity. During your meditation, try consciously to have inner joy. Suppose the inner joy does not come to you all at once, then try to imagine for a few seconds or a few minutes that you have it. This will not be something false. You can take it as pure imagination but this imagination will help you to some extent in the long run, perhaps a few weeks later, to bring forth the true inner joy. Why? Because you are sincerely aspiring to get true inner joy. You are not going to stop with imagination, far from it. You have intense aspiration; however, at the same time, you don’t have inner joy right in front of you. But you are crying for inner joy and this inner joy does not come. But your aspiration is so intense that it is going to bring you true inner joy in a few minutes’ time. But before this, you can imagine. Imagination helps the aspirant to some extent and it intensifies the power of aspiration. Gradually, in the course of time you get genuine inner joy.

So to come back to your question, to expand your receptivity to the Supreme, you first need to feel helpless without the Supreme. Then you need to feel inner joy, for its very nature is to expand. You cannot bind inner joy. The very nature of inner joy is expansion, expansion, expansion. When you expand, your receptivity will automatically expand like a vessel that keeps getting larger. This is the way in which you can expand your receptivity in order to receive the Supreme in infinite measure.