Question: How can I increase my receptivity?

Sri Chinmoy: Everyone has receptivity, but this receptivity can be enlarged. Receptivity is something elastic; it can be expanded like an elastic band through the spiritual Master’s grace. The best 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 time 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. Then, if you want to increase your receptivity, each day before you meditate, offer your deepest gratitude to the Supreme. This is the easiest and most effective way to increase receptivity. Because you are aspiring, you have become something. Then tomorrow, if you have maintained your aspiration, you will go one step further. You never stand in the same place in the spiritual life. Either you go forward, or you go backward. If you have aspiration, then you go forward; if you have desire, if you lead the life of desire, then you go backward. So if you have lived the life of aspiration today, then naturally tomorrow you will be one step ahead. Once you are one step ahead, you have every right and every reason to offer your gratitude to the Supreme. You cannot say, “Oh, I have done it all myself.” If the Supreme did not work in you, you would still be in the life of desire. But you have gone forward, and you have to feel that it is the divine Force, the Supreme, that has helped you to come forward. So you offer your gratitude to Him. Then each time you offer gratitude, you again go forward. And when you go forward, automatically your receptivity increases. Receptivity means what? It means progress. The more you receive, the more you can make progress in the inner world. Again, the more you receive, the more you have the capacity to receive.