Become Receptive – In Gita Verse 10.11 To show them special mercy, I, dwelling in their hearts, destroy with the shining lamp of knowledge the darkness born of ignorance.
Krishna is saying God is always a grace and always a love. But we are not always in the receptive mood. The people who are receptive will receive my love and grace.
As far as divine existence is concerned, love and grace are both one and the same. He is loving and that is his grace. He is always with his grace. That means he is loving. But these are not qualities which can be attributed to him. This is his nature. He cannot be otherwise. But we make distinctions because someone is known to have received grace; someone has become beloved to the divine. That again is a fallacious statement. God is always a grace and always a love. But we are not always in the receptive mood.
Unless we become receptive we cannot receive it. So when you are not receiving divine grace, it is not anything lacking on the part of the divine, but something like a barrier you are carrying. You are not receptive to it, you are not open to it, you are not vulnerable to it. God’s nature is to be graceful, to be grace itself. But as far as we are concerned, we are not naturally receptive. We are naturally aggressive. We are aggressive, and these are two different things.
If the mind is aggressive, then it cannot be receptive. Only a non-aggressive mind can be receptive. So all the qualities which carry any type of aggressiveness with them ought to be dropped, and one has to be just a door to receive. Just like a womb, one has to be in total receptivity. Then grace is always flowing and love is always flowing.
From everywhere grace is flowing. Every moment, everywhere, grace is flowing. It is the nature of existence, but we are not receptive. That is the nature of mind. Mind is aggressive. Meditation means “no-mind”. Meditation means non-aggressive receptivity – openness. But logic can never be receptive. Logic is aggressive. You are doing something. Then you cannot be receptive. You can be receptive only when you are not doing.
When you are in a non-doing state, absolutely non-doing, simply existing, then you are open from all sides, and from everywhere comes the flow of grace. It is always coming, but our doors are closed. We are always escaping grace. Even if it knocks on our doors, we escape.
When religion says “Be receptive”, the advice goes unheard. The mind cannot think of how it can be receptive. Mind has known only one thing in which it has been receptive, and that is death, in which the mind has not been able to do anything. It could not act. The only thing that the mind has known in which it has to be receptive is death. So whenever someone says, “Be receptive,” somewhere in the shadows you feel death. If I say “Be receptive,” the mind will then say, “Then you will die. Be aggressive if you want to exist and survive. The fittest survives. The most aggressive one survives. If you are just receptive, you will die.”
That is why receptivity is never even understood – not heard, not understood. This receptivity has been said in so many ways. Someone says, “Surrender.” It means “Be receptive”. Surrender means do not be aggressive. When someone says “Be faithful”, it means “Be receptive”.
Do not be aggressive through your logic. Receive existence as it is. Let it come in.
That which becomes aware of the mind is the consciousness which carries no past with it – which is eternal, which is always in the “now”, which is always new, which is always here and now. That consciousness is known only when you become aware of your mind. Then you are not identified with your mind. There is a gap between you and your mind. You know this is the mind: this aggressiveness, this hatred, this whole hell, is the mind.
And this mind goes on continuing. This mind will go on continuing, unless you become aware. And this is a miracle: that the moment you become aware the continuity is broken. Now you will be, but not of the past. Now you will be of the moment – fresh, young, new. Then each moment you will die, and you will be reborn.
Somewhere St. Augustine says, “I die every moment.” One who has become aware of one’s whole mind and its whole process, the continuity, the past continuing itself and carrying on and forcing itself into the future – one who has become aware of this – will die each moment. Each moment the past will be thrown out. One will be fresh, new and young, ready to jump into the new moment that is coming on. Only this fresh consciousness, this young consciousness – eternally young – is receptive, is open. There are no walls to it, no boundary walls to it. It is completely open, just like space.
The Upanishads call it “the inner space of the heart”. There is a space, simply a space. That is consciousness, sakshi – the expression of awareness. This transcendence of the mind, of the past, makes you open and vulnerable from all sides, to all the dimensions. Then grace is falling on you from everywhere – from the trees, from the sky, from human beings, from animals, from everywhere. Even a dead stone is graceful then. You feel grace falling toward you.
Then you cannot say this is simply an existence. Then you say, “This is God.”
Krishna says – This metamorphosis, this transformation of your own mind, this transformation of the dead mind into an eternally living consciousness, from the junk of the mind to the open sky of the consciousness, this transformation changes your attitude toward existence. Then the whole existence is just a flow of love – friendly, compassionate, loving, graceful. Then you are loved through thousands of hands.
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