Be Fresh And Receptive – In Gita Verse 10.34 I am all-devouring death, and I am the generating principle of all that is yet to be. Among women I am a fame, fortune, fine speech, memory, intelligence, steadfastness and patience.
In this verse Krishna talks about two things. One is – I am all-devouring death – talking about everything in the universe is fresh so to bring the fresh on the surface everything needs to die or undergo transformation. Another thing he talks about is the quality of females. Which in one word is receptivity.
How to be fresh all the time?
On the periphery we exist as many. Your personality is different from the personality of your neighbor. Your individuality is different from anyone else. But your innermost center is not different. Your innermost center is the innermost center of all. When you reach the innermost, you reach to the one.
The whole world is just the circumference. The center – you may call it God or you may call it the supreme soul or whatsoever you like – but when you reach your own innermost center, you have reached the innermost center of all. And there, all secrets are hidden, in that one. And there, all the mysteries can be revealed to you.
You cannot know them beforehand. Unless you enter the innermost temple of the one, mysteries will remain mysteries. You can create many theories about them and many philosophies but it is of no use, futile, meaningless. You can philosophize much, but nothing can be concluded. It has happened for ages. Centuries have passed and men have been philosophizing, creating thousands and thousands of philosophies, theories and systems with no result. You can create them, but it is mental. You don’t know.
You can imagine. You can create a very coherent system of thoughts, but it is only in your thoughts, in your dreams. Philosophers are creative, but creative of dreams and fantasies. They create logical systems, they argue for them, but the truth cannot be created through logical systems; the truth cannot be reached through arguments. Whatsoever you reach will just be a hypothesis. The truth can be reached only through experience.
That is the difference between philosophy and religion. Religion says that the truth is not known, because you are not capable of knowing it. Unless you are transformed totally – unless you become a different one, unless your perspective changes, your outlook changes, your eyes change, your heart changes – you will not know the truth. Truth cannot be known through contemplation; it can only be known through your inner transformation.
With the inner transformation you will become capable of knowing mysteries, truth. Immediately you will find freshness within you. Which is not outer but inner.
Receptivity: In my Bhagavad Gita Verse 1.40, blog I wrote – Truth cannot be sought – one can simply be receptive, that’s all. One can open the doors and wait. One can say only this much.
Receptivity is a state of no-mind. When you are utterly empty of all thought, when consciousness has no content, when the mirror reflects nothing, it is a receptivity. Receptivity is the door to the divine.
Drop the mind and be. In the mind, you are miles away from being. The more you think, the less you are. The less you think, the more you are. And if you don’t think at all, those are the moments when being asserts itself in its totality.
Receptivity simply means dropping the garbage that you go on carrying in your head. And much garbage is there, utterly useless. The mind means the past. Now the past is no more of any use; it has happened, and it is never going to happen again, because in reality nothing ever repeats.
That’s how we go on missing life: the past becomes a barrier, encloses you, traps you, into something that is no more. You become encapsulated in the dead. And the more you become experienced, grown-up, the shell of the dead experience goes on becoming thicker and thicker around you. You become more and more closed.
Slowly, slowly all windows, all doors are closed. Then you exist, but you exist alienated, you exist uprooted. Then you don’t have a communion with life. You don’t have a communion with the trees and the stars and the mountains. YOU CAN’T have communion, because a great China Wall of your past surrounds you.
When Krishna says become receptive, Krishna means become a child again. Remember Jesus, who goes on saying to his disciples: Unless you are like small children you will not be able to enter into my kingdom of God. What he is saying is exactly the meaning of receptivity.
The child is receptive because he knows nothing; not knowing anything, he is receptive. The old man is not receptive because he knows too much; knowing too much, he is closed. He has to be reborn, he has to die to the past and become a child again – not in the body, of course, but the consciousness should always be like a child; not childish, remember, but like a child, grown-up, mature, but innocent.
And that’s how one learns, learns the truth that is presented to you every moment of your life, learns to know the Guest which comes and knocks on your door every moment, day in, day out, year in, year out. But you are so surrounded by your own inner talk, by your own inner procession of thoughts, that you don’t hear the knock.
Do you hear the distant call of the cuckoo? Do you hear the birds chirping? This is receptivity. It is an existential state of silence, utter silence; no movement, nothing stirs, and yet you are not asleep, and yet you are alert, and yet you are absolutely aware. Where silence and awareness meet, mingle and become one, there is receptivity. Krishna says Receptivity is the MOST important religious quality. Become a child. Start functioning from the state of not-knowing, and then silence will come of its own accord, and great awareness. And then life is a benediction.
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