Forty students attend the same class, but only a few are able to go to the heart of the lesson. The Call Beyond goes to a few thousand, but only a few hundred read it. A few hundred thousand people live within walking distance of Sri Aurobindo Ashram – Delhi Branch, but only a handful walk to it, even when there is no lockdown. Millions of people see beggars outside temples, but only one Narayanan Krishnan changes the plans of his life to feed them.* It is as if there is plenty of positivity labelled ‘to whom it may concern’ around, and those whom it concerns are uniquely equipped to receive it, just as the television is uniquely equipped to receive what is telecast.

What equips a person to be especially receptive to spiritual awakening, the call from the beyond? Each individual soul is on an evolutionary journey. When a soul gets embodied as a human being on earth for the first time, the individual may behave almost as an animal, which it was in the previous life. But as a human being, she has a free will, which she may use throughout life for making choices, some of which raise the consciousness and some that lower it, and per chance she may leave the world at a level of consciousness higher than the one with which she arrived. This goes on for several lives, and finally she arrives as a human being who has a level of consciousness that sets her apart from the average of her species. She may be the odd one out, ‘too good’, ‘won’t fit into the world’ types. She does not live to eat, she eats to live. And, she is highly receptive to a trigger that wakes her up. The trigger is the call from the beyond. She now knows how she has to live, why she has to live that way, she enjoys living that way, and that is the only way she can live. In short, she is now on the spiritual path. Just as she was receptive to the call, she is also receptive to a contact with the one who was destined to be her Guru. Now she walks the spiritual path secure in the guidance, the protection, and above all, the Grace of the Guru.

The spiritual awakening often comes through a misfortune, a traumatic event, which makes a person miserable and helpless. But sometimes it comes through good fortune, as it did in case of Mani Bhaumik who, after staying intoxicated with material success, one day suddenly got a queasy feeling of being overfed and underfed at the same time – overfed with material possessions, progress, name and fame; and underfed spiritually. The awakening leads to an aspiration for discovering what it is that is truly Eternal, Everlasting; for discovering how I as an individual am related to that Absolute Reality; and for giving a meaning and direction to life that would be based on these discoveries. The more intense and sincere the aspiration, more effective is the Divine Grace because the intensity and sincerity of the aspiration heighten the receptivity. Taking a clue from one of Kabir’s couplets, the Divine Grace is always there, but it is like sugar mixed up in a heap of sand. An elephant cannot find the sugar, but an ant can, because the ant has receptivity for sugar. Similarly, it is not the wealth of a millionaire or the intellect of a genius that gives receptivity. It is the spiritual evolution over several lives that creates aspiration; and it is sincere aspiration, which even a simpleton might have, that creates receptivity.