The word darshan literally means to behold or to see. When you say “I am in darshan,” you are stating that “I see” or “I behold.” This is a culture in the East which comes from a very deep understanding of the life process. In India, if people go to a temple, they are not going there to pray. You will see a big crowd who just want to be in visual contact with the deity for a moment – they want to have darshan. No prayer, no pooja, no worship, no nothing; they just want to behold and be beheld by the deity.
What is the meaning of this? Is it like a shopping window, “I want to see?” No. What most people do not understand is, when you say “I see you,” when you say “I behold who you are,” the experience, the image of the other is happening within you. If you are too full of yourself, if you are too identified with things that you are not, then nothing goes in; the image just bounces off your eyeballs. But the less you are, if there is nothing much of you, this image, if it is properly taken in, imprints itself and grows within you.
This is why people want to behold the divine for a moment. Once you see something, even if you close your eyes, it is there and if you behold something with a total willingness of wanting to take that imprint into you and if you reduce yourself, then this image grows and becomes a live process; it has become a part of you. When you will allow it to become the whole of you is just a question of when you will make yourself into nothing.
If darshan has to happen, you have to take the maximum input into you. If you are so meditative that you are absolutely not there – you are an empty house, that is a great way to behold. But if you are in a house-full state, then it is best that you behold with utmost love and tenderness because this is when the imprint of what you see is deepest.
(Sadhguru is a yogi, mystic and visionary, and a prominent spiritual leader. An author, poet, and internationally-renowned speaker, Sadhguru’s wit and piercing logic provoke and widen our perception of life. isha.sadhguru.org)
