D arshan means to just behold with your eyes open. Behold what? The fundamental nature of the human intelligence is such that it cannot be fulfilled with what it has. If it finds very rudimentary expression, it will think of money, property, conquest or shopping. Some go shopping with swords and guns, some with handbags. These are just rudimentary expressions of the same fundamental longing – the longing that cannot be contained with what you have. There are many pacifying teachings of contentment and fulfillment, but how many have worked even for a single human being?

If you have an effervescent intellect, it wants to be something more. Nobody can stop this. Suppose you go for money, you are not looking for more, you are looking for all – and that is never going to happen. It is not practical. The lifespan that you have will go wasted counting numbers. You can add as many zeros as you want, but it will not serve as any practical solution to life. Money to meditation is not just a refinement, you are becoming practical and sensible. It is not changing your direction of life, it is just that you have understood that "more" is not going to fulfill you. What you want is all.

If you want all, it does not make sense approaching it physically because physical means small or big, not all. The intelligence that you call a “human being” is longing for the truth about the nature of our existence. It does not want to stop here or there, it wants to go all out. Today, if you are tired or sick, you will say “Oh, it's enough!” Tomorrow morning, if there is a little energy coursing through your nerves, you are ready again because that is the nature of being human.

To be in a state of Darshan is to allow this life to simply tremble with too much tenderness.

You are searching for that which is limitless unknowingly, unconsciously. If something is limitless, it is everywhere. Your predicament is just this – you are looking for something that is everywhere, but your instruments of perception cannot perceive anything unless there is a context -- darkness and light, male and female, day and night, this and that. If there is only “this and this” your sense organs cannot perceive it. If there is hot and cold, you can perceive it. If there is just one, you cannot perceive it. The longing is for that truth which is limitless in its nature, but the instruments of perception are lacking.

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What Darshan means is just this – downgrading your longing a little bit. Instead of looking for that which is the ultimate and limitless, start looking at something that is an embodiment of that limitlessness. Something that is soaked in that limitlessness, which exudes the fragrance. A Guru becomes a possibility because he is a limited entity. Otherwise, you could not perceive anything that does not have a context. Certain things are needed for the sense organs to proceed. The Guru is soaked with the fragrances of limitlessness. You just have to behold, not try to understand, not try to think it through, not to try to grasp – nothing. Simply look.

What does it mean to be in a state of Darshan? Your body is a certain kind of reverberation, your thought is another kind of reverberation and your emotion is another kind. What you call the life within you is yet another kind of reverberation. To be in a state of Darshan is to allow this life to simply tremble with too much tenderness. When the tenderness of life overtakes the body, thought and emotion, then you are in a state of Darshan; you are truly beholding.

What is the point? The point is that you can have a taste of a dimension which is limitless, and for which you have no instruments of perception yet. Without having a tongue, you can have a taste of the soup.

Love & Grace

Sounds of Isha performs Kabir's Naiharwa, as composed and sung by Kailash Kher. Below is the video and lyrics translated into English.


 

My Parents’ House

 

I don’t find any interest in my parents’ house
My Beloved’s Town is most beautiful
However, nobody goes or comes from there
There is no moon, sun, wind or water
Then who will take my message there?
Then who will tell my pain to my Beloved?


There is no visible path to move forward
And you blame the past for it
How should the bride go to the house of her Beloved?
Powerful pangs of separation are burning from inside
The pleasure of the senses is driving to dance on its tune
There is none other than Sadhguru who is mine
Who can tell me the way
Kabir says, "Listen, oh seeker,
Your Beloved will come in a dream-like state
That alone will quench the thirst of your heart"