Behold the Divine

 

"If you behold something with a total willingness of wanting to take that imprint into you, and if you reduce yourself, then you will see this image grows and becomes a live process." - Sadhguru 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.” In India, if people go to a temple, they are not going there to pray. You will see a big crowd of people who 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 they want to be beheld by the deity. This comes from a very deep understanding of life process. So what is the meaning of this? “I want to see” – is it like a shopping window? No. What most people do not understand is, when I say “I see you,” when I say “I behold who you are,” the experience, the image of the other is happening within me. If you are too full of yourself nothing goes in, the image just bounces off your eyeballs. But if there is nothing much of you, it imprints itself. If there is nothing much of you, it grows within you. So people want to behold the Divine for a moment because once you see something, even if you close your eyes, it is there. If you behold something with a total willingness of wanting to take that imprint into you, and if you reduce yourself, then you will see this image grows and becomes a live process. Once it is inside, you can make it grow. If you want to know something, you should become that, there is no other way to know it. If you want to know love, you must become that. If you want to know truth, you have to become that. That is the only way. Only when you have become that, you have an experience of that, otherwise you only have a definition of that. It is not something that you can do, it is something that you can become. It is not a trick of somehow getting something, no – you have to become that. If you behold, it has become a part of you. When you will allow it to become a whole of you is just a question of when you will make yourself into nothing. So if you want to know, you have to become that. If you have to become that, what you have already become has to go, only then you can become something more than what you are. This is not an addition. This is a complete invasion. It has to be taken, otherwise you can only smell it – “I like it. I like it.” That is pleasure. You sit here and enjoy the talk, or enjoy the presence, both are pleasure, different kinds of pleasure. To see something can be pleasure, to talk to somebody can be pleasure, to touch them may be pleasure, to get into more intimate situations is also pleasure, and even to entertain yourself with the idea of knowing is also pleasure – but knowing will never happen unless you become that. So if darshan has to happen, you have to take the maximum input into you. So if you are so meditative that you are absolutely not there, you are an empty house – if you are an empty house, that is a great way to behold. If you are not an empty house, you are a houseful state. If you are in a full house state, then it is best that you behold with utmost love and tenderness, because this is when the imprint of what you see is generally deepest; when your emotions are tender. This tenderness will happen to you not because you try to love somebody, but because you have become love.