Are We Overestimating the Impact of Physical Darshan?

The mystics encourage us not to focus on their physical form. Maharaj Charan Singh wrote, “May your love of the Form culminate in the love of the Formless.” Similarly, to keep our gaze fixated on the inner Master, the present Master reminds us that neither his physical form nor our human self constitutes the real guru or disciple – both are within.

Nonetheless, the mystics’ physical form is magnetic, drawing us to them like moths to a flame. Whether 100 or 100,000 of us are waiting for Baba Ji to arrive, the atmosphere is electric. As he greets us with folded hands, it’s at this moment we become highly attuned to the yearning of our soul. But in that same moment, we may also be acutely aware of two additional truths captured in Sahjo Bhai’s poem. She states:

O beloved Lord, redeemer of the fallen,
  while under your shelter I have committed many sins.

Essentially, we recognize that while the Master has not been remiss in his duty, we have failed to comply fully with his instructions. Consequently, the joy of having darshan may not be, as one would expect, absolute but accompanied by regret, remorse, and sadness. Our heightened awareness of the soul’s yearning, and the Master’s love, despite our disobedience, brings to mind the words of Bulleh Shah, who wrote, “You alone exist! I do not, O Beloved!” While these sentiments inspire intense feeling during darshan, all too often the intensity of our determination to prioritize Sant Mat dissipates soon afterwards. This never-ending loop we’re caught in – remorse without actual change – is our tragedy. In fact, we could go so far as to say that we’re enacting our own Greek tragedy.

In a Greek tragedy, the protagonist, usually a person of importance and outstanding personal qualities, falls to disaster through a combination of personal failings and circumstances that he or she is unable to control. With one important difference, this describes our situation perfectly. While we may not be important to the world, we are important to the Lord and to our Master. And since our soul possesses the same qualities as the Shabd, our individual self possesses outstanding personal qualities. Finally, we are currently at risk of disaster; not because of our personal circumstances, but our inaction.

The disaster awaiting us is our failure to take full advantage of this gift of human life; we realize that our meditation has been half-hearted, and we fear that we will not attain the spiritual liberation we crave.

Overestimating the impact of physical darshan
Undoubtedly, a master’s physical form impacts his or her disciples. There isn’t really a word which captures the joy, peace, gratitude, optimism and, above all, the love seekers feel when in the presence of their Master. The spiritual vibration a master exudes fills seekers’ hearts so much so that they feel love is pouring out of them too. In fact, in the early stages of spiritual evolution, a disciple’s faith often rests on the hunch that what they feel in the Master’s physical presence is just an inkling of what awaits them when they meet the Master’s inner form in meditation.

When not in a master’s presence, we’re engaged in our own private war between our desire for spirituality and our unreformed actions. Our inner turmoil often reaches its zenith whenever we find ourselves in the Master’s presence, so that instead of being absorbed in him completely, part of our attention is occupied with making silent apologies, begging his forgiveness, and promising to do better. But when not in his presence, the demands of the world come to dominate our attention. As this occurs, our determination to prioritize Sant Mat fades as does our feeling of love. Our condition is captured by the following lyrics from the song, “Raye” by Sultan + Shepard, Shallou:

Waiting for your love
A million miles away,
I can’t feel you now,
There’s something in the way.

Whether we are conscious of it or not, our failure to prioritize Sant Mat makes us unhappy. Instead of recognizing this, we project our unhappiness onto the Master, asking ourselves, where has the love gone? Does he not love me anymore? Subsequently, when the opportunity to have darshan arises, naturally we jump at it. But why do we seek darshan? Is it because we are yearning for him or are we expecting something?

Given that we yearn to see him or feel revived after his darshan, it seems our desire for darshan is motivated by the need to reignite the love we think is a million miles away, and to recommit to meditation. The mystics, however, explain that real darshan means losing ourselves in the Beloved. But how can we lose ourselves in our Master if our motive for darshan consists only of our own needs and expectations?

Of course, there will be occasions in a disciple’s spiritual journey when physical darshan is exactly what is needed to keep one on the straight and narrow. The problem arises when our desire for darshan is consistently driven by self-centred motives because not only do we overlook our responsibility to cultivate love for our Master, but we also risk undermining the real value of darshan. Darshan is not a substitute for our year-round spiritual effort.

Is our joy all down to darshan?
During formal satsang programmes, we often wish we could take the Dera atmosphere home with us. We may see the Master for 90 or 100 minutes at most. And what of the occasions when he passes by and we are blessed with just a few seconds of darshan? Why do we still long to bottle the intensity of whatever it is we’re feeling each time we see him?

Maybe what gives us as much joy as darshan itself is the anticipation of darshan. More specifically, it’s what’s happening inside our heads. By looking forward to being with him, we’re thinking about him more intensely than we would otherwise. While carrying on with our days as normal, he is at the very forefront of our thoughts, and it is this which forms the basis of our love and joy – our remembrance of him.

We often believe that just seeing him is physical darshan, and this accounts for the happiness we feel in his presence, but we could just as easily feel nothing. Mystics remind us that we need two hands to clap. When we are in Master’s presence, we do not passively sit there waiting for the love to be poured into our hearts, but are rather active participants in the experience. Therefore, the joy and love we feel in his presence is not all attributable to the Master’s form, or the atmosphere of a satsang centre, but to our very own self. Since our self is always with us, we can choose to be just as elated when not in Master’s presence. If we tried this, and spent the whole day thinking of our Master, we would find that no longer do we complain to him that we can’t meditate; instead, we would beg to not be caught up in the demands of the world and for him to remain constantly at the forefront of our minds.

Trusting a true master
We believe that the Master is a God-realized soul, and that we are living our life in accordance with this knowledge. If we truly believed this with conviction, we would trust everything that he says. However, taking the present Master as an example, while he is telling us that we can live the Sant Mat way of life, we insist that we can’t. When he says that there are no failures in Sant Mat and that we can do it, do we wonder about the basis for his reassurance? We ourselves are the evidence. The one thing, above all else, which sustains us on this path is love, and love is something we are not short of. Our love for the Master is abundantly clear in the facts that we seek initiation, follow the vows, do seva and attend satsang. We try to turn away from the world to seek him within.

In our own imperfect way, every single one of us tries to love, honour, and obey the Master as best we can. However, this only takes us halfway. When we tell him that we doubt our capabilities and that we’re anxious about tripping up, he tells us that the Master is within us, that the true guru is the Shabd and the true disciple is the soul. Why do the mystics continually remind us of this? We need to be reminded that the real Master is within, and be reminded of who we really are. Our real self is not our outer physical covering, but the soul. There is no difference between the soul and the Master. We are him; he is us.

Fundamentally changing our perception of who we are constitutes the next phase of our spiritual evolution. Why? It’s precisely because our sense of self is wrapped up with our physical body that, while we have faith in the Master, we have little faith in ourselves.

Our physical form will always capitulate to the mind; our mind will come up with a million reasons why today’s meditation should be put off until tomorrow. The more this happens, the more we begin to distrust ourselves, and the more we distrust ourselves, the less motivated we are to practise meditation, because who wants to spend time doing something where the starting point is one of inadequacy? But if we can move away from seeing ourselves in terms of our weaknesses and limitations, our spiritual practice will become so much easier. If we remain unconvinced, let us think about it another way. The reason our love for the Master intensifies in his presence is because he awakens our soul, and it is our soul that is responding to the spiritual vibration and magnetic power of love emanating from him. Taking this a step further, since the Master is the Shabd, and the soul is a particle of the Shabd, where is the love coming from, and who is doing the loving?

Conclusion
All the Master wants from us is that we spend time with him daily… inside. If we did that, we would experience the deeper meaning of Bulleh Shah’s words: “You alone exist! I do not, O Beloved!” The Master’s presence will become so intoxicating that it will awaken every nerve, fibre, and cell in our body, and so completely absorbed will we become by him that thoughts of our inadequacy will be completely crowded out.