Pilgrimage & Darshan

Baba Rampuri talks about the significance of pilgrimage and darshan, “the beholding.” Tirthas as crossing over places.

Magic happens anywhere worlds meet: at a crossroads, the seashore, graveyards, airports, hospitals, mountain tops, and temples. But those places where the Ordinary World meets the Extraordinary World require pilgrimage, whether internal or external. The act of making a pilgrimage is that of suspending oneself between worlds. Those locations to which one makes a pilgrimage, are called tirthas, crossing over places. They are spaces containing the meeting of worlds, and standing on those intersections, one may be at once in both worlds. Tirthas mark hidden entrances to the Extraordinary World.

They resemble a fold in the page, a hinge between the macro and the microcosms. A reflection of the inner journey onto the external world or a reflection of the heavens onto the Earth. Those who go on a pilgrimage become witnesses of mirrors.The main reason for pilgrimage is for darshan, The Beholding, and the resulting blessings. Darshan derives from drsh, ‘to see’, and is The Beholding, not ‘the looking’, as a tourist might do, but The Seeing. And, as the mirrors continue to reflect images deeper and deeper within, Analogy operates reflecting the macrocosm and the microcosm.

The World must benefit from his pilgrimage, so having had darshan, the pilgrim brings something back to his village. Pilgrims return with more than memories, something auspicious, that brings magic and prosperity home.

Pilgrimage is also story, each pilgrim a hero, and every hero has a quest. That quest may take the pilgrim outside the realm of society and into the extraordinary world, where the rules have all changed. And it is here that the pilgrim connects with … the stars.

The pilgrim reflects a story on the surface of the Earth that is told in the night sky and connects with its great chain of resemblances and its reflections. It means achieving a body-less state, a kind of immortality – becoming a ghost, as the pilgrim’s spirit may be absorbed knowingly or unknowingly by so many other humans over time. And those humans may lend hands and tongues to that spirit.