In the city of Darshana,
There is a secret dwelling,
Called The Lotus of the Heart.
Within this dwelling is a space,
And within this space,
Lies the fulfilment of all your desire.
(After Chandogya Upanishad)
Darshana is a Sanskrit term dating from around 3,000 BC, but with origins that extend well beyond the birth of written language. It can be translated as 'seeing' in a holistic sense rather than 'looking' in a conventional sense. For broad practical purposes, it can be considered to mean perceiving the divine in the mundane.
Holistic seeing bypasses the selective filters that screen the billions of stimuli that continuously bombard our pre-conscious perception, resulting in relatively crude biochemical classifications of essentially dualistic value.
This comparatively primitive discrimination based on hierarchies of contrast determines whether a pattern of impulses is permitted to attain top-level conscious awareness or not. Such mechanisms are largely responsible for the construction of our habitual 'picture' of reality.
Throughout the history of humanity - largely in the domain of wisdom traditions and artistic movements, although nowadays also as a matter of empirical scientific research - countless investigations have pursued the objective of consciously cultivating sensitivity to the volitional consequences of infinitesimal perceptual events.
Curiously, the characteristics of this penetrating capability may have humble parallels in day to day life with what we ordinarily take to be an unexceptional embodied intelligence: ‘gut-feeling’.
Darshana Art explores the paradox of impermanence and immanence in the unrepeatable configuration of each moment. By opening ourselves to embodied perception that is free from discursive elaboration, mental insights dawn spontaneously and are quietly experienced as pervasive knowing.
Not equal to,
Not metaphor,
Not standing for,
Not sign.
(Minor White)