In Surat Shabd Yoga, on the other hand, the gaze-image transference is expressly kept established and applied in reference to speaking and to rhetorical elements. It is neglected in psychoanalysis.
While the darshan, then, is a blinding gaze, one that causes pain as does God's countenance before Moses, the gaze of a psychoanalyst is rather inhibited, maybe too much so.
Thus, Seidler also does not apply the gaze as an element of therapy in psychoanalytic sessions. 'Seeing' oneself is only learned through spoken elements and interpretation. There is no question as to whether an occasional gaze may serve to restart a faltering association, or, as described by H. Prader1, to initiate an instance of mutuality that would include a well-measured dose of self-revelation by the therapist and a transcending of the 'mental'.
Even if we were to exercise the seemingly contrary in psychoanalysis, we would still arrive at similar results, i.e. by avoiding gazes in an analytic session, only glancing at each other, but without focusing, especially not allowing a deep, long look into the eyes (or 'darshan'). Psychoanalysis provides us with a tool suitably comparable to that intensive erperience of yoga.
Renowned child development psychologist, J. Bowlby, states that facial movement (especially of that of the mother) represents the main visual incentive for a baby's first smile2. Yes, even a pair of eye-similar points is enough to trigger this SHINES in the face of a baby. Firstly, here we are not only regarding a sort of primal transference, and second, the SHINES is created in both and between both of the subjects as if it were written!
There is no sudden burst of 'light' simply from the guru's eyes, even though it may seem so at times. It is rather, that this phenomenon is created under the participation of both: through the especially pure gaze of an individual totally integer vitae3 and the most original form of transference (primal transference) to another (follower, child).
1 Prader, H., Scrutinizing a "Now Moment", Forum of Psychoanalysis, No. 4 (2003) p. 312-325. Here the author could continue - by means of counter-transference - to deal with the unconscious in such an intuitive manner that one could have the feeling of a darshan. But in the same way we could also speek again of the primal-transference.
2 Bowlby, J., Bindung, Kindler, Geist und Psyche (1972) page 264
3 I have named this gaze the 'absolute gaze' elsewhere. It correlates precisely with the mother's gaze who is nursing and lovingly gazing at her baby.