Wisdom requires a clear view of what is essentially like and unlike. As it often proves ruinous to discriminate among entities that are fundamentally the same, there is a correspondingly great danger in conflating cases that are in reality different. Discerning which similarities and dissimilarities are decisive requires not only inquiring into the intrinsic properties of the entities, but also understanding our fundamental nature. This is essential because wisdom is that knowledge whereby one may act well. Even if one possessed knowledge of everything apart from oneself, absent self-knowledge, one would not know which actions are appropriate to the sort of being one is.
Yet actionable knowledge of our fundamental nature—even in far less superficial ages—of all the forms of self-knowledge proves most elusive. Few humans would consciously identify their essence with the latest in their life’s series of ephemeral desires, but their seduction may be experienced as so overpowering that everything appears worthless absent their satisfaction. Human suffering in all its varieties may likewise appear so overwhelming as to negate the choiceworthiness of existence. Desperately attempting to escape the suffering, we are tempted with false promises at every turn, each offering momentary diversion in exchange for our integrity. Free of any special distress, novelty may seduce us still, offering change from the nauseating experience of ennui so unflinchingly explored by Pascal. Yet we purchase our distractions dearly: every instance of succumbing to the hosts of dissipation fragments the self, further increasing our distance from our eternal home.
The GurSikh must never forget that we live in the dark age of Kalajuga. Attending honestly to one’s inner condition, it is indeed difficult to ignore volition’s inadequacy before the relentless onslaught of time and temptation. Mired in a myriad trifling worries, precious life slips irretrievably through one’s fingers. Reflective awareness of human frailty—especially the peculiarities of one’s own—is itself a valuable if singly insufficient possession. A recurring metaphor in Gurbāṇī likens the human body to a city. We suffer under the arbitrary depredations and importunate shrieks of the teeming inner multitude. Danger similarly abounds outside the self’s walls. The GurSikh is thus urged to see through the vain blandishments and shining façades of the outer world: we cannot rely upon what is currently most prevalent around us or most esteemed for our bearings.
Understanding of our fundamental nature is best gleaned from those who have best realized life’s ultimate purpose. All humans are created with the extraordinary potential to know our Creator in this life and beyond. Because realization of this state is extremely rare, it is not the ordinary but the exceptional that most completely reveals what is most choiceworthy. Gurū Nanak and his successors illuminated the path from human imperfection to perfection of the human essence in union with the One fount of all perfections. The Gurū-s are unequivocal in their witness: only when the mind joyously and spontaneously affirms the sovereign wisdom of the perennial Sabad do we discover everlasting peace.
Much of this exposition doubtless sounds familiar to GurSikh-s, to regular readers of The Vital Anjan, and indeed to anyone acquainted with the writings of the great mystics across religious traditions. Yet the remarkable ubiquity of verses within Srī Gurū Graṅth Sāhib recalling us personally to our mystical vocation merits comment. Their frequency is perhaps less surprising in light of three interrelated ideas. First, if human lives share a highest end, there is then by definition nothing more important than fulfilling it. Second, the Gurū-s—having personally verified the existence and choiceworthiness of such an end by themselves attaining it—are acutely cognizant of the pitfalls the wondrous illusions of māyā pose. Third, many of the hymns now collected in Srī Gurū Graṅth Sāhib were revealed in the historical encounter between the Gurū-s’ sovereign wisdom and the spiritual needs of particular souls at different points on their homeward journey.
Yet reflection on these familiar propositions and related ideas gives rise to several less commonly observed considerations regarding Gurbāṇī’s interpretive horizon and true power. Perhaps most obviously, it is maximally fruitful to seek an understanding of Gurbāṇī through its own terms, not through the normative and epistemic preoccupations of our times. In scanning through Gurbāṇī merely to support or refute contending positions in contemporary debates, we may rob ourselves of the opportunity for the Gurū to radically transform our understanding of what is actually most important. Paradoxical as it may initially seem, it is precisely because Gurbāṇī addresses our fundamental and unchanging nature that readers of all times approaching Bānī Gurū with interpretive humility receive guidance relevant to their most pressing concerns.
Less obvious are the at least three vantages—at times converging, at others appearing distinct—from which Gurbāṇī must simultaneously be approached. Closest to us is our own condition in approaching the Gurū at any point in time, granted our self-assessments may admittedly prove treacherous. Encountering the questions, declarations, perceptions, judgments, and mental patterns within a given Sabad—even as they transform one’s consciousness—helps elicit an understanding of one’s current spiritual state. Next, some combination of both implicit and explicit as well as textual and extra-textual signs aids us in identifying the state or states of soul originally addressed by the Sabad at the time of its revelation. These states at their most apparent may vary from the mūrakha (fool) to the sadhū (saint), from the Hindu jōgī (yogi) to the Muslim mulā (mullah), from the mana (mind) to the Kartāra (Creator).
Such recognition of a Sabad-’s dialogic context—whether historically singular or poetically representative in Aristotle’s sense—helps us ascertain the preconditions, qualifications, and entailments implicit in its context. Contemplation the state of the Gurū-’s addressee in a given Sabad may evoke a mode of being for which one has first-hand experience or underscore the spiritual distance one has yet to travel, thereby clarifying one’s present state. Finally, the Gurū-s’ evocation of perfect union with the One defines the synoptic vantage—the Archimedean point—wherefrom the reality of everything is knowable. It is perhaps not so astonishing that the genuine mystics throughout and beyond Srī Gurū Graṅth Sāhib are in essential accord with respect to this superlative state, for the ultimate love whose attainment unites them is eternally One and self-same. While knowledge from the comprehensive vantage is unsurpassable in scope, its personal realization is naturally unavailable before one has ascended this summit.
The foregoing may seem to vindicate the superior prudence of spiritual induction to spiritual deduction. Induction is irreproachable if one may proceed from secure experience of the self’s plenary reality, because the soul’s being partakes directly of the divine essence. While succumbing to māyā-’s illusion may indeed be experienced as ‘self-fragmenting,’ we ought not to seek the remedy in some sort of additive recomposition from sundry particulars, because the varieties of human brokenness are coextensive with the vastness of the the world and all its souls. Another of Gurbāṇī’s recurring metaphors illuminatingly characterizes the spiritual effect of corrupt actions as rendering one ‘maelā’ (soiled, begrimed). In Japujī Sāhib, Gurū Nanak colorfully explains that as the body’s incontinence ‘mūta palītī’ soils the fabric of one’s clothing, mental incontinence stains the fibers of one’s being. What is required is then spiritual cleansing, which is to say the subtraction of befouling pollutants. Critically, the sābūṇu (soap) required for the soul’s ablution is ‘nāvae kae raṅgi’—the colors of (the One’s) Name, thus precluding the exclusively privative conception—common in Buddhism—of ultimate realization as nothingness.
There is then a legitimate—and indeed indispensable—deductive function to knowledge transcending our present conditions. Disparate as our coordinates may be, evocation of the ultimate vantage establishes our shared destination. The divine attributes comprehended by the unific designation of Nām (the Name) allow us to participate in and better understand the will and nature of the ultimate being we yearn to more perfectly know. A word of caution regarding illegitimate species of deduction is now in order. It is essential we guard against premature speculation and preclusion drawing upon inadequate acquaintance with the divine nature. We must unite diligent allegiance to whatever has already been received with receptivity to the perennial possibility of fresh divine self-disclosure, never forgetting that genuine revelation does not contradict itself.
By way of conclusion, I turn to a final consideration. The Gurū-s are fully aware of māyā-’s illusory lure and fundamentally committed to ferrying all humans across its treacherous waves through the Sabad. It thus stands to reason that Sabad Gurū embodies the Gurū-s’ strategic counter to māyā-’s awesome power. Both the conditions of Bāṇī’s arrival in historical time and the explicit claims within it concerning its nature here offer guidance. Bāṇī was largely revealed as Kīrtana—in song—and in learning to sing it as it was first received, we most fully avail ourselves of its succor. We impose our own limited understanding before our ability to receive the Gurū’s sovereign wisdom when—whether through some presentist principle, premature deduction, or indolent complacency—we approach the musical form of Bāṇī’s revelation as a contingency of merely historical interest. All too often, we remember Gurū Nanak’s singing ‘Sabad Gurū’—‘Word (is the) Enlightener’—but forget his continuing, ‘surati dhuni chelā’—‘awareness (is) melody’s disciple.’
Forsaking the wondrous, historically-continuous sacred music of the Gurbāṇī authors’ utterance—where transcendence and immanence converge in the Kīrtanīā-’s song—we fatally deny ourselves the protection of precisely that gift which the Gurū Arjan declares to be ‘pardhānā’— paramount and most efficacious—within Kalajuga. Indeed, attempting to separate the ethical meaning of Gurbāṇī from its synergistic musical form to the denigration of the latter exemplifies the unwise introduction of illusory distinctions this essay began by warning against. An unbroken chain of GurSikh-s has painstakingly transmitted memory of a meaningful body of the wondrous songs whereby revelation graced the Gurū-s along with a sophisticated pedagogical system for preserving this invaluable living tradition whereby GurSikhī’s illumination shines forth amidst the darkness of Kalajuga. This priceless gift of Kīrtana, manifesting the resplendent hues of the One, cleanses the soiled consciousness, freeing all souls to sing the emancipating songs of the eternal One.
_____
Nihal Singh