In the constitution of the Khalsa State, the greatest act of genius was when the Guru _ transferred the divine sovereignty vested in him to his chosen people, the Khalsa. The Guru speaks of the people whose personality is transmuted into divine personality of selfless being. As the chemist talks of pure elements occurring in nature, the Guru refers to pure people of the cosmic spirit, not as they are found in their blind animal instincts. In this one act lies our history and the future history of human progress.

At Chamkaur, when all was lost, he made his Five Disciples the symbol of Guru, and gave them his insignia of Guru Ship and saluted them. The constitution of the Khals was thus built on the heart-shrines of humanity inspired with love of God, on the God Consciousness of disciples, not on law books. Guru Gobind Singh would have died fighting in the battlefield even, as a while before; his two young sons had obtained the merit of the death of the Sikh soldier. But these “Five Enthroned” asked him to go and yet do for the people, the Khalsa, what only he, Guru Gobind Singh, could do. So he went. And here the Guru’s benign submission to the will of the Khalsa was complete and unconditional.

To obey, to continue to live instead of fighting and dying, even in that hour of great personal affliction when his sons and his dear disciple-soldiers lay slain before him, yea, to go and live for them, as bidden by them, is the supreme self-sacrifice of God for man, out of whose red flames of blood is born this Khalsa with his mysterious destiny. Guru Gobind Singh’s policy is to transfer the sovereignty of the soul of a True King to a whole people. In the Khalsa constitution, the people inspired by the natural goodness of humanity, by the spontaneous Divinity of the Beautiful and the Good, by the Guru’s mystic presence in all things, are made supreme. They are the embodiment of Law and Justice fulfilled in the supreme love of the Guru, and in His love is filled even the love of man. In this Khalsa State, the law of man’s natural goodness is the only law.

The Khalsa verily issued from the head of Guru Gobind Singh as Minerva from Jupiter. We the Sikhs had our Resurrection en masse at the Master’s word sung in our ears in the battlefields. War gave us the fiery baptism of God’s warm blood. We died. And that is how our Master said we shall live.

 There is no other door to everlasting life but through death, like this, through love, and obedience like this.

 Very little life is in the ego of man, all is there in the shining sun of His soul. He knew all about the after death. He led us on.

Those who lay too much stress on peace and nonviolence have yet not got rid of the ignorance

Which shuts them away from the Realities of the Unseen beyond the wall of Death? Their ethics are not cosmic and “‘spherical,’”’ but only ‘‘geometrical’”” and hence mere artificial and conceptual ethics which have no relation with life, its growth and destiny.

These miserable ethics of the ‘“‘geometrical’’ conceptual minds, like those of the hair-splitting moralists and philosophers of yore, are but lifeless rules and regulations, so made to soothe the excited intellects of those who are gods to themselves, and who wish to cast the cosmic processes of the universe in their own thinking. Our Guru in communion with the cosmic processes concentrated his consciousness on the problem of making man alive, natural and free. Announce persons to rise. I announce the justification of candor and pride. “It is not the so-called ethical conduct that shall be counted, but the character of life that shall be formed by passing through a thousand fires and waters, and hells of vice and heavens of virtue. Small and miserable are those conceptualists who conceive the moral law in term of their likes and dislikes, their ought to and ought notes. The moral law is cosmic, and it prevails in spite of our wars and peace, in spite of our vice and virtue. Seeds are scattered here by the winds and the blossoms burst forth on the tree of life in the Unseen. Those who know of this and that side of death does not take any account of the man-made artificial ethics, for these all partake of human ignorance. We Sikhs the soldiers of the Master are already on the march on the open road, and we feel the war poems of Walt Whitman indistinguishably mingle with the chants of our Master. The Khalsa was baptized literally in the shadow of the sword. He lived poised on its sharp edge, and he died kissing its cold steel. Indeed iron had gone into his soul at his nativity. But it would be a great mistake to associate the Khalsa with wanton wars and bloodshed. He took to the sword because of a crisis of conscience.

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GURU GLORIOUS

They ask me to say something about Guru Gobind Singh; they ask me what is He to me?

 I tremble when they ask me, what is He to me? Unable to say anything in reply, I burst forth into childlike cries of both joy and pain, and I faint away, knowing not what He is to me! Only I say Guru Glorious! Guru lorious! Guru Glorious! Am consoled. I slumber in His Lap, soothed by the lullabies of my own sound, knowing not what He is to me! Do not ask me to define Him, Do not ask me to praise Him, Do not ask me to name Him, Do not ask me to preach Him, and ask me not to conceal Him, One who has freed me, Me, soned, The down-trodden slave in the fragrance of Himself.

Whatever He may be to anyone else, to me, He is the Creator who has cast Himself in the shape of His Song.

 And sitting nowhere, He showers from His eyes a rain of stars in the self-poi-sky!

Let the Great Ones name Him, Let the scholars search Him, Let the learned discourse on Him, Let the martyrs sing Him, Let the lovers call Him, Let the maidens garland Him, and sing Him a welcome! Let the saints worship Him, Let the devotees kiss the Hem of His Garment, and anoint their foreheads with the dust under His feet, Let the children gather round Him, Whatever He may be to anyone else, To me, He is my secret Friend, who comes unseen to me in my dark despair, To wipe a silent tear with the edge of His Kingly Skirt.

And says to me when I cannot listen even to Him, Choked with my own tears, “I am here by your side, the whole of myself when no one is nigh, I am for you, O sad sinner! I am exclusively for you and for no one else!!’’Let the woman say to Him, “‘I love you, “Let the singer say to Him, “‘I sing for you, “Let the dancer say to Him, ‘‘I dance for you,”’

Let the yogi say to Him, ‘‘I lie wrapped up in thought of you, “Let the pious tell Him, “‘We obey your law,” Whatever He may be to anybody else and anybody else to Him, What I can be? I, devoid of all virtue, merit, or light; I, devoid of the sacred vows of piety, silence or poverty; I, a sweeper of the street of the Pleasure of Sense; I, an aimless chaser of quivering Illusions that fly in the trembling colors of the wings of the butterflies that flutter round the Maya of life in full flowers: What can I, I say to Him?

I, the old joy-sipper with the everlasting burden of Illusion on my back: I only cast my head down in shame; I stand abashed, away from all, in the corner of my own naked body with all its scars and Stains;

But behold: His cometh even to me, as the sun goes down, and the saints Him alone. And as His cometh, I burst forth crying. And He consoled me saying: “Have I been really too long away from thee? “

 

Article extracted from this publication >> DECEMBER-28-1984