Khalsa Commonwealth

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Dear All,

I will be posting this excellent article written by Prof Puran Singh. Keep checking this as I will post this article in five or six parts.

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[align=center:e32818ae4b]First Part: Khalsa Commonwealth[/align:e32818ae4b]

Guru Nanak embodied in himself a revolution – religious, social and political. The years from A.D 1469 until 1708 saw in the world of the

Punjab the unique succession of the Ten Masters whose lives gave a pattern for the ideal type of man.

Upanishads and the other Hindu philosophical systems that had possessed the soul of the race for centuries taught an impersonal Real, the Para-Brahman, though the common man continued to believe in thousand unreal deities which claimed the people’s worship. That metaphysical Para-Brahman being unrealizable, unapproachable by the human senses, incomprehensible to the human mind, remained but an academic god, a theoretical concept; so the people had to invent gods to live by, thus imperceptivity of their political and religious superiors.

Guru Nanak invokes the highest Person, Purusha, which had become wholly divine in his first hymn of Japji. It is remarkable that he invokes no concept of god. He calls forth the Great One Cosmic Spirit of the Universe, who is Person and Guru, and is a Personal God, who is Word-embodied ( Sat Nam), creative personality ( Karta Purakh), devoid of the sense of fear, of hatred, whose form is timeless, eternal; born of the Spirit. He has the power to impart the sparks of true life of the Spirit. Guru Nanak was not understood, since the whole country was steeped in religious ignorance and superstitions-ultimately he bowed down to his disciple Angad, and installed him as the Guru; all did then understand what was meant, and began worshipping the Guru in Guru Angad. The Guru thus enshrines the holy word, which Guru Nanak calls forth in the first hymns of Japji.

The ardent spirit of devotion to the Guru, the highest man personality, the Nam-entity breathes the spirituality of Guru Nanak, with which he has made the Sikh inspiration forever life-giving. As Bhai Gurdas says, “With Guru Nanak the sense of true spirituality dawns in India and the world.†So simple as this was the beginning of this religious revolution brought about by Guru Nanak, that it cannot be seen till the human world has traveled a long way yet to perfection. The Guru called his disciples a panth, (a path) and it was no more a sect. It is the common road for all humanity to perfection.

This revolution in the religious world was manifested also by a corresponding revolution in society. A reconstruction followed. The individual was made so happy that he willingly shed his ego-centered individuality. Selfishness was washed into unselfishness by his great love, in the great gladness of life so realized.

Every disciple is to bow down to the Guru: it is self-surrendered complete and unconditional. The secret of social being lies in this surrender of opinions, principles and idiosyncrasies. In this realization of individualism as socialism, caste was abolished. Geographical limits separating man from man were eliminated by all being bound in one love, in one humanity.

No man or society that has risen from the dead into the life of the spirit can tolerate political subjugation or social slavery to unjust laws or rules. Politics, in the sense of fighting against all social injustice, all tyranny, all wrong taxation of the poor, and all subjugation of man to man were the “politics†of the Guru. Without freedom no true religion or art can flourish anywhere. Human love, too, degenerates if freedom fails.

Liberty is the very breath of true culture. The Sikhs raised by the Guru fought for the freedom. They were defeated again; all attempts at liberty generally end in defeat. But their very fighting for liberty is the mark of the new soul-consciousness that the Guru had awakened in them.

The Khalsa created by Guru Gobind Singh is the ideal, future international state of man: it is an absolute monarchy of the kingdom of heaven for each and every man the absolute democracy, distribution of bread and raiment of the kingdom of labour on this earth – all in one. It is democracy of feeling all on this physical plane of life, where most misery is due to one’s callousness to man. It is brotherhood of the soul, where intensity of feelings burns out all differences.

In the realms of the soul, each is to have his own measure of the Gurus joy and sorrow and love and feelings and spiritual delight, according to his individual capacity. This will constitute the measure of the real aristocracy of each one’s genius; but bread and raiment, the barest necessities of the physical body shall, in this kingdom of love for the Guru, never be denied to any one. If the Guru ideal state, or even an approach to it, is ever made by man, no one will thenceforward die of hunger or go naked. Death cannot be destroyed; but physical privation will be prevented here on this earth by man himself.

[highlight=yellow:e32818ae4b]Let mountains be high, flowers small and grass low, but all shall be clothed with the beauty of God and fed with His abundance.[/highlight:e32818ae4b] [/font:e32818ae4b]

The true vindication of the Khalsa commonwealth and its ideals as announced by Guru Gobind Singh, have yet to appear in terms of the practice of those ideals by those having faith in the Guru. The modern world is, however, busy evolving its version of the Guru’s Khalsa state out of social chaos.

To Be continued....

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This much be said at once, that the Khalsa is more than a mere republic of votes. It is more than the Soviet, which aims at the change of political environment and law, to bring the Heaven of equal distribution on earth because without the transmutation of the animal substance of man, of selfishness into sympathy, there can be no true socialism. The Guru Khalsa state is based on the essential goodness of humanity, which longs to share the mystery and secret of the Creator, and longs to love the Beautiful One living in His creation.

The Guru thus admits man to an inner kingdom of the soul, where each and every person receives such abundance of pleasure and the beauty of His Love, that selfishness dies of itself.

Inspiration to the higher life drives out the lower. Each one, according to his worth and capacity to contain, has enough of the inner rapture of the beauty of God in him, so that he lives quite happy and contented without interfering in anyone’s affairs or robbing any of his rightful freedom to increase his own pleasures. This endless self-sacrifice in utter gladness of a new realization is the sign and symptom of the true Nam culture of the Guru. The Guru has inspired him with Himself, and however small the spark of that life, man sees that the “otherness†and “selfishness†are the two most ugly specters that can not, survive in that wholly moral and spiritual aroma of delight.

The “I†that has ceased to be “I†continues in its new life of spiritual delight, its new-found joy in Nam. No one can be a man of truly human society, who has not obtained this divine spark which puts the self at rest, which thereby imbibes nobility from God to leave everything alone and gaze at Him with unending rapture and renunciation. Man needs to be truly and inwardly a divine aristocrat to be truly democratic in the Soul-consciousness of Guru Nanak.

In the constitution of the Khalsa commonwealth, the greatest act of genius of Guru Gobind Singh was when he transferred the divine sovereignty vested in him to the God-inspired people, the Khalsa. When speaking of the people, the Guru speaks of the people whose personality is transmuted into the divine personality of selfless being. As the chemist talks of pure elements just as they occur in nature, the Guru refers to the “pure†of the cosmic spirit and not as they are found with their blind animal instincts. In this one act lies out history and future history of progress. At Chamkaur when all was lost, he made His Five Disciples representative of the Guru, and gave them his insignia of Guruship and saluted them. The constitution of the Khalsa 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 would have died fighting on the battlefield even, as a while before; his two young sons had obtained the glory of martyrdom. But these “Five Enthroned†asked him, to go from the scene, and to do for the Khalsa, what only he, Guru Gobind Singh, could do. So, he went. Herein the Guru’s benign submission to the will of Khalsa was complete and unconditional.

[highlight=yellow:3ccaf695c5]To obey, to continue to live instead of fighting and dying, even in that great personal affliction of having seen his sons and his dear disciple soldiers dying before him, overwhelmed by odds, yet 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 the mysterious destiny.

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Guru’s transference of sovereignty to the peoples (Padishahi) is not of the Moghul type but of the Carlyle an ideal of the ‘Hero-King’. The Guru was called Sacha Padishah (True King) long before Caeyle cried out of Him. And Guru Gobind Singh’s polity is to transfer the true 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 God, by the Guru’s mystic presence in all beings, are made supreme. They are the embodiment of Law of Justice fulfilled for every in the love of Man. This state has but the Guru as Personal God. In this state, the Khalsa, the law of man’s natural goodness is the only law. The following words crudely reported were addressed by Guru Gobind Singh to the Sikhs at Nander on the day of his departure from this world:

“Wherefore always abide in cheerfulness and never give way to mourning. God is ever the same. He is neither young nor old. He is not born, neither doth He die. He dealth not pain nor poverty. Know that the true Guru abideth as He. His creatures that are steeped in bodily pride are very unhappy, and night and day subject to love and hate. Ever entangled and involved in the deadly sins, they perish by mutual enmity and at last find their abode in hell. Yet for the love of such creatures, the Guru assumeth birth to deliver them. He hath instructed are they who have received and treasured his instruction. By it, they are enabled to save themselves and others from the perils of the world’s ocean. And as when after drought, rain falleth and there is abundance, the Guru, seeing human beings suffering and yearning for happiness, came to bestow it on them and remove their sorrows by his teachings. And as the rain remaineth where it falleth, so the Guru’s instruction ever abideth with his disciples.

“The Sikhs who love the true Guru are in turn beloved by him.

[highlight=yellow:3ccaf695c5]“O Khalsa, remember the true Name. The Guru hath arrayed you in arms to procure you the sovereignty of the Earth. Those who have died in battle have gone to an abode of Bliss. I have attached you to the skirt of the immortal God and entrusted you to him. Read the Granth Sahib or listen to it, so shall your minds receive consolation and shall undoubtedly obtain an abode in the Guru’s Heaven. They who remember the true Name render their lives profitable, and when they depart, enter the mansions of Eternal happiness. [/highlight:3ccaf695c5]

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[highlight=yellow:0be5069cf9]“I have entrusted you to the Immortal God. Ever remain under His protection, and trust none besides. Wherever there are five Sikhs assembled who abide by the Guru’s teachings, know, that I am in the midst of them. He who serveth them shall obtain the reward thereof- the fulfillment of all his heart’s desires.[/highlight:0be5069cf9]

“Read the history of your Gurus from the time of Guru Nanak.

[highlight=yellow:0be5069cf9]“Henceforth the Guru shall be the Khalsa and the Khalsa the Guru. I have infused my mental and bodily spirit into the Grantha sahib and the Khalsa.â€[/highlight:0be5069cf9]

He then put on a Muslim waist-band strung his bow on his shoulder and took his musket in his hand. He opened the Granth Sahib and placing a coconut before it, solemnly bowed to it as his successor. Then uttering “ Wah Guruji ka Khalsa, Wah Guruji ki Fateh†he circumambulated the sacred volume and said, [highlight=yellow:0be5069cf9]“O Beloved Khalsa, let him who desireth to behold me, behold the Granth sahib. Obey the Granth Sahib. It is the visible body of the Guru, and let him who desireth to meet me diligently search its hymns. And lastly keep my kitchen ever open and receive offerings for its maintenance.â€[/highlight:0be5069cf9]

And, had the Punjab had a seaport, his disciple the great Maharaja Ranjit Singh, would have put into practice the Guru’s policy. This much he did, he loved the people as no other king did, and called himself “His servant†knowing that it was He who has entrusted the people to him. He was the “People’s servant†and the Guru’s bond slave. Treason and intrigue brought down the roof of the Sikh Court at Lahore.

Maharaja Ranjit Singh, in obedience to the will of “Sovereignty vested in Sangat obeyed the Gurmutta. Gurmatta was the constitutional institution of the Sangat and submitted himself to it, and all the heads of the different khalsa confederacies assembled and held Gurmutta and submitted to it. It was no mere resolution of a haphazard congregation. Gurmutta was the will of the Guru felt in their soul by the assembled Sikhs whose function was of the seers. The last Gurmutta of the Khalsa was held just before the action of Saido, the battle in which Akali Phula Singh lost his life. Maharaja Ranjit Singh did not approve of nor did he order the advance, but when the Sangat, the Khalsa wished it, he obeyed. This obedience of the Guru and as an idea first came from the Guru to the world. The Khalsa’s was a truly divinely representative monarchy, the soul of a people gathered in one man. Guru Gobind Singh was neither a Caesar nor an Aurangzeb.

He was the true king of the people and a comrade of the people. In the truest representative spirit, Guru Gobind Singh founded the true democracy of the people in which there were no dead votes or votes won by mental persuasion or interested coercion. Democracy was a feeling in the bosom of the Khalsa and it gave an Organic cohesion to the people who founded both society and State on the Law of Love, on Justice and Truth, not an impersonal system of the will of the blinded mob-representation by sympathy and not by dead votes. The Khalsa-State is an ideal; Sikhs may die, it does not. It is immortal. [highlight=yellow:0be5069cf9]But the polity of Guru Gobind Singh was not allowed to grow, far less to flourish, owing to the growth of hostile elements. [/highlight:0be5069cf9]

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The great Hindu culture and its innate influence on Sikh culture cannot be denied. It would be to deny one’s parentage. Such denials add nothing to the stature of the Sikh. All that is lofty and noble must be and is fully reflected in the soul of Sikhism, for the matter of that, not Hindu culture alone, but all culture of Divine Humanity whose fundamental principle is unity that shall be realizable in feeling and action, not in mere thinking and pious intentions. The divine plurality of form is more of that unity than the mere dead concept of Unity. The Sikh is rather spiritualistic in his consciousness than metaphysical.

Vedanta’s fascinating philosophy of Maya-Illusion is the a priori condition of every Indian mind, and no Sikh can escape, even if he so desires, the fascination of the Vedantic theory of Maya- so entrancingly put in Yoga Vashishtha. Vedanta is the background of all religions of India. For all restless brilliant philosophic intellects, nothing can be so full - such is the soul of all oriental poetry and Without Advaitism, that is, non-dualism of modern – something shallow, loquacious and insipid. That our religious tradition would be bankrupt without the literary and mental background of Sanskrit literature admits of no doubt.

The Sikh is in no sense an alien; he is born in India; he has the glorious heritage of Indian culture; he cannot be without Prahlad and Mira. Guru Gobind Singh sent his Sikhs to Banaras to study Sanskrit. He is said to have translated Krishna Lila himself. And all the holy associations of the resplendent past of Hindu culture inspires the Sikh with its essential goodness and nobility, just as the blood of the father flows inspiration in the veins of the son. Our mother-country is India, our language is derived from Sanskrit, but we are modern in our outlook, though also ancient as Prahlad and Krishna.

We have got a new and intensely reactive past of over 400 years and we are out off from the decadent past of India. In view of the political solidarity of India it is mischievous for any to suggest that we are not of the Hindus, and not equally of the Muslims. It is mischievous to multiply the points of difference with the Hindu, which is not fundamental. Now the process of the Hindus joining the Guru under his flag for the freedom of India has been discontinued by the Hindus themselves. It is suicidal for them to have done so. The Gurus have shown to Hindus the way to freedom of mind and soul of the spirit of vain intellectual pride have withheld themselves from the resurgence that to Survival and freedom is the Guru’s way. Political slavery has been the result of this metaphysical mentality.

For the good of the Hindu people, Guru Granth ought to have been the new Veda and the new Gita and new Upanishads, if they are to share in the great life-urge of the modern world. In the scheme of human progress there is such a thing as the physics of spirituality; which has been ignored. The Western races have realized it. Because of their comprehensive vision, the Khalsa shall have the spiritual and temporal sovereignty and all shall be saved, who gather under this flag. The Hindus, so far, have not seen the significance of the Guru’s creation, the Khalsa. Great Hindu philosophers like Tilak, Aurobindo and Tagore are reinterpreting the Gita and the Upanishads in order to come abreast with modern Western thought and scientific conclusions. But they do not see that more than four Hundred years ago, their own country men, the Sikh Gurus, actually worked all these modern tendencies into the constitution of the mind and society of this unhappy land, by creating the Khalsa. Their lives gave birth to a country in this old one, and peopled it with a new race, with a universal religion of faith in man, and fired it with the spiritual passion for progress. Out of the Gurus came a daring, colonizing race, lovers of land and agriculture, ready to start a new page of life at every turn. And of all the older texts the Sikh texts alone need not be tortured to come abreast with modern developments; they have woven the organic whole. The Sikh life is the vindication of natural manhood and womanhood. The Indians failed Guru Gobind Singh; but Guru Gobind Singh has not failed them. They have not understood him; he understood them. As antagonistic to the message of Gurus, it is essential that the basic unique character of Sikh culture should now be expressed. Such isolated expression is essential for its flourishing.

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The culture created by the Guru is in one world, the all-mind divine culture. The Sikh, like the Guru, like sunlight and air and water belongs to all: he is culture embodied, love incarnate, sweet fragrance of humanity that kindles dead souls. Men are very rare and the Sikh still more so.

The past, the whole past, of India, with all its spiritual culture lives again in the Guru’s mind, but it is the shadow of His immense personality that looms upon the future which interests me most at the present moment. To find Walt Whitman chanting almost the Guru’s great ideas in his Chants of Democracy is what inspires me. To find Sir Oliver Lodge and Bertrand Russell saying things that almost coincide with the visions of the Guru makes me tremble with the great prophetic nature of the song in the Guru Granth.

If I were to isolate some philosophy merely for the purpose of thinking aloud, the Guru has it that the spiritual infinite is made real to us by the material finite nucleus around which, for us, the infinite glows. The infinite is for us, a radiation from the finite centres.

Speaking from the position in which we find ourselves here, any life of spirit without a finite magneto-material point centre of God-consciousness must be a myth, a deception.

“God-concept†or the “Concept-God†is certainly a myth to all who have not heard His Name from the Guru - such is the theme of Guru Nanak. For all practical purpose under these conditions, the Guru is God. The talk about the infinite, and right or wrong, is mere abstract conception of the theory of things and is, as such, full of lifeless abstract mental concepts about God and the nature of reality. Such are not always necessarily the right description of the true spiritual states of the soul. All may be theoretical philosophy, but it is not of the living arts of life. On the contrary, the finitizing of the Infinite, of God as Guru, of Form-transcending beauty in forms as “things of Beautyâ€, and, then again, in the molten glory of human feeling infinitizing, impersonalizing, if you please, of the Guru as very God, of Formed Beauty as Transcendental Beauty – is the art of the inner culture of manhood. It is here that the whole difference lies between the Brahmanical and Sikh culture. The latter is like Buddhism, artistic, spiritual and personal- the former is metaphysical, merely mental and impersonal. One starts from what one sees and works it out, the other starts from the unseen and wishes to thing it away. Life clings to forms. Forms are eternal realities. Beauty is of the Form. And it is the Formed Om, Om with Akar that the Guru invokes. The Guru’s Om is the word-in-flesh-the whole creation which is the vesture of that soul. The soul of Beauty is the Guru. To the disciples, this Om is Guru Nanak himself. It is Guru Nanak who restores the traditions of Islam to the Mussalman and of Hinduism to Hindu: Find the Personal God in whatever experience comes to you.

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anand

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