Satkartar, Satkartar, Satkartar!
It is with great joy that I, the Nanak of old whom people loved, have returned. I have a body but nobody sees me. For they look for the Nanak of old, yet do not see that the spirit that made me alive then, is the same spirit that makes me alive today. The body is not the same, yet the light that shines, is the same. When people looked at me in the days of old, they saw an ordinary man. But those who were searching for the truth, were not concerned with my body. They saw that I was a door, a messenger for the light to shine through me.
The light shines but people who are used to being in the dark, want to hide from its brilliance. Why do people want to hide from the brilliance of the light? Because, they fear that what they had been doing, had been wrong. They fear that the Creator will punish them for having been in the dark… for having followed teachings blindly…for acting like little children who disobey their parents and expect to be punished.
I, the Nanak of old, did not know everything when I was born. I made a lot of mistakes. I too, searched for the light. I have been wrongly quoted as having undertaken the journey throughout India to spread the light. Little do people know that it was a journey for me to find the light. As I travelled and met many different people, I saw the glow and brilliance of the light. In some people it shined brightly while in others, it was dim.
Through talking with people, I made many friends. I also made many enemies. Those within whom the light was dim, I ignited a little fire. Those whom had the fire ablaze within them, did more like what
I did. Everytime you meet someone, you can tell how much of the light is shining in them. Sometimes, you need to be careful with the light otherwise, you blind them. Sometimes, the light itself is so powerful
that it blinds simply because that’s how the seed gets planted. When it’s pitch dark, even a little spark may look like the blinding light of the sun. Not everyone was ready to hear my message. Those who felt blinded, reacted. Some of those people chose to fight rather than accept the brilliance of the light. Just as it has happened throughout the ages. Just as it is currently happening with Baba Ji.
I, the Nanak of old, am being loved and continue to be remembered by people whose hearts are pure. You read my writings but expect to see the opposite of my teachings. How can this be? I have told you many times, that without the grace of a Satguru (one who has discovered the truth within his own being), nobody can realize the truth. I have already said that I wasn’t born with the light blazing fully in my consciousness. If that were the case, then I would have been talking when I was two months old. But that was not the case and it is never the case. I was born into a body just like everybody else. Just like everybody else, I had experiences that my parents couldn’t understand. Some of those experiences were those of a young boy who had difficulty reconciling the experiences of his inner life with society’s expectations. To those who did not know what I had been growing through (as it is said those who did not have the eyes to see) they thought I was different. It’s like today’s people saying, you’re weird.
When the light shined brilliantly through me, I learned not to blind people with it. I understood that when a seed is planted, too much water or too little water can hurt its development. The seed needs to be nurtured. Some seeds grow faster while others require more time.
The Creator is within everyone of His children. Just like children in a family, everyone has different abilities. Some children have special talents that distinguish them amongst others. Angad was one of those children. When I met him, I knew that he could nourish the seed. He knew that it would take time. But we weren’t alone.There were many others who had the light shining brightly in them. When I had been searching for the light through my early years, I spent most of my time with them.
There were many of us. We all had our own experiences of the light. Some of us wrote about it. Others did not. We had discussions amongst ourselves. There was much that was written. As the people moved on in their journey, some saw little value in the writings they wrote and discarded them. There were a few of us who thought that it would be better to summarize much of what we experienced. At first, we wrote, reviewed and discussed each others writings. We didn’t do this everyday. Sometimes, several months would pass. People would move places and sometimes we’d bump into each other many years later.
With all the changes that one goes through in life, we understood that the writings we wrote, were all relative to the place our consciousness was at throughout different times of our lives.Today, people regard the writings as gurbani. But what most people don’t realize is that when we were alive, there were a lot of writings already written before us. It’s like in today’s time, there are the writings from the
Bhagavad Gita,
Bahai Texts,
Christian Bible,
Buddhist Texts,
Christian Fathers,
Confucian Texts,
Corpus Hermeticum,
Dead Sea Scrolls,
Divrei Torah,
Enuma Elish,
Ethiopian Texts,
The Egyptian Book of the Dead,
Gnostic Texts,
Hindu Texts,
Islamic Texts,
Jain Texts,
1st and 2nd Books of Jeu,
Mormon Texts,
Nag Hammadi Texts,
Old Testament Apocrypha,
Old Testament,
Pseudepigrapha,
Pistis Sophia,
New Testament Apocryphal Acts,
New Testament,
Apocryphal Apocalypse,
New Testament Apocryphal Gospels,
Taoist Texts,
Sepher Yetzirah,
Shinto Texts,
Sikh Texts,
Tibetan Book of the Dead,
Urantia Book, Zen Texts,
Zoroastrian Texts.
As I said earlier, much of the writings that we wrote were discarded. It is like getting a training manual on how to ride a bicycle. Once you know how to ride a bicycle then the training manual is tossed. Our Creator presents His children with many training manuals. As His children learn their lessons, one training manual is replaced by the next one. Having learned the lesson, there is no need to value the training manual. You just go on to the next lesson. For those who think that lessons come only in the form of reading writings commonly regarded as gurbani, they don’t realize that that is not the way the universe teaches.
Consider those children of the Creator who cannot read. How does the Creator communicate with them? There are many who cannot read the writings in the Guru Granth Sahib. There are many who are able to read but do not understand the vocabulary. The way we talked about certain ideas and how we expressed them in the vocabulary that was understood by the people of our time, the people of today do not understand. It is for this reason that I come to you once again.
The universe teaches without the need for any kind of writings. Gurbani is light. Light does not need words. When people regard writings in the Guru Granth Sahib to be gurbani, it is like asking the sun to shine through words. But we all know that the sun does not shine through the words. The sun shines through its rays of light. Just like the sun cannot shine through the words, the words written in the Guru Granth Sahib are only words written on paper. When many of us discussed and wrote writings, we had the sun within us. Some of us could see its magnificent brilliance. We had other people around us, who couldn’t see all the brilliance but were working diligently on removing the blocks that prevented them from doing so.
Yet those who read the writings in the Guru Granth Sahib, do not have the sun within themselves. They look to the writings and expect the sun to shine through the words but that isn’t possible. It is like going to university and expecting to learn from a book, without a professor being present. If that were done today, our universities would be home to great collections of books but no one would be motivated to read them.
I know some of the people got the message, but that doesn’t mean the people of today have stopped doing that. Though many people may think that I had come to change the world, it wasn’t my purpose to change the world. I didn’t come into embodiment just so that I could start another religion. There were plenty of religions at that time and even today, there are lots of religions. The religions did not help the people of my time. If the religions had been helping the people, then there was no point for me to do what I did.
When I did that water thing, just imagine how the people reacted to what I had done. It wasn’t easy for me to do this. Some people were outright hostile to how I had tried to make them understand. A few of them understood and we spent more time together, learning from each other. Today, you could compare this to going to a gurdwara without covering your head or putting the Guru Granth Sahib in a library instead of it being placed on an altar. Like a lot of the people I associated with, we regarded religious books as lifeless books that wither away into dust as time goes on.
I know of what I speak because I’ve lived and experienced my journey. I know that those of you who read these writings of mine, the first thing that will come to your mind is going to be that this is not possible. I, the Nanak of old could not speak as I am through a bunch of words that you’re reading. But, I am and you are reading them, aren’t you? If I told you that you won’t read this writing, how would you know? You’ve already read some of my writings that are recorded in the Guru Granth Sahib, haven’t you? Did I not know that you would do that? I knew you would read them. I knew you would recite some of the stories about me that people had recorded. But like everything over time, the clarity of the message is lost. Time does not spare anything.
Divinely inspired writings meet the same fate as any humanbeing who leaves his earthly body. The writings are left behind as the mere husk of the living human being who conveyed them. To regard my writings as a living guru, is akin to a corpse that has decomposed. Those of you who have read my writings and the writings of others in the Guru Granth Sahib, do not know what worked and what did not work. You have accepted a book as being something holy. Yet, you do not pay attention to the writings that you hold dear to your hearts.
I, the Nanak of old cannot force you like a headmaster to do that. I cannot crack my ruler on your desk to wake you up when your attention is diverted by those who want to mislead you. If you’ve been expecting me to do that, then you can wait forever. You have been waiting a long time, haven’t you? You continue to wait and wait and wait. I told you about the people who had been lying to the people of my time. The book you claim to have my writings, has many examples in it. But what did you do? You ignored what I told you not to do. You have done as many others did before you. You took my writings and regarded them as being sacred. You have adorned my writings like an idol is adorned with regalia. You use you my writings to collect offerings of money and gifts. Did I say you could do that? No. I never authorized you to do that.
You cover my writings in fine cloth but keep the truth hidden and then make money from my writings. How can you do that? Don’t you have copyright laws that prevent people from making money from other people’s writings without their permission? When did you seek my permission or the permission of other writers to do this? You exploit my teachings and then assert that you love the truth. How is that possible?
The truth cannot coexist with making money from the use my writings. When you make money from my writings, did you know that you’re misleading people away from the truth? When I was walking and breathing here on this planet, did I charge people so they could read my writings? Did I charge people so they speak with me? Did I open a temple so that devotees could toss their coins into a box for the privilege of knowing I was their guru? How did I become a guru to those of you whom call yourself Sikhs?
Did I become a guru simply by people throwing coins into a box that is placed in front of a book that people say are my writings? Do my writings tell you to do that? Is that what being a guru is all about? I am not a guru that can be activated when you put your money into a box. I am not a guru that can be temporarily activated like the video arcade game machines that your children play with. But that is how you use my writings. For those who say I am their guru, do they know that I never acknowledged them to be my student? You cannot have a one-way relationship with the one you call your guru. But that is what you believe in. Imagine how your universities would function if everyone falsely declared they had learned from professors and attended university when they had not even registered!
Anonymous 2002.