Guru Nanak – Prophet of People

by T.L. Vaswani

The life of Guru Nanak was one continuous yagna – sacrifice to God. Some of the Gurus died martyrs: Guru Nanak was born a martyr to the One Eternal Mystery – God! Nanak travelled to many parts of India and Asia: He went, I am told, as far as the Russian borderland. Every travel of Nanak was a yagna to the One God of all nations, all races, all religions.

His life, from beginning to end, taught this One Truth that every man – no matter what his creed or country – was, in essence, a Nanak. Is not every man illuminated with the One Light Divine, and meant to be an offering to the Akal Purusha – the Eternal One – in the service of Love? So let the bhaktas see Nanak not once but again and again – in all men, in all creation.

Nanak’s life opened an era in the history of India and Asia – in the history of humanity. He was a prophet, a seer and a Saint. India’s history is, to me, incomprehensible without Nanak. He was centuries ahead of His age. He realised, what the world’s statesmen have not yet realised, that all men are One, therefore, Hindu-Muslim conflicts and all conflicts of ‘creeds’ and ‘classes’ and nations are born of ‘illusion.’ So Guru Nanak stood for the weak and the poor, for the men who toiled and strove for Truth. He realised that, more than food and fire, men’s need was sympathy and brotherhood.

He blessed the Hindu and the Muslim. One of His dearest disciples was the Muslim singer, Mardana – he who accompanied the Guru as, in the blue garb of a Muslim pilgrim, and carrying a staff, a cup and a praying carpet, the Guru moved out on His travels to the North and South, to the East and West. Guru Nanak called Mardana Bhai – brother.

The Guru gave His Love to the maimed and the halt, to the hungry and the blind

Be my brother,

says a Nazi proverb,

or I will bash your head in.

How superior to the Nazi and Communist conception of brotherhood was the vision of the Guru, Who said:

My brother art thou, and I shall be thy servant in the dust and the dirt of the earth, for we all belong to the Family of Him Who is the One Father of all!

And He was so humble! His face radiated humility and Love. In the centuries that have followed His advent and seen the rise and fall of Kingdoms in this ancient land, I have known none greater than this humble Prophet and Saint. This radiant and transfigured Son of God has been, for fifty years and more, a leader of my thought and life.

At rare intervals in history doth appear a man like Nanak. He is attuned from the beginning of His days to cosmic forces and the Cosmic Will: He hears voices and He sees visions in walking life and dreams. His values of life are not values of the world. Others value money, honours, earthly goods: He values the Invisible Treasure of the Eternal. He fears not the power of man: He fears not death; for He hath looked into the radiant Face of Life. He hath learnt to renounce the goods of time and all ambition and all reputation. He hateth none, and He harmeth none: for to Him every creature – human and subhuman – is a brother, a sister in the one Kingdom of Life, and even atoms are illuminated with the One Light; and every planet and every sun and every star is flooded with Love in the one Sea of Life!

In His answers to the questions put to Him by the Maulvis – the priests – at Mecca, He bore witness to His faith which was different, at once from the Islam of the Mullah and the Hinduism of the Pundit.

Nanak said: –

To whom shall I go to know of Thee, my God? Thou art the greatest of the great: and great is Thy Word. Veiled is Thy greatness from men and they depart in pride, in the vanity of little knowledge!

I have searched through and through the four Vedas and the four Books of the Mussulman; but the Illimitable escapes them and they are dumb, speechless in the presence of the Mystery of Infinite.

This be my faith – saith Nanak, the servant of all – to adore the One Mystery and to do good to all.

So when the high priest of Baghdad said to him,

Tell me to what sect Thou dost belong,

Nanak said: –

I belong to no sect: I adore but One God! And I see Him in the earth below and the Heavens above and in all directions!

Nanak’s life is like a bell with many echoes. The one note it sounds, again and again, is the note of simplicity. The simplicity of Nanak will draw to him, more and more, the youths of Asia and the West. And this man of simplicity is a man of sacrifice. His life is religion – not a theory of philosophy, a creed, the programme of a party or a church. His convictions come from action and contemplation, not information or scholarship. Blessed is the nation that has such men to inspire and lead. If India lies prostrate today – the bulk of her people hungry and in rags – it is because her statesmen lack the inspiration of the simple, Spiritual Life.

Simple was Nanak in food and dress: and simple was the message He gave to the people. At Brindaban, He saw, with sadness in His heart, crowds of men and women, singing and dancing. Krishna’s name was on their lips but in their hearts, alas! was darkness – the darkness of ‘desire,’ trisna. And Nanak sang on the spot a simple song; and how simple was its message to the people!

Give up,

said Nanak,

desire craving! Give up the tapasyas, the penances, which punish the body and do not purify the heart! Seek the Grace of the Lord! He asketh of you good deeds and Hari Kirtan. Sing His Name! With truth and resignation as your cymbals, sing His Name in chorus: And keep time in True Dance. Which is the dance of humility.

So, at Hardwar, when He sees the bairagis and sanyasins quarelling, one with the other, for honours and greatness. Guru Nanak sings, a simple song. charged with a message they all understand:

Your co1our your clothes but, alas! You walk not in humility! You forget the Word (Naam) and so, alas! you gamble away your soul for a trifle of earthly honour!

Be ye householders or sanyasins and yogis; blessed among you are the simple who ever dwell at the feet of the Lord in Love.

One meaning of the word Nanak, I am told, is ‘fire.’ Nanak was illuminated by the Divine Fire. For Him God was enough; with God He communed – with God and God’s Angels. Utterly fused in Him was the ego: the miracle of transfiguration was made manifest in Hhis life, again and again, since the day He plunged for bath in the Ravi and heard the voice of the Akal Purukha:

Nanak! I give unto thee the Word! Go forth and proclaim It among the Nations.

Since that blessed day we see Nanak enraptured, again and again, in an ecstasy of Naam – the Sat Naam. God has called Nanak out from the usual run of men: God hath called Nanak to a special task, and every moment of his life is henceforth centred round the Innermost Flame of Sat Naam – the Word! And as this Central Flame of the Soul burns brighter and brighter. Nanak comes nearer and nearer to God; Nanak rises ever up and up to God’s Holiness: and the nearer Nanak comes to Holiness, the deeper grows within Him the feeling of insufficiency, the feeling of humility. The nearer Nanak comes to God in the pursuit of Truth and Perfection the deeper He sinks into nothingness.

Nearer my God, to Thee!

– is Nanak’s aspiration, and the nearer He comes to God, the more radiant is He, for He grows in the power to reveal the veiled mystery to other men.

The secret of this nearness is Love of God and self-sacrificing Love for fellow-men. He has gazed at the beauteous lace of God; and on Him falls a ray of God’s Radiant Holiness: and His life becomes magnetic: as He travels from place to place; a strange influence streams out of Him. In His nearness to God is the secret of Nanak’s power of attraction over the hearts and lives of men and women. Nanak transmits His influence in His travels, far and wide.

Nanak’s influence has not waned but has grown, as centuries have gone. Nanak ist today, a flaming symbol. Through Nanak, as through the Great Saints, God gives continuous witness of Himself, God renews perpetually the 1ife of man. And when I read of the brave, heroic Khalsas moving in a procession of pilgrims to the Dera Sahib – a territory now belonging to Pakistan – or of the dauntless Sikh leader serenely meditating on the Guru Bani during His trial in the court of law, I say to myself:

Is not Guru Nanak still an active force today, a dynamic vitality to many men and women, a fire to His chosen few – a fire which never is extinguished?

In His great hymn, the Jap Ji, Nanak says

In communion with the ‘Word,’ the ‘Naam,’ rise superior to all shocks of the world, nor fear the dreaded angel of death! For, listening to the Naam, the ‘Word,’ thou art with wisdom armed! And departing, thou goest openly with a wreath of laurels crowned!

At another place, Nanak says:

None is mine enemy, and none to me a stranger is! Saith Nanak, servant of all: All, all are my brethren in the One Beloved!

Yes – Nanak saw all as His brethren in the One Beloved. So His words went home to all.

To a Muslim teacher, Nanak said: –

Make compassion thy mosque, and sincerity thy prayer-carpet, and justice, thy, Qur’an: so mayst thou be a True Mussulman!

And again:

Five be thy prayers – the first is Truth, the second is righteousness, the third is charity, the fourth is pure aspiration, and the fifth is the praise and Glory of God! And let deeds of service be thy creed, oh brother! So mayst thou be a True Mussulman.

To a farmer, the Guru said:

Let thy body be the field: and sow in it the seed of good deeds: And irrigate the field with God’s Name: and let, thy heart cultivate: so will God germinate in thy heart: so wilt thou achieve liberation.

To a shopkeeper, the Guru said:

Life is frail: let this knowledge be thy shop: and let thy stock-in-trade be the Word of God! and make prayer and meditation thy vessels, and fill them with the Naam – the Word of God!

To a soldier, the Guru said:

Let thy horse be honesty: and put on the armour of continence: and let Truth be thy sword and shield!

And again:

Let thy daily food be meekness! And never forget that all force is oppression: and remember; too, that justice is pure!

The emphasis of Nanak is on the heart and on Golden Deeds of the heart. Nanak rose above philosophy and metaphysics, above rites and ceremonies, above creeds and conventions, above all nation-cults and all ‘race-gospels’ to a vision of deeds of Love.

God will not ask man,

said Nanak,

of what race he is: He will but ask him, ‘What have you done?’

Deeds, not creeds, is what Nanak asks of His disciples. Nanak preached a religion for which men would live – a religion which would shine in the lives of men, a religion which would be a service of life!

Many today have lost faith in religion because religion has been separated from life. Religion will come into its own when men will learn to live amicably and helpfully with their fellow men. Nanak’s vision of life embraced all countries, all religion, all races. Nanak taught the Unity of God and the brotherhood of man. Civilisation is sinking, for there is a lack of Unity in our lives. Civilisation may be saved if life is built in the new synthesis which Nanak preached.

In the Ravi river, Nanak plunges for a bath. It is a blessed bath. A voice speaks to Him in the music of the waters: and in the silence of His soul, He knows God by personal contact of the heart with the harmony of the Eternal Self. Nanak realises that He is solitary – a soul alone with God!

He comes out of the waters, His face shines with a strange, unearthly Light. Nanak has had a vision of the Spirit whose Brightness fills the river, and fills the sun and stars and fills the temple of the heart.

Nanak realises His kinship with the village-folk, realises that if He must travel to cities, He must go there as a Spiritual Physician to cure men and women of diseases of the soul, which the cities breed.

Nanak grows into a vision of Spiritual Communism. Nanak realises that He has nothing which does not, at the same time, belong to all, that His food and garments He must share with the poor, that the richest privilege of life is to share all you have with all. In the great stress Nanak lays on fellowship and brotherhood, He reveals the secret of True Spiritual Communism.

Nanak looks on the poor and needy with eyes of understanding and Love: He sees the world lit up with the One Light, from end to end.

Ishavasyani Sarvamidam!

All this is covered with the One, as with a garment!

said a Rishi.

Nanak sees the world with new, radiant eyes. Nanak has glimpsed the beauty of the Kingdom of Heaven. He takes upon Himself the yoke of this Kingdom. Nanak prepares to go out to give to men and women, of diverse countries and faiths, the message of the One Father – Mother of all and of the One Brotherhood radiant with the light of simplicity of living, and adoration and Love of the Divine.

A flame is in Nanak’s heart: Nanak goes out among the nations to give them a message of the Flame. In the chariot of the Flame goes out the Great Lord – the Akal Purukha – to meet man. He is a pilgrim to His home in the Eternal Flame – God. Man’s way to God is the way of yagna, the way of sacrifice. In a Jewish scripture, we read:

Johanan, the Master, was riding an ass. Eliezer was behind him. And Eliezer said to Johanan: Master! wilt Thou give me leave to tell Thee a thing which Thou hast taught me?– Yes, replied Johanan, say it! Forthwith, He dismounted from His ass, wrapped Himself up in a garment and sat upon a stone beneath the olive tree.

Why, oh Master, hast thou dismounted from thy ass? asked Eliezer. And Johanan replied: Is it possible that I will ride upon my ass at the moment when thou art expounding the mysteries, and the Presence Divine is with us and the Angels are accompanying us? Forthwith. Eliezer opened his talk on the mysteries, and no sooner had he begun than fire came down from heaven and encompassed all the trees of the field which, with one accord, burst into song!

Guru Nanak sits in the shade of a tree: Mardana plays upon the rabab does not a ‘flame’ come down from heaven and encompass the tree? And does not the flame burst into a song – the song of Guru Nanak? The Guru sits in silence, cleansed of all pride, lowly and meek, with a flame in His heart, and the flame burst into song. In every word of Guru Nanak is humility: the song is not for the haughty, but for the poor and pure in heart. And the way to purity is the culture of humility.

Guru Nanak goes out on His travels, Mardana is with Him: yet not He alone. The Angels are with Nanak: for Angels, as a Jewish Rabbi says, are created, day by day, from the stream of fire. From Nanak flows a stream of fire, Guru Nanak’s Song sings of the soul as a ‘Bride’ and of God as the ‘Bridegroom.’ Guru Nanak’s Song is charged with the music of Bride and Bridegroom! Guru Nanak sings of Spiritual Marriage between the soul and God – sings of a betrothal between the two.

The ‘Jap Ji’ and many other songs of Guru Nanak have profound sayings more precious than rubies and gold. Yet must we not regard Nanak as a metaphysician or a philosopher. I look up to Him as One Whose life was luminous with Light of the Spirit. The great thoughts of Guru Nanak spring from His simple heart. Not rational but symbolic thought is the secret of the beauty of Nanak’s teaching.

In the ‘Jap Ji’ – the Guru’s Sermon on the Mount – is set forth, in symbols, the teaching that to know God and the Saints we must love Them. None met God on the road of conception: only by Love and devotion and self-dedication may a man enter into the way of True Knowledge and Realisation and Truth.

Guru Nanak appeared at a time when India was invaded by dark forces. India’s civilisation and the Aryan dharma were sinking in the midst of conflict and chaos. The soul of Guru Nanak cried out to God to save the People. Politicians could not; they were men who pushed their way to power, and placed their creed and their party above the people. Guru Nanak turned to no government for help: for He realised that governments just keep the ring to see that combat continues : governments cannot win peace.

At Saidpur, Guru Nanak sees the agony of the people whom the Moghul hath ‘conquered’ and who are crying weeping and wailing.

Oh Lord!

asks Guru Nanak: in agony of His heart,

hast Thou not felt? The hounds, alas! have ruined the jewels – innocent lives – and none heedeth the dead. Towns, cities and palaces have perished; and princes have been cut up and rolled in dust. Mughals and Pathans have fought and matched their swords on the field of battle.

Guru Nanak felt the vastness of the agony of India.

Kings,

He said,

are butchers, and cruelty is their knife: the world is suffering endless pain; how shall it be saved?

Forces of nihilism were growing. Islam, forgetful of her mystics and saints, was entangled in the externals of shariat. To the majority of the Hindus, Islam was no better than a religion of the Sword. In Kasi, in Jagannath, in Hardwar, He saw that Hinduism was no better than a religion of rites and ceremonies. And there were many to whom rites and ceremonies were meaningless, many who, in their hearts, denied or doubted the Eternal. It was a period of externalism, materialism and nihilistic rebelliousness against the Spirit. Like a beacon, blazing out into darkness, shone Nanak, His Light of Love gradually overpowering the nihilism of that dark age in history.

To all we gave the love of his heart. This Love converted the notorious robber, Shaikh Sajjan. Under Nanak’s spell, Shaikh Sajjan distributed, among the Great Prophet of Love. The magnetism of His Love influenced the Islamic countries He visited, as He travelled in the blue garb of a Muslim pilgrim. In Love He spoke to the mullahs of Mecca and His words went into their heart:

How great is God! The greatest of the great is He. And great is His Word! Men are specks: Yet, alas! they depart this life in pride!

Nanak’s Love rivetted to Him the faithful Mardana, who accompanied the Master in His many travels to Afghanistan and Ceylon, to Mecca and Medina, to Baghdad and Multan. Nanak’s Love flowed out to Lehna, and this worshipper of Durga became Angad – a limb of the Master’s body, an integral part of Nanak’s Radiant Soul!

Nanak is a psychic. Suddenly, one morning, after His bath, He has a vision in the tapoban, the forest of meditation, situated on the other side of the river Ravi. This ‘vision’ thrills Nanak: a Voice speaks to Him: –

Nanak! I am with thee! Repeat My Name: and ask others to repeat My Name. Mingle with men, uncontaminated by the world! Worship, meditate, and serve the poor!

It is the first ecstasy of Nanak. It fills Him and out of the fullness of His heart, He sings:

Oh Lord! If I had hundreds of thousands of tons of paper. And if my ink were inexhaustible, and if my pen moved swift as the rushing wind, I should still be unable to articulate all Thou art!

Nanak has a vision of the Infinite. This vision fills Him, and, three days later, as He returns from the woods and re-appears at His residence, He prepares, in obedience to the vision, to go forth among the people to sing to them the Name of God, – the Sat Naam – and to ask them all to sing the Name Divine. And, before He moves out on His travels He gives away absolutely all His possessions to the poor. Jesus asked the rich, young ruler to give all He had to the poor, if He would walk in the way of the Lord; and the young man failed at the test. Guru Nanak obeys the call or His ‘vision’ to the letter, and goes out, empty-handed, to give God’s Great Message to the people.

Nanak knoweth none other than God,

says this humble apostle of the Infinite. And again:

I only know One God. His way would I indicate unto men.

Western writers say Nanak resembled Paul in the extent of His travels. Nanak travelled much more widely than Paul. Nanak’s life was that of a pilgrimage to the Infinite. He preached to the king and queen of Ceylon. He spoke of His Lord to the yogis in the Himalayan ashramas. He gave a message on God – the Universal Spirit – in front of the Kaaba in Mecca. When the Arab priest said to Nanak:

Why hast thou oh sinner, turned thy feet towards the Kaaba – the seat of God?

Nanak, in deep humility, said:

Brother! turn my feet in the direction in which God is not!

Nurshah placed her silver and gold, her jewels and coral at Nanak’s feet but could not tempt Him.

The only Treasure,

He said,

is the Name of God!

And Nurshah and her women associate became Nanak’s disciples. He blessed a group of robbers and they gave to the poor all they had and turned farmers.

To a group of Muslims, He said:

He is a Muslim who is patient and pure and free from the taint of self, and as they listened to the words, they exclaimed: ‘Allah is speaking in Nanak!’

Nanak, too, said:

There is no Hindu and no Muslim.

‘Hindu’ and ‘Muslim’ are our names for masks; behind the masks is ‘Man.’ Nanak realised the unity of Hindus and Muslims in the Man Universal. Nanak’s was the Religion of Man. The emphasis. in His message, was not on scriptures and ceremonials, but on life, – on Love of God and right action. In a beautiful song, Nanak sings:

I have turned my heart into a boat; I have searched in every sea; I have dwelt by rivers and streams; I have bathed at places of pilgrimage; I have lived in forests and glades; I have eaten bitter and sweet; I have seen remotest regions; yea, I have beheld heavens upon heavens; and this have I learnt that he is true to his faith who loveth God and Man and, serving all, abideth in the Good!

A vision of the infinite tilled His heart. Who hath known Him? Who can comprehend Him? And in His Presence who can say that He is pure?

Why callest thou me good? There is none good but One,

said Jesus.

And Nanak said: –

My sins are numerous as the waters of the sea and the waves of the ocean.

Nanak called Himself ‘weak, ‘foolish’ and ‘ignorant.’

How can I show my face?

He said. Nanak’s God-Consciousness was that of the Infinite in whose Presence Nanak realised that ‘ego’ was an illusion, that He was nought, a zero !

The life and teaching of Guru Nanak magnetised many homes in the Punjab and in Sind. In the North and North-West of India arose Orders paying homage to Nanak and calling themselves Nanak-Shahis. They studied philosophy and practised a purely religious life in the light of Guru Nanak’s teaching. Some years ago, they published two big Sanskrit volumes on Philosophy ascribed to Nanak, and named ‘The Nirakara Mimansa’ and the ‘Adhbhuta Gita.’

These books will not be appreciated by the ‘secularists’ of modern India who, indeed, have gone a step beyond even Voltaire, the French free-thinker, who wrote, as a last confession, the words:

I die in adoration of God!

The ‘secularists’ think that faith in God is a dogma of the ‘dark middle ages’ and they feel proud of ‘modern enlightenment,’ which regards religion as an ‘opiate’ for the people and puja or ‘worship’ as merely a symptom of ‘functional disorders in the brain.’ The ‘secularists’ bow to ‘nature’ and ‘reason’ as their ‘goods’ and to ‘neo-materialism’ as the last word in the philosophy of life! Guru Nanak was a creative mind, and He bore witness to God and Truth – Sat Naam – and Brotherhood of all Faiths and all Peoples. Guru Nanak submitted not to the dictatorship of secularism.

The teaching of Guru Nanak is supported by the witness of the creative minds of the era in which we live, – the witness of poets and artists, of thinkers and scientists. Beethoven wrote in His ‘Diary’ the words which thrill me:

You alone can inspire me – You, my God, my salvation, my rock, my all! In You alone will I put my trust!

Paul Claudel emphasised the thought that poetry bore witness to God! To him poetry and prayers were two expressions of one simple urge of the human soul. And Strindberg closed his life on the following significant note:

I am through with life, and the balance shows that the Word of God is alone right!

– In the universe,

wrote A.N. Whitehead, the eminent teacher of Applied Mathematics,

there is a Unity. We call this Unity, God!

In his ‘Hymn of Creation,’ – the Arati Song, – the Guru sings of that Deeper Religion in which Faith and Science meet each other reconciled, harmonised, unified in the One Spirit.

The Guru says:

The sun and the moon are the lamps lighted In the Heaven which is Thy salver: and the Lights move round and round Thee – Beloved! From Thy radiance is radiant everything; by the Light of Thy Face the stars burn bright Thou art the Soul, the Life, the Light of all, – Beloved! Give Thou, oh Lord! the water of Thy Grace to the little bird, – this heart – that thirsts for Thee: oh come and bend on me Thy beauteous face! So may Nanak in Thy Name abide, – Beloved!

The Saints of God are like temple-bells. Each has a note of the Music of Eternity. Nanak’s is a note of Unity. Nanak sings in the ‘Guru Granth’:

The One is in eye, in word, in mouth; the One is in all the worlds. In sleeping is the One; in waking is the One; in the One be thou absorbed! In all the One abides! The universe rests in the One! Oh Thou, the Fullness of joy. Bestow Thy Mercy on me! I recognise all as Thee! One is He, and He Himself is many! Nanak says: He, the One, ever abides in all!

One recalls the words of Jami, the Persian poet:

Blend into One every soul and every form and every place: See the One! Know the One! Speak of the One! Aspire to the One! Seek the One! And ever chant of the One!

In this night of civilisation, let India meditate on the Guru’s Great Message of the One: and in His pure, sacrificial life and song, let India find a new alphabet of that True Freedom which reflects the Lotus-face of the Inner Light but which, alas! our Caesars do not see!

_______________

Footnote: Extract from ‘Prophets and Saints’ b), T.L. Vaswani. Courtesy: Jaico Publishing House, 125, Mahatma Gandhi Road, Bombay-1.