This column was written 27/12/2010, but I cannot find it anywhere on the blog
Guru Nanak wrote his slok about playing the game of love while carrying your head on the palm of your hand. Guru Gobind Singh asked us to offer our head to Guru. True love, true devotion makes you willing to give all. True love, as Saint Paul writes in his letter to the Corinthians, does not seek itself and is unconditional.
Part of the Gursikh’s way of life is this unconditional love for The One, the Limitless, the Timeless, Who was not born, Who will not die. It becomes easy to offer this love once we realise that God pours out boundless love over all of us.
Guru writes about the true marriage where there are two bodies and one soul. The marriage of the soul-bride with the God-groom does not involve bodies, here the soul-brides (all souls, whether of men or women) merge fully in the All-Soul, as a drop of water merges in the ocean.
We agree with the Ibrahimic religions that the soul is eternal, but we do not believe in life after death. At the end of the cycle of birth and death the soul is not destroyed, but returns to the All-Soul and loses its individuality.
The other difference is that we believe that all life forms, from the most primitive to the most sophisticated, have souls, and that the cycle of birth and death is a journey from the All-Soul through primitive life forms to the only life form that has the ability to make moral choices, mankind.
But mankind is often bound by the ‘five thieves’ : kám (lust), krodh (anger), lobh (greed), moh (attachment) and ahankar (pride). We do not recognise that if we do not control these enemies we are losers. Since I started walking on Guru’s path I have made progress against all the five ‘thieves’, but I find that especially kám and krodh do not relent.
I live an unhealthy life, a single male living in the Gurdwara with other males, which does not help. From June 2008 till June 2010 I lived on my own in a Southall bedsit, but was able to develop good friendships with both men and women, Sikhs and non-Sikhs, which made it much easier to deal with ‘kám’.
Offering your head, giving all, will not work when you are obsessed with any of the 5 thieves, or if you are too attached to worldly goods. Merging in the One means giving up Me, Me, Me and changing to Us, Us, Us. Getting near to God means also getting near to Creation, to your fellow humans, and to all other creatures that are equally part of God.
God is All, All are God, all the noses are God’s noses, all the eyes are God’s eyes, all the feet are God’s feet. The spiritual path will heal the isolated lives that many of us live in our post-modern western society. I am asking you all as I did in a previous article called : ‘Are you connected ?’, or in other words have you got a link with God, are you at one with God and Creation ?
