Guru Nanak Prakash – Revelation of Truth

For Guru Nanak quest for truth had begun when he was a child. The Brahmin priest who came for thread ceremony felt the first heat of his rejection of their age old network of superstitions and empty rituals which they had woven so tight around people that none had courage to break it. He did not believe in the sins which people tried to persuade that he will be committing if he rejected brahmanical traditions. His second target was to reject caste consciousness. He moved around in the company of low caste mirasi called Mardana who moved around everywhere and played music on his Rabab and sang devotional hymns with him. Guru Nanak had incomparable power of convincing that made people speechless when he argued. In search of truth he argued with his teachers, with ramta Sadhus who always visited Talwandi to keep away from marauding invaders. This intrigued young Nanak ji to find out the truth because the fear of Sadhus, injustice existing in the Society due to inequality and religious oppression by Brahman on own people and Muslim priests who acted as judges and inflicted discrimination on Hindus. The wandering Sadhus provided him the information about rest of the country and this disheartened him to know that the conditions of deteriorating human values, oppression, injustice, inequality existed everywhere. The most distressing fact was that the people had started believing in fate. This condition is so dangerous for any society because you lose the power of analyzing, power of facing difficulties with bravery and fear that engulfs you from all kinds of superstitions make you do empty rituals. At the age of thirty five he just disappeared and contemplated for three days and realization of truth dawned with enlightenment. It was clear to him that his birth was for a purpose on this earth. He expresses his direct encounter with God at some level of consciousness in following words: “As the Lord’s Word descends to me so I express O Lalo” I have uttered only what You O Lord! have inspired me to utter.”

In another hymn he talks about his first encounter with God that he was an ordinary minstrel who was commissioned by God to carry out his services. He sang his audience with the Immortal Lord, Supreme Being thus:

 I was an idle bard,

God assigned to me a rewarding task,

And commands me to sing His praises,

He summoned me to His Eternal mansion

Bestowed on me the holy laudation, and

Feasted me on the Holy Name ambrosial,

The Supreme Being is attained, say Nanak,

By laudation of the holy Eternal.

This direct and definitive revelation of truth is comparable to other higher religions of the world where in Islam Prophet Mohammed mind is passive and truth is brought to him by Gabriel as external inspiration, whereas in Hindus the inspiration of truth is drawn from religious scriptures written in various different time periods by mostly unknown authors. Moses was called in the presence of Supreme Being to receive his message. Gurbani also known as Anahad Bani is direct revelation of truth that comes from the mystical experience of Guru Nanak as he experienced the plight of humanity and asked God for the solution and it came to him directly and he utters. He thinks his life time is not sufficient to awaken that spirit back into humanity so he becomes missionary and assigns this task to Guru Angad ji with all his enlightenment transmitted in the form of Jyot (torch). All his embodiment with the truth of revelations are successive Gurus and they have the same mystical experience like Guru Nanak. Guru Amardas ji also reveals: “God is sole and Supreme, None is His equal. I speak as and when He makes me speak, my utterances are directed by Him.”