SHRINE
SIKHISM
Fredric Pincott, MRAS
Religious Systems of the World
1892
Founded by Guru Nanak, Sikh principles may be reduced
to a single formula - the Unity of God and the Brotherhood
and Sisterhood of Humanity.
There's no such thing as a God for the Hindus, the Muslims, and or the
heathen; There's but one God; the One, indivisible, self-existent, incomprehensible, timeless,
all-pervading - to be named, but otherwise indescribable,
adorable and altogether lovely.
All petty distinctions
of creed, sect, dogma and ceremony are put away.
The realization of such a God shatters the quibblings
of the dialectician; clears the brow from
pondering over trifles, and leaves the heart free
for the exercise of human sympathies. The grand
idea of the Incomprehensible Unity, which can only
be named and adored, removes all distinctions of
creed and caste.
So also, the great truth that all are equal before God;
and there's no high or low, dark or fair,
privileged or outcasts; all are equal in
race and creed, in political rights and religious
aspiration. Equality before God, and the Fraternity
of mankind.
Sikhism teaches
that the great Name of God is an efficacious instrument
of saving grace; the attainment of Nirvana, or eternal,
passionless repose, is the highest and final reward
of virtue; each soul is an immortal ray of light
from the Supreme, and the quintessence of all doctrines
rested in a realization of the formula "So-ham"
("I am that"), this last expression, is
the pure Vedanta doctrine that God appears as nature,
and that the individual soul is only a portion of
the Universal Soul, in accidental union with cosmic
phenomena. As soon as the individual soul realizes
the idea that it and that are one - in other words,
that it is only a minute atom of that eternal, all-pervading
Self - then, by that very recognition, individuality
is at once destroyed, and with it all of the desires
and passions which chain the soul to worldly life.
The essential doctrine of the Unity is impressed
on the mind of every Sikh.
This agrees with the Vedantic doctrine, and also
with Persian Sufism. Jami, the Persian poet, in
his passionate verses on Joseph and Potiphar's wife,
exclaims: - "Dismiss every vain fancy, and
abandon every doubt; Blend into One, every spirit,
and form, and place; See One - know One - speak
of One - desire One -chant of One - and seek One."
The following from the Sikh Bible, called the Adi
Granth, is identical in sentiment:
"thou recitest the One' thou placest the One
in they mind; thou recognize the One. The One is
in eye, in word, in mouth; thou knowest the One
in both worlds. In sleeping, the One; in waking,
the one; in the One thou art absorbed.
The Adi Granth abounds in declarations of the Unity,
such as, "Thou art I; I am Thou; of what kind
is the difference? "In all the One dwells;
the One is contained." All the world is contained
in the true Lord." However much the Sikh religion
may have changed in other respects, we find the
Tenth Guru exclaiming in his dying moments: "The
Smritis, the Sastras, and the Vedas, all speak in
various ways; I do not acknowledge one of them.
O possessor of Happiness! Bestow thy mercy on me.
I do not say "I." I recognize all as 'thee.'
"By reason of duality,
the name of God is forgotten."
The One God, in Guru Nanak's opinion, is the Creator
of plurality of form, not the Creator of matter
out of nothing. The phenomenal world is the manifestation
of Deity. In the Adi Grahth
we read:-
The cause of cause is the Creator. In His hand
are the order and reflection.
As He looks upon, so it becomes. He Himself, Himself
is the Lord. Whatever is made, is according to His
pleasure. He's far from all, and with all.
He comprehends, sees, and makes discrimination.
He doesn't die or perish. He neither comes nor
goes. Nanak says, He's always contained in all."
WE ARE EMINATIONS OF THE DIVINE
The supreme One comprises both spirit and matter,
and therefore is what is.
The soul of man is held to be a ray of light from
the Light Divine; and
in its natural state is sinless.
The impurity is due to Maya, or Delusion; and it's Maya which deludes
creatures into egoism and duality, that is, into
self-consciousness, and into the idea that there
can be existence apart from the Divine. This delusion
prevents the pure soul from freeing itself from
matter, and therefore, the spirit passes from one life to another, in a long chain of births
and deaths, until delusion is removed, and the
ray returns to the Divine Light, whence
it originally emanated. The belief in reincarnation
is thus a necessary complement; and
it's essential to the Hindu, Buddhist,
and Sufi.
