How to dismantle the façade of falsehood and become a Sachiara? Sachiara means the home lit with the light of truth. We may agree or not, but it is a fact that barring a very few exceptions, we are all busy building around us a cocoon of falsehood. When I was in university, we studied a play called The Iceman Cometh by an American author Eugene O Neill as part of our syllabus. I still remember the line repeated by one of the characters (Larry) in this play. “To hell with the truth! As the history of the world proves truth has no bearing on anything. The lie of a pipe dream is what gives life to the whole misbegotten mad lot of us, drunk or sober. And that's enough philosophic wisdom to give you for one drink of rotgut.”[9]

The message of the first stanza of Jap has helped me fully understand the agony of that character. This play is about the “lower depths” of our society. Even those who live in the upper echelons of the society are no exceptions. T S Eliot has written a play called Murder in the Cathedral about the assassination of Archbishop Thomas Becket. He knew that he will be murdered and gets ready for this like a religious person. In this process he realizes how he has been building a façade of falsehood all his life. To quote from the play:

“Man’s life is like a cheat and a disappointment;
All things are unreal,
Unreal or disappointing;
The Catherine wheel, the pantomime cat;
The prizes given at the children’s party;
The prize awarded for the English Essay;
The Scholar’s degree, the statesman’s decoration;
All things become less real. Man
Passes from unreality to unreality,
This man is obstinate, blind, intent
On self destruction,
Passing from deception to deception,
From grandeur to grandeur to final illusion,
Lost in the wonder of his own greatness,
The enemy of society, enemy of himself.”[10]

The point that I am trying to make is that be it a lay man or an aristocrat, falsehood has engulfed us all. That is why Guru Nanak puts forward this question. How to break open this cocoon of falsehood and embrace the rays of truth? In order to answer this question we got to find an answer to another question. Why and how do we weave this veil of falsehood around us to conceal ourselves? Guru has answered this question in the first four lines of this stanza. Before we find out the answer given by our Guru, it will be worthwhile to note that there was, and still exists, a philosophical thought that supports and promotes this façade of falsehood. [11]

Coming back to the answer given by Guru, we all feel that the pall of falsehood has shrouded us. And we start making efforts to get rid of it. There are plenty of people in this world who approach us with their ready made recipes for this. Some advise us to indulge in some rituals to purify our mind; others ask us to practice strict disciplines like abstinence or willful silence. And there are recipes who propose to accumulate an abundance of wealth, still others advise us to gain as much wisdom as we can. All these recipes are misdirected and complicate the problem. Becaule, all these recipes allow our minds to take full control of our actions. But Guru says that this shroud of falsehood is the direct result of following the dictates of our mind. As long as our mind is dictating our actions we are bound to keep on accumulating falsehood. Interestingly our mind does it in the guise of getting away from falsehood. (That is reason why some of the recipes mentioned about are so popular.) Our mind offers us a ride to the destination of truth, but shuts us up in the cocoon of falsehood.

In the first line, our mind offers us truth via purity of mind that ends up in ritualism of cleanliness. In the second line it leads us astray by practice of silence that fails to shut out the noise from within. In the third line it takes us on a ride on the horseback of our desires and we find this a never ending journey. In the fourth line our mind takes over the complete command and we end up manufacturing our own truths by our wisdom. In these

lines Guru is explaining us the reasons of the falsehood and at the same time prepares us for the all important question. The reader spontaneously comes up with the question, what is the way to light the lamp of truth in our minds? Then Guru gives his answer. The lamp of truth is lit by subduing our mind to the Hukam [12] of God. hukim rjweI clxw nwnk iliKAw nwil ] 1 ]

Before I go into the details of this answer, I would like to explain a bit more about the reasons for accumulation of falsehood in our lives. No one can say it better than the Guru. Guru tells us that as long as we follow the dictates of our mind we will continue to accumulate piles of falsehood around us. Guru called them Manmukh or Sakat who are driven by the dicates of their minds. The following quotes [13] from Guru Granth Sahib tell us how a Manmukh or Sakat is building this façade of falsehood around him.