Dr. Jaswant Singh Neki was Professor of Psychiatry, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi and Director, Post Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences, Chandigarh. His articles on Sikh theology have been published by various magazines. --Editor

In the present age of humanism, the interest of thinkers the world over appears to have shifted from God, matter and science to man. Man himself seems to have become the spectator of man. It is so because the predicaments of modern times have pushed man to recognize the necessaity of reconstructing himself. For this reason, it has become necessary to reconsider our concept of man and to understand him behind all his activities, scientific, ethical and spiritual.

Science has made great advances in understanding the nature of the physical universe as also in manipulating it for good or bad purposes. However, it has experienced severe limitations in understanding the phenomenon called man. It has proven even more ineffective in studying consciousness which preeminently characterises man. Even psychology seems to have become an altogether superficial approach for the understanding of man and his consciousness.

It is for this reason that one feels impelled to turn to other sources than science. One has to rely on what the Chinese call "Ko Yi", the systematic attempt at comparative philosophy.

This essay is an attempt to present concisely the Sikh viewpoint relating to man, his origin, his nature and his place and purpose in the universe. The major source I wish to drawa upon for this task is the Adi Granth, (Sri Guru Granth Sahib) the principal Sikh Scripture. It is not a philosophical treatise but a work of devotional lyricality. However, the concepts that it subsumes can often be reconstructed out of its hymns and odes. Almost all the references shall be from this great work and will be identified by page and line numbers.

The Need for God and the Reason for Creation

The more a man contemplates over the universe that surrounds him, the more he feels impelled to postulate a Creator thereof. However, according to Sikh thought, the Creator does not abide apart from His creation, but pervades through it. Ordinarily, we are accustomed to hold the Creator and creation in terms of duality. Such a concept is anthropomorphic. Looked at from the divine point of view, there is no creation, but only a transformation of the ever-Eternal into the seemingly ephermeral. What we call creation, in reality spells only the transformation of God Himself first into Naam (idea) and then into the material world.

Himself He created and manifested the Naam
Secondly, the expanse of Universe He made. (SGGS: 463:4)

One can raise a legitimate question here: what impelled God to manifest Himself into form of a universe; or from the human viewpoint, what makes Him create?

According to the Sikh doctrine, God being Love, wanted to dole out His Love. Hence He 'created' the great universe out of Himself to shower His Love upon it. The Guru testifies:

To dole out Your Love, You created the cosmic expanse. (SGGS: 463:5)

The Nature of the Universe

This world according to Sikhism, is "the abode of God", hence real and not illusory as held by most Indian metaphysical systems.

The three main currents of metaphysical thought that held their sway during Guru Nanak's time (1469 - 1526 AD) all held the world of appearance to be maya. The term maya originally denoted, "the power of a god or demon to deceive, to change form, to do trickery and magic and create illusion."

The idea originally came from Buddhism. Nagarjuna (200 AD), the great Buddhist philosopher, conceived the plurality (prapanca) of the external world as ultimately unreal and 'empty'. The Vedantic philosopher Gaudapada (7th C.AD) utilized this concept and interpreted the world of phenomena as illusory. Samkara (between 650 - 750 AD) in his Vedanta employed the term maya to the illusory existence of a world of multiplicity superimposed upon the single non-dual reality Brahman, by the power of ignorance or avidya.

Ramanuja (12th C.AD) raised a question: is the so called maya a subjective affection of the individual percipient colouring his own view of reality, or is it something objective, something independent of the individual: a power of the Lord himself? For Ramanuja it was 'unbelief' and not 'ignorance' which is the cause of wrong understanding of the underlying unity. The concept of maya emphasized the illusioriness of the existence and led to the prescription of abjuring of links with delusioned secular life. This led, in the spiritual field to dehumanizing tendency of cultivating elusive release from the bondage of maya.

Maitra, who discussed the problem of ideal life in all schools of orthodox Hindu philosophy, including the ones of Vaisesaka, Samkhaya and Purva Mimamsa. Samkara, Ramanuja and Vallabhacharya and Madhava came to a conclusion that a common feature of all these doctrines is to hold a negative conception of the ideal or at least a transcendence of the empirical life.

Throughout the Hindu speculative literature, maya has been admitted, in some way, as an independent principle of creation. This, inspite of the fact that Sankara called it anirvachniya, i.e. that it cannot be described (as either existent or non-existent).

In the Sikh lore, however, the doctrine of maya thus described does not find acceptance. Just as ignorance has no positive existence (being merely the aspect of the self-limited involuted spirit) so too is maya basically without any positive existence.

What is maya? What does it do?
Maya is one's being bound to pleasure and pain
And acting through one's individual ego. (SGGS: 67:4)

The universe, according to the Sikh thought is maya not in the sense that it is illusory, but in the sense that it is ephemeral:

Maya changeth its colour every moment
as do shades of the clouds
The colour of maya is like the colour of
safflower,
In a moment it will wear off. (SGGS: 645:4)

Though the world is ephemeral, yet within certain confines and rules it has its own reality, its own truth:

"True are Thy worlds, true the universe,
True Thy regions and true the forms.
True Thy acts and Thy thought
safflower, True Thy command and true Thy Court,
True is Thy Will, Thy utterance true.
True is Thy grace, true Thy sigh.
Myriads simply call Thee Truth.
True is Thy power, true Thy Majesty.
True is Thy grace, Thy laudation true.
O True Monarch, true is Thy dominion." (SGGS: 463:6)

The world is true particularly because it is a creation of the True One and He Himself permeates through it.

"Perfect is the entire creation of the Perfect One.
It allows for no addition or subtraction." (SGGS: 1412:18)

The Sikh idealism is not, then, the subjective idealism of Vedanta in the sense that things existing in space and enduring in time are nothing but illusory appearances created by maya, the creative power of Brahman. Nor is it the realism of the kind that holds that physical objects exist independently of being perceived. It has a position somewhere between these two. It holds first of all that the phenomena have a noumenal source which in itself is unknowable, but can be inferred from the experience of phenomena. This noumenal source is no other than God who is the Creator of the universe, and about whom it is said:

"Salute to Him who forms His Absolute
Formless Being
Became manifest. Permeates He the
world that He created.
The life of the world, he is also the
life of life.
He is both unmanifest and manifest,
transcendental and personal.
Such then, is the Creator of this world,
who can be recognized from His creation:
Sayeth Nanak: the True Lord reveals
Himself through His Nature." (SGGS: 141:19)

The Doctrine of Human Nature

Man is not born free. He is bound not only by individual mortality but also by finitude, fallibility, dependence, ignorance and a horde of other material constraints. Although man tries to eulogize his rationality, he is not a rational being. As has been said, "he only gets fits of rationality". However, even the rudimentary and fitful rationality does possess the potentiality of becoming refined to become discrimination ("vivek") by virtue of which man is able to distinguish good and evil.

Man's mundane life is only survival-oriented. Through his sense organs (which inform him about his environment) and his organs of action (which enable him to interact with the environment), he tries to ensure his survival - of his physical self as also of his symbolic self (i.e. his ego). However, this survival, of necessity, is within the confines of mortality. All his struggle for survival is in the outside world.

Inspite of all his endeavours to escape from mortality, he can see himself as its sure victim. Since he abhors mortality and desires to escape from the throes of life and death, he looks for real solutions. Hindu thought eulogizes "karma" (human action) and holds that the right karma (carried out as appropriate rituals) can ensure salvation from the cycle of life and death.

The Sikh doctrine, in contrast to this view, holds that "karma" is incapable of providing escape from mortality. It only leads man from mortality to mortality. Escape is possible only through the 'grace of God'.

"Through karma one only obtains a
(good or bad) raiment,
Salvation is obtained only through His
Grace" (SGGS: 2:5)

When man realizes that all objective struggle is in vain, he is impelled to turn inwards. He now realizes that he is not just his body. He is also vested with consciousness which is of the nature of divine lucency. The body is merely framed by the five states of matter, in itself devoid of consciousness. God has invested it with His own light and made it alive.

"O my body! God invested you with His light,
Then alone did you come into this world." (SGGS: 921:14)

The modicum of divinity in him is the "atma" or "jivatma" which is one with the undifferentiated continuum of Cosmic Consciousness ("Paramatma").

When man is born, he is already an individual i.e. established under the principle of individuation. This principle "uniquely identifies one individual". It has been said, "man must be parted from that on which he is dependent but which he is not, before he can become aware of that which he is, unique and indivisible" (let it be noted here that "such a fundamental concept as the individual must be expressed in terms of what it is not, i.e. not divisible"). Thus individuation is consequent upon parting - and birth indeed is such a parting. The formation of the ego is part of the process of individuation. Not just man, infact, everything created, is subject to the principle of individuation. This principle has been called "haumai" in the Sikh parlance.

Out of the undifferentiated cosmic continuum man enucleates his individuality by virtue of a sense of egoity. By virtue of the process of individuation, he not only individuates himself, but also divides the undifferentiated continuum into myriad discontinuous entities called objects.

Thus the entire world of appearances is contingent upon man's individuation the psychic representation of which is his sense of egoity. So overbearing is this propensity that man cannot escape its consequences.

It is the mind's selective action that determines the appearances and laws of the universe - as if the world is clothed in individuation right from the moment of its creation.

The yogis asked Guru Nanak:

"How does the world come into being?
Through what suffering does it perish?"

The Guru replied:

"The world comes into being through a sense of individuation.
Foresaking the Lord's Name it comes to grief." (SGGS: 46:3)

This egoity, haumai, born out of the sense of individuation, which even determines man's world for him, is not his true-self. His true self is his atma which is of the nature of God's light and has God's attributes. Yet, like God, it is not perceptible to man. What man perceives is only an artefact created by atma's relation with the physical body. It is this artefact which is called haumain in Sikh parlance.

"Haumai" is a compound word made up of "hau" and "mai" both meaning ' I '. It thus stands for the multiplicity of ' I 's. Thus ' I ' seems to approprite the whole of man - his thought, his feelings, his volition and his actions, yet it seems to change as quickly as his thoughts or feelings or moods. He lives always in the last ' I '. Man's individuality, infact, is not constituted by any single big ' I ' but by a multiplicity of small ' I 's each one of which at any given moment claims his total consciousness. This is haumai.

This haumai, then becomes man's very personality and the centre of all his strivings. Again, it is this which brings about the sense of duality ("dui") by creating a distinction between ' I ' and 'non-I', i.e. subject and object. It is haumai which separates man from the totality of life and consciousness and gives him the feeling of apartness in place of cosmic oneness.

Haumai or egoity comes to occupy the centre of all his activities:

"With ego doth one come, with ego doth one depart.
With ego was one born, with ego would one die
In ego doth one give, in ego doth receive.
In ego doth one earn, in ego doth one squander.
In ego is one truthful, in ego liar becomes.
In ego doth one discriminate sinfulness from virtue..."(SGGS: 466:10)

In other words, "haumai" engages man in the struggle for the preservation of his mundane existence making him oblivious of his true reality and ignorant of the true purpose of his life.

The Origin of Evil and Good

The struggle for existence is also nature's law, unexceptionable for the worldly life into which man is born. "Haumai" is the pivot of this life. It is God Himself who has instilled it into our nature.

"By creating haumai He brought creatures into being." (SGGS: 166:15)

"Yet, it is in his haumai directed worldly pursuits that man becomes oblivious of God. He functions with the conviction 'I am' and 'I do'. He begins to ignore and even belie God's will on account of his conceited haumai. He often times goes so far as to challenge God's will and even deny God's existence.

Such entirely ego-directed life becomes the source of evil. Guru calls this person a "manmukh" (ego-centered):

"The manmukh by egoism are from God alienated.
-know this ye my mind!
Bound by poison, by egoism are they consumed.
As the pigeon got himself encaged.
So are the manmukh bound in mortality.
They in maya-attachment are absorbed.
Such egoistic ones are the unenlightened goblins." (SGGS: 248:14)

Although the manmukh is engrossed in the pursuit of evil, yet every object around him - the winds that blow and the rivers that flow and the stars that glow, and rain and hail and snow - seems to whisper a message of God and in silent voice affirm a prescence of his Creator both within and around him:

"He the limitless One, is within us as also without.
Pervades He in each and every heart.
He is on the earth, in the sky and the underworld.
Fills and sustains the universe entire." (SGGS: 293:18)

When man awakens himself to these whispers that flood towards him from every quarter, he begins to recognize the will of God writ large on all that happens. His living thence on becomes authentic.

"Who so recognizes His Will and perceives the
One alone,
He alone may be reckoned an authentic man." (SGGS: 350:3)

Where God is, egoism cannot be. Instead of believing in 'I am' and 'I do', one begins to believe in "It's You, O Lord, Who are and Who do all that ever happens."

"Sayeth Nanak, who so realizes God's Will No more asserts his own ego." (SGGS: 10:1)

As haumai is subdued, egocentricity yields to theocentricity.

Man's will surrenders before God's Will. The Supreme Will of God transparently appears visible as superpotently operative. Whoever thus awakens becomes God-oriented ("Gurmukh").

"The Gurmukh by devotion, the Divine jewel attain.
The Gurmukh, without effort, this jewel evaluate.
The Gurmukh in holy action are engaged.
The Gurmukh have their heart fixed on the True Lord.
The Gurmukh knoweth the unknowable, as per His Will.
And so, Sayeth Nanak, he cometh not to grief." (SGGS: 942:2)

Twin Ways, One Master

There are two ways then, the egocentric and the theocentric, both ordained by the same Lord. These have been variously described as the ways of "Dhat" and "liv", i.e. of worldly entanglement and of Divine meditation. "Shakti" and "Bhakti", i.e. of power and of devotion. "Halat" and "Palat" i.e. of this world and the other. "Paravirat" and "Nirvirat" i.e. of participation and of renunciation. "Shastra" and "Shastar" i.e of conflict and of contemplation. "Miri" and "Piri" i.e. temporal and spiritual.

They have usually been conceived as ways of competing with one another. Hence it has been held that where one prevails the other is subdued.

Sikhism, however, holds that both have been created for us by the Lord Himself:

"Though two are the paths, of each, know the Lord to be the same,
Through the Guru's precept, recognize the Will Divine." (SGGS: 223:7)

In other words, the Lord Himself is the creator of both 'good and evil' as conceived by man. It is just as the Sun is the author of both 'light and shade'. True, there is an obstacle in between which is responsible for the shadow. Here, it is the obstacle of ego that produces evil. However, let us remember that even the ego has been conferred on us by God Himself.

Balance In Life

Balance in life is achieved by subduing our egocentric propensities under God-oriented endeavour. Living in the world, yet not being of the world is the kind of balance to be achieved - overcoming haumai by such pursuits as:

i. Kirat Kamavana - Earning one's livelihood through honest labour.

ii. Vand ke Chakna - Sharing one's earnings with others

iii. Sewa - Service of mankind

iv. Simran - Remembering God

Through such pursuits the wall of haumai that creates separation of man from God begins to dwindle and eventually the human soul awakens in God i.e, the atma merges[unites] into parmatma. Human life is the one opportunity of attaining the Lord. There is no other season suitable for achieving union with God.

"Now hath come Kali-yuga,
Sow you the Name of the Lord
No other season you need wait for
Be not lost in delusion." (SGGS: 1185:6)

Through "Naam-simran" or practice of the prescence of God, one is imbued with a great spiritual confidence ("Chaardhi-kala") and feels as Guru Nanak declared:

"God does not die so I fear not death,
Indestructable is He, so I fret not.
He is not poor, nor am I in want.
He isn't grief, nor am I in trouble.
Except Him none can destroy." (SGGS: 391:1)

It is only when man attains this oneness with God that he escapes the throes of the cycle of births and deaths. Until then he is tossed from one form to another till he attains salvation.

Even salvation, however, is not the 'summum bonum' for the Sikhs. Only love of God is. The Guru says:

"I covet neither sovereignity nor salvation,
My love is for the lotus feet of the Lord."

However, even when he attains salvation, he works for the salvation of others.

"Liberated himself, liberation to the whole
world he brings,
To such a one, sayeth Nanak, I ever bow
in reverence."

Conclusion

In conclusion one may say that in this world which is the "temple for practising righteousness", man has the sole opportunity of realizing his real self (atma) which is identical with cosmic consciousness. This he can do by subduing his empirical ego (haumai) which stands between him and God and which is the cause of all evil.

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