AS A SIKH,
We try to be noble, bold and free, self-drunk, selfless, flower-like, sun-like. It sweetens us and the sweetness sweetens all life around us. At our sight, the lamb and the tiger must drink at the same pool. We have the moral influence radiating peace, good-will, friendship, fellowship, life, vigour, vitality, in short, spirituality.
The Sikhs are creations of Guru’s universal love. They are by their very birth of His spirit, citizens of the world.
GURU (THE DIVINE BRIDEGROOM)Meeting Him, the Guru, the Personal God, is a whole spiritual enlightenment in a glance. It is the sudden discovery of one’s highest and utmost self. He is the ultimate Reality of the subjective universe within me and also without me. Without Him, it is all dark. Dante’s Heavens are lighted by the figure of his Beatrice. The Guru’s presence is like the coming into our soul of the whole spiritual universe peopled with shining gods and angels. All that is, is true in the Guru, with the Guru. Without Him, all gods and angels are ghosts of darkness.
GURBANIGuru Arjun Dev has sent us a Hymn of peace. It is like a river of peace in which we can dip our soul. Bathing is a mechanical process, sometimes we do no feel like bathing. But whenever we bathe, we feel refreshed. We feel new. We love ourselves. The clogged pores of the body are cleaned. The mind, too, becomes rectified by a mechanical process. I feel when we read Sukhmani, there is, unknown to ourselves, a strange effect on our minds. And there is a reflex action on the body. The mind mounts up to some delectable heights and the body becomes light and ethereal and soars with it. We feel bodiless. In this river of peace, we must plunge daily and refresh ourselves. And when the mind is risen, we should kiss in every line and in every word the beautiful hands of our King who composed it for us. No hymns can give one the love-spark unless they belong to oneself. The French national song belongs to every French child and man and woman. When they all stand and sing, they become inspired thereby. So is the case with the Japanese national anthem. Songs fly away like birds without love’s fond ownership. Especially so is the case with this most sensitive song—Guru Grantha. He will not live with the dead as a mere book. Now we must in a similar way, feel an intense personal love for this great universal anthem of Guru Arjun Dev. The Guru does not sing of a nation here, nor of kingdoms, nor of war cries or of the victory yells of conquerors. It is a hymn which is to set all the loose screws of humanity right.
KAKKARSEvery Sikh is to wear His
Sword. Not his own. Kirpan is a gift from the Guru. It is not an instrument of offence or defence; it is mind made intense by the love of the Guru. The Sikh is to have a sword-like mind. It is the visible sign of an intensely sensitive soul. The sword cuts so rapidly, the mind can do so much in an instant. That common herd mentality with its drolly dullness, with utter incapacity to fly like the Eagles of Heaven cannot live together with the sword of Guru Gobind Singh. It is but the symbol of the myriad personality of the Guru’s Sikh, that knows no defeat, no disappointment, the personality, that is unconquerable in its hope, in its spiritual radiance. Guru Gobind Singh says, “I will make my one dominate over a million.” This domination is of the illumined mind. The highly intensified and developed intellect naturally becomes overpowering, so much so that it becomes fascinating and attractive in a physical sense. It gathers its own moths like the intense flame of a night lamp. The presence of a great spiritual man overpowers millions. What is mind if it has not the flash of the lightning and the sword?
All conquests in the fields of life are mental and moral; physical conquests are no conquests. It is no use wearing His Sword, if one has not become wholly spiritual and the animal in man has not shrunk to a pretty pet or, as St. Francis said, “his ass” or the forgotten shadow of a byegone self.
When He touched
my hair and blessed me, how could I bear my hair being shorn? The Sikh is the dedicated. I nestle the fragrance of His touch in my tresses. I am the bride. They, of the modern era, have bobbed the bride but the Sacred Braids of Christ still remain the most beautiful adornment of man’s or woman s head. I love the Guru s superstition. The lightning spark is concealed in the wool of the wandering cloud in the sky and the life spark of the Guru. is hidden in this sheaf of hair. They say it is troublesome to carry it. But more troublesome is a life of no inspiration. The body itself is not less troublesome. The daily toilet, powder and puff and rogue, and pearlcaps, and arranging of ear drops and shingles is in no way less troublesome. And when one is reconciled to such a thing as the human body, to such a thing as this impossible life, it is emptiness of soul, it is bankruptcy of love for God and for the Guru to think of the riddance of hair, the spiritual crown of humanity. The modern woman, as I have said elsewhere, has lost most of her soul by shingling her hair and puffing an odorous reed in her rose-bud-like lips.
I heard a stupid Sikh preacher the other day, trying to convince a mass gathering of the Sikhs that the iron ring of the Guru worn on the wrist is a protection against lightning. He said, as large buildings are made safe against lightning by a rod of iron, so the Guru has saved man from the stroke of lightning. He was hopelessly flinging his arms up and down to gather some straw of a reason to prove the rationale of the iron ring the Guru gave us as a gift. Coming to us from our personal God, dearer to us than our mother, father, sister or sweetheart, it comes to us as His Gift, as His Blessing. Fie on Our manners that we argue over and over about it. He touched my hair and I keep it; when I toss my arm up in the air and the iron ring shines, I am reminded of His wrist that wore it—one exactly like this. Is this arm, by some stray gleam of the iron ring on my wrist, His? Other religions live in an elaborated symbolism; I the Sikh have no religion. He loved me, He made me His own. The sword is the mind where the Guru lives. The iron ring is the sign of His remembrance. The tresses of hair are as clouds round a snow peak—they always gather, gather—they always rain, rain. In my sacred tresses flow Ganga, Jamna and Godavari. Have I got the comb, the Guru gave me? Have I got His other gifts? I may have lost them. But I cannot lose my tresses, I cannot lose my iron ring. We are of His Spiritual militia. We have to wear the ring which is His gift, and we are the prisoners of infinite love. These are the fetters of love, the price of our freedom. Each Sikh wears hair and the beard of Guru Gobind Singh. We are moulded in His image.
Those who do not have that great personal love for the Guru are still out of court. But our freedom is in Him and not anywhere without Him. Do not talk to us in that strain of the Sikh preacher. These are not the symbols of a religion, nor essential rites of any religious discipline. They are the signs of our being ‘wedded women’. They are the wedding gifts from the Bridegroom. He gave all these to us, and they are sacred. Superstitious? Yes. But which love hath not and where at all bath love not its own superstitions?
Veer Ji, here are few ideas from writings of Prof Puran Singh. I know, it is difficult to present them in movies. But you must, carry these ideas in your mind, before you find answers to your questions. 
ਸਤਿਗੁਰਬਚਨਕਮਾਵਣੇਸਚਾਏਹੁਵੀਚਾਰੁ॥
