The Source Book On Sikhism

A Religion of Numina (Naam) and not Phenomena

Ethereal experience is inherent in Fries's Ahndung (longing), Schleiermachar's Feeling, Kant's Things in Themselves (noumena) and Kapur Singh’s Antithesis of Phenomena. It stands for the holy minus its moral factor and without any rational aspect. It is irreducible to any other factor. Numinous consciousness involves shaking fear or repulsion and an element of powerful fascination. It can only be understood by “ideograms” i.e., not through logic, but only symbolically. The core of religious experience is inherent in the awareness of non-moral holiness as a category of value. This category of value is called numina. Numina means a spiritual experience of reality peculiar to religion. The numinous experience is the core and base of Sikh religion and its ingredients i.e., religiously sensitive mind in relation to his/her apprehension of himself/herself and the universe around him/her. The ultimate reality is not comprehensible through the sensory motor perceptions and speculations. Sikhism is a religion of Naam (neumin), which is asserted through 30,000 hymns of Sikh scripture through revealed statements, literary similes and allusions. Naam is God and God is Naam, and the practice of religion revolves around the Naam. Sikh religious thought cannot be interpreted through any phenomenal process. Naam is timeless. Recently, an attempt has been made to dub Guru Granth Sahib as a 16th century philosophy and it should be changed to fit the present post-technical and capitalistic society of the 20th century. One must understand that AGGS is Shabad Guru and a direct revelation which cannot be changed. The man of technical and capitalistic era of the 20th century has the same wicked or worse mind that 16th century human beings. Only the numinous nature of Sikh philosophy can change this man and not the egoistic man of phenomenal society or vice versa. Such challenges on Sikh philosophy will be continued in the 21st century and Sikh scholars must answer them appropriately.