The Source Book On Sikhism

The Disciples Baptize the Master

After this, Gobind Singh asked his Five Beloved Disciples to prepare again the Nectar as he had prepared it, and to anoint others with it as he had done. The Five sat in a group, and, inspired by the Master, prepared the Nectar in the same way. It was the Master himself who offered first of all to drink the Amritam from the hands of the Beloved Five. From Guru Gobind Rai his name was changed to Guru Gobind Singh. Thereupon, the whole heavens resounded with the joyous ejaculation, “Sat Sri Akal” – “the only Reality is He” - the deathless, the timeless Glory! Thousands of Sikhs were anointed on that day with the sacred word - Amritam of the Master. It was this Amritam that changed the docile, poor, fearful disciples into the leonine men of the new Khalsa: Saint-soldiers; who were taught to salute the God and the Master with a naked sword swung high in the air, and to practise the Simran of Mantram Wahi-Guru. Arms were thenceforward the symbol of the disciples’ fervour of soul.

This great miracle of creation, done by Gobind Singh transmuted Anandpur into the centre of a new Saviour-Nation. A contagious spirit of independence arose and spread, and the face of the country changed. Where love is supreme, the heart in which it resides must be clothed in splendour of steel: the flashing sword of love must be the expression, in this dark world, of the light of the soul. “I am thine, death is nothing to me. I wear arms, not to kill, but to dazzle with their flash the eyes of cowardly kings, and to blazon in letters of fire Supreme majesty of love over all. I need no kingdoms on this earth; I lust not for shining gold, nor for the beauty of woman. I own nothing. All belongs to Him, the Lord! If he has chosen to adorn my smile of Knowledge Absolute with the flash of His cleaving sword, it is his pleasure. My Religion then is of His Sword.”

“Do not misunderstand me. I know the Truth, I am made of it. I am in the safe-keeping of the Beloved. His pleasure is my salvation. I have no need to act, for all action has ended for me in His love. But so He wills; and I take the body of flesh to the altar of sacrifice for the sake of suffering humanity, and, rising out of the Master’s heart still half-asleep, I go forward and die for others. With my blood, I will buy them in this world of trade and money-getting, a moral and physical relief. I covet no more but to die naming Him, with His song on my lips and his Nectar flowing out of my mind; fixed on the one purpose, to die for others and to save them from misery! I therefore, pray I may die, not in solitude, but in the battlefield; and not for my glory, but for the glory of the song that is deathless.”

Akali

The human spirit at Anandpur manifested its joyous spiritual energy in many ways. On every day that dawned there were new ideas in the very air, and the Khalsa crystallized in many shapes. The Sevapanthis, the Nirmalas, the Sahej-Dharis set forth new shining resolutions; and last but not least, came the Akali, who washed himself clean of all earth and earthly life, till absolutely free from the illusion of flesh and immersed in the vision of the Guru. Sevapanthis reserved themselves for the creed of service; later on they formed the first "Red Cross" corps of Gobind Singh, serving friend and foe alike. They carried water on their backs in the battlefield, and held the bowl of mercy to the thirsty lips of the dying. They carried on a stock of first aid, and gained special knowledge in surgery and medicine. Nirmalas devoted themselves to learning. They studied Sanskrit and Bedanta, and went about educating the country and spreading the literature that took its start in Anandpur. Sahej Dharis, “Disciples of the vow of moral devotion”, was a beautiful name given to the disciples who could not yet stand up to the wearing of the sword of the Khalsa, since wearing the sword meant death and dissolution. They would rather be in the background, the sympathizers, the hidden disciples of the Master, “They also serve who only stand and wait”.

Akali was the Khalsa with an increased share of the Master’s Amritam in him. He was already immortal, he had shaken off his body; there was no consciousness in him of death, sin, or self. He recked nothing, he heeded nothing. So great was the power of soul in him that he called Death – “ascension to Heaven (charahi)”. He called the silver and the gold coins “husk”, “pieces of broken chaina”. His arithmetic began with Sawa Lakh (1,25,000). Whenever an Akali entered the city, he said, “The Armies of the Khalsa have arrived” - he never said, “I”. When anyone asked, “how many?”, he said, “Sawa Lakh”. Whenever he wanted anything he did not “beg”, but he said that he had only come to collect “taxes of the Khalsa”.

Some ill-informed writers have depicted the Akali as a king of human wild boar, because he was sincere to the point of savagery. He was armed from head to foot, “covered with steel”; his flesh was steel, and his eyes shone with the blue fire of destruction if anyone touched him wrongly. But he was the disciple, full of the Nectar of the divine song. If they were to cut him, they would find nothing but Hari Nam in his blood and bone. Was it not a marvel that at the call of Gobind Singh, there came a kind of man who soon rid the country of its weakness and won a respect for the Master’s personality that no king could command?” “Akali” means deathless or timeless, "Kill me, cut me to pieces, I never die. I am Akali, out of this door I go, out of that door I come in Again. His touch has emancipated me. I am knowledge absolute. I am purity absolute. I am love absolute.”

The Akali called Emperor Aurangzeb by the curtailed name of “Auranga”, their language turned the world’s glories and greatness into object of contempt. They acknowledged no kings, and perhaps that is why no Akali could be tolerated in the British Panjab.

Without intending it, do doubt, the present rulers in India, in the ordinary course of their administration, have made the existence of the Akalis in the Panjab of today impossible. For he could allow no laws to interfere with his indigo garments, his infinite self-confidence, his prophetic-like majesty and sincerity combined with the simplicity of a child in his love of his Master.

The creation of the Khalsa in India is the culmination of Guru Nanak’s genius, and the written character of his Word. The Amritam of the Tenth Master completely transmuted the men drawn from low or high castes of India, drawn from the Hindu or the Musalmans. After the Amritam, the Khalsa resembles no part type of his own. For making the universal nation of man - apart from the characteristics that delimit races and nations - for the evolution of one united family of man on earth, Gobind Singh had shown the way in his Khalsa which he brought out ready-made from his brain, as Jupiter brought out Minerva. In the Khalsa is his type of the universal “super-man”, dead drunk with the glories and powers of the Infinite, yet sweet as a woman, innocent as a child, the Bhai “brother of all”, “striking fear in naught nor himself afraid of aught”. He has given to him also a form which the great Master dreamt for the future universal man of God belonging to no one country, caste or creed. In the Khalsa there is seen the blending of the whole spiritual character of man of the past and the future; as if it were a new creation.

“Anandpur of the Master: now the Anandpur of the Khalsa! The Khalsa chanted the new life-mantrams with untied voice that passed like a thunder rolling over the hills: Sat Sri Akal”.

The Khalsa chanted the Song of the sword composed by Gobind Singh for their daily invigoration. He is said to have composed this song in adoration of some old Hindu goddess; but he merely employed the words used in Sanskrit literature in praise of an old goddess, adapting them to the praise of Steel. In recent history, under the leadership of Bhai Ram Singh, and inspired by the same old life-mantram, “Wahi-guru”, there again rose in the Panjab the semblance of the old Khalsa; the Kukas, whom the last generation saw sitting cross-legged in the posture of yoga-meditation, chanting this Song of the Sword, and spring rot and for - still in their sitting posture, like birds - to accompaniment of their cry: “Sat Dri Akal, Sat Sri Akal”. The original of this at Anandpur may be imagined. Whoever went to Anandpur in those days saw a new world, as if the veil of sky had been lifted at one corner and the celestial life was in sight. For in truth no one could recognize those Figures of Light made by the Master as anything of this earth. Pilgrims, both Hindu and Mussalman, came in singing caravans from all parts of the country to the City of Joy, which resounded day and night with the music of Nam.