Sri Guru Granth Sahib (The Adi Granth), compiled and edited by Guru Arjun Dev in 1604 A.D. is the scripture of the Sikh faith. It contains the divine writings of the Sikh Gurus and Bhagats of different origins. For its holism and multi-faceted vision of life, the tenth and last Guru, Gobind Singh, commanded the Khalsa Panth to accept the Granth as their Guru, the Supreme Guide. Although the divine writings have their historical contexts, yet essentially they are "epiphanic." They reveal the entire network of cosmic life as light or spirit, tearing asunder any layer of consciousness determined by history whether cultural or biological. The composition and style of the Granth asks for an experiential reading that bridges the gap between consciousness and being. The reading does not stimulate the mind alone; it also shakes and alters the entire psychobiology of the reader or the listener. The most vital theme of the Granth, relevant to our times is how to become a person of Sahaja. In English it means equipoise or cosmic balance. Originally a Buddhist sect or Sahajyanis to denote a seeker's orientation used the word Sahaja. The seeker, through certain disciplinary practices related to the mind, breath and body, learns to function in constant negativity or Shunya. Without separating the world from the Absolute, by going beyond categorization, the seeker attains to the highest intuitive illumination:- Turya. The Gurus, in the Granth, enlarge this Buddhist-Yogic notion and suggest that meditation on Void is not enough. It is absorption into God or drinking His juice (rasa) that keeps one in Sahaja and frees from disruptive flights. The God of the Granth is neither an intellectual aggregate nor a mere metaphysical speculation of par excellence. He is the "timeless form" (akãl murat), "self born," and" fearless." He is also a "colourful" friend who dyes the mind with the permanent red colour of love after which all distinctions cease. Equipoise is attained only with love for God. Then, everything else becomes insignificant. Love is not only the devotion on whose growth the Guru himself is wonderstruck but also a destroyer of ego that purifies the mind. With its realized radiance, the mind becomes one with the light of God. The ascetic Sahaja changes into a living Sahaja, the spontaneous condition of being in which consciousness becomes poetic creative. The problematic of being and becoming or of essence and existence is superseded by a relationship of intimacy. The loving and close relationship with God, who is both formless and multifaceted in creation, not only characterizes the Granth's equipoised person but also expressed him or her. The expression is both of separation (birha) in ignorance, and joy in meetings. The joy includes bodily jouissance and spiritual bliss. By assimilating the pre-Aryan epistemology of "deha" (body), the Rigvedic notion of cosmic "maithuna" and the Buddhistic-Tantric exploration of the nervous system, the Gurus develop a metaphor related to the bride, the bridal bed and her sensuous awareness to construct the relationship of God-love. The much neglected and repressed body is resurrected with a vengeance. The intensity of this vengeance is greater than what we notice in Freud, Norman, O Brown, Herbert Marcuse, Roland Barthes and Julia Kristeva, after the Platonic- Cartesian repression of the body that had pushed the entire West towards the what Marcuse calls "One Dimensional" perspective. The Guru's Sahaja person is integrated in body and mind and overflows with love-energy, which is a dialogue of the libidinal and spiritual. In fact there is no tension between the body and the divine in the Granth. The body according to Guru Amar Das in Rag Maru is "the temple of God that He himself decorates."6 The trinity of gods: Brahma, Vishnu, Mahesh , is also present in the body. The deha or the kaya is not the repressed other positioned in the dichotomy of "darkness" and "enlightenment". The emphasis on metaphysics of light or rational consciousness has led European thought to the other extreme, of occulting it as the "terror of night" after Nietzsche ,and surfacing with wrath in its darkness . Its Dionysian onslaught has aimed at wrecking Apollo, the sun god of enlightenment. The recent feminist assertion in the writings of Irigaray and Helen Cixous , is also a rebellious act to resist the pure enlightenment separated from the body associated with the female . The Sahaja – person , freed from the dichotomous light and darkness of the mind – body problematic , has been called "Gurmukh" or the mouthpiece of the Guru which means in the Granth both a living spiritual guide and God.

The Gurus have elaborated the Gurmukh, using an organic metaphor, as a "green tree" blossoming in the Brahma with truth and spontaneity . In contradiction with the Gurmukh, the Manmukh or the ego(mind) – projector- is "homeless", without shade and fruit. The spontaneous Gurmukh has also been presented as radiating the bursting red colour of devotion and love. During the "night" of meeting with God he or she gets drenched in affection like an impassioned beloved .In this identification with the divine , the Gurmukh , does not shrink into a closed unit but becomes the earth, the water, the air, and the fire, says Guru Amar Das in Rag Majh. In this intensity of love and expansion of being , the person is also faced with two dangers : one is of excessive subjectivity and the other of reducing the other to what Georges Bataille would call "immediacy". Excessive subjectivity is not only an overflow of emotion but also categorizing life outside "codependence." From the perspective of the second century Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna it is an I- obsession. According to him, there is no intrinsic nature or tasyasvabhavtam. Everything is dependent and for that reason void or Shunya Nagarjuna says that in his work Vigrahavyavartani . To believe in ultimacy of intrinsic nature whether emotional or categorical, according to Granth is "haumai" . In Rag Gauri, Guru Nanak Dev says that this haumai, ego, or intrinsic nature delimits and keeps in the cycle of birth or death. It is due to this ego that kings invade very often. In other words, colonialism or imperialism is another version of haumai whether it is of an individual or of an institution. The notion of haumai is best exemplified by the conduct of Hitler or Mussolini in our times. The political or economic imperialism of a national state in regard to the other external or internal nations/nationalities will also fall within the haumai - paradigm of Guru Granth. A reductionist paradigmatic attitude of a hegemonic continent regarding the other marginalised continents or cultures as elaborated in Edward Said's Orientalism, is another form of haumai. For its various negative features, haumai, has been called by The Granth as a, "perpetual malady," but if one probes its problematic, it also leads to a cure. To safeguard oneself from the dangers of this - obsession and to stay on the path to Sahaja , individual effort is not enough. One needs to become part of the collective of saintly and truth – radiating persons, called "Sat Sangat." It is they who enlighten multidimensionally , says Guru Amar Das in Rag Asa. If the seeker or the subject desires to get his/her mind and body dyed with the colour of God, if he /she wills to live in God's eternity , only the Sangat can fulfil that aspiration. Besides giving knowledge (gyan), the Sangat , performs the act of transforming. The closed "lotus" according to the Gurus, is a moment of enlightenment, of radiation shooting like sunrays. The word used is "paragasu." The notion of Sangat and the metaphor of lotus are genealogically related to Buddhism. The collective of monks called "Sanghas" has come into being during the life – time of Buddha. The lotus or "padam" figures even in Buddhistic–tantric mul mantra. In the Buddhistic lore Buddha himself was represented was through the metaphor of lotus. Later , in the tantric sects inspired by Buddhism , the human body was thought to be made up of many lotus centers. The distinction of Guru Granth is that it does not make the lotus symbolic of mere detachment and Karuna (compassion). The relationship between the water which is the world or society of space and time and the lotus is of "preet" (love), as Guru Nanak Dev says in Sri Rag .The notion of Buddhistic Sangha was although based on the tribal or primitive communes of Buddha's times, as both Rahul Sankrityayan and Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya suggest and for that reason democratic, yet the Sangha's relationship with the individual was not symbiotic .The Gurus insist that the sleeping lotus is not awakened to its light without associating with the enlightened collective. In the biogenetic or bio – structuralist idiom we can also say that the Sangat works a neurogenetic wonder, it opens up the entire nervous system with its multicentres, to its creative possibilities. The original insight of the Granth is that a human being is a closed flower, a lotus bud waiting to blossom up with the touch of Sangat. The Guru Granth is our contemporary in placing a human being in socieus. The Granth asserts that a human being is not a "nomad," a unit self–sufficient in itself. The flame of this unnomadic decentre is to be kindled by those who are already self–realized not self- lights.

Not only the Sangat, but also a true guru (Satguru) keeps one in cosmic balance. It is only in his service that the mind loses its ego , and the lotus begins to emit its rays, advises guru Ram Das in Rag Gauri. Both the Sangat and the Guru orient one's being towards the Nam and Simran of God . Literally, Nam means name and Simran remembrance. Nam in Guru Granth (as has already been suggested by several interpreters of Sikhism) is not a mere repetition of various names of God, it is rather a holistic and loving meditation on Him, a state of absorption that turns into near ecstasy. In Rag Bilawal Guru Ram Das says that Nam is cool like water, its repetition leads to the fragrance of Sandal wood abode of God. Guru Nanak Dev in Rag Asa says that the intoxicated mind drinks nam as juice or rasa and dwells in the joy of Sahaja. Repeatedly , the Gurus call Nam as nectar (amrit). In the moment of absorption the nectar is experienced as a "ceaseless sweet shower."

Guru Arjun says in Rag Gauri Sukhmani that it is His remembrance, which enables one to live in Sahaja . Only in this absorption does the lotus grow in refulgence. The Nam and Simran ,as elaborated in the Granth, thus, are a loving and impassioned meditation on the divine in which the discrimination intellect or "bibek budh" is not discarded. The distinction of this meditation or absorption is that it is not void but on the one who is youthfully beautiful (banka), father(pita), wonder causing (vismad) , beloved (yarara), mother (mata), and kin (bandhap). In addition to His formful identity, He is also formless and self-born. This loving concentration into which the Sangat and true guru initiate as well as holistically enlarge is a new space that the Guru Granth fashions. Nam and Simran ,with their rich ensembles of symbols ,were intended to create this space so that time and history could be permanently affected. After the publication of Henry Lefebvre's `The Production of Space'(French 1974, English, 1991), we have learnt that for liberation of human beings the refashioning of space is necessary. Through Nam and Simran with a specific ensemble of symbols, The Gurus and Bhagats were subverting the inner space engineered by the Mughal imperial and Brahmanical systems. The concrete geography and symbols related to the Emperor and his feudal hierarchy, and the Brahamnical patriarchs had done this through their caste–differentials. The Guru Granth generated a sign-system that established the aesthete ,wonder causing and beloved God and his related poetic/sacred subsystems as the objects of meditation . This radical and non – differential sign- system created a new liberative space of the inner mind that was empowered to affect the other spaces , and it still does. The Nam and Simran with the altered symbol – complex, therefore, are not a pure and alienated psychologism ,they are motivated liberationally in our modern multiple sense that includes, mental, social and political dimensions.

No wonder, nam according to Bhagat Ravidas in rag Dhanasari is kindling the "lamp "that lights up the entire world. Bhagat Kabir in Rag Maru describe the altering of the mind with the metaphor of battlefield : "The martial drum beats ,the target heart is hit, life turns into a spot of excitement and moment for battle knocks." Through the strong will of a soldier the seeker arrives at the "tenth door" when alteration or qualitative transformation occur. The transformation enables one to hear the "Sabada" or the eternal sound , the unstruck melody (anhad nad) that is the invisible essence or ground of the entire universe. The mind that guru and Nam, ecstatically dances" and the "Sabada" ceaselessly gives melody to it, according to Guru Ram Das in Rag Bilawal. In brief, Nam, Simran, and Sabada existentially alter the willed person. The inscriptions made on him/her by the socio – political apparatuses get dismantled .The rise of the Sikh revolutionary in the Mughal period was an evidence of that change. The bani (meta- poetry) of the Guru Granth is an aesthetic and spiritual strategy – complex par excellent to describe the power – affected human beings. After the works of Foucault, Deleuze and Gattari, we know, that each person is a battlefield, an explosive site on which the codes, signs and ideologies of the hegemonic and the oppressed crash head. Many defeats of the individual are written on his/her body s "inscriptions". The bani through its way, liberates from these inscriptions. Each poetic expression of the bani is both incision and musical healing with a new awareness. The Sahaja – Soldier despite his/her strong will do not develop dogmatically. The person remains open and flexible with many simultaneous insights. To ensure that, the Guru Granth presents the divine from many religious or philosophical system or sub-system.

In Rag Asa, Guru Nanak Dev calls God as "the ascetic among ascetics and the jouissance – relisher among jouisance – relishers." In Rag Ramkali, Guru Arjun Dev says: "Some call him Ram, some Khuda some serve him as the Lord of the universe and some Allah." The Granth developed a multilogical metaphor in which many perspectives get related. Their imbalances are criticized, yet in togetherness they generate a notion of God, of creation, and of human, which are all ployphonic. Many sounds reverberate in them. Sabda as the ground or the Meta sound had distributed itself into relatively autonomous sub- sounds. In contradiction with the post–Nietzschean postmodernists, The Guru Granth upholds that the energy distributed multiply can be related positively. The different fragments share the light. For that reason the ideal of becoming a Sahaja – Soldier given by the Guru Granth is elaborated through the self-realising fragments as they share the light. It splits into sparks that keep flying around. They are invisible only due to our ignorance and due to the mystification thickened by the socio–political institutions set up by the classes with vested interests which ought to be and can be dismantled through enlightened and collective action. According to Guru Nanak Dev in Rah Malhar, such an action can be undertaken only by those in whose inward "the truth burns like the lasting red, their minds blossom like the lotus and they ecstatic in the joy of the Sabada."