Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
My whole self is so full of joy I can't find words for it.
We came from the One, and back into the One we gently return.
Like a drop of water slipping back into water, I melt into the great Light.
That One One fills the seas, the land, the sky — I see nothing else, only the One.
It fills the forests and the fields and every world — more than I could ever say.
Only the One truly knows — the One who made all of this.
The shabad ends in one of Gurbani's most beloved images of union: jal mahi jal aae khataanaa — "like water merging into water." When a drop returns to the ocean, nothing is lost and nothing is destroyed — the drop simply becomes what it always was. This is the Sikh picture of the soul's homecoming into the One: not annihilation but belonging fully, the small returning to the vast it came from. The vision widens to non-duality: "the One permeates water, land and sky — I see no other." The verse guards against pride at the very end — "He alone knows, He who created this creation" — the mystery stays the One's. For a child: you came from something vast and good, and one day you gently return to it, the way a drop of water returns to the sea — safe, home, and not lost at all.
What do you imagine it's like for a raindrop to fall back into the ocean it came from?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI