Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
The One acts, and moves everything else to act too. Nothing happens outside of it. It can do anything.
There is only the One, spread through everything, everywhere. There has never been a second. There never will be.
A short Shalok stating the ground the whole bani stands on: Ik Onkar — not "one god among others," but oneness as the only reality. "He Himself acts, and causes others to act" is the teaching that there is no separate second power — no rival force, no other author of events. This is not fatalism that flattens your effort; it is the recognition that even your acting is the One acting through you. The closing line — "there has never been any other, and there never shall be" — is the alphabet's foundation stone, laid before the first letter is even sounded.
If everything you see is one connected whole, how does that change the way you treat any part of it?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI