Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
People who are real and true right here in this life stay true on the other side too — there's no switching. A mind becomes true when it's soaked in the True **shabad**, the divine Word. Then everything such people do is built from truth: they serve the True One, they live truthfully, and so what they earn in life is truth and only truth.
This opening stanza plants the word the entire song will repeat like a heartbeat: sach — true, real, permanent, genuine. Notice the bold first claim: "aithai saache so aagai saache" — true here means true hereafter. There's no version of you that's fake in daily life but somehow becomes real after death. What you are now is what carries. This quietly demolishes the idea of religion as an insurance policy you buy for later; truth is something you are, woven into the texture of every ordinary day.
How does a mind become sacha, true? "Sachai sabad raache" — by being dyed through and through with the True shabad. The mind takes on the quality of whatever it's steeped in. Steep it in the world's passing surfaces (jhooth, the unreal) and it becomes flimsy and false; steep it in the divine Word and it becomes solid, genuine, real.
And then the most practical turn: "sacho sach kamavania" — they earn truth. In Guru Amar Das's vision, truth isn't an abstract belief; it's a livelihood, a daily practice, something you do and make with your hands and hours. Truth is the material of a real life — its food, its clothing, its work. You don't just believe it. You build with it.
If "true here means true hereafter," is the person you are in private the same as the one you show the world?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI