Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
There's a priceless jewel hidden deep inside you — but you only find it when the One stirs you to find it. The trouble is that the mind keeps getting pulled three ways by the three moods of the world. Scholars and silent sages have read and meditated until they were exhausted, yet they still missed the highest thing — the **fourth state** that lies beyond all three pulls.
This stanza introduces one of the most important ideas in the whole tradition: the trai gun, the three qualities, versus the chautha pad, the fourth state. Everything in the visible world — every mood, every motivation, every personality — is woven from three threads: rajas (restless drive and passion), tamas (heaviness, inertia, darkness), and sattva (lightness, goodness, calm). The surprise is that all three bind — even the "good" one. Being a calm, virtuous person is better than being a greedy or lazy one, but it's still a state within maya, still a colored thread the mind gets caught on. "Tribidh mansa, tribidh maya" — the mind's wants and the whole world come in these three flavors, and all three keep you spinning.
The chautha pad, the fourth state (turiya), is the way out — not a fourth thread but the still place beyond the loom entirely. It's the same as sahaj, the effortless equilibrium that isn't any mood at all but the ground beneath all moods. And here is Guru Amar Das's crucial point: the pandits and silent sages parh parh thake — read and meditated to exhaustion — and still missed it. Why? Because the fourth state cannot be reached by effort within the three. You can't try your way out of the loom; trying is itself a thread (rajas). You can't go calm enough; calm is a thread too (sattva).
So how is the jewel found? The very first line told us: "milai milaaia" — it's received only when He causes it to be received. The jewel is antar, already within — not earned, not read into being, but revealed by grace (gurprasad) when the striving finally stops. The scholars grew weary precisely because they kept reaching with the very faculties that can't grasp it. The fourth state isn't achieved. It's noticed, when grace lifts you out of the three.
Can you think of a time when trying harder actually made something worse, and only letting go finally let it come?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI