Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
Without a guide to show the way, life is pitch-black darkness. Gripped by the fear of death, people cry out in distress. Day and night they're sick at heart — like a little worm born in filth, living in filth, never knowing there's anything else, aching in the only world it can see.
This verse shows the dark side: life without a guide, where death feels terrifying. It is written with pity, not scorn.
After six bright verses, this one shows the other direction: baajh guroo — without the Guru. Hai anDh anDhaaraa — there is only pitch darkness. And then an image from an earlier shabad: bistaa kay keerhay, worms in the muck. The worm is not being insulted. It is being pitied. It was born in the muck and is surrounded by it. With no light and no guide, it cannot even picture clean air and sky. The sadness is in not knowing. It is not a bad worm. It is a stuck one.
In the dark we cannot tell clean from dirty, or real from fake. We just keep doing what is around us, because we cannot picture anything else. The deepest pain named here is jamkaal garthay karahi pukaaraa — seized by death, they cry out. Jamkaal means death, pictured as a messenger. This is the opposite of the gurmukh in the first verses, whom death could not even spot. Why the difference? The person without a guide thinks they are only the body and the separate "me." So death looks like the end of everything, and they cry out. The gurmukh has already let the "me" go quiet and joined the One who never dies, so death has nothing to threaten. Same death, very different experience. The difference is the light.
So this verse is not a verdict on anyone. It is the shadow that makes the light easy to see. Among all the gurmukh's freedoms, it shows what those freedoms are freedom from. And the worm only looks hopeless because it has not met the Guru yet. Nothing here says it must stay in the muck forever. The shabad has already shown that gurmukh is a direction, not a fixed fate. Anyone can turn. The worm just has not been shown the door yet — and this whole shabad is that door, held open.
Why might someone be far more afraid of loss and death when they think they're *only* their body and ego — and less afraid once they sense they're something deeper?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI