Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
I am just telling you what I actually saw — no more, no less. And only the person who has truly discovered the secret tastes this sweetness for themselves. When my own little light melted into the great Light, I found a deep peace. Nanak says: everything you see, all of it, is the One spread out before you.
The shabad closes with the poet's honesty and its final vision. Jehaa dithaa mai teho kahiaa — "as I saw it, so I have told it." Guru Arjan is not theorizing; he is reporting. What follows is not borrowed doctrine but eyewitness testimony of the soul. And he adds a humble truth: tis ras aaiaa jin bhed lahiaa — "the sweetness (ras) comes only to the one who has found the bhed, the secret/mystery." You cannot be argued into this taste; you have to discover it yourself. Words can point, but only the one who lahiaa (finds, grasps) it directly receives the ras.
The climactic image is jotee jot milee — "light merged into Light." The individual flame (your awareness, your jot) blends back into the one great flame from which it was never truly separate. This is the consummation the whole shabad built toward: the unstruck music (P0), the homecoming (P1), the vision of the One as all (P2), and now the actual merging — and with it, sukh, peace. The drop returns to the ocean, the flame to the fire, and what remains is rest.
The final line is the seal of the project's whole lens: jan Naanak ik pasaariaa — "all of this is the One, spread out (pasaar)." The entire visible world — every king and commoner, every joy and sorrow, every separate-seeming self — is ik pasaariaa, the single reality unfolded, expanded, displayed. There was never a second thing. Signed with the lineage's name, Nanak, the shabad ends in the serene certainty of Ik Onkar: not many things and one God among them, but one reality appearing as all things.
The poet says he can only describe what he actually saw, and that the sweetness comes only to those who find it themselves. What is something true that you could never really know just by being told — you'd have to experience it?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI