Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
The One was here before the very beginning. It is beyond anything you could reach, beyond anything you could picture.
It sets everything up, and when the time is right, it takes everything down again. The whole rise and fall of the world rests in the same hands.
And that One is woven through everybody and everything. So the people who turn toward the teaching are lifted high.
This one says the One is far beyond us and also right inside everything, both at once.
Guru Ram Das starts with aad purakh, the First Being, the One who was there before there was a "before." Then he holds two truths together that only seem to pull apart. The One is aprampar, beyond every edge, further than any thought can go. And sabh meh vartai ayko so-ee — that same One is present in everything. Not a faraway God on one side and a close one on the other. One and the same, completely beyond and completely inside.
The middle line shows the One holding the whole story of the world: aapay thaapay thaap uthaapay — He sets things up, and having set them up, He takes them down. Building up and taking down are both the One's own movement. There isn't a good power that builds fighting a bad power that breaks. The rising and falling of all things are one breath of the same Source. Think of a child building a sandcastle and then smoothing the beach to build again. Both belong to the same hands. This quietly calms a deep fear. Endings in the world aren't accidents or enemies. They belong to the hands that made it.
The verse ends by making the huge personal. If the One is in everything, the One is in you. Gurmukh sobhaa paavani-aa — those who become gurmukh, who turn toward the Guru's light, are honored. Turning toward the teaching means lining up with the One who is already everywhere, including inside. The honor isn't a prize sent from far away. It is what happens when a wave remembers it is the ocean.
Does it change how endings feel to imagine that the same source made the thing and lets it go?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI