The Countless Forms Poured From One Like Sparks

Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa

The song has answered every question with the word Gurmukh — but the final stanza pulls back to the widest possible frame and shows what stands behind even that answer: the One itself, the source and the home of everything. The Lord Himself created the entire creation. He Himself acts, and causes others to act. He Himself establishes. There is no second power anywhere; the One makes the world, moves within it, and moves everything else that moves. Even the turning of a face toward the teaching, even the becoming of a Gurmukh, ultimately happens within this single all-pervading activity.

And then the closing line gives the deepest answer of all, the truth underneath every question the song has asked: From oneness, He has brought forth the countless multitudes. O Nanak, they shall merge into the One once again. Ek becomes anek — the One becomes the many — and the many return to the One. All the diversity of creation, all the countless forms and beings, came pouring out of a single source like sparks from one fire, and to that source they all return.

This is the quiet resolution of the whole song. Beneath the urgent questions — who is bound, who is free, who is happy, how to meet the One — lies a truth so simple it dissolves the very ground the questions stood on: it is all One, going out and coming home. The separations that the questions worried over — bound and free, met and parted, householder and renunciate — are real as waves are real, but the water was always one water. The Gurmukh is simply the one who has remembered this, turned toward it, and so begun, even now, the homecoming that all of creation is making together.