Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
Without the Guru, love never wells up — and the dirt of ego never leaves.
But the one who recognizes 'He is me' — who is pierced through by the Shabad — that person is satisfied. They have arrived.
As Gurmukh, you recognize your own self fully. And when that happens — what else is there left to do?
Soha-n aap pachhaaneeai — "one who recognizes that 'He is me' within himself." Soham (He is I) is one of the great mahavaakyas (great sayings) of the Upanishads: the recognition that the individual self (aham — I) and the divine (so — that one) are not two separate things. Guru Nanak is explicitly using this classical Vedantic formulation — one of his characteristic moves of drawing on the deepest currents of the Hindu tradition to express Gurbani's own teaching.
The recognition is not intellectual. It is not "I have read the Upanishads and understand non-duality conceptually." It is sabad bhayd pateea-ay — pierced through by the Shabad, satisfied, settled, arrived. The Shabad does the piercing. The recognition is the wound that heals everything.
Gurmukh aap pachhaaneeai avar ke karay karaa-ay — as Gurmukh, you know your own self; what more is there to do or have done? When the self is fully recognized — when the soul sees clearly what it is — there is nothing left to seek, nothing left to prove, nothing left to perform. The doing that was motivated by seeking is complete. The searching is done. What remains is being — fully, without remainder, what you actually are.
Without the Guru (bin gur), this recognition cannot happen; the filth of ego (haumai mail) cannot depart on its own. The Guru's teaching is not decoration — it is the necessary and sufficient condition for the recognition that ends the seeking.
What would it mean to fully recognize that what you are at your deepest level is not separate from the divine — and how would that change how you move through your day?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI