Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
Those who serve the True Guru are certified. Genuinely approved. The word is final.
They eradicate selfishness and conceit from within — not just from the outside. They remain absorbed in the True One.
Those who don't serve the True Guru waste their lives in vain.
The Lord does just as He pleases. No one has any say in this.
"Certified and accepted"
Je thar Satgur sev karhin, soi parvān — "Those who serve their True Guru are certified and accepted." Parvān is a legal/administrative term: certified, approved, stamped, ratified. The spiritual approval that comes from genuine service to the Guru is absolute. No court can override it. No subsequent event can revoke it.
Eradicating from within
Ahankār mamtā mār kai, sach nāl la'e lagā'in — "They eradicate selfishness and conceit from within; they remain lovingly absorbed in the True One." The eradication is interior: not just suppressing the ego's expression but genuinely removing it from within. The self-conceit (mamtā) and egotism (ahankār) are uprooted, not pruned.
The Lord's sovereignty
Nānak Har ji'o āpai karhai, ko'ī kiā kar sahī'e — "O Nanak, the Lord does just as He pleases. No one has any say in this." The Shalok closes with a return to sovereignty: the certification, the acceptance, the service itself — all of it is within the Lord's doing. The devotee serves; the Lord certifies. But both the serving and the certifying are the Lord's.
This Shalok is brief precisely because the point is simple: serve the Guru, you are certified. Don't serve, you are wasted. The Lord decides. These are three facts.
*What would it feel like to know you were genuinely 'approved' — not by any human standard, but at the deepest possible level? What would change about how you live?*
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI