Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
Body and soul — all belong to Him. He gives support to everything.
Nanak says: become Gurmukh and serve Him — He is the Giver, forever and ever.
I would give everything to be near those who meditate on the Formless Lord.
Their faces are forever radiant — and the whole world bows in reverence to them.
The Formless Lord
Nirankar Har nāmū dhiā'in — "those who meditate on the Formless Lord." Nirankar — without form, without shape — is one of the Lord's most important attributes in the Guru tradition. The divine is not contained within any form, any image, any representation. To meditate on the Formless is to move beyond all conceptual content, all visual objects of meditation, to the pure awareness of the divine presence itself.
Those who meditate this way — not on a form of the divine but on the formless divine itself — have their faces forever radiant. And the whole world bows to them. Not because they sought status, but because genuine alignment with the Formless generates a presence that is universally perceptible.
"Body and soul, all belong to Him"
Tan man kichh āpnā nāhī, Har Āpai sab kichu dittā — "Body and soul, all belong to Him. He gives His Support to all." The Shalok opens with a statement of total belonging: nothing is the self's own. Body and mind are given. This is not self-deprecation but liberation: if nothing is "mine," then nothing can be lost. What belongs to the Lord is held in the Lord's care.
Universal bowing
Sabh jagat nivan vandi'ā — "the whole world bows in reverence to them." The Gurmukh who meditates on the Formless Lord is bowed to by everyone. This is the remarkable consequence of genuine inner transformation: the world recognizes what the Lord has made, and bows.
*Who are the people in your life whose presence you genuinely feel — whose radiance is palpable? What do you think that quality is, and where does it come from?*
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI