Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
Many millions live inside the world's three weathers - restless doing, heavy sleep, and clear calm.
Many millions are the scriptures and the pearls of the oceans and the kinds of beings past description. Many millions are given long lives; many millions of mountains stand made of gold.
Many millions are the treasure-spirits, the celestial singers, and the dark spirits too; the ghosts, the pigs, the tigers.
And the One is near to all of it - and beyond all of it. Nanak says: the One stays distinct from everything, while filling everything.
The One is near to everything and beyond everything, all at once.
The count now even includes the moods of life. There are three, called the gunas: raajas taamas saatak. Raajas is busy, heated doing. Taamas is heavy, sleepy darkness. Saatak is calm, clear light. They are counted like kinds of creatures, as if even the weather inside a mind were alive. Then come gold mountains and ocean pearls, treasure-spirits and music-spirits, ghosts, pigs and tigers. The lovely, the scary and the ordinary are all listed in the same even voice.
Then comes the center of this whole section, the puzzle the count has been building toward: sabh tay nayrai sabhhoo tay door, "He is near to all, and yet far from all." And aap alipat rahi-aa bharpoor: He stays untouched while filling everything.
Think of sunlight shining into a muddy puddle. The light fills the puddle, but no mud ever gets on the sun. Sukhmani's eighth section used the lotus for this, a flower that sits in muddy water and stays clean. Now we see that this is the Maker's own mark. The One lives inside the world and is also beyond it, untouched by the tigers and the ghosts He fills.
How can something be closer to you than your breath and bigger than the universe at the same time?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI