INSIDE THE GURU'S GATE - Anpere

In its entirety the text is regarded to contain advices and spiritual instructions (updesh)
applicable to everyday life. People in general say that recitations of Sukhmani
Sahib will bestow peace (sukh) and remove all sadness (dukh). A 19-year old woman
exemplified:
When you are doing a reading of Sukhmani Sahib properly dukh goes
very far away. You will get a lot of peace in your mind. The rain of
sukh comes over you. Sukhmani Sahib is not only [performed] for one
reason. By reading it you will get all kinds of sukh. The dukh gets far
away.
Sukhmani Sahib is believed to alleviate all sorts of suffering in life, such as sadness,
pain, grief, fear, and anxiety. Even karmic results of committed sins and the punishments
of Yama ‒ the Messenger of Death ‒ will escape the person who engages in
Sukhmani Sahib. Just as you have to clean a dirty mirror in order to see your true self,
in the same way a reading of Sukhmani Sahib purges your body and mind, an elderly
Sikh man paralleled. He likened the words in Sukhmani Sahib to “soap” for internal
remedy. To accomplish this cleansing a reading has to be performed with “proper”
motives, free from greediness and all types of evils (vikar).
When both specialists and the laity paid attention to the purging functions of
the text they quite often submitted to a bodily and numerical rationale: every hour a
person takes 1000 breaths (sans), which in total adds up to 24000 breaths per day and
night. As Sukhmani Sahib consists of twenty-four ashtapadi one single reading of the
texts, preferably in the morning, will purify the human breath and mind for a whole
period of twenty-four hours. More circumstantial accounts specify the number of
words or characters of the text to 24000. 457 The main point of these calculations is to
verify the power of each spelling in Sukhmani Sahib and that recitations of the text
actually will have spiritual and physical effects on the reader. 458
Given this power, recitations of Sukhmani Sahib appear in a large number of
ritual contexts. In the daily liturgy of the gurdwara it is the first composition to be
recite these two words, prabh ke simran, and this is the meaning of Sukhmani Sahib. These two
words are in the first asthapadi. Each line of Sukhmani Sahib has a meaning.”
457
As some interlocutors asserted, the relationship between Sukhmani Sahib recitations and human
breathing was established already in the creation of the text. At the time when Guru Arjan
was writing Sukhmani Sahib his wife Ganga asked for a valuable necklace. Guru Arjan replied
that when this composition was ready it would become her necklace that is made by the breaths
of all who will read it. Human breaths, purified by gurbani, would be her jewels. The elderly
woman who told this story attempted to confirm the sophisticate combination of form and
content in the text and the Guru’s original intention behind its reading.
458
According to a local granthi, people who read Sukhmani Sahib with regularity and a pure heart
will get a shining look on their face. When community members ask for his help in troublesome
times he usually exhorts them to read Sukhmani Sahib regularly over a fixed period, either in
solitude or in company with others.
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Published on www.anpere.net in May 2008