INSIDE THE GURU'S GATE - Anpere

water. An elderly Amritdhari woman, for instance, kept a small bottle of water in her
shop to cleanse herself and her son after taking food and tea from outside the house.
“We get a feeling that we have eaten tasted (jutha) food and used tasted cups so we
drink it to become pure,” she said. Adduced as an instance of impurity, her son recalled
an episode when a relative forced him to cut a non-vegetarian cake with his
dagger (kirpan). Afterwards he began to feel sick: “I felt like someone was pinning me
with a knife. I did not feel good at all. For these reasons we keep amrit. If we experience
any trouble we collect Ganga amrit from Nichibagh.” The transformative power
of this nectar is solely generated by the historical miracle of Guru Tegh Bahadur
within spatial confines. The well-water does not require the element of gurbani or
ritual preparations but perpetually store substances of the Guru’s power.
Local concepts and uses of various types of amrit thus presume that there are
several forces and factors involved in the process of transforming ordinary water to
nectar. The most significant element of any nectar is the Gurus’ words which will
produce different bio-moral effects on the recipient depending upon which verses or
sections of the scripture are recited. A comparison between different nectar shows
that considerations of the immediate space around the verbal recitation of gurbani, the
identity and representation of human agents, and uses of instruments in the preparation
will condition the particular qualities which the separate water-nectars assume
(See Figure 17). Khandevala amrit is the only nectar which manipulates and gives value
to all of these elements in order to activate agentive forces in different ways; through
the recited gurbani, the double-edged sword, the five Khalsa Sikhs who administer
the amrit, and the Guru Granth Sahib installed within a purified and controlled space.
The nectar prepared will consequently recompose the identity and self of the person
who drinks it. What the different types of amrit do have in common is that they all
presume the essentialist notion of substance transformation. The Gurus’ words and
power are transformed to fluids which the devotee ingests to achieve different gains.
By drinking amrit the individual devotee may shed disorders in social life and improve
his or her nature by taking in value-laden substances of the Guru into the body.
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Published on www.anpere.net in May 2008