INSIDE THE GURU'S GATE - Anpere

creator holds a pen by which the creation is inscribed and made manifest. God is the
active scribe (likhari) who exercises the art of writing (likhai) to make the whole universe
a text, as a self-manifestation of the divine author. “God is both the tablet, the
pen and what is written upon it,” the Guru writes. 791 The only one who remains
unwritten in the textual cosmos is the formless and invisible divine agent. 792 As a
part of this creation, humans and human conditions are depicted with similar metaphors.
In several hymns the Gurus mention the hidden fate or record engraved on
the forehead of every human born into this world. 793 Guru Nanak describes the human
body as a paper upon which God has written inscriptions that will register both
good and bad acts with the ink of the mind. 794 Humans cannot erase this engraving
since it is written in accordance with the will of God and thus follows a divine order.
With a written record of their destiny people will enter and leave this world. 795 The
wise ones will understand their fate while the foolish remain blind to what has been
written. 796 The Gurus present the divine inscriptions on humans as a karmic record
of previous and ongoing actions of the individual human life. 797 The record has been
written according to past deeds and will be the seed of virtues and vices in the present
life. 798 Only in a liberated state, when the human soul unites with God, will no
more records be written. At this moment, when there is no more birth and death, the
karmic accounts on the human destiny are torn up into nothingness. 799 As Guru
Arjan rhetorically asks: ”What can Dharmaraj do now? All my accounts have been
torn up.” 800 The human text has reached its end and the divine judge has torn the
record to pieces. 801 Like God, the human soul becomes an unwritten record when it
merges with the divine author.
In the intertextual world of local Sikhs, it is not surprising to find models of
personhood and the post-mortem destiny based on the Gurus’ textual metaphors.
Popular conceptions of the human person often highlight atma – the soul or spiritual
self ‒ that will pass through the cycle of births and rebirths, in each of which is cocooned
a body (tan, sharir) and mind/heart (man). The cycle of transmigration creates
accumulation of behavioral consequences that determine the future destiny and rebirths.
Many of my informants would talk about this predestination in terms of a
791
GGS: 1291.
792
GGS: 4, 412.
793
GGS: 74, 359,689, 1009, 1029.
794
GGS: 662, 990.
795
GGS: 636.
796
GGS: 662.
797
GGS: 763, 1110, 1169.
798
GGS: 59.
799
GGS: 79.
800
GGS: 614, 1348.
801
GGS: 697.
488
Published on www.anpere.net in May 2008