Chapter II

God-Power / Naam – the Word

We have to understand the God-Power with the help of spoken Names. This is our first step. Though the name is not different from the Named, yet it seems so until the Named is actually contacted. A person tastes a mango and declares that it is sweet. But one who has neither seen a mango nor tasted sugar, cannot know how sweet it is.

Thus, to realise God is of utmost importance. We have to make a beginning with spoken names. It is unfortunate that people quarrel over the different Names of God as given by the founders of the various religions. All the Names refer to the supreme Lord; and, as such, they all deserve our respect. The real thing is the Power of God to which these Names refer. That Power is Eternal Truth. It is One, will ever remain One, and is called Naam or the Word.

The Word is the source of the entire creation and can be experienced only with the help of a Satguru – True Master.

Guru Nanak has explained this point lucidly in the Jap Ji:

Whatever has come into being is the creation of the Word.

The Word is the Power that exists in the minutest speck in the universe. That is the Divine Link that connects the body with the soul. When this Link breaks, it brings about physical death. It is the same Link which sustains the universe and higher Spiritual Planes. When this Divine Link is withdrawn, there is total dissolution.

Now, the question arises, if we are connected with the Divine Link, which is the point in the body at which the two meet?

Guru Nanak tells us that the Word can be contacted after one transcends the six chakras – ganglionic centres – and has reached the aggya chakra – behind and between the two eyebrows. The Divine Link can be established only there and not anywhere else in the body.

Rishi Patanjali as also other past Saints have explained this process. When one reaches the aggya chakra after rising above the six lower chakras, one is connected with the Celestial Sound Current, the Anhat sound, and merges into Sahasrar, the first Spiritual Plane.

The Anhat sound is the Divine Link; It is the Word, or the Divine Power, which is manifested in every human being. This is the primary source of all existence.

Naam, the Word,

says Gurbani,

is invisible, unfathomable, limitless, and sweet beyond description. It has an Everlasting Divine Intoxication and Bliss. Whosoever experiences It forgets all worldly pleasures.

According to Gurbani, communion with Naam opens within a grand vista of Divine Light – the Light of God. Naam also refers to the Sound Principle – the Sound of unabounding joy.

Thus, there are two expressions of Naam – the God-Power – Light and Sound.

In the Vedas, Naam has been described as Udgit or Nad – Music of the Beyond. According to the Vedas, Nad has created fourteen spheres. Muslim sages call It the Kalma. They also believe that the Kalma has created fourteen tabaks, spheres.

Maulana Rumi once prayed:

Oh God, lead me to the place where conversation goes on without words.

Christ says:

In the beginning was the Word, Word was with God and Word was God.

The Gurbani says:

Naam has created the earth and the heaven. All Light has emanated from Naam. All creation has come into being from Naam which is resounding in all human beings.

The Word was there even before the universe came into being. The Word is thus the source of all creation.

Saints of all the religions have expressed parallel thoughts on the subject:

The Word has been the source of salvation to human beings during all the four Yugas.

Gurbani