Guru Granth Sahib is the living Guru of the Sikhs. It is the embodiment of the spirit of all the ten Gurus who came in human form. The Gurbani, the religious poetry of the Guru Granth Sahib covers the entire spectrum of life. It shows the devotee how to live life meaningfully so that the purpose of life is achieved. On the physical level, it tells you how to conduct your behaviour in society; at the mental level, it helps you understand the profound truths of life in amazingly simple words; at the emotional level, it fills your heart with love for the divine so that you remain attuned to the Creator all the time. The Guru Granth Sahib discusses mundane matters, on the one hand and, on the other, touches the peaks of mysticism and spiritualism just as easily and effortlessly.

Guru Granth Sahib is your guide, friend and philosopher. You can feel the presence of the divine spark in you in the presence of the Guru Granth Sahib. You can get answers to your questions from the Guru Granth Sahib. You can gain an understanding of life by simply reading and listening to the Gurbani. The Guru Granth Sahib is the Guru that cares for you, holds you by the hand and leads you to your goal, and makes your life comfortable in this world as well as the other world. Thus, in every sense of the word and at various levels of consciousness, the Guru Granth Sahib is the living Guru.

Guru Nanak passed on the spark of divine light to Bhai Lehna and made him Guru Angad, a part of himself. The tradition was kept alive by the subsequent Gurus. Guru Gobind Singh, the tenth Guru of the Sikhs, declared that after him the Guru would not appear in the human form. He said that from then onwards, the Guru Granth Sahib would be their Guru.‘Sab Sikhan ko hukam hai guru manyo Granth,’ he said. All the Sikhs are instructed to follow the Granth as their Guru. ‘Guru Granth ji manyo pargat guran ki deh,’ he continued to explain that the Guru Granth is the culmination of the teachings of all the Gurus. In other words, he made it clear that the Guru Granth Sahib was the embodiment of the all the ten Gurus preceding it.

In the Guru Granth Sahib, they would be able to see their Gurus who had come in the human form. In the Guru Granth Sahib, they would find answers to their questions that may rise on their spiritual or worldly path. And, in the Guru Granth Sahib, they will find the spirit of their Guru that will help them surrender themselves completely to the divine power. The Guru Granth Sahib encompasses all the qualities that each Guru individually and all the Gurus collectively professed and practised.

1. The first Guru, Guru Nanak, received the divine light and laid the foundation of the concept of the ideal man. He made a sketch of what that person should be.
2. The second Guru, Guru Angad, filled it with devotion, discipleship and surrender. He taught the real meaning of being a Sikh, a disciple, a shishya.
3. The third Guru, Guru Amardas, initiated the tradition of sharing and forgiveness. He started the tradition of langar where everyone would sit together and eat the food cooked in the common kitchen.
4. The fourth Guru, Guru Ramdas, brought in service of the poor, the suffering and the needy. He created a place where this service could be provided. He asked a Muslim to lay the foundation of the Harmandir Sahib, thereby emphasising that he made no distinction on the basis of religion.
5. The fifth Guru, Guru Arjan, brought in the virtues of compassion, self-sacrifice and total acceptance of the Divine Will. His contributions to the Guru Granth Sahib are the maximum.
6. The sixth Guru, Guru Hargobind, introduced valour and courage. Known as Miri Piri de Malik, he struck a balance between the practical and spiritual aspects of life.
7. The seventh Guru, Guru Har Rai, strengthened the tradition of langar, sadh sangat and spread the word of Guru Nanak by sending missionaries far and wide.
8. The eighth Guru, Guru Harkrishan, the child Guru, provided the healing touch to the suffering people.
9. The ninth Guru, Guru Tegh Bahadur, broke all boundaries between people on the basis of caste or religion. He sacrificed his life for the faith of others thereby setting an unparalleled example of selfless sacrifice in the world. His contributions to the Guru Granth Sahib were added by his son and the tenth master, Guru Gobind Singh, who was a perfect example of humility; he did not include his own poetic compositions in the Guru Granth Sahib.
10. The tenth Guru, Guru Gobind Singh, gave a practical shape to the followers of Guru Nanak. He baptised them formally and bestowed his own form and spirit on them. He instilled courage in them so that they would not be passive spectators only but take up arms against injustice. He created a tribe of saint-soldiers who would fight for justice and against oppression against anyone.

Guru Granth Sahib records all these qualities. While it teaches you to live peacefully, it also inspires you to do or die in the battlefield. While it instructs you to live your life in remembrance of God, day and night, all the time and with every breath, it also tells you to work hard and earn your living so that you do not become a burden on the society. All in all, it instructs you to look within and concentrate on self-improvement rather than preaching to others.

The concept of Guru is of utmost importance in Sikhism. Man, in his present state, cannot find true knowledge without the Guru. Even at the mundane level, we are incapable of teaching ourselves; we need teachers and schools and colleges to learn the basic skills and information that can help us adjust in the society. Therefore, it is not surprising that we cannot attain true knowledge without the Guru.

Guru Nanak says in Asa-di-Var:

It means that even if there were a hundred moons and a thousand suns, without the Guru it would be pitch dark. Of course, he means the darkness of ignorance. Just as darkness is the absence of light, ignorance is the absence of knowledge. True knowledge is very different from what is commonly known as knowledge. In fact, we often mistake information to be knowledge. Information can be collected from umpteen sources — books, people, environment, television, radio and now almost everything you want to know can be known from the Internet. But the one and only source of true knowledge is the Guru. How does the Guru impart such knowledge? The Guru is not just a teacher; he is much more. He creates the atmosphere around him that makes learning possible. It is the brilliance of his knowledge that creates the light around him and whoever comes close to him is blessed with it. Imagine a dark room in which light falls only through a small hole in the roof. If you remain out of the direct path of the ray of light, you will remain in darkness. But the moment you come under the ray of light, you are bathed in light and you, too, start glowing in the radiance.

What is true knowledge? We have already said that knowledge is different from information. Knowledge is also not scholarship. You may be a great scientist, a philosopher or an engineer yet you may be quite ignorant about life. Life is very vast and your area of excellence is limited. Indeed, most intellectuals miss true knowledge because they focus all their energy on a small sphere of knowledge. This is the age of specialisation, which means knowing more and more about less and less.

In a nursery class, a teacher was being very innovative when teaching the concept of blindness to three-year-olds. She told them the story of the elephant and the blind men who touched one portion of the elephant and declared what it was. The man who felt his ear said it was a fan; the man who touched his legs said it was a pole; the man who felt his trunk said that it was a snake, and so on. She told them the whole story without giving them the word blind. She wanted them to figure out the answer on their own. So, after telling the whole story, she asked, “Who were these men?” A smart young child promptly replied, “Specialists!”

True knowledge means ‘knowing through experience.’ Let me give you an example. When I talk about an apple, you get the taste of the apple in your mouth and you immediately understand what I am talking about. But for a child who has never tasted an apple, it would be very difficult to know exactly what an apple is. At best, he will understand the shape of the apple; he will feel the apple and know its texture; he will smell it and know its flavour, but he will not know its taste until he has eaten it and relished it. Now, the experience of true knowledge is not as common as apples; in fact, it is extremely rare. Gurbani says that experience of true knowledge is like gunge ki mithai. When a dumb person eats a sweet, he knows the taste in his mouth but has no means of expressing it because he cannot speak. The divine experience is somewhat like that; you know it, you can feel it, but cannot express it because you have no words to express it. Even if you coined new words to express it, no one will understand you because they have never had the same experience— they have never ‘tasted’ it. Thus, only the Guru will understand you because only the Guru can help you experience it in the first place.

Guru Granth Sahib contains the collective wisdom of not only the Sikh Gurus but of many other saints and sages who had arrived at the same truths through their personal experience. It is remarkable that Guru Arjan Dev ji, who first compiled the Guru Granth Sahib, included the writings of the Gurus and the Bhagats, regardless of their religious or social background. Truth is not the monopoly of the rich and the learned; indeed, often the illiterate and the poor are far ahead in knowing the truth. Similarly, knowledge is also not the prerogative of the old and elderly; sometimes, the young can understand profound truths more easily because they are innocent and their minds are not covered with the dust of time.

Guru Granth Sahib is unique in having compositions of sage-poets and mystics of different faiths, including those of Kabir, Baba Farid, Namdev, Jaidev, Dhanna Bhagat and Ravidas. Guru Gobind Singh, the tenth Guru, later enshrined the Holy Book as the eleventh Guru, a living testament to the bani or sayings of the Gurus.

Meticulously compiled and arranged into 5,894 hymns, the Adi Granth is set equally meticulously to 31 ragas of the classical music tradition, which has a powerful appeal to the heart as much as the mind. This setting to music forms the underlying basis of the classification of hymns into Ashtapadas or hymns of eight verses, Chhands or verses of six lines, Chaupadas or hymns of four verses. The Guru Granth Sahib is intricately divided according to ragas, the metre of the poem, the author of the poem and its ghar in which the raga is to be sung. It has a fascinating raga-mala towards the end of the Holy Text, which is an index of musical measures.

Thus, the Guru Granth Sahib is the fountainhead of knowledge, expressed in poetry and set to music. It is rightly described as ‘musicalisation of thought.’ Like a spring, it bursts forth and flows down the mountains and plains in all its glory. Like a river, it allows all the streams and rivulets to join in and flow on. And like a river, it is always flowing, always new and always the same. Not that the words change in Guru Granth Sahib but the meaning changes for the seeker as he moves on the path of understanding. The Guru Granth Sahib is the living Guru as it helps you walk on the path that leads to true knowledge; it lights up the path for you so that you are aware of the dangers on the way; it helps you cross the barriers by throwing light on the path; and it guides you to the ultimate goal. The Guru is not a subject of sight but a subject of sound. The Guru has to be heard, not seen. And, the Guru Granth Sahib is the talking Guru. The significance of the Guru Granth Sahib lies in its articulation. No wonder, kirtan and recitation are given so much importance. Kirtan is singing the Gurbani tunefully, melodiously.

Music has a way of piercing your heart like nothing else. And, when Gurbani is sung, you cannot remain untouched, no matter how rigid you are, regardless of whether you understand the language or not. Rabindranath Tagore did not understand the Gurmukhi language but he used to sit for hours in the Golden Temple listening to kirtan. He said music is universal and is not dependent on language. It is felt and understood not only by human beings but by animals and plants as well.

The historical gurudwaras have maintained the tradition of uninterrupted kirtan throughout the day. You can go in at any time and listen to the Guru’s bani being sung melodiously, and feel blessed. It is like the flowing river. All you need to do is bend down, make a cup of your hands and take a drink of the water. The living Guru is there for you, overflowing with the sound; all you need to do is to take your pitcher and fill it with pure bliss.