My Adventures with The True Name

You are called by Names according to your Attributes,
But Sat Naam is your foremost, essential Name.
Says Naanak, your devotees have entered your Sanctuary.
Give them your Vision. They are filled with love for You.

I continued to ponder the mystery of the True Name, examining it this way and that, until at last several years later, it started to unfold itself for me.

In my experience, I had since long been aware of how the background of English words, how they were originally used, often shed surprising light on their present useage. A word like "holy" is related to the word "hale" which means well and "inhale," not unlike the words "spiritual," "inspiration," and finally "expiration" - all of them linking the idea of sacredness with the breath, what we call "Pavan Guru." But I had never applied this methodology to Gurbaanee until one day I happened to look at a Sanskrit grammar and noticed the forms of the verb "to be." To my surprise and delight, I found there my old friend, sat in the form of a verb, third person singular, as in "she is," "he is," "it is." I also recognized that if something is, it is sat and if it is not, it is asat. In modern Punjabi also, sat means "truth" and asat means "untruth." In relation to naam, the identity, I realized that basically Sat Naam means "to truly be," "to be authentic," "to be real," and "to be true to one's self."

Of course, in English, the language of a culture known more for its conquest and technology than its philosophy, the very idea of "self" is often confused. We may say someone is "self-realized" or "self-actualized" and mean it as a good thing. Then we also say someone is "selfish" or "self-obsessed" and we mean it as a bad thing.

What is this "self" then, and what could it mean to "just be yourself?" Let us look at children, remembering that we were all children once. What qualities do we find in children's ordinary state of being? They are present-oriented, innocent, sensitive, trusting, easily satisfied, affectionate, curious, imaginative, and self-accepting. These spiritual qualities are innately theirs unless they are in some way disturbed. The very idea of not accepting her or himself for what they are is impossible for a small child even to imagine.

This spiritual state turns up again when we as adults lose ourselves in the nightly void of deep sleep. When we awake, we are fresh and, for a few seconds at least, embody the present-oriented qualities of the child. In this context, we may remember that there are four basic states of consciousness: the delusionary states of dreaming and wakeful egotism, and the spiritual states of deep sleep and enlightened awareness, turiyaa. We may regard this pure state of realized being as our True Self, our Sat Naam.

In this light, it is relevant to mention an informal study conducted by Bronnie Ware who spent several years in Australia attending to the dying. In her book, The Top Five Regrets of the Dying she describes what she found to be their biggest regret: "I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me." In her observation, Ms. Ware reinforces the Guru's message, of our need to ever live authentically, to live in our Sat Naam.

The inspired verses of Siri Guru Granth Sahib advise us that all of creation is taken up with religion, but Sat Naam alone is the realization and fulfillment of God's worship. So it is that Guru Gobind Singh Jee laments in Bachitar Natak, his account of the history of religions, for all the masters, scriptures, and prophets of the past, "No one meditated on the True Name."

Guru Nanak draws our immediate attention to Sat Naam by putting it in the Mool Mantra, at the beginning of Siri Guru Granth Sahib. Bhai Gurdas Jee also gives it prominence by mentioning Sat Naam in the very first Pauree at the beginning of his composition of forty Vaars:

I bow to the Divine Guru who gave the world the mantra of Sat Naam.
Pulling people out of the terrible ocean, he promptly gave them liberation.

After all my study and explorations, I feel that by the Grace of the Guru I am abundantly blessed with a good life and the means to share the blessing of Sat Naam. Now that I feel I better understand it, I encourage my students, people of many cultures and all walks of life to strive not to improve themselves - because by nature their selves are perfect - but rather to improve their habits of thinking, speaking and behaving so they might better cohere with their essential nature, their Sat Naam.

As a Kundalini Yoga instructor, I have taken up classes of people suffering all kinds of stress and trauma. It is under stress and trauma that we are most likely to be "beside ourselves." When these pressures are on-going and we lack the skills to cope with them, we are liable to be chronically other than ourselves. For some of us, relief from this painful duality only presents itself in the form of the temporary stupor afforded by alcohol or some other addiction.

I feel it is my great good fortune now to share with everyone exercises they can do to develop their minds and bodies, and thereby to better navigate the pressures and distractions of this world. It gives me great pleasure to recognize their progress by their smiles and the sparkle in their eyes. No make up and no cosmetic surgery can possibly replicate the beauty in their shining faces.

Those who do the hard work of meditating on the Name,
O Nanak, their faces radiate joy
And they take their holiday, bringing with them many another.