THE SACRED SWORD
Every Sikh is to wear the Master’s Sword. Not his own. Kirpan is a gift from the Guru. It is not an instrument of offence or defence. It is mind made intense by the love of the Guru. The Sikh is to have a sword-like mind. It is the visible sign of an intensely sensitive soul.
The sword cuts rapidly, the mind can do so much in an instant. That common-herd mentality with its drolly dullness, with utter incapacity too fly like the Eagles of Heaven cannot live together with the sword of Guru Gobind Singh. It is but the symbol of the myriad personality of the Guru’s Sikh that knows no defeat, no disappointment, the personality that is unconquerable in its hope, in its spiritual radiance. Guru Gobind Singh says: “I will make my one dominate over a lakh and a quarter.” This dominion is of the illumined mind. The highly intensified and developed intellect naturally becomes overpowering, so much so that it becomes fascinating and attractive in a physical sense.• It gathers its own moths like the intense flame of a night lamp. The presence of a great spiritual man overpowers millions. What is mind if it has not the flash of the lightning and of the sword? All conquests in the battle-field of life are mental and moral: physical conquests are no conquests.
I think he, who wears the Guru’s sword, is a spontaneous man fully grown in His spirit. This is to say a great deal. The herd mentality wearing the Guru’s sword is as great a mockery as the lightning of oil-lamps in brass-plates before the stone idol of Jagan Nath, against which Guru Nanak sang His famous Aarti. It is no use wearing His sword, if one has not become wholly spiritual, and the animal in man has not shrunk to a petty pet, or, as St. Francis said, ‘his ass”.
Have I got the Guru’s gifts? I may have lost them. But I cannot lose my tresses, I cannot lose my iron ring. I cannot lose my sword. Because, you remember how the Fifth Master called back His disciple, Bhai Gurdas from Benaras. The disciples went as bidden and brought him back with his hands bound with a strung. Once the call of the Master was answered thus. Each one of us is called. We are of His spiritual militia. We have to wear His gifts and we are the prisoners of infinite love. These are the fetters of love, the price of our freedom.
Those who do not have that great personal love for the Guru are still out of court. But our freedom is in Him and not anywhere without Him. Do not talk to us in that strain of the Sikh preacher. These are not the symbols of a religion, not essential rites of any religious discipline. They are the signs of our being “wedded women” They are the wedding gifts from our Master, the bridegroom. He gave all these to us, and they are sacred. Superstitious? Yes, ‘but which love hath not and where at all hath love not, its own superstitions?