Thirty-second Paurī from Jap Jī Sāhib
by Guru Nānak
Reflections from Ram Singh Khalsa

"The Thirty-second Paurī pays your debts and completes your karma." - from the Teachings of the Siri Singh Sahib Yogi Bhajan (1)

The 32 nd  Paurī of Jap Jī Sāhib starts with a multiplication.  Lakh  means 100,000, and instead of writing "many" or "innumerable", Guru Nānak gives an exact calculation - so let's do the math:

ik du jībhau lakh hoh(i) lakh hovah(i) lakh vīs.
If one tongue became 100,000 tongues, and these were multiplied by 100,000, and twenty times more;

lakh lakh gayṟā ākhī-ah(i) ayk nām jagadīs.
And each one would repeat hundreds of thousands of times the Name of the One Lord of the Universe.

That's 20 x 100,000 x 100,000 x 100,000: 20,000,000,000,000,000. Twenty quadrillion: quite a lot! What kind of number could that be? What vibrates the Name of God, and is so abundant in the Universe that it needs sixteen zeros to write? We could think of planets and stars, but there are actually many more stars than a few quadrillions: now we need twenty zeros to count them. It seems that the best option here is... the average number of cells a human body has in the entire life! And when in a lifetime, at every moment, all of them have been vibrating the Nām - the inner vibration of divine identity - merging with the primal cosmic One happens.

The Siri Singh Sahib Yogi Bhajan taught us these sacred words " Ang Sang Wāhe Guru: with every limb of your body, God is! (...) God is with your every limb. Now you have ten trillion cells in you. Each cell has three parts. It means you have 30 trillion  Wāhe Guru with you! (...) It says, "One God is thirty trillion times with you"! (2)

Ang Sang Wāhe Guru, which can be poetically translated as "the dynamic, living ecstasy of the Universe is vibrating within every cell of me". The cell is the basic unit of our biological life; it is the first level where life,  Prāna, incarnates. That's why cells can multiply, from the very first one, to quadrillions of them. But as every cell receives life, it also stores history: every cell, and not only the ones in the brain, is the organic substratum, the biological ground, of the subconscious. The totality of our cells is the hard drive of personal experience. That is called "cell memory".

Therefore the chanting of  Ang Sang Wāhe Guru is recommended to anyone who wants to eliminate haunting thoughts from their subconscious: such a cleansing has to happen at the very cellular level, where the negative memories and the karmic patterns are stored.

Cell level is also where Kundalini Yoga works: it is a complete technology that reaches that level of precision and subtlety where deep and lasting change can be programmed. It goes to the very unit of your biology to install transformation and identification with truth. Through  Shabad Guru - the transformative science of effective vibrations, of combinations and permutations of sacred primal creative sounds that the Sikh Gurus mastered and taught - each cell is tuned to the others, thus creating a complete harmony of vibration. Under the right conduct of the brain glands, the whole body becomes an orchestra playing the cosmic symphony. Guru Nānak teaches that through that technology, let every cell of you, at every moment, vibrate the divine sound of Oneness: that shall lead you to God.

But in some way, this Paurī is also about the Jap Jī Sāhib itself:

ayt rāh(i) pat pavaṟī-ā chaṟī-ai ho-i ikīs
This is the elevating path of mastery, and the steps of this path lead to merger with the One:

suṉ galā ākās kī kīṯā ā-ī rīs
Hearing of such spiritual matters, even the lowest worms aspire to walk on it.

With the Mul Mantra, thirty-eight Paurī and the final  Salok, the Jap Jī is a forty-steps staircase that is taking us from the very beginning of everything -  Ek Ong Kār , "One, continuously unfolding into creation" - to collective liberation in God's glory - with the last two lines of  Jap Jī celebrating this. Many creative or transformative processes have forty stages: for instance, around thirty-eight weeks of pregnancy, plus conception and birth. Or the forty days after birth that newborns need to generate their own aura. Kundalini Yoga teaches that it takes a minimum of forty days of daily meditation to change a habit, a pattern or a negative identification.

Here, Guru Nānak suggests that the recitation of Jap Jī itself is such a process of transformation and elevation:  Ayt Rāh(i)means "this is the path". And  Pavaṟī is just another version of  Paurī - actually sounding quite the same - that means "step". Each Paurī is a step on the ladder of spiritual awakening, up to the very realization, in every cell, that it's all One.

And Guru Nānak says, hearing such spiritual, elevating, etherical things - actually, the Jap Jī itself! - even the lowest, most humble, miserable and insignificant being recognizes that there is a path, there is a possibility to grow and attain liberation.  As Guru Rām Dās says in Kīrtan Sohilā, one of the daily recitations of the Sikhs, "I am low and weak, but I am yours, o God! So save me! Save me, o Highest of the High!"

And that resonates with so many testimonies of people who embraced the path of Kundalini Yoga and the awakening lifestyle of Sikh Dharma after hearing the Jap Jī just once. That's what happened to the third Sikh Guru, Guru Amar Dās: longing to find a guru, he heard his nephew's wife - who happened to be the daughter of Guru Angad, first successor of Guru Nānak - reciting Jap Jī and that was enough for him to recognize Sikh Dharma as his path, to bow to his Guru and serve him forever.

So for people of all walks of life, let Jap Jī awaken you to the path of Spirit that your soul aligns to, whatever that path may be. Whoever you are, whatever you have done - and whatever was done to you - however miserable you might feel, walk the path of Spirit! Elevate! Climb up the ladder of grace: recite Jap Jī, and keep the company of those who do.

Bibliography

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