IB World Religions 7.4.3. Eschatology: Jot, Mukti, Hukam and the Five Khands Notes

7.4.3. Eschatology: Jot, Mukti, Hukam and the Five Khands

Rebirth and the jot

1. Sikhs hold that every living being carries jot, the divine light, and that the jot does not end when the body does. It passes into another living being unless mukti, liberation, has been reached.
2. Rebirth is governed by karam, the moral weight of what a person has done. A favourable or an unfavourable birth follows from the karma of the previous life.
3. Sikhs do not present this as a punishment system run by an accountant. They describe it as the working of God's own order, in which a life spent ignoring God is drawn back into the world it was attached to.
4. Human birth is taught to be the valuable one. The Gurus say it is reached after passing through many other forms, and that only in it can a person turn deliberately towards God.
5. That gives the doctrine its urgency. Human life is described as the opportunity, so a Sikh is taught not to spend it on haumai, self-centredness, and the collecting of possessions.
6. The goal is not a better rebirth. Sikhs aim at release from the cycle altogether rather than at a more comfortable place inside it.
7. Sikhs say little about heavens and hells as destinations. The Gurus set aside detailed maps of the afterlife and turn the question back towards how a person is living now.

Mukti and the sach khand

1. Mukti is liberation from the cycle of rebirth and union with God. Sikhs describe it as the jot entering the sach khand, the realm of truth, where God is present.
2. Union is not pictured as vanishing into nothing. The images the Gurus use are the drop merging into the ocean and the light merging into the light.
3. Those images hold two things at once. The drop is no longer separate, and Sikhs use this to say that the ego ends while what was real in the person is not destroyed.
4. Mukti is not necessarily held back until death. A person who has reached it while still alive is a jivan mukt, liberated in life, and goes on working, eating and serving like anyone else.
5. This is a distinctive Sikh emphasis. Liberation is not sought by leaving the world, and the Gurus rejected renunciation, celibacy and the life of the wandering ascetic.
6. What changes in a jivan mukt is orientation rather than circumstance. Such a person is gurmukh, turned towards God, in the middle of ordinary family and working life.
7. Sikhs therefore treat eschatology as a present question. What becomes of the jot at death is held to be settled by how a person is living before it.

Hukam and responsibility

1. Hukam is God's will, the divine order by which everything happens. Sikhs hold that Akal Purukh, the eternal being, created the universe and that it runs by hukam.
2. Japji Sahib raises the question directly. It asks how a person becomes true, and answers that it is by walking in the way of hukam.
3. The doctrine can look like fatalism, and Sikhs deny that it is. The same scripture that places everything under hukam also tells Sikhs plainly what they must do.
4. The responsibilities are definite. Sikhs are to practise nam japna, remembrance of God's name, kirat karna, earning an honest living, and vand chakna, sharing what they earn.
5. They are also required to become gurmukh, God-centred, instead of remaining manmukh, a follower of the ego. Sikhs treat that change as daily work rather than as a single decision.
6. The tension is resolved by placing freedom inside hukam rather than outside it. Accepting God's will is itself the act a person is held responsible for making.
7. The result is acceptance without passivity. Sikhs are taught to say that what happens is God's will while continuing to work, to serve and to resist injustice.

Haumai, maya and the vices

1. What holds the jot in the cycle is haumai, the sense of I and mine. The Gurus describe it as a wall a person builds between themselves and God.
2. Haumai is fed by maya, the illusion that worldly things are the real and lasting ones. The world itself is God's creation, and Sikhs do not call it evil.
3. That distinction matters for practice. Sikhs are not asked to reject the world but to stop mistaking it for the thing worth living for.
4. From haumai come the five vices: kam, lust, lobh, greed, moh, attachment, krodh, anger, and ahankar, pride. A person ruled by them is manmukh.
5. The remedy is replacement rather than withdrawal. Sikhs hold that filling the mind with nam, the divine Name, leaves haumai no room in which to work.
6. Nam simran, meditation on God, is therefore the central practice of liberation. It is done at the gurdwara, at home, and silently in the middle of ordinary work.
7. Sewa, unpaid service, attacks the same target from the other side. Serving others without reward is held to wear down the self-importance that keeps a person separate from God.

The five khands

1. Japji Sahib describes the way to God as five khands, realms or stages. Sikhs read them as a map of spiritual progress rather than as places above the sky.
2. The first is dharam khand, the realm of duty. It is the world understood as the arena where action has consequences and a person starts to live rightly.
3. The second is gian khand, the realm of knowledge. The scale of God's creation opens up here, and Sikhs describe the effect as the collapse of a person's sense of their own importance.
4. The third is saram khand, the realm of effort. Understanding is turned into disciplined work on the mind, and Sikhs say the self is reshaped at this stage.
5. The fourth is karam khand, the realm of grace. Sikhs hold that no one reaches it by effort, because entry depends on God rather than on achievement.
6. The fifth is sach khand, the realm of truth, where Akal Purukh dwells and the jot is united with God. It is the end of the cycle of rebirth.
7. Sikhs commonly say that a person can climb as far as the third stage by their own effort. The last two are held to be God's to give.

Grace and the final step

1. Gurprasad, the Guru's grace, is what admits a person to the sach khand. Sikhs hold that effort carries a person a long way and cannot carry them the whole way.
2. The Mool Mantra ends on this word. Having described God as one, timeless and self existent, it closes by saying that God is known by grace.
3. Nadar, God's glance of grace, is the other term Sikhs use for it. Both words make God the giver rather than the person the earner.
4. This does not make practice pointless. Sikhs hold that nam japna, kirat karna and vand chakna prepare a person to receive grace, even though they cannot compel it.
5. Grace may come in life or at death. A jivan mukt has received it already, while for others the jot enters the sach khand when the body dies.
6. Sikh funerals state the doctrine plainly. Cremation is followed by Ardas and by readings, and the ashes are usually placed in flowing water.
7. No monument is raised over the ashes, and this is deliberate. Sikhs hold that what mattered has gone to God, so there is no grave to visit and no shrine to build.