IB World Religions 7.4.4. Cosmology and Authority: Akal Purukh, the Guru Granth Sahib and the Khalsa Notes

7.4.4. Cosmology and Authority: Akal Purukh, the Guru Granth Sahib and the Khalsa

Akal Purukh the Creator

1. Sikhs call God Akal Purukh, the Timeless Being, and the Mool Mantra names that God karta purakh, the Creator. Creation on this account is God's own act and not the work of any lesser power.
2. The Mool Mantra also calls Akal Purukh ajuni, unborn, and saibhang, self existent. Sikhs conclude that God never takes human form, so no guru or sant is God appearing in a body.
3. The Japji Sahib, the opening composition of the Guru Granth Sahib, asks when creation began. Guru Nanak answers that only the Creator knows, and that scholars who name a date are guessing.
4. Sikh cosmology is deliberately vast. The same composition speaks of worlds beneath worlds and skies above skies, beyond counting, so no single earth sits at the centre.
5. That scale carries doctrinal weight. Sikhs take it as a reason why Akal Purukh cannot be reduced to human categories or owned by one community.

Hukam and the created order

1. Hukam is God's command and God's order at once, and Sikhs use one word for both. Everything from the shape of a body to the turn of an event is said to happen within it.
2. The Japji Sahib states that all forms come into being by hukam, that high and low standing are assigned by it, and that nothing stands outside it.
3. Hukam is therefore a claim about the universe, not only about morality. Physical regularity and human circumstance form one continuous order under one Creator.
4. Guru Nanak opens the Japji Sahib by asking how a person becomes sachiara, true, and answers in the same breath: by walking in the way of hukam. Cosmology and daily practice meet in one line.
5. Sikhs do not read this as fatalism. The tradition insists that a person may live as manmukh, turned toward the ego, or as gurmukh, turned toward the Guru.

The end of human gurus

1. Guru Gobind Singh, the tenth Guru, died at Nanded in 1708. Sikhs hold that he closed the line of human Gurus rather than naming an eleventh.
2. He is said to have installed the Adi Granth as his successor, so the scripture became the Guru Granth Sahib, the eternal Guru of the Sikhs.
3. Sikhs summarize the arrangement plainly: consult the Guru Granth Sahib for spiritual matters and the Khalsa for temporal ones. The formula Guru Granth, Guru Panth closes the Ardas.
4. The transfer is understood as continuity rather than substitution. The gurbani in the volume is held to be the same divine Word the ten Gurus uttered, so authority changes form, not source.
5. This is why Sikhs treat the volume as a presence rather than a reference book. It is installed on a manji sahib beneath a canopy, attended by day and put to rest at night.
6. The doctrine also shuts a door. Because no further human Guru is possible, mainstream Sikhs reject any claim to that office, and this is the sharpest boundary in modern Sikh disputes.

Taking a hukam nama

1. A hukam nama is literally a letter of command. The term covers edicts issued by the Gurus and, in everyday use, the verse a congregation receives by opening the Guru Granth Sahib at random.
2. The daily reading follows a set routine. After parkash, the morning installation, and the Ardas, the granthi opens the volume and reads the shabad at the top of the left page.
3. That verse is taken as the Guru's word for that congregation on that day. Gurdwaras often display it, and the hukam taken at the Harmandir Sahib in Amritsar is published each morning.
4. The same procedure supplies personal guidance. Sikhs may ask for a hukam before a decision, and at a naming ceremony its first letter gives the first letter of the child's name.
5. The tradition does not describe this as divination. Sikhs present it as putting a question to a Guru who is present, and the verse is to be understood rather than obeyed mechanically.
6. Authority here rests on the text rather than on an interpreter. Sikhism has no clergy empowered to rule on meaning, and a granthi is a reader and custodian rather than a priest.

The Khalsa and temporal authority

1. Temporal matters were left to the Khalsa, the body of initiated Sikhs. What that means institutionally has been worked out over three centuries and is still contested.
2. The Akal Takht at Amritsar, facing the Harmandir Sahib, is the traditional seat of that authority. Its jathedar issues hukamnamas addressed to the whole Panth.
3. Since 1925 the historic gurdwaras of Punjab have been administered by the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee, or SGPC. It is an elected body operating under Indian secular law, not by sacred appointment.
4. Its most consequential act was publishing the Rahit Maryada, the code of conduct approved in the 1940s after some twenty years of committee work. It remains the standard reference.
5. Outside Punjab the arrangement differs. Gurdwaras in Britain, Canada, the United States, East Africa and Malaysia are run by locally elected management committees, which own the premises and appoint granthis.
6. Sikhs therefore disagree in good faith about who speaks for the Khalsa. Some treat SGPC and Akal Takht rulings as binding worldwide, while others read them as one region's voice.

Sants and personal authority

1. Sants, holy men and women recognized for piety and teaching, hold an informal place in Sikh life. The word carries no office in the Rahit Maryada and no power to settle doctrine.
2. Their standing comes from reputation rather than appointment. A sant is followed because Sikhs judge that his or her life and exposition of gurbani merit it.
3. Some sants head a dera, a centre with its own premises and congregation. A few have attracted very large followings in Punjab and across the diaspora.
4. Sikh opinion divides sharply. Many value sants as teachers who bring people back to daily practice, while others warn that devotion to a living person sits badly with the finality of the Guru Granth Sahib.
5. The line most Sikhs draw runs between guidance and guruship. A sant may explain the scripture, but no living person may receive the reverence given to the Guru.
6. The three authorities hold each other steady. Doctrine rests with the eternal Guru, communal decisions with the Khalsa and its institutions, and personal instruction with teachers answerable to the book.