Bani Mahala 9 - Rag Devgandhari

Guru Teghbahadar Sahib

In the first and second compositions, Guru Teghbahadar took us from the mind to the behavior. In the third composition, Guru Teghbahadar takes us to what the world is doing. The Guru brings in a dimension of love: false love. The Guru is saying that something is not right with the way love is being expressed and experienced in the world. It seems to be false; it seems to be love that exists as a lie. Our understanding of love is a lie. Our practice of love is a lie; we are all only after our own comforts. We form relationships because they bring us comfort. Whether it is our close relationships with our spouses or our close relationships with our friends, we seek these relationships out because they make us feel better. The Guru uses these relationships because they are specifically, more often than not, the closest relationships we have. These are the relationships in which we practice love as we know it. But love as we know and practice it is a lie because we all shout “mine, mine!” We see our relationships with us at the center, and our consciousness is bound up only with our self-interest. But in the end, we have no companion. Knowing this, we still form relationships in this way. This has still become the way we operate. That false love has still become the norm. This, the Guru says, is the strange way of the world, or the surprising norm in the world: we know that no one and nothing is ours in the end, and still, we are shouting that things are ours. We know this, it is evident, and still, we do not understand. 

The Guru identifies with that frustrating experience and says I have lost strength, having given instructions every day. In the first composition, the Guru began with this; this mind does not do even a bit of what is said. And we still see that in this third composition. There comes a point when telling and teaching is not effective anymore. So, the Guru says, sing the songs of the One. Singing takes us out of cognition and into an experience. We are dealing with this primordial condition, this human condition that manifests itself in our thinking and behavior and our relationships worldwide. And still, we have not been able to understand how to grapple with it mentally, how to free ourselves in our behavior and understand our relationships. Now it is time to feel it, and singing takes us to the next level outside of this world and our cognition. If we have been able to experience the primordial struggle of the mind mentioned in the first composition, if we have been able to think through these struggles but still are not able to come to an understanding of how they change our behavior in the second composition, then, the Guru says, let us sing the songs of the One so that we may feel it on a level that is beyond cognition. There is a time to understand and learn, and then there is a time to feel. 

And we all can sing, collectively! This composition is about the world, not just one of us or our small circles and our direct relationships. This is about the world. We can all sing, and when our voices blend, it does not matter if some of us can’t carry the tune as well — the voices meld together. Even when we sing different notes, our voices tend to adjust to make harmonies. Even if people are singing different things, there is a way that sounds wrap themselves around each other. It is in this collective singing that we learn without talking. If we got a big group of people together and asked them to all talk, there would be discord. But when we are singing, there is something to that, beyond cognition, beyond teaching, beyond thinking. Can we move beyond the intellectual and begin to feel and experience this understanding about the ways of the world and the ways we practice love? Can we allow our exhausted minds to experience a new kind of knowing? Can we sing the songs of 1Ness?