All knowledgeable Sikhs and students of Sikhism recognize that the ultimate goal which the religious and spiritual discipline laid down by Guru Nanak was supposed to lead to, was the experience of Sahaj. Sahaj, according to him, was indeed the last reach of human experience, beyond which lay the realm of formlessness, of inarticulation.

What is this Sahaj experience, what is its nature and character? How does one achieve it, how does one recognize it?

In common with Kabir and other sants of medieval India, Guru Nanak came to recognize and accept that religious and spiritual quest was a matter which was altogether internal to man. Negatively speaking, it was not a matter of external practices and observances of traditional forms and prescriptions of religion. Positively, it was a matter, first, of cleansing and purifying one’s heart and mind; secondly, of filling them with an intense love for - and devotion to - God, the Ultimate and the Absolute, and waiting cravingly for His grace (kirpa, prasad, daya etc.,), and thirdly, striving unceasingly for a complete, unalloyed and absolute blending of one’s individual self, or atma, with the Universal Self or Paramatma who is none other than God Himself. For each one of these stages Guru Nanak laid down certain discipline which each individual aspirant was called upon to go through to prepare himself for the final merger or blending. An analysis of these disciplines seems to indicate that what Guru Nanak was aiming at was a transformation of the individual psyche and will, by bending and directing both towards the ultimate goal of achieving the merger with the Ultimate Absolute. It was only when the soil of life was made ready that the final ascent could be made. This ascent too, was in several khands, or stages, in spiritual progress, as Guru Nanak described them; they were five in number, namely, Dharam Khand, Gian Khand, Saram Khand, Karam Khand and Sach Khand. For the purpose of this essay it is not necessary to go into an explanation and analysis of these khands; it would be enough to indicate that neither God’s grace nor the merger or blending with Him was any matter of accident, happening as if in a sudden flash. To reach upto the ultimate state of Sahaj or absolute union, merger or blending, one had to prepare himself through a rigorous process of sadhana or discipline and proceed stage by stage.

How does one recognize that one has reached the state of Sahaj; what is the nature and character of Sahaj experience?

Ascent of Spirit: Sach Khand, the last of the five khands or stages is the realm of Truth, the ultimate stage of human aspiration and experience in which one reaches a state of blending with the Absolute, a state which is beyond words, beyond articulation and can be known only in experience. It is beyond the three gunas; tamas, rajas and sattva, and is hence called the chautha pad, the fourth state. It is also called the sahaj pad, turia pad or avastha, that is, the supreme state, the param pad, the absolute state, the amara pad, the deathless state. It is a state of absolute peace and tranquillity, of changelessness since it lies beyond the cycle of birth and death, and of eternal wonder and bliss; it is also a state of ineffable glory and light radiating beyond the dasam duar or the tenth door. The Sahaj blending or merger is like the blending of the light of the individual with the light of God, like that of a drop of water in the ocean. It is a state of existence in which the atma of the individual is dissolved and absorbed in the Paramatma, and the inner duality dies within. It is variously described as sunn (sunya) samadhi, sahaj samadhi, sahaj yog, for instance, and the experience itself as mahasukh, param sukh, param anand. Indeed, the Sahaj state is not merely the Ultimate Reality, it is the Lord (Prabhu), the ultimate in-dwelling Beloved in whom one is merged or absorbed. One who achieves this state of being is described by Guru Nanak as jivanmukta, and the state itself is described as that of jivanmukti.

Unity of Spirit: The word in which this absorption or blending or merger is characterised is a very significant one; it is either samati or samauna as in sahaji samati, sahaji samauna, joti-joti samauna, sabadi samauna, sachi-samauna, for instance, the root verb in each case being sam which literally means to equalise, merge, blend, absorb, fill, pervade, unify. But from the context in which the word samati or samauna is used it is clear that what is meant is absolute absorption, unification, merger or blending in a manner so as to leave no trace or consciousness of duality or separate identity.

Apart from the characteristics of peace and tranquillity, of wonderment and bliss and of ineffable radiance by which one recognized the Sahaj state of being, Guru Nanak recognized another, that of anahad sabad, an unstuck sound which he used to experience within himself at that ultimate state of being.

All said and done, the fact remains that in whichever manner one seeks to describe the Sahaj experience, its real nature must elude understanding in humanly communicable language. The articulation of an experience which was essentially a mystical one and, hence, according to Guru Nanak himself, was incapable of being translated in communicable terms, was indeed beyond human expression, had necessarily to be in traditional mystical terms made current and somewhat understandable by his predecessors belonging to various mystic orders of sants and sadhus, and in well-known traditional symbols and images that had some meaning, howsoever vague and generalized, to those whom his words were addressed.

Sabad, the Holy Word: What I have just essayed to do is to present, as faithfully and as briefly as possible, the nature and character of Sahaj as was sought to be articulated by Guru Nanak himself at different places of his enormous corpus of sabads, or dohas and slokas. Yet is must be recognised that, the ultimate analysis, the essential nature of the experience lay in the experience of the actual absorption or union itself by one who experienced it in the lineaments of his being. That Guru Nanak was convinced that one did so by one’s senses and the mind - all physical entities - there is no scope for doubt. He is very clear, precise and definite when he says: "This body is the abode of God, His palace where-in He shines in infinite radiance. By Guru’s word one is ushered into the palace. There alone one comes face to face with God."

Was Guru Nanak absolutely original in what he said about Sahaj, its nature and character? Were the terms and concepts like sahaj, anahad sabad, samati and samauna, mahasukh, sahaj samadhi, jivanmukti, etc. and the nature of the description of the experience of Sahaj entirely his own? There are many points of similarity and divergence between Guru Nanak on the one hand, and the totality of the Indian medieval protestant and non-conformist mystic tradition, and the individual mystics belonging to this tradition, on the other. But for the purpose of this paper I shall confine myself to one concept alone, that of Sahaj, and its nature and character, of the Indian medieval mystics, considered individually and collectively, and try to find out answers to the questions I have put to myself in respect of this one particular concept.

Synthesis: One of the tallest of Guru Nanak’s predecessors, perhaps an elder contemporary, in the line of mystic sants and sadhus, and the greatest representative of what is called the Sant synthesis, was Kabir, and it was Kabir’s way of life and thought that seems to have had an impact on the life and mind of Guru Nanak, the Nathapanthi and Kanphata yogis and the leaders of the Bhakti movement, figures like those of Ramanand and Namdev, for instance, being the next formative influences on him.

But in so far as the concept of Sahaj is concerned it would be enough if we turn to Kabir and the Nathapanthi yogis in the first instance, and in the second, to the Sahajayani Buddhists and their spiritual descendants, the Sahajiya Vaishnavas and Bauls of Bengal, since all these sects and cults came to accept Sahaja as the Ultimate and Absolute reality. The Sufi saints did not accept the term, but they too conceived the Ultimate Reality in terms of the Supreme Beloved, just as Kabir and Dadu, even Guru Nanak, the Sahajiya Vaishnavas and Bauls of Bengal and other devotional sects and cults did under the impact of the Bhakti movement. The sants and sadhus of Northern India seem to have had already achieved a kind of synthesis between the Sahaja and Sufi ideas when Guru Nanak emerged on the scene of medieval Indian religious thought and activities. It must be pointed out at once that the sants and sadhus, including Kabir and Guru Nanak, were never tired of asserting that Rama or Krshna was not any historical or even a mythological person, not any incarnation of God nor even of Rama or Krshna himself; indeed he had no anthropomorphic form whatsoever. As a matter of fact they conceived their Rama or Krshna as an in-dwelling principle which was the Ultimate, formless, colorless reality immanent in man; it was none other than God himself. Sahaj experience was indeed with them God experience itself.

Kabir characterises the experience of Sahaj as the ultimate human experience of bliss and peace; he calls it sahaj samadhi which one can attain by finally arresting all the functions of the mind and hence by creating an absolute vacuity within. He therefore characterises Sahaj as suni (sunya) sahaj which he describes, just as Guru Nanak does, a state of supreme peace and bliss, of mahasukha. It was a state of absolute merger in which there was left no trace of duality. What is significant is that the term for merger or blending or union that Kabir uses is samana which is the same as in Guru Nanak. Speaking of Sahaj Kabir says : "Everybody speaks of Sahaj, but nobody knows what Sahaj really is. Sahaj really is when one gives up all his desires, keeps his senses under his full control, when his son, wife, wealth and desire are all kept aside and when Kabir becomes the maid of Rama; that is real Sahaj when one is united with Rama, that is, with the Lord, in a natural manner.

Guru’s Role: It is perhaps necessary to mention the elements that were the pre-conditions of the Sahaj experience, that is, these elements constituted the stages of preparation and of the psychological pre-condition which led to the experience of that state of peace and bliss, happiness and radiance which was called Sahaj. Negatively speaking, these were (a) sharp criticism and rejection of all external formalities in regard to religious practices and spiritual quests, and (b) protest against and rejection of priestly and scriptural authority, celibacy, penances, austerities and the like. Positively, the most important elements were (a) recognition of the Guru as essential for any spiritual exercise and quest, (b) recognition of the human body as the seat and habitat of all religious and spiritual experience, indeed of the Truth or Ultimate Reality and hence rejection of any transcendental reality external to man, and finally, (c) recognition of the experience of the Ultimate Reality as one of inexpressible happiness and ineffable radiance, waveless equipoise, absolute peace and tranquillity, and of absolute non-duality or complete unity. The Sahajayani Buddhists, the saintly poets of the Sant tradition, Kabir and Guru Nanak knew this experience of the Ultimate Reality as Sahaj; indeed the sants and Guru Nanak seemed to have received the term and concept as an inheritance from the Sahajayani Buddhists who in their turn seem to have received - not the term but - the concept of the resolution of the duality through an absolute union of two principles, one male and another female; as well as the nature and character of the ultimate experience, from the older Mahayana-Vajrayana Buddhist tradition. The Sahajayanis too, knew this experience as one of mahasukha.

Judging by the north Indian regional literatures on the Nathasiddha yogis and the variety of myths and legends connected with them, it would seem that the Natha movement was at least a pan-north Indian one, and if Matsyendranatha is regarded as one of the originators of the cult, its antiquity must be at least as old as that of the Sahajayana. Apart from a general predilection towards occult practices and acquisition of supernatural powers, the Nathasiddhas owed their religious affiliation to the Siva-Sakti cult, but their religious discipline was that of Hathayoga, which was almost an article of faith with them. Yogic practices, some-what of the nature and character of those of the Natha yogis, were common to the Sahajayani Buddhists and other esoteric sects, but with the Natha-yogis these were the most important means of achieving their goal, while with the others these constituted only one of the disciplines. With the former it was altogether physiological, while with the latter it was also a psychological discipline.

Final Goal: The most important difference lay in the ultimate goal itself. The ultimate objective of Guru Nanak was the achievement of Sahaj experience which the Sahajayanis identified with mahasukha, but the Natha-yogi objective was to attain the state of jivanmukti or immortality in life, according to their own way of life and its interpretation.

How did they propose to achieve this end? Bereft of esoteric complexities and scholastic niceties as recorded in relevant texts their position may be stated, for our present purpose, as follows:

This ordinary human body is a raw, indeed a very imperfect, a most inadequate object for the achievement of jivanmukti, that is, for freedom from bondage of decay and death, in other words, of immortality. But through the yogic processes of ulta-sadhana, that is, by making the vital fluid flow upwards instead of downwards, which is the natural physical law, and of kaya-sadhana, that is, by the disciplining of the muscles, sinews, ducts, nerves and nerve centres, as well as of the mind, through perfect control of the vital wind, this raw, imperfect body can be transformed first, into a pakkva deha or ripe body and then transsubstantiated steadily into a divya deha or divine body, which was the only way to overcome decay, destruction and death. This disciplining of the body and the mind involved, a detailed classification and analysis of the entire human physiological system so well-known in Hathayoga; it also involved according to Nathayogic interpretation, a number of theoretical postulates and actual physiological processes which have all been studied, analysed and described in some detail by competent scholars.

For our purpose, I need not go into any of these very intricate details; I need only point out that the conception of the sun and the moon - identified respectively with Sakti and Siva on the one hand and with woman and man on the other, had an important role to play in the yogic scheme of things of the Natha-yogis.

Their attitude towards - and aversion of - women was unacceptable. Even Kabir refers to women as tigresses who were always seeking men to prey upon to suck their vitality out of them. Guru Nanak derided such attitude, holding women as deserving of respect.

Sahaj & Amrit: Guru Nanak uses the term amrit, in the sense of nectar of immortality. His use of the term is found in association with the Naam, the name of God, His name being the Truth. "Whatever God has made is the manifestation of His Naam" says the Guru. "There is nothing in creation which is not such a manifestation". This Naam is veritably the amrit (=namamrita) the nectar of immortality, and it is in this sense and in this context that the word amrit is more often than not used. Nowhere do I find any yogic meaning of the term.

In common with the Sahajayani Buddhists Guru Nanak used the term mahasukha to describe the nature of the experience of the sahaj state of being, which may at once suggest a very close and intimate association with Sahajayani yogic practices, especially because he also uses the phrase sahaj yog in this context. But here too, one must take into consideration the fact that he uses the term mahasukh - not in its technical Tantric yogic meaning - but synonymously with paramsukh and paramanand, that is, in its literal sense of supreme pleasure, supreme joy and bliss. A technical term is not interchangeable, but Guru Nanak seems to have admitted the interchangeability of mahasukh with param sukh and param anand, and - by and through - this simple means he seems to have divested the term and concept of mahasukha of all its exclusive Tantric yogic significance.

Guru Nanak also uses the term and concept of jivanmukti. But here too, if one has to go by the context, he seems to have used the term in its literal sense of liberation from bondage in one’s temporal existence, and not in the Tantric sense in which the Nathapanthis used the term. Indeed, with the latter jivanmukti, which they interpreted in terms of immortality, was the ultimate objective of their spiritual pursuits, while with Guru Nanak jivanmukti was but another name of what was the Sahaj state of experience.