The Sixth Element Divine Consciousness in the Philosophy of Guru Nanak A Philosophical Essay

[indichawla]

The Sixth Element

Divine Consciousness in the Philosophy of Guru Nanak

A Philosophical Essay​

Abstract

This essay explores the concept of the “sixth element” in the philosophy of Guru Nanak, arguing that, even though the term does not occur in the text of the Guru Granth Sahib, it is a productive interpretive pointer that leads to a central and authentic insight about Sikh cosmological belief the fact that the five physical elements (Panch Tattva ) that make up the human being are none of them self-sufficient or self-explicatory, but rather that there is a divine animating principle whose nature is followed in the essay through four interdependent ideas. Sunn the Primal Void is defined as the unmanifest totality of the Divine, which is the precursor of the elements, and out of which they are generated. Hukm -the Will of God- is conceived of as the organising intelligence that is written in every being, the grammar of being that makes the five elements of the world rationalise into an active form of existence. The Divine Light, Jot, is the immanent being of the Creator in all his creation, transcendent at the same time as present in each grain of matter. Guru Tattva -the Principle of the Guru- is the driving force by which the Jot is acknowledged rather than merely asserted. The cosmology of Guru Nanak is placed in the essay in the context of dialogue with the intellectual inheritance, the Samkhya-system of Panch Tattva, the Atman-Brahman identity of Advaita Vedanta and the Sufi metaphysics, including the, metaphysis of Nur-i-Muhammadi, while insisting on the distinctiveness of Nanak’s position, in which the divine light is neither an abstract universal identical to the self by definition nor a distant transcendent reality, but a living relationship that must be awakened through the practice of Naam Simran. A concluding hermeneutical section cautions against hardening the sixth-element metaphor into doctrine, arguing that its value lies precisely in its capacity to return the reader to the Gurmukhi text itself, to the devotional language of the Guru Granth Sahib as the irreducible ground of all inquiry into Sikh thought.

Sabh mai jot, jot hai so-e.

“In all is the Light, that Light is He.”

— Guru Nanak, Guru Granth Sahib​

I. The Question Behind the Question​

There is a peculiar hazard in the phrase “sixth element.” It invites literalism. The mind, conditioned to enumerate, earth, water, fire, air, ether, immediately reaches for a sixth entry in the list, something discrete, something nameable in the same register as the others. But Guru Nanak’s entire philosophical enterprise was a sustained resistance to exactly this kind of enumeration, to the assumption that the Divine could be itemised, catalogued, or appended to any list whatsoever.[1] However, the question will remain, and reasonably so, because it deals with something tangible. When we talk of a “sixth element” in the doctrine of Guru Nanak, we are trying to give a name to that which the five elements cannot possess, a living source over them, a presence without which the five elements are lifeless matter, a light which not only impregnates the body but is in its very essence. This sort of naming is difficult, inaccurate and constantly tends to shrink the infinite to the finite. However, the effort per se is a form of devotion, and as Guru Nanak taught, no worship ever goes to waste.[2] This essay is an exploration of that attempt. It draw of Guru Granth Sahib, on Japji Sahib and particularly on Maru Sahib, the philosophical concepts of Sunn, Hukm, Jot, and Guru Tattva, and on the broader intellectual background in which the concept of a sixth element provides us with some insight into the nature of the divine reality to which Guru Nanak thought emerged, including its dialogue with both the Vedic and the Sufi traditions. It seeks to understand what the concept of a “sixth element” disclosed about the nature of the divine. It is not item number six on a list, as we shall see. It is a totally different kind of thing, -a presence which does not sit alongside the elements but beneath them, within them, and beyond them simultaneously. It is the ground that makes the list possible. It is, according to the language of Nanak, the Jot: that Divine Light, which pervades over all the creation, and breathes life into every creature that breathes



II. The Five Elements in Sikh Cosmology



To understand what the sixth element might be, we must first understand the five. One of the oldest frameworks in South Asian cosmological and philosophical thought is the concept of Panch Tattva, or the five elements. It is found in the Samkhya school of Hindu thought, in Ayurvedic medicine, in Jain cosmology, and in some of the branches of Sufi metaphysics. The history of Sikhism dates back to the Vedic era. By the time Guru Nanak was born in 1469 CE, the Panch Tattva framework was deeply embedded in the intellectual life of the subcontinent that any serious thinker had to work with it, either by accepting it, altering it, or modifying it, or transcending it.[3] In the traditional Indian doctrine, these five include: prithvi (earth), jal (water), agni (fire), vayu (air), and akash (ether or space). They represent, in ascending order of subtlety, the spectrum of physical existence from the grossest material substance to the finest vibrational field. They are all together and make up all that can be perceived, measured, or sensed. The human body, under this framework, is perceived as a combination of these five, a temporary assembly that will eventually dissolve back into the elements from which it was gathered.[4] This framework was accepted by Guru Nanak, though he radically transformed it. The body itself is mentioned many times in the Guru Granth Sahib as being made of the five elements, often called panj tatv ka jorhaa (an assembly of five elements), although an important caveat is always added: the assembly itself is not self-sustaining. To be alive, it needs something other than itself. Left to themselves, the five elements are incapable of love, devotion, or the longing of the Divine that Gutu Nanak placed at the centre of human existence.[5] The Guru Granth Sahib states this concept quite bluntly: "This body is earth, it speaks through the breath of air, but it is the Inner Light that holds the court within."[6] The court, consciousness, awareness, and the parliament of the soul belong to something completely different from the body, which is one of the five elements. For lack of a better term, we refer to that other object as the sixth element. It’s crucial to recognise what Guru Nanak was not saying. He was not arguing that physical existence is a prison from which the soul must flee, that the body is bad, or that the elements are to be escaped. This would be the stance of several dualistic schools of thinking, both in medieval Sufism and the Hindu tradition.[7] Guru Nanak's perspective is, in some respects, more nuanced and subtle, and more demanding: the elements are real, God created them, God sustains them, and they are profoundly manifestations of God. Our failure to acknowledge the divine presence within our bodies is the issue, not our embodiment. The five components are not obstacles; they are, when properly understood, a scripture in themselves.



III. Ik Onkar and the Nature of Divine Creativity



Any exploration of Guru Nanak’s cosmology must begin where the Guru Granth Sahib itself begins: with the Mool Mantar, the root declaration, the seed from which all teaching grows.[8]

Ik Onkar, Sat Naam, Karta Purakh, Nirbhau, Nirvair, Akal Murat, Ajuni, Saibhan, Gur Prasad.

“One Universal Creator, Truth is His Name, He is the Doer of all, Fearless, Without enmity, Timeless in form, Unborn, Self-illumined, Known by the Guru’s grace.”​

Each word of the Mool Mantar is a philosophical position.[9]



Ik Onkar. the numeral One joined to the symbol Onkar, asserts not merely monotheism but something more radical: the oneness of existence itself. There is one reality, and everything that appears to be multiple, plural, or diverse is an expression of that one reality.



Karta Purakh, the Doer, the Creative Person, asserts that this One is not merely an abstract principle but an active, creative presence. The universe is not an emanation that happened by necessity or accident; it is the expression of a living will.



Akal Murat, Timeless Form, is perhaps the most philosophically arresting phrase in the Mool Mantar. It asserts that the Divine has form (Murat) but that this form is not bounded by time (Akal). This is neither purely formless Brahman in the Advaitic sense nor a personal God with a fixed shape. It is something in between, or rather, something that transcends the opposition between form and formlessness. Guru Nanak was not interested in resolving metaphysical disputes on the terms already set by existing philosophical schools. He was declaring a different kind of knowing altogether.[10]



Saibhan, self-illumined, self-existent, completes the picture. The Divine does not derive its existence from anything else. It is its own source, its own light, its own cause. And it is this self-luminosity that becomes, in Guru Nanak’s teaching, the very substance of the ‘sixth element.’ The Jot, the Divine Light, is not something God projects outward like a lamp illuminating objects at a distance. It is what God is. And when that light enters creation, it does not diminish; it is fully present in every form that arises from the One.[11]



IV. Sunn: The Primal Void Before the Elements



Perhaps the most striking portion of the entire Guru Granth Sahib, is the cosmological section of the Maru Solhe (in Raag Maru) where Guru Nanak elaborates upon the state of reality before creation with such detailed description and philosophical intensity that has few parallels in the religious literature of the period. It is here that the concept of Sunn, the primal and absolute void, is given its most extensive and sustained treatment.[12]

Sunn is one of the most difficult concepts in Guru Nanak’s lexicon precisely because it resists translation. The word is sometimes rendered as ‘void,’ sometimes as ‘silence,’ sometimes as ‘emptiness.’ But none of these English words captures what Guru Nanak means.[13] Sunn is nothing. It is not an absolute lack of things. It is the totality of the Unmanifest, in which the possibility of all creation is present, but which has not yet been actualised or yet taken form. It is the silence which contains all sound; the darkness which is before and encompasses all light; the stillness in which all moments waits.

Arbad narbad dhundhookaara. Dharan na gagana hukam apaara.

“For endless eons, there was only utter darkness. There was no earth, no sky—only the infinite Hukam.”​

The verse indicates what the situation was before creation with great economy: darkness, immensity, vastness, and the Hukam, the Divine Command, as the only reality.[14] It is to be noted what is present in this pre-creation situation: not matter, not light, not five elements, and not time of any sort, but the Hukam. The Divine Will is what is present before anything else. It is the source of all sources. This has profound implications for how we understand the relationship between God and creation. If the Hukam is what precedes everything, including the five elements, then the five elements are not co-eternal with God. They are expressions of God’s will, brought into being by the Divine Command. They are, in the most literal sense, made of God’s creative intention. And if that is the case, then the ‘sixth element’, the animating divine presence, is not added to the elements from outside; it is the very creative force that called them into being and sustains them in every moment of their existence.

Jaa tis bhaanaa taa jagat upaa-i-aa.

“When it pleased Him, He created the world.”

​

The words “when it pleased Him” are not used casually.[15] They hint at the complete freedom of the act of creation by the Divine; there was no compulsion from without, no pre-existing material to shape, no necessity that compelled creation to come into being. The world was created as an act of divine pleasure, an act of what might be termed creative joy. And if creation is an expression of divine joy, then the elements themselves are infused with the mark and signature of that joy, a signature that might be termed the Jot, the Divine Light. Sunn, then, is not the absence of God, but the presence of God before form. It is God unmanifest. The five elements presented God manifest. And the Jot, the animating consciousness in all things, represents for the continuity between the two states, the continuity of divine presence from the Primal Void through the act of creation itself, and on down to the smallest grain of earth, every drop of water, every flicker of flame, , every current of air, every expanse of sky.

V. Hukam: The Divine Will as Inner Intelligence​

If Sunn is the state before creation and the five elements are the substance of creation, then Hukam is the principle that governs the relationship between the two. Among the most prominent and least understood elements of the philosophy of Guru Nanak is the Hukam, the Divine Command or Divine Will. Hukam is a word that comes from the Arabic hukm, which carries the meaning of judgment, authority, or command, and which enters the vocabulary of Guru Nanak through the tradition of Sufi intellectualism, which was very influential in the Punjab of its time. In the metaphysics of the Sufis, the divine command, or hukam, is the way in which God creates things, fiat lux, in Islamic cosmology. It is a notion that is taken by Guru Nanak and developed by him into a richer and more subtle than a simple act of divine speech.

Hukam rajaa-ee chalnaa, Nanak likhiaa naal.

“O Nanak, walk in accordance with the Divine Will—this is written with you.”​

The words ‘written with you’ are evocative. The Hukam is not an external command, issued from a distant divine throne. It is inscribed within each being; in a sense, it can be said to be the deepest layer of what a being is. To live in accordance with the Hukam is not to live in accordance with an external law, but to align with one’s own s deepest nature, which is itself a manifestation of divine will.[16] And this understanding of Hukam is immediately relevant to the question of the sixth element. If Hukam is indeed the inner intelligence of creation, the principle that guides not just the laws of nature but also the very nature of each being, then it is precisely this which we are looking for, the non-physical principle that animates and organises the five physical elements. The Hukam is not a sixth element in the sense of a sixth physical substance. It is, rather, the guiding intelligence that organises the five elements into a coherent, living system.

Take, for example, the human body. It has earth (bones and flesh), water (blood and fluids), fire (metabolism and digestion), air (breath and movement), and ether (space within and between). What integrates these elements into a unifying and functional whole? What integrates them in their unique proportions, their unique characteristics and patterns, their unique capacity for homeostasis, to heal, to grow? We might think of DNA and cellular activity in contemporary biological language. In Guru Nanak’s terms, we would speak of the Hukam, the Divine Will expressing itself as the inner intelligence of each living being.[17] Thus, the Hukam is not outside the elements; rather, it is the unifying principle by which the elements cohere to form life. It is the grammar of existence, not a word in the vocabulary of creation, but the rules by which all the words are arranged to form meaningful sentences. And since the Hukam is an expression of the will of God, it bears within it the signature of the Divine. To perceive the Hukam operating within creation is, for Guru Nanak, a form of direct perception of God.



VI. Jot: The Divine Light Within All



Of all the concepts embodied by the symbolic sixth element, the Jot, the Divine Light, is the luminous, the most intimate, and the most central to the devotional vision of Guru Nanak. It is the notion by which the abstract metaphysics of Sunn and Hukam is translated into the realm of personal encounter, personal lived experience, the personal discovery by the heart of its own source.

Sabh mai jot, jot hai so-e. Tis dai chaanan sabh mai chaanan ho-e.

“In all is the Light—that Light is He. By His radiance, everything is illuminated.”

​

This verse may be the single most important of all in summarising what we are calling the sixth element.[18] The logic here is circular in the best sense, a circularity that marks a complete truth, not a fallacy of tautology. The Light is in everything, everything is illuminated by Light, and the Light is God. There is no break in the chain, no point where God ends and creation begins. The Light is at once transcendent (for it is God himself) and immanent (for it is within everything).

The Jot is not, in Guru Nanak’s view, what is known in Advaita Vedanta as Atman. The Atman in Advaita Vedanta is by definition identical with Brahman. The separation between the individual soul and universal consciousness is simply an illusion (maya), and liberation lies in recognising their true and pre-existent identity. Guru Nanak’s view is rather more complex. The Jot is divine light implanted in creation by an act of Hukam. It is a gift, a presence, a grace, not an identity that one possesses by definition, but a relation to be awakened. The distinction is of enormous significance for understanding the sixth element. If the Jot is simply the Atman, the self-evident divine nature of each being, then there is nothing to do, nothing to seek, no journey to undertake. But Guru Nanak’s whole message and teachings are based on the assumption and reality of the journey, of the seeking, of the transformative power of devotion. The Jot is in all things, it is true, but it can be obscured. It can be veiled by haumai, or ego-consciousness, the self-referential consciousness that mistakes its own separateness for reality.[19] In a sense, Haumai is the antithesis of the sixth element. Haumai is the state wherein the five elements mistake they are the entire universe, wherein the body thinks it is complete by itself, wherein the individual ego loses sight of its source. The path prescribed by Guru Nanak is Naam Simran, simply remembering the Divine Name, is the path wherein one lets go of Haumai so the Jot to shine through the five elements without obstruction.[20] How does it feel when the Jot shines through? Guru Nanak does not describe this feeling abstractly; instead, he uses the imagery of light, dawn, the rise of the sun, the lamp in darkness. It is the sense of recognition, the realisation that the sought-after thing was already present. It is a sense of coming home, not going to a new destination. The sixth element was already present within the five; it only seemed to be missing because the Haumai had impaired and dimmed one’s vision.



VII. Guru Tattva: The Principle That Activates the Sixth



There is one more dimension to the sixth element that must be explored: the role of the Guru. In Sikh philosophy, the Guru is not merely a teacher, a guide, or a historical person. The Guru—understood as Guru Tattva, the Principle of the Guru, is the active means by which the Divine Light within the individual is awakened, activated, and brought into full consciousness.25 Guru Nanak is quite explicit on this point. The Guru is the bridge between the individual and the Divine, not because the individual lacks anything in and of themselves, but because the individual, lost in haumai and the illusions of the world, cannot find the way on their own. The Guru gives what the five elements cannot: the specific quality of illuminating wisdom that reveals the Jot within.

Gur bin ghor andhaar, Guroo bin samajh na aavai.

“Without the Guru, there is deep darkness; without the Guru, understanding does not come.”

​

The darkness here is not the darkness of Sunn, the Primal Void that is pre-creation and that contains within it the fullness of God. The darkness here is that of haumai, the darkness of self-enclosure and of forgetting. The Guru is the lamp that dispels this darkness, not by adding anything new to the individual but by revealing what is already there. In the larger context of spiritual traditions of Guru Nanak’s time and place, the concept of Guru Tattva had Hindu as well as Sufi implications.[21] In Hindu tradition, it is the guru who imparts the sacred mantra, the liberating word that awakens the sleeping consciousness of the disciple. In Sufi tradition, it is the murshid (spiritual master) who is the embodiment of the awareness of the divine presence and who can transmit it to the disciple by love and proximity. Guru Nanak draws on both traditions while transforming them.For Guru Nanak, the final form of the Guru is not any human being, including the guru himself, but the Shabad, or the Divine Word. The Shabad-Guru is the living presence of God as sacred utterance, and it is the Shabad that awakens the Jot within the devotee.[22] The Guru Granth Sahib, which contains the Shabad of Guru Nanak and the subsequent Gurus, as well as the compositions of Hindu bhaktas and Sufi saints, is the living form of the Guru, the eternal Shabad made available to all who seek it with sincerity. This is the reason for the importance of the concept of Guru Tattva in the understanding of the sixth element. The sixth element, the Jot, the divine light, is not self-activating in the individual human being. It requires the Guru, the Shabad, the sacred word of God, the luminous teaching, to awaken it. The Guru Tattva is the sixth element in made active, not the light itself, but the turning that allows the light to be seen.



VIII. The Sufi Resonances: Ishq and the Light of Creation



No discussion of the philosophical vision of Guru Nanak can be complete without an acknowledgement to the deep resonance between the thought of the Sikh founder and the tradition of Sufism. The world in which Guru Nanak lived and taught was a world in which Sufism was a living, breathing tradition, a world in which the dargahs of the great masters were the centers of spiritual practice and intellectual ferment, a world in which the poetry of Rumi, Hafez, and the Indian Sufi masters was the very air that one breathed simply by being present in the Punjab of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.[23] The Sufi concept most directly related to the sixth element is that of Nur-i-Muhammadi, the Light of Muhammad, conceived of by Sufis as the first creation, the very luminous principle through which all subsequent creation came into being. This school of thought, as developed by such thinkers as al-Hallaj and Ibn Arabi, holds that the light of God is not an attribute of God but rather the very medium of creation, the substance by means of which the unmanifest becomes manifest.[24] The similarities to Guru Nanak’s Jot are striking and almost certainly not accidental. Jot, like Nur, is the divine light that precedes and constitutes creation. Jot and Nur are equally described as being the cause and substance of creation at the same time and are equally described as being all-encompassing, pervading all things and being within all forms of existence. Jot and Nur are equally accessible to the purified heart. The difference lies in the specific frameworks within which these concepts are embedded. Nur-i-Muhammadi is described within Islamic theological categories, while the Jot is articulated in the idiom of Guru Granth Sahib, but even at this level, they show a similar intuition.[25]

This similarity is not merely one of academic interest. It suggests the shared mystical understanding, an understanding that there is one single luminous principle behind the multiplicity of creation, and that this principle is not separate from the Absolute, but the most accessible face. For the Sufi, the means of accessing the light within oneself is the practice of remembrance (dhikr), and for the Sikh, the same is the practice of remembrance (Naam Simran). The object of the practice, for both the Sufi and the Sikh, is not the annihilation of the self, the replacement of the contracted, ego-bound self with a self-expanded to include the divine light at its centre. It must be noted that the word ishq, or sacred love, the intensity of the soul’s longing for the Divine, is repeatedly used in the Guru Granth Sahib, including in the writings of Guru Nanak himself.[26] Ishq, in the Sufi tradition, is not merely an emotion, but an ontological force, a cosmic principle that propels the soul towards its source, as iron filings are attracted to a magnet. In the context of the sixth element, ishq can be seen as the soul’s recognition of and movement towards the Jot within, the love that the light within us feels for its own source.



IX. Creator and Creation as One: The Unity Behind the Five



We have now considered the sixth element from several different points of view: as Sunn (Primal Void preceding the elements), as Hukam (Divine Will that organises and animates them), as Jot (Divine Light that permeates them), and as Guru Tattva (activating principle that makes the Jot to be recognised). We now need to bring all of this together to form a coherent and unified picture. Guru Nanak’s profoundest statement on the relation of God to creation is given in the most compact expressed form in one of the many variations on this phrase that appear throughout the text: Saccha Sahib, sach naa-e, True is the Master, True is His Name. The word sach, truth, is doing an enormous amount of philosophical work here.[27] In Punjabi, "sach" means not only factual accuracy but ontological reality: that is, that which exists, that which is not illusion, that which persists even when the conditions for its appearance are removed.

Jis te upjiaa, tis mahi samaavai.

“From whom it arose, into Him it merges again.”

​

This single line encapsulates the entire cosmological arc of Guru Nanak’s teaching.[28] Creation arises from God; God sustains it; it merges back into God. The five elements do not exist independently of this arc. They arise from the Primal Void, which is God unmanifest; they are animated by the Divine Light, which is God present within creation; and they return, at the end of their particular cycle, to the One from whom they came. The sixth element, when seen in this way, is not an external addition to the five elements. It is the continuous divine presence that runs through the entire arc, from Sunn to manifest creation and back again to Sunn. It is the thread linking beginning to end, the unmanifest to the manifest, the Creator to creation. It is what gives the whole arc coherence, ensuring that creation is not a random scattering of matter but an expression of divine intentionality. This has a crucial implication for how we understand ourselves. If the sixth element, the Divine Light, is present within the five elements of which we are composed, then we are not merely physical creatures who happen to have souls. We are, at our deepest level, expressions of the divine creativity. The Jot within us is not a guest in the house of the five elements; it is the host, the very reason the house was built. This metaphysics is the direct stream of the practical teaching of Guru Nanak. But when we have the divine light within us, the most important thing we can do is not to seek God in some distant realm but to find God within us and within all creation. This discovery does not necessitate the rejection of the world, but a certain type and quality of attention, which sees the light behind all surfaces, hears the Shabad behind the noise of the world, that recognises in every human face the same Jot that shines within oneself

X. The Hermeneutical Caution: Metaphor and Doctrine​

Throughout the essay, ‘the sixth element’ has been treated as an effective metaphor, a way of referring to something that resists direct articulation. It is crucial, as we reach our conclusion, to be clear about the status of this metaphor and to distinguish between metaphor and doctrine.[29] The Guru Granth Sahib does not contain the phrase ‘sixth element.’ It does not enumerate a sixth tattva in addition to the five physical elements. Any use of the phrase in connection with the teachings of Guru Nanak is an interpretation, an attempt to bring a concept from one framework (the enumeration of elements) into contact with a concept from another framework (the divine presence within creation) to produce illumination This is legitimate and even valuable as long as it is done with full awareness of what is doing. The danger is that the metaphor has become doctrine; that the sixth element has become a technical term within a theological system, when it is treated as if Guru Nanak himself used it, or when it is used to subordinate the actual language and imagery of the Guru Granth Sahib to an external conceptual framework.[30] The Granth Sahib is not a philosophical treatise, though it contains profound philosophy. It is primarily a work of devotion, of the heart’s encounter with the Divine, and its language is the language of that encounter: intimate, paradoxical, multi-layered, resistant to systematic reduction. The most candid opinion that can be made with respect to the sixth element is this: it is a helpful pointer, not a definition in a strict sense. It indicates the divine animating principle that Guru Nanak recognised as ground of the very existence, the Jot, the Hukam, the Sunn-to-manifest arc of divine creativity. Nevertheless, the thing it points at is not the pointer. The map is not the territory. And the sixth element, as an concept, is most useful, when it returns us to the verses of the Guru Granth Sahib itself, to the Gurmukki in which they were written, to the devotional tradition of Naam Simran tradition which they have been practised over the last five and a half centuries.



XI. The Lived Experience: Naam Simran and the Recognition of the Jot



Philosophy is not an academic school of thought in the tradition of Guru Nanak. It ever serves to liberation, to mukti, the emancipation of the soul which has acknowledged his own divinity and is no longer in the illusions of haumai. All the metaphysical structure we have been considering, Sunn, Hukm, Jot, Guru Tattva, is not an end in itself bit a preparation for the practice of Naam Simran: the remembrance of the Divine Name.[31] Naam Simran has been simply described as a repetition of the name of God, that is, Waheguru, the Sikh sacred name or Mool Mantar, or of certain divine attributes. But it is far more profound than a mere description suggests. To Guru Nanak, the Naam, the Name, is not just a name that is attributed to God. It is a first-hand experience of the divine reality. Remembering the Naam is remembering what one truly is; to repeat the same is to align one’s consciousness with the light of the divine that already exists and is present within.[32]

Naam jinaa kai man vasiaa vaaje shabad ghanere.

“Within the minds of those in whom the Naam abides, the celestial music of the Shabad resounds.”​

The image of the heavenly music is not ornamental. According to the cosmology of Guru Nanak, the Shabad the Divine Word is a vibration, a sound, the primordial resonance of creation out of which all creation emerges. On the most basic and fundamental level, the five elements consist of vibrations of the Shabad. And when the Naam abides within the mind, when the practitioner of Simran quietens the noise of haumai, the Shabad is heard not as an external sound but as the inner music of creation itself.[33] This is the experiential aspect of the sixth element. It is not a theological stance held in the mind, but it is the direct perception of the divine light within all thighs, a perception available. Guru Nanak asserts, can do so to anyone who approaches the practice with utmost sincerity, humility and love. The sixth component is not reserved for philosophers, scholars, or spiritual virtuosos. It is a prerogative of all human beings, stipulated in the very constitution of the soul, by the divine act of creation. The Japji Sahib, upon which every Sikh commences his day, is in itself a progress toward this recognition.[34] The thirty-eight pauris (stanzas) and slokas of it take the way over to the declaration of Ik Onkar up to the exploration of Hukam, the nattier of the true realm, the gradations of spiritual progression, and finally to the vision of the divine court, the darbar, where the whole creation is observed in true light. The path of the Japji is the path to the recognition of the sixth element: the movement of the surface of the five elements to their luminous source.

XII. The Dissolution and Return: Elements Back to the One​

In case creation is the transition of Sunn to manifest form: of the Primal Void to the five elements, then the opposite of creation is death and dissolution, a return movement: the movement in the opposite direction: the manifest form back to the One where everything originated. Guru Nanak does not talk of this homecoming with the fear with which so much traditional theological talk about death, but with something more like a gladness of homecoming, the homecoming of the traveller who has finished a long journey and feels the lights of the home in the distance.[35]

Jo aa-i-aa so chalasee sabh ko-ee aa-ee vaaree.

“Whoever has come shall depart; all must take their turn.”

​

The phrase ‘take their turn’ is indicative of no dismal accounting but of a structured, even elegant partaking in the order of creation and giving back. These five elements united to constitute this one life, this special particular body; and they will dissipate into space when Hukam decrees it; and the Jot, the divine light, will not be extinguished by this dispersal. The Jot is not part of the elements but rather a part of the One out of whom it originated, and of whom it returns.[36] To the soul which has recognised the sixth element, that has, by Naam Simran and by the grace of Guru, seen the Jot in the five elements, death is not a catastrophe, but a completion. The recognition of the divine light within oneself during one’s lifetime transforms one’s experience of dissolution at the end of life. The elements, the Light, the individual consciousness, purified of haumai, merge into the divine consciousness from which it, originality emerged. And it is this, Guru Nanak refers to as Sachkhand, the True Realm, the realm of truth, the divine domain where the liberated soul passes.[37] It is not a physical location but a state of consciousness, the realm where the Jot is completely realised, fully experienced, not masked by haumai or the opacity of unrecognised maya. The sixth element, in his full realisation, will dissolve into the One not by the cessation of existence, but by the recognition that it was not originally distinct from the One to begin with.



XIII. Conclusion: What the Sixth Element Teaches Us



We started this essay with a question--what is the sixth element in the philosophy of Guru Nanak? and we have arrived, I hope, not a neat answer but a richer question. The sixth component is not a commodity or a thing. It is a relationship, the relationship of the Divine and the creation, of the Creator and the creature, between the Primal Void and the manifest world, the Jot and the five elements in which it inhabits and animates. It teaches us, in the first place, that the world does not lie forsaken by the Divine. God is not a craftsman who created the universe and then watched it carefully without approaching it. God is the Jot in all the atoms of the creation, the Hukam in all the processes, the Sunn out of which all forms emerge and in which all forms return. God did not make the universe; it is God’s expression.[38] It educates us secondly that we are not what we believe we are. These five elements that we consist of are not the innermost and deepest identity; they are the instruments through which our deepest identity, the Jot, the divine light, has its specific manifestation in this life, in this body, in this place and time. It is the haumai which confounds the instrument with the musician, the cause of all misery and suffering; the recognition of the Jot within is the root of all liberation. It teaches us, third, that the way to this recognition is not an isolated nor solitary. The Guru the Shabad, the divine word, the living tradition of Naam Simran is the instrument with the help of which the Jot in oneself is activated, recognised, and awakened to full consciousness. The sixth element never vanishes, it is the Guru Tattva and makes it visible.

And it teaches us, finally, that the line differentiating the sacred and secular, the divine and the mundane, the spiritual and the physical is not a distinction that Guru Nanak would have recognised The five elements are not a prison which the soul needs to escape. They are the medium through which the Jot expresses itself, the instrument through which the divine music of the Shabad sounds.. To honour the body, to live consciously, to see the Jot in all faces one looks at, this is no lesser spirituality; this, in the eyes of Guru Nanak, is the supreme form available to us as embodied beings.

The sixth element, finally, is not beyond the five. It is in and within them, as in light within colour, as in music is within sound, as in truth within language. To feel it is not to leave the world but to see the world truly, that is to see it as an expression of the One, animated by the one, returning to the One in every breath.

Waheguru — Wondrous is the Lord​

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[1] The resistance to enumeration as a philosophical stance in Guru Nanak’s thought is examined in W. H. McLeod, Guru Nanak and the Sikh Religion (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), 148–162. For the broader problem of translating Indian cosmological frameworks into Western categorical schemes, see Wilhelm Halbfass, India and Europe: An Essay in Understanding (Albany: SUNY Press, 1988), 263–285.
[2] On the role of devotional longing (viraha) as epistemological evidence of divine origin in Sikh thought, see Nikky-Guninder Kaur Singh, The Name of My Beloved: Verses of the Sikh Gurus (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1995), 1–28.
[3] For the Panch Tattva across Samkhya, Ayurvedic, Jain, and Nath Yogi traditions, see David Gordon White, The Alchemical Body: Siddha Traditions in Medieval India (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 37–65. On the intellectual milieu of Guru Nanak’s Punjab, see J. S. Grewal, Guru Nanak in History (Chandigarh: Panjab University, 1969), 1–27.

[4] Gerald James Larson, Classical Sāṃkhya: An Interpretation of its History and Meaning (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1979), 186–210, provides the standard account of the five elements in Samkhya. For the ascending order of subtlety from gross to subtle, see also Kapila Vatsyayan, ed., Prakrti: The Integral Vision, vol. 1 (New Delhi: Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, 1995), 44–58.
[5] For a systematic survey of the phrase panj tatv ka jorhaa across the Guru Granth Sahib, see Sher Singh, The Philosophy of Sikhism (Lahore: Sikh University Press, 1944), 117–138. Sher Singh's treatment remains one of the most careful discussions of the body in Sikh thought in the secondary literature.
[6] The verse “Ih tan maati, boleya pawan. Andar jot, ta suni divan” is from the Guru Granth Sahib. The image of the divine darbar (court) within the body appears across multiple compositions. For its significance in Sikh cosmology, see Pashaura Singh, The Guru Granth Sahib: Canon, Meaning and Authority (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000), 71–85.
[7] On dualistic strands in medieval Sufism that positioned the body as obstacle, see Annemarie Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1975), 152–176. For the contrast with Guru Nanak’s embodied theology, see Daljeet Singh, Sikhism: A Comparative Study of Its Theology and Mysticism (New Delhi: Sterling Publishers, 1979), 88–108.
[8] Gurinder Singh Mann, The Making of Sikh Scripture (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 21–42, provides the most rigorous recent account of the Mool Mantar's textual history and its function as the generative root of the entire Granth.
[9] The philosophical analysis of each term in the Mool Mantar is undertaken in detail in Daljeet Singh, Essay on the Authenticity of Kartarpuri Bir and the Integrated Logic and Unity of Sikhism (Patiala: Punjabi University, 1987). For Ik Onkar specifically as asserting the oneness of existence rather than mere monotheism, see Arvind-Pal S. Mandair, Religion and the Specter of the West: Sikhism, India, Postcoloniality, and the Politics of Translation (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), 212–234.
[10] On the concept of Akal Murat and its resistance to both Advaitic and theistic categorization, see Harbans Singh, The Heritage of the Sikhs (Delhi: Manohar, 1985), 28–42. For the broader philosophical context of transcending form/formlessness dichotomies in Indian thought, see J. N. Mohanty, Reason and Tradition in Indian Thought (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), 201–219.
[11] The claim that the divine light is fully present within each created form is analysed in relation to panentheism in Nirbhai Singh, Philosophy of Sikhism: Reality and Its Manifestations (New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers, 1990), 78–94. See also McLeod, Guru Nanak and the Sikh Religion, 192–207.
[12] The cosmological verses of the Maru Solhe appear in the Guru Granth Sahib in the Raag Maru section. For detailed analysis, see Surindar Singh Kohli, A Critical Study of Adi Granth (New Delhi: Punjabi Writers' Co-operative Industrial Society, 1961), 201–219.
[13] The translation difficulties around Sunn are surveyed in Christopher Shackle and Arvind Mandair, eds., Teachings of the Sikh Gurus: Selections from the Scriptures (London: Routledge, 2005), xx–xxxii. McLeod renders it as “void”; Trilochan Singh prefers “silence”; more recent translators move toward “primal consciousness.”

[14] The verse “Arbad narbad dhundhookaara. Dharan na gagana hukam apaara” is from Raag Maru, Guru Granth Sahib. On the priority of Hukam over all created categories in Guru Nanak’s cosmology, see McLeod, Guru Nanak and the Sikh Religion, 192–207.
[15] The verse “Jaa tis bhaanaa taa jagat upaa-i-aa” is from Raag Maru, Guru Granth Sahib. On divine creative freedom (as opposed to necessary emanation) in Guru Nanak’s theology, see Avtar Singh, Ethics of the Sikhs (Patiala: Punjabi University, 1970), 44–62.
[16] The verse “Hukam rajaa-ee chalnaa, Nanak likhiaa naal” is from the Japji Sahib, Guru Granth Sahib, Ang 1. On the inscribed or immanent quality of Hukam, its being written within rather than imposed from outside, see Gurinder Singh Mann, Sikhism (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2004), 18–29.
[17] The comparison between modern biological organisation and Hukam as organising intelligence is an analogy offered for heuristic purposes and does not imply that Guru Nanak anticipated modern biology. The distinction is noted in Daljeet Singh, Sikhism: A Comparative Study, 112–131.
[18] The verse “Sabh mai jot, jot hai so-e. Tis dai chaanan sabh mai chaanan ho-e” is from the Guru Granth Sahib (Dhanasari, Aarti, Ang 663). For its theological analysis as the foundational statement of divine immanence in Sikh thought, see Harbans Singh, The Heritage of the Sikhs, 38–46.

[19] On haumai as ego-sense and its function as the primary obstacle to recognition of the Jot, see McLeod, Guru Nanak and the Sikh Religion, 165–178. McLeod's reading, that haumai is the condition of self-centredness rather than the self per se, is the standard interpretation in the secondary literature.
[20] On Naam Simran as the specific practice prescribed by Guru Nanak for dissolving haumai, see Darshan Singh Maini, The Sikh Way of Life (New Delhi: Indian Book Company, 1974), 55–74, and Nikky-Guninder Kaur Singh, The Name of My Beloved, 1–28.
[21] On the Hindu guru tradition as background for Guru Nanak’s conception of the Guru, see Joel Mlecko, “The Guru in Hindu Tradition,” Numen 29, no. 1 (1982): 33–61. On the Sufi murshid tradition, see Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam, 228–258.

[22] The concept of Shabad-Guru, the Divine Word as the ultimate, eternal Guru, is foundational to Sikh theology. Its formal institutional expression in the Guru Granth Sahib as living Guru (established by Guru Gobind Singh in 1708) is discussed in Gurinder Singh Mann, The Making of Sikh Scripture, 107–134.
[23] On Sufism as a living intellectual and devotional force in the Punjab of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, see Richard M. Eaton, “Multiple Lenses: Differing Perspectives of Fifteenth-Century Sufism in India,” in Manifestations of Sainthood in Islam, ed. Grace Martin Smith and Carl W. Ernst (Istanbul: Isis Press, 1993), 197–213.
[24] On Nur-i-Muhammadi as developed from al-Hallaj through Ibn Arabi, see William C. Chittick, The Sufi Path of Knowledge: Ibn al-‘Arabi’s Metaphysics of Imagination (Albany: SUNY Press, 1989), 65–89.
[25] The parallel between Nur-i-Muhammadi and Guru Nanak’s Jot is discussed in Balwant Singh Dhillon, “Influences of Sufism on Sikhism,” Studies in Sikhism and Comparative Religion 14, no. 1 (1995): 63–81.
[26] On the use of ishq in the Guru Granth Sahib and its Sufi resonances, see Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam, 130–148. For Ibn Sina’s philosophical account of love as ontological force, see Emil Fackenheim, “A Treatise on Love by Ibn Sina,” Mediaeval Studies 7 (1945): 208–228.

[27] On the philosophical meaning of sach as ontological reality (rather than mere factual accuracy) in the Guru Granth Sahib, see Daljeet Singh, Essay on the Authenticity of Kartarpuri Bir, 44–58.
[28] The verse “Jis te upjiaa, tis mahi samaavai” is from the Guru Granth Sahib. Its cosmological significance, as an encapsulation of the entire arc of arising and return, is discussed in Kohli, A Critical Study of Adi Granth, 188–196.

[29] On the general hermeneutical problem of distinguishing productive metaphor from doctrinal claim in religious discourse, see Paul Ricoeur, The Rule of Metaphor, trans. Robert Czerny (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977), 216–256. For the specific Sikh context, see Mandair, Religion and the Specter of the West, 177–210.
[30] The risk of systematic reduction when approaching the Guru Granth Sahib through external philosophical frameworks is noted by Pashaura Singh: “The Guru Granth Sahib is not a systematic theology but a record of spiritual experience.” Pashaura Singh, The Guru Granth Sahib: Canon, Meaning and Authority, 3.
[31] On the relationship between philosophical understanding and liberation (mukti) in Guru Nanak's tradition, see McLeod, Guru Nanak and the Sikh Religion, 218–231. On the centrality of Naam Simran as practice, see Nikky-Guninder Kaur Singh, The Name of My Beloved, 1–28.
[32] On the Naam as participation in divine reality rather than mere labelling, see Sher Singh, The Philosophy of Sikhism, 155–173. For the devotional theology of remembrance across Sikh and Sufi traditions, see Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam, 167–178 (on dhikr) and Nikky-Guninder Kaur Singh, The Name of My Beloved (on Simran).
[33] The verse “Naam jinaa kai man vasiaa vaaje shabad ghanere” is from the Guru Granth Sahib. On the Shabad as primordial vibration and its relationship to the cosmological function of sound in Indian traditions, see Guy Beck, Sonic Theology: Hinduism and Sacred Sound (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1993), 169–184.
[34] On the Japji Sahib as a complete spiritual itinerary, see Eleanor Nesbitt, Sikhism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 36–49. For the musical and performative dimensions of the Japji, see Gobind Singh Mansukhani, Indian Classical Music and Sikh Kirtan (New Delhi: Oxford and IBH Publishing, 1982).
[35] On Guru Nanak’s treatment of death and dissolution, see Rajinder Singh Dogra and Gobind Singh Mansukhani, Encyclopaedia of Sikh Religion and Culture (New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1995), 97–103.
[36] The verse “Jo aa-i-aa so chalasee sabh ko-ee aa-ee vaaree” is from the Guru Granth Sahib. For the theological analysis of the Jot’s return to its divine source at the moment of bodily dissolution, see Sher Singh, The Philosophy of Sikhism, 201–219.

[37] Sachkhand is described in the fifth pauri of the Japji Sahib (Guru Granth Sahib, Ang 8) as the realm of truth, formless and beyond description, where the Creator looks upon creation with grace. For the full analysis, see McLeod, Guru Nanak and the Sikh Religion, 218–231.
[38] On the distinction between God as craftsman-creator (demiurge) and God as the creative ground of existence in Guru Nanak’s theology, see Arvind-Pal S. Mandair and Christopher Shackle, Sikhism: A Guide for the Perplexed (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), 44–68.