Gurmat (Sikhism) and Kierkegaard

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Takeaways

• You cannot reach the essence of a person through analysis, the ‘I’ is not just an it
• It is meaningful to say that something is true but only for me
• One may compare Kierkegaard’s knight of faith with the Khalsa

At first blush, a comparison between Kierkegaard and Sikhi appears odd. Certainly, Kierkegaard is no mystic as he does not believe that the gap between the human and the divine may be overcome. For Sikhs the gap is caused by a wall of filth we erect against the flow of universal grace. However, where Kierkegaard is useful is in noting that abstracting the unique and personal reality of the self is a mistake. While we could add layers of generalisations to explain specific rock formations or even snowflakes even the most exhaustive series of explanations of human behaviour will fail, even if all added together. In the human sciences, interpretation is as important as explanation, understanding from within as important as explanation from outside.

Yet again, even adding layer upon layer of understanding does not make it possible to ‘know’ another. Shakespeare’s Iago is a character who exemplifies the impossibility of knowing another’s mind. Being in love we know the ‘other’ so well but what we love is the gap of unknowing, the surprise of a living relationship, the fact that they are not us, we are not talking to and living with ourselves. Each individual stands in relation to another reality that may not be abstracted, God. God speaks to the unique person that we are. As Sikh scriptures put it, “the Light within each”, compared to “fragrance within a flower, fire inside wood, reflection in a mirror.”

When we love someone we tear off all the abstractions we had of that person, we get to ‘see’ them and we live in the moment with a person. We do not act out, as per some social script, towards an abstract entity — black, white, male, female, rich, poor. Abstractions allow us to treat persons as things. As such they may be used for our purposes, which we invariably dignify as noble. They may be used as they are excluded from worth, the worth of uniqueness. However, the Sikh emphasis is that all are included. The reason for this is that each is unique, a person and that is because the Person lives within them.

Kierkegaard talks of three stages in life. The first is aesthetic and the individual focuses on themselves. The second is moral and the person focuses on universal rules. The third stage is religious. Here the person turns to the divine knowing that we are not right with God and therefore with a sense of shame. The founder of the Sikh tradition, Guru Nanak, often claims that he is the “lowest of the low” and it is interesting that for him the stage of morality or dharam khand is the lowest realm. The highest is Reality Itself which defies description. Describing it is “eating iron”, impossible, obviously doomed to failure with the substance hard, not subtle. Realisation is not about mental subtlety nor sensual sensitivity. This is something impossible to miss and impossible to do.

Kierkegaard expresses the move from the second to the third stage from morality to religion with the terrifying story of the sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham. Abraham has everything but no child. God gives him a child and then demands that he is sacrificed to him. Abraham is prepared to obey this clearly immoral demand. In contemporary terms, this is child abuse and attempted murder. Yet this is the whole point. Religion is not the same as morality, nor is it a set of statements that we can agree with in a religious community. It is a relationship of trust and surrender to that trust. It is about a reality that is undeniable and one must be true to, as one must be true to people. Common sense dictates the route we must follow faced with this reality. ‘Common sense’ is the framework with which we must experience life — there is certainty that the external world exists, that ‘I’ exist, that you and other ‘persons’ exist. I have no need to prove the truth of this as I cannot actually deny it. I can deny it in brief periods of hyperbolic doubt, being over-clever (“siana”). Being faithful is acting in accordance with common sense in relation to existential truths, not intellectual, rational beliefs.

Kierkegaard labels such a faithful person as “a knight of the faith.” However, such a knight is completely different from knights who act for social or tribal reasons. They morally justify their acts. An example could be from the ancient Greeks. Agamemnon sacrifices his daughter, Iphigenia, so that the Greeks can set sail to Troy. Abraham is not acting for socially approved reasons; due to his faith his son is returned to him. The creation of the Khalsa on the Vaisakhi of 1699 is a Sikh parallel. It has five people offering themselves as sacrifices and being returned as the five beloved ones, knights of a new social order. Studies of the past and narratives may be overgrowing plants that no longer decorate a garden but hide the gate to it. To know this episode is not mental but experiential, as in knowing physical love or the loss of a loved one. It is utterly personal, cannot be denied and cannot be known by another, although it can be recognised as expression of a real experience or mumbling of theory. Kierkegaard writes that one must be contemporary to Christ. To be contemporary to the Guru, Sikhs may join the Khalsa. One joins the Khalsa following in the footsteps and copying the example of Guru Gobind Rai, in trust of the Guru, to join his family.

In 1675 the ninth Guru of the Sikhs was martyred leading a non-violent mass protest against the forcible conversion of Kashmiri brahmins to Islam by the Emperor Aurangzeb. A Sikh scripture notes that, “Guru Tegh Bahadur broke his earthly vase on the head of the Emperor of Delhi; And went to the abode of God. No one has ever done such a unique deed as did Guru Tegh Bahadur.” What is unique are the reasons for which he gave his life.

The text continues, “The Guru protected their frontal mark and sacred thread.” This means he protected the freedom to worship of Hindus, people whose beliefs he did not share making him, perhaps, the first interfaith martyr. Secondly, “To uphold righteousness, so supreme an act did He perform” meaning to protect the respect of every person’s private and personal point of contact with God. Thirdly, “For the sake of righteousness. He did this great heroic deed; He laid down His life but not the principles” showing that he was promoting every good person’s right to pursue their own vision of happiness and self-fulfilment. It is these second and third principles that make a study of Kierkegaard fruitful — our point of contact with the Real is personal.

However, if God cannot be reduced to language what is the role of organised religion? Kierkegaard raises concerns about the Lutheran Church of his time. From a Sikh perspective it can only be as a framework to establish a common moral community and an openness to all spiritual experience that sets us on our way. Guru Nanak stated that “there is no Hindu, no Muslim” which could mean that we are all humans, our common humanity must be the starting point of our human relations. It could also mean that formal religion can stand in the way of our relationship with the divine. This nameless and unknowable entity is according to Sikh morning prayers, “aname” (beyond name) and “amazbe” (beyond religion). Gurmat is a religionless religion, deconstructing its stories and statements tearing everything back to standing in the face of the divine, head bowed in shame, sorrow and humility.

In that moment outside space a good person responds with common sense, knowing what to do, following our Inner Tutor, intuition, the Word that writes us into being “likhia naal”, not able to, or needing to, explain or justify their lives to the second voice they might hear, the voice of hyperbolic self-doubt, an ‘I’ living in denial of common sense, racked by life scripts and narratives of our heroism and self-justification, of our hidden un-heroism, shame and un-worth, answering to the abstracted ‘they’ of the world. In that moment a person becomes good by virtue of being real, being faithful to the actual person or divine Person confronting them.