ਸ੍ਰੀ ਗੁਰੂ ਗ੍ਰੰਥ ਸਾਹਿਬ ਜੀ · ਅੰਗ ੬੫੪

Hindus go mad worshipping idols, and Muslims do the same by bowing their heads to qibla walls of mosques and the cube room of the Kaaba 🕋 built of four brick walls, and they die doing just this.

Upon death, Hindus burn the body and Muslims bury it in the ground, but the surat (awareness) remains deprived of the final destination and the path leading to it; neither of the two traditions, following Brahmanical and Abrahamic beliefs, has been able to know the supreme Truth and the path leading to it.

Listen carefully, O wandering mind, this world is a deep, dark forest of Maya trap.

Go anywhere you wish in the world outside, the noose of Death (Time) is stretched out to hang you. Stop, and reflect.

Scholarly poets are dying in spiritual wanderings by repeatedly reciting their poems and verses in royal courts and feasts; likewise, Kapadi ascetics and mendicants continuously visit pilgrimage sites like Kedarnath (yet remain lost in delusion).

The yogis make and keep matted locks of hair until they die, but even they have not known or attained Your station and path!

Kings, emperors, and the wealthy accumulate riches and die while burying and hiding vast treasures of gold.

Scholars die while remaining trapped in the cycle of Death (Kaal) as they read the Vedas, and women pass away while gazing at their own adorned beauty in the mirror.

Look and reflect within your own body and mind, and realize that without recognizing the all-pervading True Name, everyone is wandering lost in utter delusion.

Kabir Ji raises a challenging question: Show me any such teaching or doctrine through which the ultimate abode of consciousness (Surat) and its path was ever attained, without the True Name of God?

People focus intensely on the final stage of the physical journey and link the last rites performed at that time with liberation; however, the cremated body turns to ashes right here, and the buried body is consumed by an army of worms.

Just as an unbaked clay pot dissolves and breaks the moment it hits water or is filled with water, the existence (or worth) of this human body is merely that much.

Kabir Ji further asks in a colloquial Eastern dialect, 'Bhaea! Why do you walk around so puffed up, arrogant, and boasting with empty vanity?

When you had to live inside your mother's womb for ten months, curled up with your face turned downward toward your knees—have you forgotten those days?

Just as a honeybee gathers honey, a foolish human—driven by the ego born of worldly illusion (Maya)—keeps amassing wealth within the never-ending cycle of sensory pleasures.

But after death, the heirs to his home and wealth grow anxious and hurry to remove his corpse, urging to perform the last rites according to their respective religious customs; because in many faiths and religions, it is believed that until the body's final rituals are completed, the soul keeps wandering right inside the house. To the extent that the greedy man's own family members start saying, 'Why is this ghost still being kept inside the house?

His wife accompanies him only as far as the threshold of the house, and his friends go only up to the crematorium or the graveyard.

And upon reaching the crematorium, friends, relatives, and clansmen abandon his soul to face its journey entirely alone and return back home.

Kabir Ji says, 'O mortal! Pay attention to the fact that you are trapped inside the dark well of Maya's (illusion's) deathly snare.

Just as a parrot is deceived out of greed and gets trapped in a snare, you too have bound yourself within the illusionary trap of deceitful Maya (material wealth), driven by your own ego, desires, and greed.

Listening to the doctrines of all four Vedas, ancient Shastras, and Semitic scriptures (Katebs) only breeds an inclination toward empty rituals in a person, unless one reflects upon their ultimate spiritual essence.

Due to remaining bereft of the True Name—which reveals the ultimate divine secret illuminated in the true Lord’s teachings (Sikhi)—even great scientists, sharp-witted intellectuals, and those deemed wise eventually drown in the karmic cycle of Maya's deathly snare; meanwhile, pundits and scholars depart from this world in utter despair, failing to achieve union with the Ultimate Truth.

O mind! In striving to appear wise your whole life, you ultimately remained a fool; and because you failed to focus on the single most vital purpose of existence, that paramount task could never be accomplished.

You were to merge your brightly radiant, light-form surat with the bhajan and contemplation of the Master and King of all surats, but you paid no attention in that direction! Reflect on this.

Wandering away into the forests (abandoning the world and family), man practiced Yoga, stubborn rituals, and penance. He resorted to various forms of hypocrisy and, renouncing worldly tastes, lived by gathering and eating wild vegetation, roots, and fruits.

Whether sounding the ritual horn, chanting Vedic hymns, falsely invoking the unseen, or keeping the strict silence of a sage—all who live without the divine Name remain captive to the ledger of Death, their names inscribed irrevocably in the rolls of mortality.

Even the famous sage Narada Muni of Hinduism kept singing praises without knowing the Ultimate Truth, adorned in external religious attire like a dhoti, a sacred thread (janeu), and a rosary around his neck, while carrying a musical instrument like the veena under his arm; he merely performed worldly rituals for the deity Vishnu, who himself arose from the three-pronged illusions of Maya, but without the realization of the Supreme Essense, true devotion could never descend into his heart.

While singing outward melodies of raagas and raginis, that Narada harbored deceit, cleverness, and the hypocrisy of instigating conflict within his mind. Though the world can be deceived in this manner, what connection do such people truly have with the Divine who dwells in every atom? Absolutely none!

All past religions, faiths, sages, seers, and scholars—including the world operating according to them—remained under the absolute influence of temporal illusion (Kaal Maya); consequently, those scholars continued to describe only the physical form of illusion (Akaar Maya/manifested creation) within their religious Vedas, books, and scriptures.