ALAM CHAND was a masand or parish leader at Lahore in Guru Arjan\'s time. He was known for his pious and honest ways. He brought to the Guru regularly offerings collected from the Lahore sangat. His favourite maxim, tells Bhai Mani Singh in the Sikhan di Bhagat Mala, was

ATMA, Sanskrit at man, originally meant `breath`. Later the term came to connote `soul` or `principle of life`. The different systems of Indian philosophy gave it further semantic shades. Nyaya Visesaka considered atma a substance and endowed it with qualities of cognition, pleasure, pain, desire, aversion and effort. Sarikhya recognized

BRAHMGIANI (Skt. brahmajnanin), lit. the knower of Brahman or one possessing the knowledge of Brahman. The knowledge (giana, jnana) of the Universal Spirit (Brahman) consists not in the mere recognition of His existence, but in a continuous consciousness about HimHis realization in the heart or rather the realization of

DHARMARAJA (DHARAMRAI) Dharamrai (Dharmaraja) has been created by the Lord, therefore he does not come near a devotee and servant of the Lord. (Var Bihagra M. 4, p. 555) By the remembrance of the Name, all the troubles end and the papers of Dharamrai are torn. (Prabhati M. 5,

JIVANMUKTA, in Sikhism the ideal and aim or objective of man`s spiritual life. The term is derived from jivanmukti {j`tvan=`ife; mukli=recasc, liberation, emancipation, freedom from bondage), and means one who has attained liberation from human bondage or one who has attained to the highest spiritual slate of being in tune

KRISHNA The One Krishna is the Chief among gods, the soul of their godliness. If one comprehends the secret, this soul is God Himself... (Var Asa, M. 2, p. 469) (The false Gurus) Sing of Gopis and Krishna, Sita and Rama, but not the Fearless and True Transcendental Lord

RAM DAS, GURU (1534-1581), is the fourth Guru or spiritual mentor of the Sikhs in the line of Guru Nanak, Guru Arigad and Guru Arnar Das. "Ram Das" translates as servant or slave of God (ram = God + dds slave). Blessed by Guru Amar Das with the light of

RAMKAIJ SADU, by Sundar, is an "elegy" (sadd, in Punjabi) included in the Guru Granth Sahib in Raga Ramkali, eighteenth of the thirty-one musical measures used in Sikh Scripture. Sadd is a form of folk poetry prevalent in rural Punjab. Literally the term means an invocation call, hark or

SAHAJ, in Sikh vocabulary, refers to a state of mental and spiritual equipoise without the least intrusion of ego; unshaken natural and effortless serenity attained through spiritual discipline. Ego (aharn or haumai) develops out of the undifferentiated primordial being as a result of the sociocultural conditioning factors that generate

SYMBOLISM. The poetry of the Guru Granth Sahib is noteworthy especially for the wealth and variety of its images and symbols. The Gurus and sants whose compositions form part of the Holy Book have rendered their mystical and spiritual experience in the idiom of poetry. A large number of similes

TRANSMIGRATION OF THE SOUL. doctrine of rebirth based on the theory that an individual soul passes at death into a new body or new form of life. Central to the concept is the principle of universal causality, i.e. a person must receive reward or punishment if not here and now