Joti (Light) is term used to describe the Godhead, God's creation or the state of highest spiritual experience.

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Chapter 2: Mother; the Infinite Matrix

 

As the " spiritual " principle, the female images the One Transcendent

within the individual. The term used most frequently in Sikh

scripture for the Spirit within the body is joti (or nur at times),

meaning light. Joti is grammatically feminine; joti is metaphysically

the feminine dimension of the numeral One. Light has been a crucial

concept in the religious heritage of humankind. It is used to

describe the Godhead, God's creation or the state of highest

spiritual experience. This image is found in various traditions:

 

Hindu: Lead me from the unreal to the real,

From darkness lead me to Light. [44]

 

Jewish: Lift up the light of thy countenance upon us, O Lord! [45]

 

Buddhist: Hold firm to the truth as a lamp and refuge. [46]

 

Christian: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. [47]

 

Islam: God is the light of the heaven and the earth. [48]

 

Shinto: She lights the far corners of Heaven and Earth – the great

Kami of the Sun. [49]

 

And Sikh: There is a light in all and that light is the Ultimate One.

[50]

 

It is in its aspect as light – as joti – that we shall now explore

the role of the feminine principle in the Sikh vision of the

Transcendent. This dimension of the feminine principle raises three

important issues: What is the nature of joti? How can the

Transcendent remain transcendent if the One Light is immanent in all?

What meaning does this ontological base have for society?

 

We shall first examine the feminine nature of joti and its relation

to the Transcendent. Joti (light) has been strikingly – and aptly –

used as an image for the Transcendent Reality, for the nature of

light is manifestation. Light is being, just as its absence,

darkness, is nothingness. " There is nothing that is more without need

of being defined than light. " [51] Joti, continuing the feminine

dimension of the Transcendent is no ordinary light. Its ineffability

and noetic quality have been beautifully rendered by Guru Nanak:

 

jhilmili jhilkai candu na tara

suraj kirani na bijuli gainara

akathi kathau cihanu nahi koi. [52]

 

It is brilliantly dazzling,

yet it is neither the moon nor the stars,

Neither the sun-ray, nor the lightning of the skies,

Words cannot describe it, nor can any sign or symbol.

 

Joti is thus totally transcendent: it is not the radiance from the

moon, the stars, or the sun, or the flash of lightning. In this case,

light has no form, and it never becomes an attribute of anything

other than itself. It subsists by itself.

 

This image of joti from the Sikh scriptures corresponds to

Suhrawardi's perception of Nur al-anwar and the Upanisadic-Gitic

perception of Jyotisam jyoti. Both Nur al-anwar and Jyotisam jyoti

signify the light of lights, the ontological ground of the universe.

In both philosophies, the light of lights has a direct symbol in

every domain: the sun in the skies, the fire in the elements, and al-

nur al-ispahbadi (Ishraqi) or atman (Hindu) within the individual….

Joti is accepted as the source of all energy and every being –

everything depends on it. A verse in the Guru Granth reminds us of

the ontological base of our existence; we exist only because of the

joti placed in out bodies by the One:

 

e sarira meria hari tum mahi joti rakhi

ta tu jag mahi aia. [54]

 

O my body, the One put joti (light) inside you,

Only then did you come into the world.

 

That joti pervades the body is reiterated in another hymn of Guru

Nanak as well:

 

jis da jio pranu hai

antari joti apara. [55]

 

The One who has given life and breath

Has placed in the body Its joti (light) infinite...

 

According to the Guru Granth, most of us remain oblivious to the

divine light within us. This condition is portrayed through an

eloquent simile – that of a deer which, ignorant of the musk within

its own body, runs frantically in the jungle searching for it. " The

perennial light is within us all, " says a verse; " it's only the

enlightened ones who recognize this " (ghati ghati joti nirantari

bujhai gurmati saru) 59

 

Joti is therefore both all-pervasive and transcendent, and this

single ontological base has enormous significance for human society.

A popular couplet from the Granth brings out the social implications

latent in this conception of the Transcendent:

 

aval allah nuru upaia kudrati ke sabh bande

ek nur te sabhu jagu upjai kaun bhale ko mande. 60

 

Allah first created Its light, and from it were all made,

From that One Light came the whole cosmos,

whom shall we then declare good, whom bad?

 

From One Light (ek nur) has originated the entire cosmos. One Light

is beyond all and yet simultaneously within all….

 

It is because creation emanates from the One Source, ek nur, that the

Sikh tradition upholds the equality and unity of humankind. When

from One Light all are born, who can be called good, who bad, who

high, who low?... A thoroughly egalitarian and liberating structure

emerges out of the Transcendent Light's being the spirit in us all.

Shattered are all caste structures, shattered are all racial and

gender monopolies. The ground is set for a just social, political,

and economic world in which oppressive and hierarchical systems would

not find any base.

 

The Sikh understanding of joti, the feminine principle of the

Transcendent, residing within all initiates the search of the

individual, man and woman, for his or her origin. It provides both

men and women with the spiritual goal, with the right opportunity to

exclaim with Ntozake Shange:

 

i found god in myself

& I loved her

I loved her fiercely. 67

 

 

Nikki-Guninder Kaur Singh,

The Feminine Principle in the Sikh Vision of the Transcendent,

page 59-64, Cambridge University Press, 1993,

ISBN 0521432871

 

Notes:

44. Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 1.3.28.

45. Psalms 4:6.

46. Mahaparinibbana Sutta.

47. John 1:5.

48. Qur'an XXIV. 35.

49. Cited by David Kinsley, The Goddess' Mirror: Visions of the

Divine from East and West (New York: State University of New York

Press, 1989), 71.

50. Guru Granth, 663.

51. S. H. Nasr, Discussion of Suhrawardi's Hikmat al-Ishraq, bk. II,

ch. 9, Class lecture, Temple University, February 24, 1982.

52. Guru Granth, 1033.

53. S. H. Nasr, Three Muslim Sages (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University

Press, 1964), 69. The following passage by Suhrawardi has been cited:

 

The essence of the First Absolute Light, God, gives constant

illumination, whereby it is manifested and it brings all things into

existence, giving life to them by its rays. Everything in this world

is derived from the Light of His Essence and all beauty and

perfection are the gift of His bounty, and to attain fully to this

illumination is salvation.

 

The ontological status of the various planes of reality is dependent

upon their proximity to the Nur al-anwar and upon the extent to which

they are themselves illuminated. The tashkik al-dhati theory of

Suhrawardi's finds a parallel in the Hindu ontological speculation.

For it is maintained in the Hindu religious texts that the universe

is constituted of the various gradations of light….

 

54. Guru Granth, 921.

55. Ibid., 140.

59. Guru Granth, 20.

60. Ibid., 1349.

67. Ntozake Shange, For colored girls who have considered suicide

when the rainbow is enuf (New York; Macmillan, 1975).