Authenticity of Kartarpuri Bir - Global Sikh Studies

108
in the socio-political field. The diagnosis of the Gurus is that
the egoistic man has neither the perception, nor the vision,
nor even the organisational, moral and spiritual capacity to
solve the problems of man. It is the religious man with a higher
consciousness, who alone can fulfil God’s mission of creating
the Kingdom of God on earth. The Guru indicates the path
of progress or evolution: “God created first Himself, then
Haumen, third Maya and fourth state of poise and bliss.” 63 At
the second and third stages, man’s development is only partial.
The aim is the achievement of the fourth stage. In Sikhism,
the development of union with God is not an end in itself.
The goal is the development of a higher consciousness so as
to discharge the total responsibilities devolving on man in order
to create a world of harmony and happiness. The Gurus say
that human problems cannot be solved at the third stage of
man’s development. These can be dealt with adequately at the
fourth stage of man when he is not alienated from Reality and
its objectives. And, this development of a higher consciousness
is for a religious purpose. That purpose or mission is epitomised
in the lives of the Gurus. The enrichment of the life in the
world, in accordance with God’s love of man has been the
mission of the Gurus, as it has to be of every God-conscious
or religious man. In such a righteous world alone can the
problems of poverty, misery, disease, war and conflict be
solved. In whatever field God’s Will works the superman is
there to assist it in an altruistic manner. Therefore, no segment
of life is taboo for the God-conscious or religious man, since
nothing is beyond the sphere of God’s Will. In fact the tragedy
has been “The secularisation of the Western Civilisation in
the seventeenth century, so far from producing a stable way of
life, raised the quetion; what is going to fill the temporary
spiritual vacuum that this deconsecration of western life has
created in western souls? Alternative attempts to fill this
vacuum have