Religious Problem in India

Author(s): Annie Besant
Publisher: Theosophist Office Adyar

Page 69

SIKHISM
61
then, primarily of devotion. In its philosophy it is Hindū, but as a movement it is reformatory in its nature, striving against the formalism of the time, against the ceremonialism of the time, in order to find the life which lay below the form, the essence of the truth that had inspired the ceremonies. In the time of Guru Nának, as too often in the history of the world, a great religion had grown more and more formal and men were starving on the luusk of the grain rather than eating the grain itself. Gun Vānak songht to find the grain, and in so doing threw aside, to a large extent, the husk; he strove to lead men to see the reality of religion, the life of religion, the essence of religion, and to see that life and essence in love to God and the Guru, in love to men as children of the one God. You may almost sum up in that phrase the very essence of Sikhism. We shall find presently in his life how he tried to draw together the waring elements around him. We shall see presently in his life how it was one song of praise and love to God, how he was ever seeking the Supreme and, having found Him, strove to teach liis fellows how they too, by devotion, might reach the same knowledge. That is the thought that I would have in your minds in the study of Sikhism, and I shall show yon presently low that is carried out by the teachings in the Sikh Scriptures.
But before I do that, and before I speak of the life of the great saint, I must hastily sketch for you, as it were, the historic setting of Sikhism, so that