In the early 16th century, during his first Udasi—a spiritual journey across the Indian subcontinent—Guru Nanak Dev Ji arrived at the sacred coastal town of Puri, in present-day Odisha. The air was thick with devotion, and the famed Jagannath Temple stood as a beacon of ritualistic grandeur. Priests gathered with platters of lamps, incense, and offerings, preparing for the evening Aarti—a ceremony of light offered to the deity.
Guru Nanak was invited to participate. But instead of joining the ritual with its ornate gestures, he sat quietly, eyes closed, immersed in a deeper vision. When questioned by the priests—why he hadn’t stood, why he hadn’t waved the lamps—he opened his eyes and spoke not in rebuke, but in revelation.
He sang.
"Gagan mai thaal rav chand deepak bane, taarika mandal janak moti..."
The sky is the platter, the sun and moon its lamps, the stars like pearls scattered across the firmament.
This was not a rejection of ritual, but a cosmic expansion of it. Guru Nanak’s Aarti, composed in Raag Dhanasri, transformed the temple’s ceremony into a universal offering. The wind became the waving fan, forests the fragrant flowers, and the celestial sound—the Anahad Naad—the true music of devotion.
He sang of a God not confined to wood or stone, but alive in every atom, every breath, every light. His words dissolved boundaries between temple and cosmos, ritual and realization.
Centuries later, in the quiet halls of Santiniketan, the Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore was asked by actor and teacher Balraj Sahni:
"You have written India’s national anthem. Could you write one for the world?"
Tagore smiled and replied:
“It has already been written. Not just for the world, but for the entire universe.”
He was speaking of Guru Nanak’s Aarti. So moved was Tagore by Guru Nanak’s vision that he personally translated it into Bengali, calling Aarti the true anthem of humanity—an offering not to a nation, but to the infinite.
Reflections
Aarti is not merely sung—it is felt. It invites us to see the divine not in ritual alone, but in the vastness of creation. And Tagore, a poet of universal spirit, recognized in it the anthem of the soul’s longing for unity.
This story is a bridge—between the quiet depth of existence and the soul's poetic spirit, between sacred echoes of Gurbani and starry skies humming with silence. It reminds us that true worship is not bound by form, ritual, or geography, but flows from the heart’s recognition of the divine energy in all things. In Guru Nanak’s cosmic Aarti and Tagore’s reverent tribute, we glimpse a shared vision—where dharma transcends boundaries, and the universe itself becomes the altar of love.
