Questioning Hermeneutics With Freud

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Questioning Hermeneutics with Freud:

How to interpret dreams and mute-
speech in Sikh scripture
a
Balbinder S. Bhogal
a
Founders College, York University, Rm 232, 4700 Keele Street,
Toronto, Ontario, M3J 1P3, Canada E-mail: [email protected]
Available online: 19 Aug 2006
To cite this article: Balbinder S. Bhogal (2005): Questioning Hermeneutics with Freud: How to
interpret dreams and mute-speech in Sikh scripture, Sikh Formations, 1:1, 93-125
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Sikh Formations, Vol. 1, No. 1, June 2005, pp. 93– 125
Balbinder S. Bhogal
QUESTIONING HERMENEUTICS WITH

FREUD
How to interpret dreams and
mute-speech in Sikh scripture
Downloaded by [117.199.84.125] at 22:19 10 December 2011
This paper begins to question the interpretive endeavor when it is applied to the Adi
Granth. The text itself expresses a view that the ‘world is a dream’ and that there is
real difficulty in communicating the truth about reality, since it is like a mute person
who enjoys, but is unable to express, the taste of his sweet; that is the sweetness of the
mystic experience. I raise the question: what is hermeneutics to this situation? How is
one to interpret a dream and a text that is the ‘speech’ of a mute person? Traditional
hermeneutic theories (conservative, moderate and critical) do not seem to cater for this
problematic since they do not concern themselves with the unconscious, the sub-text,
the dreams underlying waking thought. I thus turn to Freud to gain clues about the
interpretation of dreams, and thus attempt a preliminary radicalization of hermeneutic
theory. It is suggested that perhaps a reversal is required where dreams precede worldly
reality, and interpretation is a sign of delusion, obviously locating and implicating this
very text within the very problematic it attempts to illuminate. Beyond this ironic tau-
tology I ask: could there be a self that does not dream and does not interpret?
The world is a drama, staged in a dream; in a moment the play is played out.
Some attain union with the Lord, while others depart in separation.
Whatever pleases Him comes to pass; nothing else can be done.1
(AG, 18, M1)
I cannot describe such a Carpenter who is pervasive in everything, every place.

A dumb (man) tastes the flavor of a great elixir, if you ask him,
he cannot describe it.2 (AG, 657, Namdev)
A reversal, an impasse. How are we to interpret these AG tropes of the ‘world-

as-dream’ and ‘truth-as-unspeakable’? Are they to be understood literally, that is,
that the world is actually a dream? If so how does this affect the distinction
between waking and dreaming? Indeed how can one step out of the dream to
ISSN 1744-8727 (print)/ISSN 1744-8735 (online)/05/010093-33
# 2005 Taylor & Francis Group Ltd
DOI: 10.1080/17448720500215337
94 SIKH FORMATIONS
interpret it? Should we take the Guru literally when he says that he cannot describe
the Carpenter (Hari/Reality/Truth)? Are the words of the Guru Granth Sahib really
to be understood as the ‘speech/communication’ of a dumb (guungai) person’s
silence? If the world is a dream does that not make scripture, the gurus, as well as
one’s own ignorance, dream images? How do these negations square with the
more straightforward affirmations that are also present in the writings of the
Gurus? What does it mean to interpret a dream, a poem, a song – forms which con-
stitute the AG? Yet before we can begin ‘answering’ such questions, one cannot avoid
a fundamental question: what does it mean to interpret?
Such questions indicate a fraught field since to hear significance is always already
an interpretive act. Like language, interpretation, translation and understanding
seem to resist an independent objective gaze; one has to use language to set language
up as an object of study, similarly one is already interpreting, selecting, before
interpretation can be ‘isolated’ as an object of inquiry; every ‘new’ understanding
is ‘related’ from within previous epistemic modes. There is no outside to interpret-

ation. This quandary confounds the notion of beginning; there seems to be no origin
to language, communication, as there seems to be no pre-interpretive state. Simply
put, hermeneutics cannot be studied as an object apart from the questioner and what
his or her focus brings into view. This does not mean, however, that reflecting on the
nature of hermeneutics is a pointless pursuit. Rather, as Montaigne (1991, v. 19. ch.
XIII ‘Of Experience’) made clear, ‘we need to interpret interpretations more than to
interpret things’.
Too often language, and its translation into another language, goes unquestioned,
assuming a perfect reciprocity between different sociolinguistic cultures, that ‘all’
agree on ‘the universals’. Yet Benjamin (1992, 75) counters this easy move: ‘all
translation is only a somewhat provisional way of coming to terms with the foreign-
ness of languages’.3 This ‘foreign-ness’ is foundational to hermeneutics and could be
seen at the heart of the ‘hermeneutic circle’, highlighting the problem of beginning,
and the circular nature of understanding.4
From Schleiermacher’s methodological hermeneutics as an ‘art of understand-
ing’ that can ‘understand the discourse just as well and even better than its
creator’ (Madison 1994, 291), to Heidegger’s ontological hermeneutics, where
understanding itself is an existential mode of being rather than a form of knowing
(Madison 1994, 300), hermeneutics as a whole is seriously challenged when the
interpreter is put into question by the texts, practices that he or she studies. If her-
meneutics is a process which allows that which seems to be distant and alienated (in
time and language) to speak again (Gadamer 1992, 102), to make familiar that which
is foreign, (Ricoeur 1976, 91), then the ‘reality’ of ‘poem-dreams’, and the ‘truth’
or ‘testimony’ of ‘mute-speech’ seem to halt this process in its tracks; the non-
language of the mute, the strangeness of the dream being too alien and foreign. If
hermeneutics is ‘the art of understanding foreign meaning’ (Gallagher 1992, 5),
then what can be understood from that which remains (forever) foreign and unfami-
liar? For Nanak, ‘Truth’, ‘Hari’, ‘Word’, the ‘self’ are like this – for him, their alien
speaking never stops, nor could it. As we shall see, to become ‘familiar’ with the
Truth, the Word, one has to ‘die’.
This ‘ego-death’ is beyond the rational-knowing subject that grounds all three
major hermeneutic schools (conservative, moderate and critical).5 Traditional
QUESTIONING HERMENEUTICS WITH FREUD 95
hermeneutics would therefore stumble over the AG, which demands such a death as
pivotal to (‘religious’) understanding. Many, however, have seen the power of the
critique of deconstruction and post-structuralist thought (not least in its ‘death-
of-the-subject’ and ‘anti-humanism’ motifs) and thus call for the radicalization of
hermeneutics (Caputo 1987, 2000).6 The following will investigate some of the
foundational ideas in this radicalization of hermeneutics. In this respect Freud’s
basic theorizing in his Interpretation of dreams (1999) becomes a source for reflecting
on the complexity of interpreting a life that is understood as a dream. How do
common sense waking interpretations relate to dream consciousness? Would herme-
neutics, radicalized by deconstruction and psychoanalysis, speak as the unconscious
to conscious interpretations, as dreams speak to waking consciousness?7 Yet if we try
to understand the (conscious hermeneutic) waking-world apart from the ‘reality’ of
the (subconscious deconstructive) dream-world, there will always be something
missing in our interpretations. What if dreams herald waking reality, what if
‘writing’ precedes ‘speech’? What would it mean to understand dreams as more

real than the everyday? What would a radicalized hermeneutic attuned to discourse
as rhetoric look like? What if things are not what they seem and reality really is an
‘illusion’?8
Freud’s dream of interpretation and AG poetry
O Lord, what can be said about such a delusion?

What we believe to be [the case, in reality] is otherwise.
Like the King, who asleep upon his throne, dreams he is a beggar –
His kingdom remains, but separated from it, he suffers in vain:
such is my own condition.9
(AG, 657, Ravidas)
If this cruel illusion is indeed our situation then a straightforward hermeneutics,

be it conservative or moderate that seeks the message of truth is inappropriate. Nor is
a critical hermeneutics of suspicion (qua Marx, Freud and Nietzsche) appropriate
here despite its focus on tearing down illusory veils, for the ‘truth’ does not stand
within the dream of the world – but in its total transformation-cum-destruction.
Furthermore a hermeneutics of suspicion has at its origin a secular (pseudo) scientific
agenda; it reads a religious consciousness as ‘false consciousness’, whereas the AG is
doing precisely the opposite: it has a religio-existential context that reads ego-related
action as ‘false being’. Thus, whilst Ravidas shows the limit and error of our con-
scious knowing, the answer is not necessarily hidden within the private subjective
realm of the personal ego, but beyond it, beyond the human: comprehending only
aspects of the world/dream do not help in breaking the illusion of the dream itself.
Yet Freud and psychoanalysis cannot be written off so easily. The mesmerizingly
straightforward capacity of conscious hermeneutics to explain the visible simul-
taneously conceals the Other of its discourse through its narrow selection of the
‘positivist real’.10 Freud’s work, style and techniques (to seek the hidden within
the obvious, to listen to the unsaid within the said, the repressed in the expressed)
are important in their foreshadowing of deconstruction – itself ironic given Freud’s
96 SIKH FORMATIONS
desire to scientifically pin-down the dream’s ‘essential structure’ (Ellmann in Royle

2000, 211 –37). More simply, Freud’s interest in the repressed/unconscious is too
important to be ignored in a ‘religious’ discourse that is all about the hidden (Hari,
Truth, Word) ‘within’ the manifest world.
Admiring and eager to develop Sully’s claim that the dream is a revelation,11
Freud comes to a similar conclusion to that of the British psychologist by arguing
that interpreting dreams, ‘means finding a hidden sense in something’ (PFL 1,
115) – and that hidden sense was always related as a wish, for dreams are wish-
fulfilments.12 This is not unlike early biblical and mystical hermeneutics of the
Bible that also sought to find the allegorical, analogical and esoteric meanings
hidden within the surface grammar of the text. Whilst ‘the interpretation of
dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind’
(PFL 4, 769), Freud also knew that this meant that such a critical hermeneutic of
suspicion was also a road to what our conscious mind and its interpretations
repressed, missed out, and ignored. Yet he counters this thrust to find the underlying
meaning and wish of dreams by charting a hermeneutical impasse not unlike ours
with the AG: ‘there is at least one spot in every dream at which it is unplumbable
– a navel, as it were, that is its point of contact with the unknown’ (PFL 4, 186, n.2).
Freud’s interpretive strategy therefore dwells on that tension between hermeneutics
and deconstruction, between a scientific and religious discourse, between capturing a
meaning in the wish and its endless deferral in different disguises.
Therefore, Freud, like later deconstructionists, insisted that the meaning of
texts, whether dream or otherwise, could not be abstracted from the visual
images, symbols, puns, rhetorical ploys, style, and feel of the text’s form, which
both aided and frustrated the wish for (singular) meaning: it is the interaction and
mutual superimposition between the visible surface (of text, speech or dream) and
the invisible forces (of desire, repressed wishes, bias of interpreter) that are
crucial. When the text is a song (as is the case with the AG), then it is even
harder to create the distinction between content and form, especially when the
poetic hymns are meant to be performed, uniting the message with its medium.
Hence, what we say the dream ‘means’ seems to enact a betrayal of the dream’s
‘poetic structure’. This reductive mistake also occurs with those that claim to
capture the ‘latent meaning’ of the ‘manifest poems’ of the AG.
. . . psychoanalysis parodies the traditions of religious hermeneutics, but psycho-

analysis is also a reductive parody of poetry, which may be another way of saying
that poetry has always been a transcendental kind of psychoanalysis, a mode
marked by patterns of transference and counter-transference, or of influence
and its anxieties. Freud spoke truly (and also somewhat anxiously) in his repeated
admissions that the poets had been there before him. . . Dreams, like psychoana-
lysis, parody and reduce poems, if we follow Freud by treating dreams in terms
of their latent content or ‘meaning’. But dreams, in their manifest content, in
plot and imagery, share in the poetic elements that tend to defy reduction and
reductiveness.
(Bloom 1987, 6)
It seems clear from the above that dreams, ‘an involuntary kind of poetry’ (Stevens
1995, 154), cannot simply be reduced to their ‘meaning’; the immediacy of their
imagery and impact resist narrative closure – since they demonstrate a primal
quality in their ‘poetic structure’ and arresting surprise. Sharpe’s Dream Analysis
(1937), argues more forcefully that the laws of poetic diction and the laws of dream for-
mation ‘spring from the same unconscious sources and have many mechanisms in
common’. By exploring how simile, metaphor, synecdoche, metonymy, onomatopoeia,
punning etc. work, Sharpe shifts away from ‘universal symbolism’ towards the individ-
ual’s first ‘encounters with language’ as being the primary factor – thus preceding
Jacques Lacan’s elaboration of the linguisticality of the unconscious (in Marcus 1999,
27). Understanding the dream as poem as well as the poem as dream begins to open
a new vista on the AG’s own poetic hymns, their form and content.
Freud consistently and systematically denied the potentiality of the prophetic,
futural, cross-cultural element prevalent within dreams that his own Jewish heritage
promoted.13 Yet the dream’s ‘intuitive quarrying’ of the future occurs primarily in
the form of free-association within the intimate relationship between analyst and
‘patient’, where the patient’s retelling becomes ultimately indistinguishable from
the interpreter’s questioning. This ‘co-habitation’ of a single narrative dialogue
reveals that the interpreter-as-therapist and guide can never merely translate the
dreamer’s past, but must also simultaneously rewrite possible, healthier futures –
mirroring the expressed purpose of the Indic guru-chela (Teacher – student) relation.
Inasmuch as Freud treated the dream report as a ‘holy text’ and despite his own
rejection of prophecy, he himself ‘acted as a modern prophet, influencing personal
lives and intellectual history’ (Frieden 1990, 135). Therefore much can be gained by
questioning (conscious) hermeneutics from the joint standpoint of deconstruction
and psychoanalysis – something that is required if the interpretation of the
World/AG-as-dream is to be taken seriously. Hence what follows below is a delinea-
tion of Freud’s basic theories that informed his various dreams of interpretation.
Freud’s bias to find something hidden, demands at least two levels to dreams, the
deeply hidden wish of the ‘primary processes’ and the surface manifestation in the
dream scene itself as the ‘secondary process’. The latent content of the dream
thoughts or wish is transformed through the ‘dream work’ into the manifest
content, but it occurs by a complete ‘transvaluation of all psychical values’ (PFL
4, 443). The free-flowing instinctual (Id)-energy of the dream scene is constrained
and distorted by the moral (superego)-censor.14 Thus this ‘compromised formation’
of the dream-scene charts the difficulty any hermeneutic brought to bear would
experience, and Freud detailed three sometimes four key interpretive hurdles.
The first of these is ‘condensation’, a process which prevents any one-to-one corre-
spondence between the latent and manifest content. The former is greater than the latter
so that wishes are condensed and each dream is therefore over-determined by (infantile)
desires. Nanak’s terminology of key terms reveals a form of condensation and one which
he freely acknowledges. For example, Truth/Real/Hari is ‘deep’ (gahir), ‘profound’
(gambhiir), ‘infinite’ (apaar) ‘countless’ (asankh), ‘omnipresent without interval’ (niran-
tar). Such descriptions imply a form of condensation at work when Hari is ‘described’,
suggesting also a certain opacity, as attested by the AG’s trope of those struck dumb. As
there is no one-to-one correspondence between latent and manifest content, so is there
no simple relation between Truth and its expression, Reality and words.
98 SIKH FORMATIONS
The second form of ‘unintelligibility’ is, ‘displacement.’ Here the dream-wish is

significantly disguised so as to appear obscurely, decentred, displaced in the manifest
dream content, but through a ‘chain-of-associations’ is nevertheless traceable. Again,
within the AG, there are many examples of this kind of ‘displacement’. As the
dream-wish is ‘significantly disguised’ so too is the true self (aatam) disguised by
the false-I (haumai) and its desires. Clearly, any attempt to describe the indescribable
(akath), unapproachable (agam), imperceptible (agocar), invisible (alakh), formless
(niramkaar), timeless (akaal), that which is separate from creation (aparampar),
that which has no attributes (niragun), is bound, by the very nature of these defi-
nitions, to fail and be displaced into some form of symbolization.
This brings us to the third ‘obscurity’, ‘symbolization’. This process involves a
transposition or re-presentation of thought-wishes into imagery (penis/pencil,
vagina/box). Similarly, given the AG’s length (1430 pages), the ineffable, or some-
thing, is somehow named, for via negativa is being complemented by via positiva.
Nanak’s primary symbol is ‘the One Sound Being’ (ik oamkar), an Unstruck Sound
(anahat-shabad), an esoteric and blissful music (anand-dhuni) or subtle sound reson-
ance (naad). The human Guru is also a key symbol of the eternal True-Guru (sati-
guru). As the thought-wish is symbolized through visible imagery so too is Hari’s
hukam (Will, Order, Command) symbolized in the events that make up one’s life
(which is composed of returning karam). The whole world is also to be taken as a
symbol of the Truth/Hari/Real and of Hari’s Order (hukam). Its dimensions and
workings are therefore seen as an awesome wonder (visamaad), a marvellous
display (coj) a strange, and amazing spectacle (vidaanaa, binod, tamaasaa) – all of
which elicit the AG’s constant tone of humility in description.
Freud’s disputed fourth hypothesis is ‘secondary revision’. This problematic
entails an attempt of the mind to order and revise the dream content making it
more acceptable or intelligible as a whole. From the AG it could be argued that
as the mind attempts to revise the dream content, making it more palatable, so
too does the ego re-narrate the chaos, suffering and brute facts of the world into
innumerable self-justifications and misunderstandings (maximizing pleasure and
seeking the elimination of suffering).15 But, of course, the primary ‘secondary revi-
sion’ for Nanak is the mode, style, terminology, diversity and practices of ‘loving-
devotion’ (bhagati) and the wider ‘religious discourses’ that he encountered across
north India; the AG’s revelations come in a particular language and time as a ‘sec-
ondary revision’. From another angle, even the writings of the Gurus could be
seen as a ‘secondary revision’ of their own understanding and mystic experiences,
and Guru Arjan’s compilation of their works into the AG as a third ‘revision’ –
making any subsequent interpretation of the AG a fourth ‘revision’ of the AG
‘dream’.
Just from this very cursory look at Freud’s ‘knots’ of dream interpretation and
their parallel tropes within the AG it is clear that any interpretation of this text
would have to confront these, or similar, ‘hurdles’ pointing to the need to radicalize
one’s hermeneutic approach beyond the visions of conservative, moderate and criti-
cal schools. What is significant about these four hermeneutic hurdles for both Nanak
and Freud is that they do not present insurmountable obstacles (as one might initially
think), since both have their own methods for ‘capturing and controlling’ the
‘dream-scene’. The four hurdles do, however, demand a sophisticated and similarly
complex (i.e. radicalized) hermeneutic. By developing and adopting the method of

free-association (noting its cultural specificity), Freud traces a ‘chain-of-associations’
from elements in the manifest dream back to ‘the genuine thing which is being held
back’ (PFL 1, 142). This is not how meaning is constituted in traditional hermeneu-
tics – that is, by the dynamics of the hermeneutic circle charting the mutually
informing back-and-forth interrelations between part and whole, often dialogically
imagined. Instead Freud, employing the example of the rebus,16 understood
interpretation to proceed element-by-element (not unlike Benjamin’s notion of
translation), since there is no whole to the dream, but there are highly significant
elements (seemingly) arbitrarily juxtaposed, where the movement occurs from
one image to the next often incongruously.
Similarly, the AG is a set of poems collected at various times, composed by a
diverse body of authors from various religious and socio-cultural backgrounds.
Nor are these hymns collated in any narrative, chronological, or thematic order.
Each hymn is its own dwelling station, ‘image’ or ‘emotional’ map.17 Since the
AG is compiled to an order of 31 musical melodies (raags) meaning arises by
going deep into the poem through singing (kirtan), exegesis (kathaa) and contempla-
tive listening (suniai, dhian), that is, through embodied devotion rather than disinter-
ested reflection. Similarly with dreams their meaning is not arrived at by reading
some continuous narrative between and across them, but by pondering each one’s
own peculiar enchantment. Such an (anti)structure of the AG poems, of dreams,
calls for a penetrative (radical) ‘depth’ hermeneutic rather than a narratival, horizon-
tal hermeneutic, for as Freud argues, ‘we can only form a proper judgment of the
rebus if we put aside criticisms. . . of whole composition and its part’ (PFL 4, 382).
Condensation, displacement, symbolization and secondary revision all provide
clues to the trickiness of reality (world-as-dream according to the AG), and
thereby, provide the initial form of a radicalized hermeneutic. Guru Nanak
readily acknowledges that the Truth cannot be told:
If I would know, would I not tell? The description cannot be told

(AG, 2, M1)
There is no power in speaking, there is no power in silence.
18
(AG, 7, M1)
Is not the religious discourse par excellence a discourse of perpetual displace-

ment and deferral? In re-presentation the ineffable can never be symbolized directly
hence it is condensed, distorted and inevitably displaced. If these kinds of traits are
evident in the language of the AG, then it would never say what it means, nor mean
what it says.
In other words there seems to be an unconscious desire behind every interpret-
ation. For Freud, this is evident in the contradiction of relying on two aspects of his
hermeneutic endeavours. Whilst Freud relied on the uniqueness of individual associ-
ations as a set of indispensable interpretive keys, he also postulated a fixed set of keys
or cryptography for interpreting universal symbols and typical dreams. Yet this two-
tier interpretive strategy, where the dreamer’s unique chain of associations are
con-joined with the psychoanalyst’s knowledge of universal symbols, speaks of
mixing and mistaking culturally-specific signs for universal meaning, and has come
100 SIKH FORMATIONS
under criticism. It has been argued that the ‘symbolic’ [universal] and ‘associative’
[particular] techniques are ‘diametrically opposed orientations’ which ‘cannot help
but collide. . .’. This is because the ‘enquiry into the personal psychic sense of
dreams cannot be compatible with reliance on a catalogue of invariable and univer-
sally valid meanings’ (Marcus 1999, 26). This contradiction can easily slip into its
own justification: ‘Freud held that no dream could be interpreted without possessing
the free associations of the patient’, yet he also claims that ‘the dreamer’s associ-
ations are unnecessary when one can interpret the dream symbolically’ (Rieff in
Bloom 1987, 51). This convenient contradiction also qualified Freud’s blunt denun-
ciation of the patient’s ability for self-interpretation, transforming the psychoanalyst
into an interpretive god (Hermes), and establishing the institution of analysts into an
elite guild zealously holding the keys to interpretation, allowing them alone to know
a dream better than its dreamer – thus mimicking Schleiermacher’s earlier herme-
neutic claim to know a text better than its author, and indeed the author better than
he knew himself.19 One could easily add here, how the Guru knows one better than
one knows oneself. Given Guru Nanak’s own admissions regarding the impossibility
of describing the Truth, then what he does say cannot escape the type of problematics
outlined above – for Nanak also wanted to speak universals in particular contexts.
From the elaborate and flamboyant ‘disguises’ dreams wear, Freud’s hermeneutic
strategy, through symbols and free-association, pretended to cast these clothes of con-
trivance off, to lay bare the naked truth and essential nature (read animality) of the
dream: its primal and sexed wish. Similarly, Nanak’s reduction of the human being
to the rudimentary operation of animal desires is seen to be constant and alike for
all.20 Freud’s less than scientific handling of the contradictory pulls of free-association
and universal symbols, coupled with his reductive preoccupation with sex, make of his
hermeneutics an interpretive strip-tease of the dream-scene with him as the principal
director. In this regard Frieden (1990, 5) notes, ‘it remains difficult to determine
whether dream interpretation is high drama or a comedy of errors’. We see a
similar ‘duplicity’ in the AG between two orders of agency – human (karam) and
divine (nadar, bhaana) (Bhogal 2001). In both cases though, what we see is not the
hubris of revelation or scholarship, but serious attempts to delve into a ‘true’ reflec-
tion of the complexity of life – which by all evidence (scientific and religious) seems
to demand various orders of contradiction. Herein lies the problem: for the world,
the AG, the Guru are to be understood as part of the samsaric dream.
But what if the dream-state actually illumines a self, a dream-self that knows the
waking self better than the waking self knows itself? What if there is a (‘true’) self that
we are known by but do not consciously know? What if it is an error to start with the
waking self as the norm? Carl Jung has often acted as a bridge between Freudian psy-
choanalysis and Indic thought via the intuition that dreams are much more than
repressed desires, revealing prophetic visions where primordial, universal ‘domi-
nants’, or ‘archetypes’ of the ‘collective unconscious’ may be witnessed. Within
the AG ‘archetypes’ would be ‘satiguru’ (True-Guru), ‘sabad’ (Word), ‘naam’
(Name), etc. It is in the broader Indic traditions that the world is seen as an illusion,
a pale reflection of the reality within such that the deeper one goes internally, the
more real one becomes. Hence, delusional error is located within the conscious
ego, and ‘truth’ within a super-consciousness – which Jung (1978) consistently
read as the ‘collective unconscious’. Within Indic culture dreams do not only function
to keep one asleep (as Freud imagined);21 on the contrary they often wake one up from
sleep. We do not dream if we have had insufficient sleep, rather we only dream when
dreamless sleep is sufficient. Thus, we do not dream to sleep (satisfying the body and
waking consciousness), we sleep to dream (satisfying the soul, or the higher faculties).
Indic dreams and dreaming: hermeneutics of the

mute Guru
In a dream, He came, and went away again; I cried so many tears.
I can’t come to You, O my Beloved, and I can’t send anyone to You.
Come to me, O blessed sleep – perhaps I will see my Husband again.
(AG, 558, M1)
Thus far, to dream is to deceive oneself (both the English dream and German
traümen derive from dreugh, ‘to deceive’). Yet in the specifically Indic contexts the
range of reflections on dreams is complex – not least, as the above example shows,
revelatory and sought after.22 The above quote is, however, the exception. More com-
monly the dream (svapna from the root svap – ‘to sleep’) is understood as the result of
past karmic formations (easily tied to unconscious desires) which arise from (primor-
dial) ignorance (avidyaa). This range from the ‘light’ or ‘revelatory’ to the ‘mundane’
dream is missed/ignored by Freud.23 The latter ‘heavy’ dream, like all dreams ephem-
eral in nature, became widely used as a leitmotif of the evanescent waking world. The
world does not last and is full of false pain and delights; the world is a dream of false
perceptions and conceptions (svapna-prapanca, svapna-mukhaa):
This [illusory world] is a dream, but the sleeper does not know it.
In his senseless state he clings to it. Pause.
The fool is enticed by the great attachments of the world. . ..
The Other has never occurred nor will it ever occur.
(AG, 740, M5)
Therefore the point of the comparison between world and dream is to encourage
a detachment from the delusory nature of waking reality; to correctly perceive it is
to see it as a dream – where there is in reality ‘no Other’. That is, one should wake
up from the dream (of having or fearing the Other):
Wake up ( jaaga lehu), O mind! Wake up! Why are you sleeping unaware?. . .
O Nanak, sing [praising] the qualities of Hari; understand everything as a dream.
(AG, 726 –7, M9)
This ‘waking up’ is often linked to the notion of ‘entering’ a ‘fourth state’ of super-
consciousness, beyond waking, dreaming and deep-sleep states:
The Three (modes), pervade (the world);

(You) dwell in the house of the Fourth (cauthai) (state).
(AG, 1038, M1)
102 SIKH FORMATIONS
The consciousness (citu) of my Friend is incomparably beautiful: its mystery

cannot be known. . .
When consciousness is absorbed in consciousness (citahi-citu) dense rapture
occurs. (AG, 1362, M5)
The Sikh Gurus accept the notion of the (nondual) ‘fourth state’ often identifying it
as Hari’s abode. They are, however, less concerned with the detail of the three (dua-
listic) states of consciousness, or the three modes of existence, often conflating the
two as synonyms of maaiaa – a qualified illusion in the Sikh case. The Gurus’ ineffable
and blissful ‘consciousness-within-consciousness’ could be understood as a ‘latent’,
super- rather than sub-consciousness resting within ‘manifest’ waking conscious-
ness.24 Another simpler way to capture the essentially two-sided nature of the
human condition (dual and nondual) is through the metaphoric allegory of two birds:
Two birds, companions (who are) always united, cling to the self-same tree.
Of these two the one eats the sweet fruit, and the other looks on without eating.
(Shevtaashvatara Upanisad IV.6; tr. Radhakrishnan 1994, 733).
The Sikh ‘fourth-state’ (cauthaa-pad, turiiaa-vasthaa; dasavaam-duaar), and ‘con-

sciousness-within-consciousness’ (citahi-cit) is the same silent, witnessing bird.25
This Upanishadic ‘fourth’ (turiiya) nondual (advaitam) state that transcends the
subject-object (internal-external) duality revolutionizes and corrects rather than dis-
places the first three states of waking, dreaming and deep-sleep. Furthermore the
fourth state is actually always present in the former three, but it needs to be
‘found’, ‘activated’ or ‘remembered’ since it is only ‘there’ that true ego-less
(read-nondualistic) perception occurs (seeing neither ‘high nor low’, ‘good nor
bad’). The line or distinction drawn between the three dualistic and one nondualistic
consciousness is therefore an illusion of the waking mind. Accordingly this super-
witnessing-consciousness is there, hidden but aware, even when one is not: aware
when one is in deep sleep, aware when one is dreaming, and aware when one is
in ‘normal waking’ consciousness. It is the only state that is perfectly self-aware
and real – that is to say this fourth state can be experienced in waking, dream
and even in deep sleep, these latter being its lenses:
Even better than being awake, is the dream in which I dwell with God.
(AG, 816, M5)
As one proceeds through these veils from deep sleep, through dreams to waking,
the nondual, superconscious-self becomes more and more hidden, lost and forgotten –
and the delusional waking-self becomes the norm, ‘the seeker’ who experiences daily
‘false awakenings’ from ‘sleep’. This waking identity is simply an outer form presented
to the world as oneself. It is also presented to oneself as really oneself. But it is not fully
self-aware, it is not the self that sees, it is only the self that is seen.
That One sees (them), [but for them that One] does not come into view;
this is a great wonder.
(AG, 7, M1)26
The Creator-Sustainer-Destroyer (Brahma-Vishnu-Shiva) cannot see the absolute

nondual One. Only in the fourth state does ‘one’ ‘see’ the other three states for what
they are, for that is the station of Hari, of ‘True Perception’. Self knowledge, here, is
not discovering and knowing what this true-self, this fourth state, is, but rather it is
to be known by that fourth state; it is to realize, unnervingly, how well one has always
already been known to oneself. It is a remembering backwards of something one
never knew one had forgotten. This knowledge as a form of remembrance is not
unlike Plato’s notion of recollection (anamnesis) of the knowledge acquired by
one’s immortal soul’s acquaintance with the Forms before one’s birth, thus preced-
ing one’s experiential and sensory knowledge. In this sense we have not yet met our-
selves. The dream, along with the other states, hold the voice of our Other within,
and the world may just be that kind of place where – through a specifically religious
engagement with it – one is introduced to oneself. The ‘remembrance of God’ or of
the ‘Name’ (naam-simaran) is not then about an ego remembering some thing or name
(that could be forgotten), but coming into an awareness of how one has always
already been known – an unending unforgetfulness – and this realization-as-
awakening pivots on the loss of the waking-ego-self (aap gavaii).
We are puzzled by our dreams because the mind that dreams is not the mind that
interprets. The dream is a ‘lived experience’ of the subconscious but also supercon-
scious imaginary. ‘Interpretation’ is a dualistic waking reflection on that experience:
the (subtle) world of the dream is translated into the (gross) world of the waking
mind. From the Upanisadic and Sikh perspectives a reverse hermeneutic is required,
since the dream-mind knows things about the self that remain hidden to the waking
interpreting consciousness. That is why dreamers cannot interpret their own dreams:
they have to figure out how they are already known to their deeper, subtler
dream-self, and even further, by their deep-sleep-self, and finally by that nondual
fourth-state-self that is present in all three states of ‘false consciousness’. Dreamers
therefore require an expert, that is, someone who realizes how he or she is known by
the true-self, someone who is fully cognizant of the fourth state as the only state
(beyond the veils of deep-sleep, dream-sleep, and waking-sleep), someone who is
a Guru (‘dispeller of darkness’) or a Buddha, (lit. ‘awake’, ‘awakened’) – all the
time, beyond time.27
In an important sense, the Buddha is someone who no longer interprets the
world. An expert or guru in the Indic context, at least in the early Theravadin para-
digm, is one who no longer dreams. Creating a typology of dreams based on their
four origins,28 Buddhaghosa states, however, that ‘these four kinds of dreams are
[only] seen by ordinary people; those who have perfected themselves do not see
dreams’ (Young 1999, 46). The dream-self knows ‘more’ than the self that interprets
dreams only because the latter identifies too strongly with the ego’s interpretive
waking reality. Indeed the dream world makes perfect sense and things are what
they are whilst the dream runs, but upon waking only then does it become
strange to the waking-self, wearing each of its interpretations awkwardly (making
the interpretive outfit rather inept and wrong-headed) like clutching gods or
ghosts with one’s fleshy hands. Yet the waking world is never what it is, it is
always other than what it is; contestations about its reality are continuous.
Indeed, in the Indian context, sleep dawns as soon as there is certainty about an
interpretation of reality – and since we are never courageous and insightful enough
104 SIKH FORMATIONS
to withhold from interpreting the world, our fears and hopes being far too convin-
cing, we fall in waking-sleeps, performing endless interpretations led by this desire,
by that fear: thus by interpreting we do not wake up but return to and maintain our sleep. It is
now becoming clear, within this religious discourse, that a deconstructive herme-
neutic is required to jolt us out of our soporific interpretations – to act as cold
water to wake us from our waking-sleep, to shock us out of the habituated desire
to own the world through interpretive (dis)ingenuity – yet nothing of the visible
will remain upon awakening. The body is a dream and the world is lie:
The creature is lived by lust, anger and infatuation, having forgotten Hari’s form.
The body is false, they deem it true; it is like a dream at night.
Whatever is seen all that will vanish like the shadow of a cloud.
O servant Nanak, the one who knows the world to be false remains under Rama’s
protection.
(AG, 219, M9)
Samsaar is the state of dreaming, [it’s] all a game, all a game:

the Player plays and causes the game to be played.
(AG, 1311, M4)
This dis-ease of interpretation often seeks to end all interpretation, to speak

finally about the world. But, of course, as long as the fires of desire remain ignorantly
fed, so too will the interpretive process continue. Working on a theory of lack, the
waking mind figures if only it could know all about the self, the world, then all would
be fine. This view fails to realize that there is an ontological claim being made by the
Upanishads and the AG that always outstrips the epistemological desire, in that we are
always already known, and much more profoundly than we can ever know.29 It would seem
logical to assume that at the ‘point’ of awakening there is a transvaluation, an implo-
sion of that interpretive desire which hitherto has always been a desire to know some-
thing. But in the fourth state it bestows liberation from the need to know any thing,
even from the need to interpret and make objects (out of the world or oneself). The
point here is to learn how to actualize a ‘state of becoming’ where the ego-self is lost
in a motionless, non-mayic moment that dissolves the distance from the waking world
and its competing maps. Yet the struggle to, within, and from interpretation forms
the chains of samsaar, and there is no awakening without samsaric sleep (there is no
deconstruction without interpretation). The point here is not whether we can find
the hidden meaning to a dream, and so get the ‘right’ interpretation, but whether
we can awaken to the deeper self, to the forth state and so explode the entrapment
within various (false) frames of reference circumscribed by the three common and
dualistic states of consciousness. If there is no shift along that yogic ‘axis’ then
interpretations can only serve to feed an already bloated waking-ego: the dream
does not conceal a hidden truth unknown to us, but disguises what is already
known to us, such that we begin to remember our forgotten self.
From her study of dreams in South Asia, where dreams ‘foretell the births of
important religious figures, describe their spiritual accomplishments, and reveal eso-
teric teachings’, Young states that dreams are ‘first and foremost an accepted form of
cognition, one that can provide access to powerful states of consciousness’ (1999, 1).
Within the Indic context then one does not have a significant dream, one sees it
(darshan). Thus an important dream is given to the dreamer and is not perceived
as having been created by their own psychological processes and needs. This view
therefore places the dream outside the dreamer giving it a level of external objectiv-
ity beyond the individual’s subjectivity, lending them, as Young notes, ‘a divine or
demonic authority’ (1999, 9).30 In discussing darshan, Young extrapolates Diana
Eck’s formulation that the worshipper not only sees the divine but is primarily
seen by the divine to the dream context: ‘the dreamer not only sees the dream
but can be seen by it’ (1999, 9). This is a phenomenon that Freud too easily
ignores given the overly scientific bias of his historic European moment. The AG,
however, shares the positive reading of the dream:
In sleep, I saw my Husband (Lord); I am a sacrifice to that dream.

(AG, 1100, M5)
In a dream, I was lifted up; why didn’t I grasp the hem of His Robe?
(AG, 1362, M5)
Dreams can be more real than waking reality if they show a vision of the latter.
This is based on the belief that the reality of the ‘physical’ world first manifests in
psychic form, in dreams – most commonly expressed in prophetic vision.31 The
above argument therefore leads to the conclusion that perhaps Hermes the Trickster
(in radical hermeneutics) is more appropriate than Hermes the Messenger of the
gods and their platitudes (as explained in conservative, moderate and critical herme-
neutics). Perhaps a hermeneutic that does not give us things ‘as-they-are-in-themselves’
is required, since seeing maaiaa (illusory dream-world) as it is in itself is simply to peer
into a hall of mirrors. One cannot awaken from a dream by exploring its every avenue.
Here a different hermeneutics is required that turns things inside out, up-side-down,
radically ruptures the dream-scene in toto.32 A hermeneutic that aims to rupture a nar-
rative and turn it on its head approaches deconstruction. But this rupture must work; it
cannot simply disrupt the narrative to replace it with another one. That is to say, it
must be insightful, there must be some inkling that such a disruptive interjection
would produce the desired result. In Sikh parlance, a ‘Guru-led-hermeneutics’ of
vision, penetrative insight and skilful action, not just a stick that stirs the pond’s
already muddy waters. Nanak elaborates the idea that the world is a dream, that we
are trapped by our own ego-centred interpretations:
As in their dreams at night, people wander around as long as they sleep –

Just so, they are under the power of the snake Maaiaa;
as long as their hearts are filled with egoism and duality.
Through the Guru’s teaching consider deeply: this world is just a dream.
(AG, 63, M1)
Know this world to be like a dream or a show;

There is no truth in it, O Nanak, without the Lord.
(AG, 1427, M9)
106 SIKH FORMATIONS
Humans wander in their own imaginings because of the dualistic dictates of

egoism manifest in the three modes of consciousness. That is to say, the ego is inher-
ently interpretive and interpretation is the voice of its dualistic desires. The Guru’s
nondual insight is that the world has to be seen as a dream for action to become spiri-
tually efficacious, or un-dreamlike, unchained from desire and duality. Dreams are
fleeting, there is little time in a dream to do what is required. Dreams are imperma-
nent, their play soon ends, only upon waking does one realize not to get attached to
their deluding reality – but one never awakens. Furthermore there seems to be an
unfathomable logic at work in the world-as-dream, even as His will is inscrutable.
The call to interpret and understand the world-as-dream cannot operate on the con-
scious exercise of reason alone where the ego is in control. What is hermeneutics to
this situation?
The point obviously is that samsaar, like a dream, is utterly false and disappears as
soon as we awake from our spiritual slumber. Yet prior to that revelatory awakening,
each person is totally enmeshed within the concerns of that ‘false-self-world’. Indeed,
part of that world of the dream relies on ‘scripture’, ‘gurus’, ‘suffering’, and
‘nirvana’. If this is indeed the case then the ground beneath the AG is unstable, and
in need of clear qualification of how it is to be read and heard. If we do not interpret
our friends and family absolutely, then why should we interpret the AG, especially if it
is really to be understood as a person, a Guru, no less? Everything, after all, is made
through the Name, as the Name/Word (AG, 4, M1). To reach the fourth state and
perceive the world-as-the-Name and not as an illusory dream, one has to slay dualistic
consciousness in all its forms and states:
O People, my brothers, see a marvel (acaraj),

by slaying duality (dubidhaa) Hari dwells in the mind.
The priceless Name is not obtained by any other way,
By the Guru’s grace it comes to abide within one’s mind.
(AG, 663, M3)
The notion that whilst one is dreaming one is also being dreamed is something that
the humanist in Freud could not countenance. Nor could he tolerate the idea that the
dream-self is a truer-self than the waking-self, that the real or fourth state is some-
thing that knows conscious reason but lives beyond its imagined rules. For the Sikh
Gurus speaking the truth is fraught with complication if not sleight of hand, demand-
ing a communication given through an indecipherable oxymoronic sign-language of
‘mute-speech’.
The hermeneutic failure is obvious when acknowledged by the one who experi-
ences the mystic state himself. The mute person cannot tell you the sweetness of the
divine taste: the message cannot be carried over by describing, by the work of
language in the broadest sense. It is not the case that by simply writing or speaking
that Sikh revelation can be given and taken – there is an inbuilt proviso. The AG’s
revelation comes with a warning stitched into its very fabric: it is not to be taken at
face value, and this ‘injunction’ is repeated throughout as a constant refrain. The
saints of the AG are struck dumb, even intoxicated (khiivaa, maataa) by the sweetness
of Hari’s Presence (AG, 16, M1) and driven mad (divaanaa) by ‘Hari’s rapture’
(AG, 214, M5).
The Fear of You, is my hemp (bhaang)33; my consciousness is the pouch which

holds it.
I have become an intoxicated renouncer.
(AG, 721, M1)
Some call him an evil-spirit; some say he’s a ghost.

Some call him a (mere) man; O, poor Nanak!
Crazy Nanak has gone mad, after the King [Lord].
(AG, 991, M1)
Nanak himself acknowledges how he must seem to some. Nanak claims that Truth
(saace) is an intoxicant, and that he is permanently ‘high’ on it (AG, 945), since
the intoxication never wears off (AG, 1291, M1; AG, 1019, M5). Those intoxicated
are often called crazy; after all the insane and the inebriated babble incoherently.
How is one to interpret the words of a madman or a drunkard? They cannot

(naively) be taken at face value. As in the case with the dream motif, one cannot
simply tell the ‘truth’ to the king, that really he is only dreaming of being a
‘beggar’. This ‘truth’ is likely to provoke a violent response or hysterical laughter.
In this crucial sense Truth is a useless past-time of philosophers. What the king
requires – as do all those habituated to maaiaa – are a series of ‘insightful tricks’
(upaayas) to alert the king that things are not what they seem (Bhogal 2001). The
Lord and the Guru therefore speak, if they do at all, through a strained if not
strangled communication:
Hari’s attributes cannot be spoken by speaking.

They are like the sweetness of sweets to a dumb person.
(AG, 659, Bhikan)
Similarly humans experience the same tangle in the communication wires (for
we are all insane, drunk, addicted to the Other).34 There is then a structural
problem, a block in communication, something remains untranslatable. Conse-
quently, the inability to utter or write ‘divine knowledge’, ‘His merits’, holds an
important limit on how that utterance/writing is to be understood when it is
given, how it is to be heard, read and interpreted. This gap casts a shadow revealing
the dark-side of any hermeneutic ‘illuminations’ – a synchronous negation to all affir-
mative claims. It is difficult to understand the dumb, the drunkard or insane for their
communications seem uncontrollably twisted, slurred, obscure, and comprehensible
only in snatches and fragments. Indeed if words possess this duplicity then, either
language is used in strange ways, or non-linguistic means devised. The former case
ultimately leads to spontaneous poetry, the latter to a tradition outside of scripture
with its Zen staff-blow or logic-bashing koan. Or, if words have to be used, then they
are made unsettling, deliberately formulated to shock, with inversions to perplex,
even insult, and turn one’s world and values up-side-down – all to halt the march
of the hermeneutic mind. Much of Siddha and Sant nondual discourse uses this ulat-
baamsii language.35 Hess (1983) has described Kabir’s art as a ‘rough rhetoric’
devised for effect more than, if at all, ‘objective’, ‘phenomenological description’.
Such uses of language and metaphors of the dream, mute, insane, and drunk, all show
108 SIKH FORMATIONS
determined efforts are made to ensure that such scriptural sayings are not taken as
literally obvious. Rather the aim is to halt the mind in its tracks – make it pause
and re-think its thinking, backtrack its whole trajectory – disrupting its ego-plots
by the vajra-flash of poetic insight.
What, then, is being ‘described’ or invoked in such passages? And why are 1430
pages needed to do it? Indeed what is the AG if not also an undescribing? Omnipresence
of the Guru or his Word is, after all, an uninterpretable notion given that interpretation
demands selectivity, foreground-background. How indeed would one ever come to
explain omnipresence but by poetic license, some deception, misdirection? There is
an insurmountable interpretive failure at the heart of a mystic’s revelation, indeed
anyone’s speech. Life’s experiences can often strike us mute, fumbling in the sheer
awe of the mystery. To the mystic this mystery is a wonder (bisamaad) (AG, 801,
M5). Similarly the hermeneutic hurdle is a wonder, perhaps because we fail to see
it, like the planes of glass that are not there until we walk straight into them.
If the mute Kabir, Bhikan, Arjan, etc., cannot describe it, then what they even-
tually do ‘communicate’ cannot, by their own admissions, be taken straightfor-
wardly, literally or univocally. This paper concerns this crucial oversight.
Guru lies: the truth in fictions
Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions.

Nietzsche (1873; Magnus and Higgins 1999, 30).
. . . the clearing is pervaded by a constant concealment. . .
At bottom, the ordinary is not ordinary; it is extraordinary, uncanny. . .

Truth, in its nature, is untruth.
Heidegger (1971, 17 –87)36
The mind’s understanding is like a drunken elephant;

whatever is uttered, it is all totally wrong.
Nanak (AG, 351)
By merging with the Word,

the (Guru) causes one to speak the Unspoken.
Nanak (AG, 686)
Guru Nanak argues consistently that the Truth resists expression; one’s speech
has to become speechless to do it – otherwise whatever is uttered is ‘totally wrong’
and ‘truth’ really is illusion. Nanak, therefore does not leave us with ‘untruths’
alone. Once one has psychically merged with the Word then one is caused to
speak the unspoken (akath-kathaavai). And given that merging with the Word
requires the death of the ego, it is through the Guru’s Will that the unspoken is
spoken (AG, 686;796). But who is the Guru? That one ‘who causes the Truth to
be strengthened within’ (AG, 686, M1). There is then a clear idea that the Guru
is omnipresent, and accessible to all. Yet this accessibility is rarely cultivated leaving
most struck dumb by life’s complexity.
However, is not the Guru’s ‘muteness’, his refusal to explain the ecstasy of
his/her sweet, the starting point we all share? Do we not also undergo experi-
ences we cannot communicate? Could it be argued that the origin of hermeneutics
and the continuity of dialogue is born out of this constant failure, silence, and
untranslatability? That is to suggest that perhaps perfect communication is the
death of communication. Is not the primary aim of hermeneutics then to make
silence speak, to decide its undecidability, and is not the nature of silence pre-
cisely to withhold, remain undecidable? Is it not obvious then, that all interpret-
ation speaks of, through and about this failure? That some violence is at work in
each interpretation and a greater violence to deny this failure? Is not hermeneu-
tics, language in general, a useful ‘lie’, a necessary fiction humans need to be
human, that it is only through failure that particular subjectivities come into
view? At least it could be argued that it is not only the dumb who struggle to
communicate their experience, but all of us, since it is an inherent condition
of language, of being-in-the-world, of having body and positionality, mind and
its cultural and historical imprints.
To be sure the type of fiction being discussed here is not opposed to fact per se,
but signals a movement beyond the polarized duality of fact-contra-fiction superim-
posed on truth-contra-lie. Skilful (that is insightful) fictions are not lies or untruths,
as imagination is not the opposite of reality. Truth is being re-understood here not as
opposed to fiction but on the contrary as an apposite fiction. Perhaps this is Nanak’s
speechless-speech. Wyschogrod notes, ‘if the notion of fact reflects the effort to say
what is, fiction attempts to imagine what is not, to bring absence into presence, to
construct a world that does not exist’ (1994, 7). How else would one bring ‘absence
into presence’ but by an ‘unspoken speech’? The parallel aim here would be to recall
through a series of skilful fictions (dreams) the forgotten self and its fourth-state con-
sciousness, something absent to our waking presence. The AG points constantly to
what is not, what is absent in our waking egotistical lives. Though not fully endorsing
George Steiner, Wsychogrod quotes him: fiction ‘is a way to unsay the world, to
image and speak it otherwise’ (1994, 7). Fiction then would seem to be essential
to any creative project (Goodman 1978; 1983): the felt presence of the waking-sam-
saric-world occurs in the form of ‘sleep’ and has to be ‘destroyed’ by acknowledging
a haunting absence, before one wakes to a new expansive sense of self and world.
Again Wsychogrod quotes Steiner, ‘language is centrally fictive because the
enemy is “reality”’ (1994, 8). Similarly in our discussion, the waking world is
the ‘enemy’ disguised as reality driven by the desires of the ego, which requires
not the truth of what is the case (in the waking world), but a fiction unsaying that
ego-world, pointing to what could be, or what was. Wsychogrod cites Rousseau
in support: ‘in the particular or individual sense [paramount in dream-analysis and
the Indian guru-chela relation], truth is not always such a good thing; sometimes it
is a bad thing and very often it is a matter of indifference’ (1994, 8). Likewise a
‘lie’ is not always negative, and may be exactly what is required to recall who one
is – since lying now becomes not a refusal to see a thing as it is, but a refusal to
see what could be seen. Dreams let us know of possibilities far in excess of the
waking world, yet we wish not to see them, choosing to live by our own limitations.
110 SIKH FORMATIONS
The King refuses to see anything other than himself as a beggar – though he is likely,
in his dreams, to glimpse the reality of his regal status. Wsychogrod, employs the
term ficciones to denote a fiction that has pedagogical utility (paralleling our soterio-
logical efficacy of the AG’s sayings):
Ficciones can become a sinuous form for making the sacred thematic, by bringing
forth the silences of the sacred, not by forcing them into speech but by devising
strategies of encounter that simultaneously attest and preserve that silence.
(1994, 13)
What is shunned is apt to become silent; what is forgotten or other to our dis-
course speaks an incomprehensible language that seems to lack an origin and location.
These ‘blind-spots’ or present absences, strike us all mute. The muteness arising
from this hermeneutic failure is particularly visible in ‘mystical’ writings and prac-
tically invisible in languages that operate on a high degree of conformity. Everyday

speech becomes an unspeaking understood as full of miscommunication, or perhaps
more accurately, lends itself to different readings of the same remark – something
that soap-operas, comedians and poets, have long exploited and which politicians and
philosophers have traditionally aimed to tame if not eradicate. Even numbers operate
in interpretive frames and there is no subject that does not have its imponderables.
Furthermore, it must be stated clearly: ineffability does not render our speech
wholly futile; the presence of absence may be just how our speech gains it possibility
and meaning, as silence punctuates speech. Certainly, Nanak saw the possibility of an
unspoken-speech. The ineffable may be an unavoidable difference that makes dialogue
possible. Translation of this ineffable is not a secondary event, attempting to commu-
nicate a known, for the known is always already a translation: the unspoken is never
fully spoken. If translation is foundational and primary to all knowing then difference
is normative (Derrida 1998). This demands a radicalization of hermeneutics beyond
the notion that meaning is univocal and stable across varying contexts. Simply put,
hermeneutics needs to internalize the notion of ineffability, translation even self-
translation – which demands contextual sensitivity, a poetic sensibility, and not
least the courage to step beyond convention.
Translating the nondual dream

The wild geese are in the ocean, the sea is in the wild geese.
(They) honour the Unspoken Speech, the Guru’s Word.
The One Yogi [Hari] sits within the sphere of Emptiness.
He is not male, He is not female; how can anyone describe Him?
(AG, 685, M1)
The AG as revelation then is an Unspoken-Speech (akath-kathaa) (AG, 806, M5);

from ‘the beginning’ speech is not plain but mysterious resounding from the sphere
of Emptiness (sunn-mandal). Interpretation is not clear right at its ‘origin’; interpret-
ation does not follow after the ineffable event (of revelation), but is the event
occurring differently. There is, likewise, no original divine language or speech-act
that is simple: ‘Hari’ does not speak without ‘Nanak’s’ difference, without unspeak-
ing – therefore what is spoken, given, written down is at once familiar and strange,
like all translations:
All are in the One and the One is in all, this vision the True-Guru has shown me.
(AG, 907, M1)
How is one to understand the One when there are two: True-Guru and Guru Nanak?
There is some trickery here.
Thousands are Your eyes, yet You have no eyes;

thousands are Your forms, yet You have not even one. (AG, 13, M1)
My eyes are Yours yet You have no eyes: I see without eyes. Such statements out-
strip conservative, moderate and critical hermeneutics whose waking, rational

subject remains unquestioned. Here the ego-subject (haumai lit. ‘I-me’) is the
problem, and ‘cause’ of interpreting falsely. The solution is often seen in its destruc-
tion (haumai maare) so that a unique ‘seeing’ beyond what the physical eyes see arises.
Thus the counter-part to this hermeneutics of haumai, of duality, lies in a trick. One
has to recognize that the ubiquitous, dualistic constructions that constitute ‘our
reality’ are just that, fictions, they are not what ‘reality’ is. Once this has been recog-
nized, then the ‘world’ becomes a function of one’s understanding. Nanak, therefore
argues, to conquer the world one has to conquer the mind (AG, 6).
Could it be that ‘truths’ are of varying degrees of concealment – following
Nietzsche’s reading of truth as the kind of thing that can kill you, that is why
most need it ‘attenuated, veiled, sweetened, blunted and falsified’ (1990, 68
no. 39). Or, is it the case that there are fictions of varying degrees of revelation, as
with the skilful means thematic. Either way there remains no such thing as an inno-
cent and effortless truth or fiction, for both have the ability to seduce and delude as
well as disrupt and awaken. Their necessity as such is captured well by Gabriele
Schwab. He states humans need and live by fictions because ‘fictions become our
uncanny doubles, reflecting to us something we otherwise cannot perceive.’ (Iser
2000, dustjacket). Yet, perhaps none have captured how extraordinarily difficult it
is to accept truth as pragmatic fiction than Nietzsche: ‘it is a measure of strength
to what extent we can admit to ourselves, without perishing, the semblance, the
necessity of lies’ (in Schrift 1990, 156). The problem with understanding revelation
as a pure, separate, divine speech, is that it is actually always mediated, housed in a
particular language, and endlessly mutates – ‘God is always self-deferring even when
he reveals himself’ (Caputo 1987, 279). Yet this mediation and deferral is precisely
how it gains its relevance and power over us, and beyond to others.
If we are locked in a dream, if things are not what they seem, if revelation is
dumb-speech, which hermeneutic theory can work? Dreams operate according to
a concealed, often bizarre and disturbing logic. When the world is illogical what
can logic account for, what use is a reason-fixated hermeneutics? When one is inter-
preting the visible half (granth) of the invisible (guru), then the Guru’s Word (gura-
sabad) cannot be simply identified with the words of the AG. Given the importance
of this invisible shadow over the text (beyond the dumb, dream, insane, intoxicated
112 SIKH FORMATIONS
and nondual tropes) what is required to understand the AG is a transformed

interpreter-interpreted relation; that is the guru-chela duality requires re-under-
standing. The duality of the guru and the chela is challenged by how the Guruship
is passed on in the Sikh tradition: Nanak stops being the Guru when Angad, his dis-
ciple, becomes the Guru, and so on down the line of ten Gurus: the tenth guru
initiates and then is initiated in turn into the Khalsa.
Guru-chela dreams: mixed fantasies
The reader necessarily conspires in the text’s imaginings; that the act of reading
is a process of mutual seduction in which the reader and the read arouse each
other’s fantasies, expose each other’s dreams.
(Forrestor 1990, 264 – 65)
To understand more keenly the implications and importance of this interpreter-

interpreted relation it will be fruitful to return to Freud’s notion of ‘secondary revi-
sion’. The dream leaves confusion in its wake simply because it does not remain for
our considered analysis. Similarly the ‘real text’ of the AG is never really before us
for we are forever lost in the process of recalling-to-tell and retelling-to-recall; like
life’s moments dreams ever vanish. In Freud’s secondary revision the conflict of
forces between the censor and the wish is not like a tug of war, but more like the
perpetual conflict caused by ambiguous duck-rabbit drawings or the intellectual

conflict in a debate or a sequence of textual interpretations. . . secondary revision
comes on the scene after the struggle and tries to pull the pieces together. . . The
conflict here is less like the conflict between two moose clashing head on than
like the dilemma of the passerby who encounters the animals afterward and
wonders what the two-headed beast is called. This secondary factor is the pas-
serby who introduces the dream’s first misreading, and it is the interplay
between primary and secondary readings that makes the dream what it is.
(Skura in Bloom 1987, 127)
One’s dream of life has a felt primary quality (raw perceptions) that is itself inter-
pretive but is always second-guessed at by our more distanced, reflected and second-
ary interpretations (culture-specific cognitions). The point here is not naming the
primary as original and authoritative and the secondary as something that comes
after the event as loss, but acknowledging the interaction between the ‘primary’
lived experience and its interpretive ‘overlay’ as simultaneous and normative.
Guru Nanak then is the first passer-by of his own mystic-dream insofar as he had
to retell his given vision and understanding in his hymns, a reduction of true-
living (gura-sabad praxis) to its representation in written word and song (AG as
musical text). But so too are we passers by of the AG-dream and bring an interpret-
ation, a ‘secondary revision’ from our own psycho-social contexts and times to the
dream of the AG, and necessarily produce a misreading: be it the double-headed
‘atheism’ turned ‘monotheism’, or nihilism-cum-pseudo Buddhism, even dualism-
turned-nondualism.37
Yet the dream-hermeneutics here is not concerned with the correct reading of
the dream of the AG, nor of grasping the ‘true meaning’ or the first misreading of
Nanak, but engaging in the interplay between our first misreading and the text
and its continuity in multiplying those misreadings in such a way, not to get
nearer to some objective truth (either lodged in Nanak, the text or oneself) but
to eventually wake up from the dream of our waking-life. The circular (re)negotia-
tions between interpretations and their dreams is a crucial insight:
. . .oddly enough, it is not always clear whether the dream or its retelling comes
first in this strange relationship where the play between two versions of the
dream is more important than either version. . . The play between these two pos-
sibilities is the dream’s defining quality and a main source of its unsettling power.
(Skura in Bloom 1987, 124 – 5)
There is then an inherent undecidability about the dream-interpretation process. In

this regard Bloom (1987, 5) notes, ‘a dream, in the Freudian view, is thus a
belated text, an inadequate commentary upon a missing poem’. As there is no absolute
reading of a dream, so similarly there can be no mastering of the AG’s poetic voice
with the mundane prose of ‘waking puzzlements’, be they scholarly or community
interpretations. Yet, and significantly, each of their hermeneutic dreams cannot be
separated from the task of understanding beholden to both – which indeed
demands a questioning of hermeneutics as a questioning of the interpreting self vis-
à-vis the self that does not dream and does not interpret, but feels the pain of exist-
ence: within all waking interpretations waits the missing poem of the silent bird:
Day and night, he remains awake and aware; he never sleeps nor dreams.
That one knows this who feels the pain (of separation).
The arrows of love have pierced (deep) inside my body;
Lord! how can [the doctor] know the cure?
(AG, 993, M1)
The dream, mute, intoxicated, insane, and love-sick: all represent interpretive
‘failures’, though failures of a kind that are rich in insight. The AG calls for a
hermeneutic sensitive to this bhagati lament, this real absence, and pain of love.
This paper has pondered the situation and desire of the interpreter-interpreted
relation as an ongoing engagement, rather than merely the idea of interpretation.
The AG’s own self-understandings with regard to the difficulty of communicating
the ‘truth’ by utilizing various textual strategies have been explored. This explora-
tion points to the basic inadequacy of traditional hermeneutic theories. The employ-
ment of textual tropes of the dream/er, the dumb, the drunkard, the mad and the
incurable deliberately figure a ‘hermeneutic bankruptcy’ that is central to the teach-
ing and form of the AG’s poetry. Past scholarship on the AG has singularly failed to
see the centrality and import of these motifs, tending for the most part to ignore
them.38 The AG’s claim that this world is a dream from which one can and
should wake up demands a radical reorientation, even revolution, in the way one
should approach the text. The operations of condensation, displacement, symboliza-
tion and secondary revision begin to convey the complexity of the interpretive
114 SIKH FORMATIONS
endeavour. The task of interpretation is compounded when the speech of revelation

is given by the mute, insane, or drunk – such that the hearing of something familiar
may seem impossible. If it is impossible (frequently and flatly claimed throughout the
AG), then what is being communicated? Something, surely; for just as dream images
and desires linger upon waking, a residue or trace of the AG remains upon its
hearing; we see the gesticulations of the mute, we hear the slur of the drunkard,
the random shouts of the mad, and the mumblings of the sick. These traces have
otherwise been understood as an Unspoken-Speech, which can be said and heard
but ‘cannot be understood’ (AG, 300, M5). This means that the poetry of the AG
is as much a saying as an unsaying:
Your Unspoken Speech cannot be spoken.

(AG, 610, M5)
Drink the undrinkable; speak the Unspoken continuously.

(AG, 227, M1)
Each interpretive impasse demands a radicalization of the hermeneutic project such

that the interpreter can no longer hide safe behind the wish of an objective, indepen-
dent and rational analysis; for the AG is first and foremost a mirror – reminding us of
a déjà vu re(ve)lation we ourselves have long forgotten: the connection to a liberating
poetic unspeakability buried deep within everything:39
The Unspoken Story (is) the state of Nirvana –

How rare is the one who understands this through the Guru’s teaching.
(AG, 844, M1)
Appendix of AG Quotes
M1 ¼ Guru Nanak; M2 ¼ Guru Angad; M3 ¼ Guru Amar Das; M4 ¼ Guru Ram
Das; M5 ¼ Guru Arjan and M9 ¼ Guru Tegh Bahadur.
AG, 2 Jap M1, 5.10. (Line 9)

jy hau jwxw AwKw nwhI khxw kQnu n jweI ]
AG, 4 Jap M1, 19.12. (Line 10)
kudriq kvx khw vIcwru ]
AG, 4 Jap M1, 19.10-11. (Line 10)
jyqw kIqw qyqw nwau ]
ivxu nwvY nwhI ko Qwau ]
AG, 6 Jap M1, 26, 25– 26. (Line 6)
jy ko AwKY boluivgwVu ]
qw ilKIAY isir gwvwrw gwvwru ]26 ]
AG, 6 Jap M1, 28.3. (Line16)
AweI pMQI sgl jmwqI min jIqY jgu jIqu ]
AG, 7 Jap M1, 30.4. (Line 3)

Ehu vyKY Enw ndir n AwvY bhuqw eyhu ivfwxu ]
AG, 7 Jap M1, 33.1. (Line 9)
AwKix joru cupY nh joru ]
AG, 13 Sohila M1, 3.2.1-2. (Line 3)
shs qv nYn nn nYn hih qoih kau shs mUriq nnw eyk quohI ]
AG, 16 Sriiraag M1, 5.2.3. (Line 1)
qw mnu KIvw jwxIAY jw mhlI pwey Qwau ]2 ]
AG, 18 Sriiraag M1, 11.3. (Line 8– 9)
jgu supnw bwjI bnI iKn mih Kylu Kylwie ]
sMjogI imil eyksy ivjogI auiT jwie ]
jo iqsu Bwxw so QIAY Avru n krxw jwie ]3 ]
AG, 63 Sriiraag M1, 15.7. (Line 7– 8)

ijau supnY inis BulIAY jb lig indRw hoie ]
ieau srpin kY vis jIAVw AMqir haumY doie ]
gurmiq hoie vIcwrIAY supnw iehu jgu loie]7 ]
AG, 176 Gaurii M5, 71.2.3. (Line 1 –2)
rwju kmwvY dh ids swrI ]
mwxY rMg Bog bhu nwrI ]
ijau nrpiq supnY ByKwrI ]3 ]
AG, 214 Gaurii, M5, 157:4:1. (Line 2)
mwqo hir rMig mwqo ]1] rhwau ]
EuhI pIE EuhI KIE gurih dIE dwnu kIE ]
auAwhU isau mnu rwqo ]1 ]
AG, 219 Gaurii M9, 2.2. (Line 5– 7)
kwm koRD moh bis pRwnI hir mUriq ibsrweI ]
JUTw qnu swcw kir mwinE ijau supnw rYnweI ]1 ]
jo dIsY so sgl ibnwsY ijau bwdr kI CweI ]
jn nwnk jgu jwinE imiQAw rihE rwm srnweI ]2 ]2 ]
AG, 227 Gaurii M1, 15:2.1. (Line 14)
Aipau pIAau AkQu kiQ rhIAY ]
AG, 300, Thitee Gaurii, M5, Paurii 16.7. (Line 8)
AkQ kQw nh bUJIAY ismrhu hir ky crn ]
AG, 351 Aasaa M1, 9.2.1-2. (Line 9)
mn kI miq mqwglu mqw ]
jo ikCu bolIAY sBu Kqo Kqw ]
AG, 469 Aasaa M1, salok 1.1. (Line 9)
duKu dwrU suKu rogu BieAw jw suKu qwim n hoeI ]
AG, 558 Vadahans M1, 3.15-17. (Line 5– 6)
supnY AwieAw BI gieAw mY jlu BirAw roie ]
116 SIKH FORMATIONS
Awie n skw quJ kin ipAwry Byij n skw koie ]

Awau sBwgI nIdVIey mqu shu dyKw soie ]
AG, 610 Sorathi M5, 8:2.1. (Line 14)
qyrI AkQ kQw kQnu n jweI ]
AG, 657 Sorathi Namdev, 2.3. (Line 8)
AYso byFI brin n swkau sB AMqr sB TWeI ho ]
gUMgY mhw AMimRq rsu cwiKAw pUCy khnu n jweI ho ]3 ]
AG, 657 Sorathi Ravidas, 1.1-2. (Line 18 –19)
mwDvy ikAw khIAY BRmu AYsw ]
jYsw mwnIAY hoie n qYsw ]1] rhwau ]
nrpiq eyku isMGwsin soieAw supny BieAw iBKwrI ]
ACq rwj ibCurq duKu pwieAw so giq BeI hmwrI ]2 ]
AG, 659 Sorathi Bhikan, 2.1. (Line 17)

hir gun khqy khnu n jweI ]
jYsy gUMgy kI imiTAweI ]1] rhwau ]
AG, 663 Dhanasari M3, gharu 2, chaupade 1.3. (Line 16– 17)
eyku Acrju jn dyKhu BweI ]
duibDw mwir hir mMin vsweI ]
nwmu Amolku n pwieAw jwie ]
gur prswid vsY min Awie]3 ]
AG, 685 Dhanaasrii M1, 1:3.3-4; 4.1. (Line 16 –17)
srvr mih hMsu hMs mih swgru ]
AkQ kQw gur bcnI Awdru ]3 ]
suMn mMfl ieku jogI bYsy ]
nwir n purKu khhu koaU kYsy ]
AG, 686 Dhanaasrii M1, 2:2. (Line 6 –7)
so guru krau ij swcu idRVwvY ]
AkQu kQwvY sbid imlwvY ]
hir ky log Avr nhI kwrw ]
swcau Twkuru swcu ipAwrw ]2 ]
AG, 721 Tilang M1, 2:1:1.1-2 (Line 10)
Bau qyrw BWg KlVI myrw cIqu ]
mY dyvwnw BieAw AqIqu ]
AG, 726-7 Tilang M9, 1.1; 2.2. (Line 18; 1)
jwg lyhu ry mnw jwg lyhu khw gwPl soieAw ]. . .
nwnk hir gun gwie lY sB suPn smwnau ]2]2 ]
AG, 740 Suuhii M5, 16:10:1-2; 4.1. (Line 9 – 11)
iehu supnw sovq nhI jwnY ]
Acyq ibvsQw mih lptwnY ]1] rhwau ]
mhw moih moihE gwvwrw ]. . .
dUsr hoAw nw ko hoeI ]
AG, 796 Bilaaval M1, 4:3.1 (Line 9)

AkQ kQw khIAY gur Bwie ]
AG, 801 Bilaaval M5, 1.5. (Line 13 –14)
ijin cwiKAw iqsu AwieAw swdu ]
ijau gUMgw mn mih ibsmwdu ]
Awnd rUpu sBu ndrI AwieAw ]
jn nwnk hir gux AwiK smwieAw ]5]1 ]
AG, 806 Bilaaval M5, 20:2:2.1. (Line 11)
AkQ kQw AMimRq pRB bwnI ]
AG, 816 Bilaaval M5, 61:31:1.2. (Line 9)
jwgn qy supnw Blw bsIAY pRB sMig ]1] rhwau ]
AG, 844 Bilaaval M1, 2:3.3 (Line 6)
AkQ khwxI pdu inrbwxI ko ivrlw gurmuiK bUJey ]

AG, 907 Raamkalii Dakhanii M1, 8.5. (Line 9)
eyk mih srb srb mih eykw eyh siqguir dyiK idKweI ]5 ]
AG, 931 Raamkalii Dakhanii M1, 1:14.6. (Line 12)
Bgiq ibhUnw jgu baurwnw ]
AG, 945 Raamkalii M1, 1:63.2 (Line 5)
AMimRqu pIAw swcy mwqw ]
AG, 991 Maaruu M1, 7.1-4. (Line 6 –11)
mwrU mhlw 1 ]
koeI AwKY BUqnw ko khY byqwlw ]
koeI AwKY AwdmI nwnku vycwrw ]1 ]
BieAw idvwnw swh kw nwnku baurwnw ]
AG:993 Maaruu M1, 12:1.1. (Line 2)
Aihinis jwgY nId n sovY ]
so jwxY ijsu vydn hovY ]
pRym ky kwn lgy qn BIqir vYdu ik jwxY kwrI jIau ]1 ]
AG, 1019 Maaruu M5, 6:3:6 (Line 4)
mwiqAw hir rs mih rwqy iqsu bhuiV n kbhU AauKIvnw ]6 ]
AG, 1031 Maaruu M1, 10:4:16.2. (Line 3)
AkQu kQhu mnu mnih smweI ]
AG, 1038 Maaruu Sohale M1, 18:4:1. (Line 17)
qRY vrqwie cauQY Gir vwsw ]
kwl ibkwl kIey iek gRwsw ]
inrml joiq srb jgjIvnu guir Anhd sbid idKwieAw ]4] ]
AG, 1047 Maaruu M3, 4:12.1. (Line 16)
dUjY Bwie iPrY dyvwnI ]
AG, 1100 Maaruu M5, 17.2. (Line 7)
suqVI so shu ifTu qY supny hau KMnIAY ]2 ]
118 SIKH FORMATIONS
AG, 1140 Bhairau M5, 19:6:3.4. (Line 13)

nwm ibnw sBu jgu baurwnw ]3 ]
AG, 1194 Basant Kabir, 3.1-3. (Line 3 – 6)
joie Ksmu hY jwieAw ]
pUiq bwpu KylwieAw ]
ibnu sRvxw KIru iplwieAw ]1 ]
dyKhu logw kil ko Bwau ]
suiq muklweI ApnI mwau ]1] rhwau ]
pgw ibnu hurIAw mwrqw ]
bdnY ibnu iKr iKr hwsqw ]
indRw ibnu nru pY sovY ]
ibnu bwsn KIru iblovY]2 ]
ibnu AsQn gaU lvyrI ]
pYfy ibnu bwt GnyrI ]

ibnu siqgur bwt n pweI ]
khu kbIr smJweI]3]3 ]
AG, 1287 Malaar M1, Paurii 20:3.1. (Line 7)
bwJu gurU jgqu baurwnw nwvY swr n pweI ]
AG, 1291 Malaar M1, 2.7. (Line 8)
sg nwnk dIbwn msqwnw inq cVY svwieAw ]
AG, 1311 Kaanaraa M4, 5:5.1. (Line 2)
supnMqru sMswru sBu bwjI sBu bwjI Kylu iKlwvYgo ]
AG, 1362 Phunahe M5, 23:12.1; 12.3; 13.1. (Line 13 –15)
imq kw icqu AnUpu mrMmu n jwnIAY ]. . .
icqih icqu smwie q hovY rMgu Gnw ]. . .
supnY aUBI BeI gihE kI n AMclw ]
AG, 1417 Vaaran and Vadheek M3, 36.1. (Line 7)
ibnu sbdY jgqu brilAw khxw kCU n jwie ]
AG, 1427 Saloks M9, 23. (Line 14)
ijau supnw Aru pyKnw AYsy jg kau jwin ]
ien mY kCu swco nhI nwnk ibnu Bgvwn]23 ]
Notes
1 All references to the Adi Granth/Guru Granth Sahib will be abbreviated AG, fol-
lowed by page and author; full references are given in the appendix. M1 ¼ Guru
Nanak; M2 ¼ Guru Angad; M3 ¼ Guru Amar Das; M4 ¼ Guru Ram Das;
M5 ¼ Guru Arjan and M9 ¼ Guru Tegh Bahadur. Translations are mine, though
Trumpp (1989), Chahil (1993) and Sant Singh Khalsa’s (2003) internet translation
[http://www.sikhs.org/english/frame.html] have been consulted and sometimes
adapted. This scripture, compiled in 1604, is a collection of hymns from a variety
of sources and has multiple authors under three major categories: six Sikh Gurus
above (90.4%), 15 Hindu and Sufi Bhagats or devotional Poet-Singer Saints (8.2%),
and 17 Bhatts or panegyrists (1.5%). Later, according to tradition, the tenth Guru
before his death in 1708 transformed the AG into the Guru Granth Sahib, claiming
the eleventh Guru to be the Scripture itself. All Indic terms are given in their AG
form (maaiaa not maayaa, karam not karma, bhagati not bhakti, etc.).
2 Nanak’s most frequent term for ‘God’ is Hari, which is conflated with ‘truth’ (sac).
Thus personal and impersonal, formless/attributeless (nirguna) and those denoting
attributes/form are used (saguna).
3 The language of the AG is rich. Just looking at Nanak’s extensive vocabulary four
classes have been identified by Shackle (1981, viii-ix): Perso-Arabic loans, contem-
porary New Indo-Aryan words (Old Panjabi, Old Western Hindi or Khari Boli, Old
Siraiki or Multani and Braj); Middle Indo-Aryan forms (Apabhramsa and Prakrit); and
Sanskritic words.
4 Gallagher (1992, 60– 61) clarifies the circle: ‘We are always already actively
understanding the world even before we attempt to grasp anything in a thematic
or cognitive fashion. The knowledge which we already have of the whole, consti-
tuted in our prepredicative experience, impacts on the constitution of the meaning
of any particular thing, while the meaning of any particular thing adds to or
reshapes our knowledge of the whole. . .’
5 For elaboration of the Conservative (Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Betti, Hirsch), Mod-
erate (Gadamer, Ricoeur), and Critical (Nietzsche, Marx, Freud, Habermas) herme-
neutic schools see Gallagher (1992), though he adds, rather contentiously, a
fourth: Radical (Foucault, Derrida). It is in this latter area that the questioning
begins here.
6 Here the play of intertextuality confounds the notion that one can carry over
meaning from one language-context to another in a singular way. What would it
mean for one interpretation to be carried over from dream into waking state? Is
it sensible to talk about the ‘correct’ interpretation of a dream? All closure
seems to be a form of blindness and forgetting, revealing all naming as an exclusion-
ary and often expedient process.
7 ‘. . .that philosophy – like literature – is a product of rhetorical figures and devices. . .
[Derrida] is proposing what amounts to a psychoanalysis of western ‘logocentric’
reason, that reason which aims at a perfect, unmediated access to knowledge
and truth. The ‘unconscious’ of philosophy – to pursue the comparison – could
then be read in all the signs and symptoms of its own (long repressed) rhetorical
dimension’ (Norris and Benjamin 1988, 7). However Derrida himself does not
equate psychoanalysis with deconstruction, and sees this as a misreading:
‘despite appearance, the deconstruction of logocentrism is not a psychoanalysis
of philosophy’ (in Royle 2000, 212).
8 Indeed it is not hard to find dream-inspired works, nor the significance of dreams
more generally, they abound: Jahweh, communicates to Moses through dream and
vision (Num. 12: 6 – 7), Paul sees certain of his dreams as signs of God’s will (The
Book of Acts 16: 9 and 18: 9). The first revelation of the Qu’ran is said to have been
given to Muhammad in a dream (Young 1999, 7). The most famous (in the West)
however are Einstein’s autobiographical claim that the theory of relativity was
given to him in a dream, and the set of dreams that came to the ‘founder of
modern philosophy’, René Descartes, as ‘the most important affair of his life’
making real the most embarrassingly ironic fact that Cartesian rationalism of
modern philosophy has as its source the irrational par excellence: dreams. Yet
120 SIKH FORMATIONS
there are also the dark dream visions too. Describing himself as a somnambulist
whose footsteps were guided by a providence granted in a prophetic dream
(1917) and vision (1938), Adolf Hitler was able to command an army with hypnotic
power. He writes, ‘I go the way that Providence dictates with the assurance of a
sleepwalker’ (Stevens 1995, 292 – 8).
9 Note Guru Arjan’s inversion of this, in line with the world-as-a-vain-dream trope:
‘His rule may extend in all ten directions; he may revel in pleasures and
enjoy many women – but he is just a beggar, who in his dream is a king’ (AG,
176, M5).
10 Obviously, whilst Freud was attacking the dry positivism of his day, given their
interpretation of dreams as ‘meaningless by-product(s) of automatic and uncoordi-
nated brain activity occurring during sleep’ (Ellenberger 1970, 304), this was not
to displace reason with dream-(ill)logic, but aimed to apply rational thinking to
dreams as a meaningful enterprise. Though Freud did not go as far as make math-
ematical models of the dream’s cinematic canvass, he did aim to ‘discover’, given
the bent of his times, its ‘essential’ nodal point and chart its limited typography.
11 ‘Like some letter in cipher, the dream-inscription when scrutinized closely loses
its first look of balderdash and takes on the aspect of a serious, intelligible
message. Or, to vary the figure slightly, we may say that, like some palimpsest,
the dream discloses beneath its worthless surface-characters traces of an old and
precious communication’ (Sully 1894, 364).
12 ‘that ideas in dreams and psychoses have in common the characteristic of being
fulfilments of wishes’ (Penguin Freud Library 4, 163 – hereafter PFL). That is, ‘a
dream is an attempt at the fulfilment of the wish’ (PFL 2, 58– 9). Note the modi-
fication of inserting ‘attempt’ – given the problem-case of anxiety dreams –
which are not easily explained as wish-fulfilments.
13 ‘. . .and the value of the dreams for giving us knowledge of the future? There is of
course no question of that. It would be truer to say instead that they give us knowl-
edge of the past. For dreams are derived from the past in every sense’ (PFL 4, 783).
An example of Freud’s denial of his own past can be seen in the Babylonian
Talmudic saying: ‘sleep is one sixtieth of death; dream is on sixtieth of prophecy’
(cited in Frieden 1990, 4, fn.7).
14 ‘a dreamer’s relation to his wishes is a quite peculiar one. He repudiates them and
censors them – he has no liking for them, in short’ (PFL 4, 737). This statement
cannot be separated from Freud’s desire to establish ‘a psychology for neurol-
ogists’; since he believed that what explained dreams also explained neurotic symp-
toms, and their ‘true origins’ lie in the past – hence his infamous Oedipus complex
and the notion of the infantile roots to all wishes expressed in dreams – dreams
thus express primitive repressed desires.
15 Not knowing, according to the AG, the reverse to be true: ‘suffering is the medi-
cine and pleasure the disease’ (AG, 469, M1).
16 A rebus is a picture puzzle that has no narrative plot and juxtaposes a range of pic-
tographic, phonetic and ideogrammatic elements that have no meaning as a whole.
17 Each classical raag is meant to evoke a particular sentiment, or flavour (rasa).
18 ‘What power have I to say Your deep thought?’ (AG, 4, M1); ‘If any loudmouth
says (he knows), then it is to be written on his forehead [that he is] the greatest
fool amongst fools’ (AG, 6, M1). Yet these lines often come at the end of passages
of relating and ‘describing’ His deep thought.
19 Gadamer notes how central this statement is for the ‘whole history of modern her-
meneutics’, which for him ‘contains the whole problem of hermeneutics’ (1992,
192). He quotes Steinthal’s repetition of Schleiermacher’s formula: ‘the philologist
understands the speaker and poet better than he understands himself and better
than his contemporaries understood him, for he brings clearly into consciousness
what was actually, but only unconsciously, present in the other’ – and this is
done through the ‘knowledge of psychological laws’ (Gadamer 1992, 192 –3).
To be fair Freud was aware of this over-interpretation and sought to check
himself by making the opposite claim also: that only the dreamer can interpret
his own dreams.
20 Traditionally these are five: sexual lust (kaam), anger (krodh), covetousness (lobh),
delusion (moh), pride (ahamkar).
21 Dreams are ‘guardians of sleep’, they ‘are things which get rid of (psychical)
stimuli disturbing to sleep, by the method of hallucinatory satisfaction’ (PFL 1,
168).
22 Gananath Obeyeskere (1981, 180) argues that ‘this mode of knowledge. . . is one of
the most powerful and ancient forms of knowing. . .. I believe that hypnomantic
knowledge [derived from dreams, trances, and other ecstatic experiences] also
lies at the base of most South Asian religions; on it are superimposed the ratioci-
native speculations of the great historical religions of this region’.
23 That range in the Indic context has many aspects to it that cannot be developed here;
dreams have been interpreted (svapna-vicaarin) as furnishing prophetic vision
(svapna-darshana, svapnya), soteric instruction (svapnadesa), a form of super-con-
sciousness (svapnajaagaritavishayaa, taijasa, turiiya) producing their own unique
kind of cognition (svapnantika) and knowledge (svapna-jnaana). There have also
developed dream methods (svapna-vishayaprayogam), techniques and rituals to
cause particular ‘sought dreams’ (svapna-maanavaka), as well as having dream
interpretation (svapna-vicaari), and a dream interpreter (svapnadhyaayavid) of the
state of dreaming – (svapnavasthaa). See Sanskrit-English Dictionary (1970), Young
(1999), and O’Flaherty (1984). In contemporary Punjabi the dream (supanaa
‘dream, vision, reverie’) ‘comes’ (aaunaa), is ‘taken’ (lainaa), and is ‘seen’ (vekha-
naa); one is to dream, have a vision and gain something to aim at (Punjabi-English
Dictionary 1994).
24 This schema of the 3 þ 1 states of consciousness, is first seen in the Upanisadic dis-
courses, most clearly expressed in the Mandukhya Upanisad (tr. Radhakrishnan
1994, 695 – 705), wherein the self possesses three dualistic modes of consciousness
and one Fourth nondualistic (advaitam) and distinct ‘mode’ of super-consciousness.
Waking (vishva) ‘cognizes external objects’; Dreaming (taijasa) ‘cognizes internal
objects’; Deep-Sleep (prajna) is a ‘mass of cognition’, the ‘face of thought’; and
the Fourth-State (turiiya): ‘not cognitive, not non-cognitive’, i.e. nondual.
25 Nanak conflates these Yogic/Upanishadic terms with Buddhist Siddha ones:
nirbaanii-pad, sunn-samaadhi, sahaj. He also talks in bhagati terms of mystic union
(samaai, liva-laai), and the Way ( jugati, calanaa) as well as Islamic ones of attaining
Allah’s Court (daragah, darabaar).
26 ‘Them’ refers here to the Absolute’s three disciples of Creator, Storekeeper and
Judge – who see everything but the Absolute – a thought also expressed in the
Upanisads by locating the Absolute within: ‘You cannot see the seer of seeing’
122 SIKH FORMATIONS
and ‘Everyone sees his sport but himself no one ever sees’. (Brhad-aaranyaka Upa-
nisad III.5.1 and IV. 3.14 in Radhakrishnan 1994, 220; 259).
27 Young acknowledges that in the South Asian context ‘dreams can be stimulators of
enlightenment’ (1999, 25), noting that ‘in fact, it suggests that in sleep, in dreams,
one comes closer to understanding the nature of reality than in waking conscious-
ness’ (1999, 25). Young concentrates on the Indo-Tibetan Buddhist traditions bal-
ancing the work already done on Hinduism by O’Flaherty (1984).
28 ‘disturbances of the bodily elements, previous experiences, influence of the gods,
and portents or prophecies caused by one’s (karmic) merit and demerit’ (Young
1999, 46).
29 Much of the inspiration for these insights come from Carse (1995, 89– 110). Con-
trary to Freud, the secret that withdraws in the dream is not an ‘unplumable
unknown’, but an ‘unplumable known’. Carse notes, ‘This dream does not hide
what I don’t know but what I do know.’ (1995, 103)
30 She further notes, ‘to say one has seen rather than had a dream is to suggest that the
dreamer is the passive recipient of an objective vision. The literalness of this think-
ing is expressed in hymn 4.9 of the Atharva Veda, which recommends and eye oint-
ment, asana, for protection from troubled dreams, and in a Tibetan text from the
Tangyur that also recommends using a certain eye ointment when seeking an aus-
picious dream’ (1999, 9).
31 The influential fifth-century C.E scholar-monk Buddhaghosa ‘uses the word vipaaka
to discuss how prophetic dreams predict future events that have already matured
[psychically], making it just a matter of time before they manifest in [physical]
waking reality’ (Young 1999, 27).
32 This ‘rupture’ is a form of ‘violence’ that is part of the bhagati praxis. See my ‘Text
as Sword: Sikh Religious Violence Taken for Wonder’ in King and Hinnells eds.,
Routledge (forthcoming), where I discuss Sikh bhagati as a ‘violent-love’.
33 Cannabis sativa.
34 Without the Word (sabad), the Name (naam), the Guru, bhagati, the ‘whole world
is insane’, being addicted to the Other (duujaa bhaai). (AG, 1417; 1140; 1287;
931; 1047)
35 ‘Upside-down’ language. Hess’s excellent study provides a detailed exposition of
Sant upaaya but without locating that term within its Buddhist context. For
example she even argues that Kabir’s Name-Word is meant as a device, a trick
to get free of the tangle of maaiaa (Hess 1983, 135 – 61). See AG, 1194 for an
example.
36 cf. Derrida’s ‘Because, indeed, if woman is truth, she at least knows that there is no
truth, that truth has no place here and that no one has a place for truth’ (1978, 53),
and Baudrillard’s ‘The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth – it is the
truth which conceals that there is none. The simulacrum is true.’ (1983, 1) Radical
hermeneutics and deconstruction move to Baudrillard’s third order of the simula-
crum, where the image masks the absence of a basic reality, but do not move whole-
sale with Baudrillard to the fourth order, where the image bears no relation to any
reality whatsoever – it is its own pure simulacrum. This is because of their
discourses on a ‘quasi-transcendental’. Baudrillard ditches truth, or the notion
of a ‘god’, or ‘the other’ in the Levinasian sense, far too easily and neatly in his
four totalised shifts in the orders of the image.
37 Trumpp’s 1877 interpretation claims that AG is contradictory, that is simul-

taneously, nihilistic, pantheistic, thoroughly pessimistic like Buddhism, and monis-
tic (1989, xcvii-cx). This reading is followed by Macauliffe’s 1909 opposite
interpretation of the AG as a ‘moral monotheism’. Later we get those cashing in
on the currency of this particular interpretation: from Gopal Singh’s 1960 trans-
lation of the AG as ‘strictly monotheistic’ (1993, xxvi; xxxii), to Talib’s translation
as ‘uncompromising monotheism’ (1991, xliv-xlv). My own interpretation, though
critical of the need to classify the AG, moves towards a ‘nondual monotheism’.
38 See the long introductory essays preceding major translations of the AG: Trumpp
(1989), Macauliffe (1993), Gopal (1993), Talib (1991). For secondary exegesis of
the AG’s hymns see McLeod (1968; 1997), and Kaur (1990).
39 Compare, ‘Speak the Unspoken Speech (and) merge the mind into the mind’
(AG, 1031, M1).
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QUESTIONING HERMENEUTICS WITH

I cannot describe such a Carpenter who is pervasive in everything, every place.

A reversal, an impasse. How are we to interpret these AG tropes of the ‘world-

is ‘related’ from within previous epistemic modes. There is no outside to interpret-

‘writing’ precedes ‘speech’? What would it mean to understand dreams as more

Freud’s dream of interpretation and AG poetry

O Lord, what can be said about such a delusion?

If this cruel illusion is indeed our situation then a straightforward hermeneutics,

desire to scientiﬁcally pin-down the dream’s ‘essential structure’ (Ellmann in Royle

. . . psychoanalysis parodies the traditions of religious hermeneutics, but psycho-

The second form of ‘unintelligibility’ is, ‘displacement.’ Here the dream-wish is

complex (i.e. radicalized) hermeneutic. By developing and adopting the method of

If I would know, would I not tell? The description cannot be told

Is not the religious discourse par excellence a discourse of perpetual displace-

Indic dreams and dreaming: hermeneutics of the

The Three (modes), pervade (the world);

The consciousness (citu) of my Friend is incomparably beautiful: its mystery

The Sikh ‘fourth-state’ (cauthaa-pad, turiiaa-vasthaa; dasavaam-duaar), and ‘con-

The Creator-Sustainer-Destroyer (Brahma-Vishnu-Shiva) cannot see the absolute

(AG, 219, M9)

Samsaar is the state of dreaming, [it’s] all a game, all a game:

This dis-ease of interpretation often seeks to end all interpretation, to speak

In sleep, I saw my Husband (Lord); I am a sacriﬁce to that dream.

(AG, 1100, M5)

As in their dreams at night, people wander around as long as they sleep –

Know this world to be like a dream or a show;

Humans wander in their own imaginings because of the dualistic dictates of

O People, my brothers, see a marvel (acaraj),

The Fear of You, is my hemp (bhaang)33; my consciousness is the pouch which

Some call him an evil-spirit; some say he’s a ghost.

How is one to interpret the words of a madman or a drunkard? They cannot

Hari’s attributes cannot be spoken by speaking.

Guru lies: the truth in fictions

Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions.

. . . the clearing is pervaded by a constant concealment. . .

At bottom, the ordinary is not ordinary; it is extraordinary, uncanny. . .

The mind’s understanding is like a drunken elephant;

By merging with the Word,

tically invisible in languages that operate on a high degree of conformity. Everyday

Translating the nondual dream

The AG as revelation then is an Unspoken-Speech (akath-kathaa) (AG, 806, M5);

Thousands are Your eyes, yet You have no eyes;

strip conservative, moderate and critical hermeneutics whose waking, rational

and nondual tropes) what is required to understand the AG is a transformed

Guru-chela dreams: mixed fantasies

To understand more keenly the implications and importance of this interpreter-

perpetual conﬂict caused by ambiguous duck-rabbit drawings or the intellectual

There is then an inherent undecidability about the dream-interpretation process. In

endeavour. The task of interpretation is compounded when the speech of revelation

Your Unspoken Speech cannot be spoken.

Drink the undrinkable; speak the Unspoken continuously.

Each interpretive impasse demands a radicalization of the hermeneutic project such

The Unspoken Story (is) the state of Nirvana –