The Power of the Khalsa Women!
The Chali Mukte: The 40 Liberated Ones. Forty of Guru Gobind Singh's men deserted him at Anadpur. They were afraid to die, afraid for their lives, desperate and starving. They were so concerned with their own survival, that they willing wrote and signed a letter denouncing their Guru. When they arrived home, rather than finding wives joyful for their return, happy that they were alive, what did they find? Wives who were appalled that they had deserted Guru Gobind Singh Sahib Ji. The male side of this story is that the men returned to fight for the Guru and died in the battle, liberating their souls in the process. But the hidden story is:
That the consciousness of their Khalsa wives is what inspired them to do it. The Khalsa women consciously chose widowhood. They would have rather born the burden of seeing their husbands dead, of being left with the sorrow of being widowed, of raising their children alone, of having to find their economic security in the absence of a husband -they would have rather endured all this than to see their husbands walk away from their destinies and betray their Guru.
These women knew - the duty and role of a Khalsa wife is to serve the soul of her husband and deliver him to his destiny and to God and Guru no matter what. Who liberated these men? Themselves? No - it was the grace, security, wisdom and blessing of their wives: that allowed them to be liberated. It was the meditative discipline, the trust in the Divine, the attunement with God's Will through the experience of their own Spirits that allowed these women to look their husbands in the eye and say:
You are dead to us, no matter what! Go back and stand with your Guru or leave!
Minus the spiritual understanding of the women, the 40 Liberated Ones would have never returned to their Guru and would have gone through lifetimes of karma to repay the mistake. These Khalsa women understood non-attachment, security in the Divine, living in the Will of God, loyalty to the Guru so well that they could fearlessly send their husbands to their death, knowing that it was better for their husbands to die in service of the Guru than to live any other way. And the pain of loosing their husbands was less to them than the pain of seeing their husbands loose their path to God. Publicly- the valour of the men prevailed. Privately- the wisdom of the women prevailed.
It was this joint consciousness, valour and wisdom, male and female that displayed the true power of the Khalsa.
Comments:
Principal Amar Singh Dhaliwal, "Rudiments of the Sikh Religion," pg.14., Khalsa School Vancouver.