Goindwal - A Magical Place
S.S. Sangeet Kaur Khalsa
Phoenix AZ, U.S.A.
It was November of 1996 and I was standing at the top of a long flight of marble stairs, looking down to the clear waters of a deep well far below in which people were immersing themselves. The place was Goindwal in India's northern province of Punjab, only a short drive from Amritsar and the Golden Temple. It is a magical place, a place I had heard about for many years. It was a place where, the Siri Singh Sahib, Yogi Bhajan had told us, if we recited Japji Sahib (the Sikh morning prayer) on each of its 84 steps, we would wash away 8.4 million lifetimes of karma.
I had not understood the power of a visit to Goindwal with the dip in the sacred well and the recitation of Japji Sahib until November 1996, seeing the faces of those two women in our yatra (spiritual pilgrimage) who were there doing it. It would take them two days, beginning on the bottom step in the water and moving up, step by step, going down to immerse themselves in between each recitation of Japji Sahib and then back up to the next step, until they reached the top step. When they rejoined the yatra after that, they had a special glow I had never seen before.
I made a promise that day to Guru -- if He made it possible for me to return to India the next year I would visit Goindwal and recite Japji Sahib on its 84 steps. A year later, the funds "miraculously" appeared for me to go on the yatra, and I knew it was Guru's will that I keep my promise.
We began at Goindwal as five committed Gursikhs - three women and two men, standing waist-high in the clear water below the bottom step - each on their respective sides of the head-high wall that discreetly separates the two genders. It was a deceptively warmish morning of a wintry November day, the sunlight streaming down through the windows high above us.
All the women on the steps had joined us for the opening Ardas, a prayer for the blessings and completion of this practice, and then they chanted with us for the first recitation of Japji Sahib. It was thrilling. Visitors who had come to take a single ceremonial dip stopped respectfully to watch us.
It wasn't until we were on the fifth step reciting Japji Sahib that I realized how ill prepared we were to handle the cold winds sweeping down from the entrance high above us. We each had a towel - mine was soaked through by then - and one wool blanket to wrap around us as we recited and walked down to dip and walked back up to begin again on the next step. The blanket quickly got soaked also. I was shiver-shaking as I came back out of one immersion and an older woman reached over and rubbed my legs briskly as I was drying myself.
Later on, about step 15 of 84, a lady with precious stones in her earrings and on her rings took off her silk chuni and rubbed my legs with it. In the late afternoon, another lady came by and gave us small glasses of warm chai (Indian tea). I counted my blessings at having been born a woman to enjoy the compassion of these wonderful ladies.
At first it was easy to take the broad, steep steps at a brisk pace going down and up, but gradually it became harder. We kept up until about midnight when we stopped to take a brief few hours' nap in rooms we had set aside at the Gurdwara guest house only a hundred yards away. That day we had only had the water we brought along and two protein bars, so we would not have any unnecessary interruptions. At first light we resumed our recitations at step 40.
The second day was harder than the first. As before, hundreds of women and children streamed past us every hour to take their ceremonial dips. Many of them paused to touch our feet - a sign of respect for what we were doing. But this day there was no delivery of chai, no warming rubs of the legs. There was only the force of Japji Sahib propelling us through the spin of lifetimes of karma we were burning off.
By now I felt the profound change process we were in. On some steps I could feel an uplift, and on other steps the emotional weight was huge, evoking depression, even seeming to take me to the point of near-death. It took all the power of Japji Sahib and Guru's will to keep up. I realized I was actually doing a seva - not a selfish act, but one where I had focused on my students and how they deserved a stronger teacher and so I had to clear away all this karma if I was going to be of greater service to them. That desire helped keep me going.
The afternoon came and went and we were approaching the 70th step. By now the other two friends I was with - with far younger hips than mine - had been able to take the steep stairs faster than me and were several steps above me. When they finished all 84 steps about 9 p.m. I still had seven steps to go - about two hours at my rate. They disappeared; I assumed to go rest in the rooms.
A little later, Hari Nam Singh came back with a still-warm roti (round unleavened bread) he had found for me in the Gurdwara kitchen. He held my Nitnem (prayer book) as I ate and then recited silently and supportively with me on each of the remaining steps. When we reached the top, Sat Mohine Kaur rejoined us. It was 11 p.m., 26 hours after we had started. I led the recitation of the closing Ardas, expressing gratitude for all that Guru had done to help us complete our missions here.
We each continued to understand and acknowledge the impact of that work for the next 40 days, knowing that we had been forever altered and renewed. I, along with Hari Nam Singh, went on to teach my Womanheart women's retreat in Australia before returning to the U S. It was only when I was home in Phoenix, teaching my first yoga class, that I realized how exquisitely Guru had kept his promise to me. I had indeed come home the stronger teacher I had asked to become.