Narayan Shabad

The Narayan Shabad was composed by Guru Arjan, the 5th Sikh Guru.

Narayan is one of the many different names for the Divine. It relates to the quality of water. As a plant needs water for its flowers to blossom, in the same way chanting Narayan nurtures the Divine Identity within you so that your soul can bloom into its full beauty and grace.

Narayan is the quality that restores. It allows life to become fresh, lush and green again.

Narayan also can defend against death. It is said in the Siri Guru Granth Sahib that when Narayan is chanted, death cannot approach.

Chanting this Shabad restores what has been lost. It brings forth abundance and life. It protects against the power of death.

Here is the Shabad Sheet in Gurmukhi and English

Here is the Shabad Sheet in English and the Transliteration

What Yogi Bhajan said about the Narayan Shabad

The Power of the Narayan Shabad

“And now, I am telling you Akal Takhat shall not be completed and restored back to its glory if we do not sing the Narayan Shabad and participate to the full glory of it. This is a shabad by Guru Arjan Dev. Guru Arjan Partakh Har personified God. He stood the test of fire and came out totally pure. That purity entitled Guru Hargobind to construct Akal Takhat. Akal Takhat didn’t get constructed because somebody had the brick and the paste and the mortar and sat down and built it up. No. And I did hear the story that Brahma came and Vishnu came and Shiva came and Narayan came and they built the Akal Takhat…”

Excerpted from ‘Gurdwara Lecture – The Day of the Akal Takhat,’ give on February 6, 1987 in Los Angeles by the Siri Singh Sahib, Yogi Bhajan

This is a shabad by Guru Arjan Dev. Guru Arjan Partakh Har, personified God. He stood the test of fire and came out totally pure . . .

When we are singing this Narayan Shabad, the vibration of it will restore the glory of the Khalsa . . . This Narayan Shabad has a history and a power behind it. You have seen the success of the other shabad, haven’t you? Well, test this one, too.

What this Shabad will do

This shabad will do five things:

1) It will restore the glory of the Khalsa

2) It will restore the glory of the Akal Takhat

3) It will bring the character of the Khalsa back to it

4) It will bring the future of the Khalsa on a silver plate and God shall present it back to the Khalsa

5) It shall give you the amalgamation, merger and oneness with God, whosoever shall sing

If that doesn’t happen, wherever you perform my last rite, as a religious duty, spit at that place and never leave a flower. But as Guru has said, so it shall happen and I’m just taking this opportunity today to communicate with you.

Jaa(n) kao mushkal at banai, dho-ee ko-e naa(n) de,

Laagoo ho-e dushmanaa, saak bhe bhaj khale,

Sabho bhajai aasaraa, chukai sabh asaraa-oh,

Chit aavai os paarabraham, lagai naatatee vaa-o.

One who is confronted with dire difficulty, to which no one offers any support,

Whose friends have turned into enemies and even kinsmen have deserted him,

When all support has given way and all hope has been lost,

If he should then remember the Supreme Lord, even the hot wind shall not touch him. (Guru Arjan Dev Ji, Siri Guru Granth Sahib, p. 70 – 71)

Guru Arjan Dev and the Narayan Shabad

This shabad has been sung by Guru Arjan Dev for us to practice. I hope every night in your silent, saintly, instituted sense of that communicated magnetic field, in the realm of the urge to participate in the valleys of those realms where no man has a voice, you will come to this ashram and sing those words created by Guru Arjan, the personified God, Himself. Those words made him to stand to purity by the test of fire, and when he came out the other side, Guru was installed who could wear the miree and piree, and thus became Har Gobind. And it entitled him to install the Akal Takhat.

Yogi Bhajan about the practice of this Narayan Shabad

What is in the heavens is on the earth. So it is written, so it shall be done. But it needs a little help from you, a little effective participation. Today you may not care what I say to you because you know I can speak and I can tell you. Very soon you will miss one thing. There will be nobody like me to tell you. Then you’ll have to depend upon your dreams, and your dreams and extra-sensory perception to receive the sound, and those kinds of things.

But, that’s a human formula. That’s too little in comparison to what you have, the Siri Guru Granth Sahib. I am asking you to understand today that the body is a shell and it shall fall because it is a confinement. It keeps me and you on the earth. Earth is not our home. Earth is the creation, it is Kar. It is one creation of the Ong. But I do not belong to the earth. I can visit it, live here, then go back home.

The divine Children of Shabad Sansaar

I came here, I got married, and I have children. Then I married in a different way. I created so many children. So this children business is going on. One is jiwan sansaar. Other is shabad sansaar. You are my divine children through shabad sansaar. And in that we have now become a Khalsa family. We have become Undying. We took Guru Gobind Singh of Akal Moorat. Then next is Ajoonee Saibhang Gur Prasaad . . .

Because we are Sikhs of the Shabad, and we are the sons and daughters of Guru Gobind Singh, and we are the soul and the soul-ownership of Guru Arjan. That’s why this shabad was given to us and that’s why now we are going to sing it and we are going to repeat it every night! And it is very good! The interest, the benefit, the earthly benefit to you will be 25% – a lot of money, a lot of prosperity, a lot of happiness, Sukh, Anand (peace, bliss). Two things. Not only Anand. Sukh, Anand. And the daa-in, the teeth of the daa-in – witch, shall be broken. That’s the most beautiful thing in it . . .

Come. Bring friends, enemies, known, unknown. Come. Come you must! Prosperous you shall become. That day! Because you will be meditation in the construction of the sole sum of that energy which is the totality, reality and infinity of God. There is no meditation; there is not a mantra which can give us so much in such a short time . . .

Wahe Guru Ji Ka Khalsa! Wahe Guru Ji Ki Fateh!

Audio Files – Listen to the Narayan Shabad performed by the artists below:

Listen to the following musical recitations of the Narayan Shabad:

Chardi Kala Jatha:

Dev Suroop Kaur:

Guru Raj Kaur:

Sangeet Kaur:

Satkirin Kaur