Nirvan, from nir out and va to blow, means in Sikh literature the cessation of individual consciousness caused by the blending of the light of the soul with the light of God. The Sikhs compare it to water blending with water:--

As water blends with water, when

Two streams their waves unite,

The light of human life doth blend

With God's celestial light.

No transmigrations then await

The weary human soul;

It hath attained its resting-place,

Its peaceful crowning goal.

Nirvan is to be obtained by meditation on God, with sufficient attention and iteration, and by a life spent in conformity with the Guru's teachings. Individual consciousness then ceases, and there is no further pain or misery.

A man may have performed good works on earth, but, if they be unattended with devout meditation and mental absorption on God, he cannot expect either Nirvan or Sach Khand, but must undergo purgation after death. After this the soul returns to a human body and begins anew its career, to end in either the supreme bliss of ultimate absorption or the supreme misery of countless transmigrations.

If man have done evil and laid up demerits, his punishment after death must be severe. When the punishment corresponds to his misdeeds, his soul must enter some lower animal and pass through a greater or lesser number of the eight million four hundred thousand forms of existence in creation, until its turn comes to enter the offspring of human parents. The soul thus reborn in a human being has again to proceed in its long struggle to obtain the boundless reward of Nirvan.

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Longa dies, perfecto temporis orbe,

Concretam exemit labem, purumque reliquit

Aetherium sensum atque aurai simplicis ignem.[1]

Mind, whether known as reason or instinct of a greater or less degree, and whether an attribute of the brain, of the nervous system, or of the heart, is common to all animals. It is held in most religious systems to be distinct from the soul.[2] It induces the soul, under the impulse of goodness or passion, to perform good or evil acts. Both the mind and the soul are concomitants of life, which is a particular combination of certain elements existing in the body, and abides -is long as the bodily mechanism is in order and harmonious operation. When the mechanism has fallen out of gear by illness, accident, or old age, life departs, and with it the soul, which in some religious systems is held to perish with the body, in others to be immortal and individual, and in others again to transmigrate from one living creature to another. We are in this work only concerned with the soul in its migratory aspect.