Daily Inspiration Quote by Guru Nanak

Reason is being put in its place, not mocked but dethroned. Guru Nanak’s line draws a hard boundary around what the mind can do: logic can map the world of causes and categories, but it can’t close the distance to the Divine. The jab is in the phrase “even if one reasoned for ages” - a slow, almost humorous image of a thinker grinding away for a lifetime, then another, still circling the same unanswered center. It’s a critique of spiritual bureaucracy: the idea that God is a problem you solve if you’re clever or disciplined enough.

The intent isn’t anti-intellectual. Nanak lived in a North Indian landscape thick with competing religious authorities: scholastic Brahmanical debate, ritualized piety, yogic austerities, and the prestige of scriptural interpretation. In that marketplace, “reason” can become a status symbol, a way to win arguments and accumulate authority. Nanak’s move is to strip that away and reroute the seeker from conquest to surrender: comprehension of “Him” belongs to experience, devotion, and ethical living (Naam, humility, seva), not to metaphysical domination.

Subtext: the ego is the real target. Reasoning “for ages” still centers the self as the agent who masters truth. Nanak implies that God is not an object to be captured by the intellect; treating the Infinite like a finite concept is the category error at the heart of spiritual pride. The line works because it compresses a whole theology into a single refusal: if you want God, stop trying to win.