We interface with our world through our five senses – hearing, smell, touch, sight and taste – but they have their limitations. Our sense of taste can only judge sour, bitter and sweet and that is no way exhaustive of the flavours in the world. Our sense of smell is no better. A dogs sense of smell is very acute and sensitive, it can pick out a scent left days ago by another animal, yet we cannot. Similarly our sense of hearing only aids us when a sound has a frequency of between 32 vibrations a second to around 40,000. There are innumerable sounds beyond both limits that we know nothing about. In the electro-magnetic spectrum the visible range is but a very small portion of it. We only know the shades and mixtures between the red and violet part, but the spectrum extends towards the infrared and radio waves in one direction and the ultraviolet and x-rays towards the other, the vast majority of it we will never know. The whole world as it is, seven–eights of it is beyond our senses and perception. And then, Guru Nanak Dev Ji said in the Japuji Sahib “There are hundreds upon thousands of nether and upper regions which ordinary humans cannot perceive, the Vedas and the Puranas have grown weary of trying to know them. But they ultimately agree that He Himself knoweth of these things who has created them.”

During the night when the physical body sleeps, man’s astral mind floats away. Distances mean nothing, gravity is ineffective as man’s astral body moves by desire, and the moment he desires to to someplace, he reaches it. When one sleeps and moves in the realm of Dharam Khand one may see relatives long dead who now occupy this plane. One finds that one can go any place just be desiring it, create things, meet people just by desiring it. Man can work and live in the physical world only as long as he has a physical body. Once the body dies his contact with the physical world is broken and his consciousness now passes to the next plane. Here the desires of his mind are still intact – sensual gratification, the pleasures of women, wine and wealth – all these desires still persist but since his physical body now does not exist the desires cannot be gratified. The more his attachment, desires and ignorance, the greater his pain, for man’s consciousness has not risen past material attachment. Guru Nanak Dev Ji writes, that man gets what he deserves according to his actions when in the physical world.

Guru Nanak Dev Ji explains these realms or Khands in the morning prayer, Japuji Sahib.

Dharam Khand

This is the khand where our soul goes to after death. This is where Dharam Rai is stationed. Almost every religion explains this khand in some form or the other. Dharam Rai has an army of millions jammdoots who control the whole Dharam Khand. There are countless seasons, waters, fires, fires and low-lands like Pataal. Amidst such wide variety of things is the land of Dharam Khand. There countless kind of creatures reside. The length of ones stay in Dharam Khand is determined by the strength of the desires and attachments one possesses. Once the futility of holding on to earthly desires dawns, either through self experience or through the guidance of an enlightened soul one moves on into what some call Summerland but Guru Nanak Dev Ji calls Gian Khand.