From Fantasy to Resolve
How do males make the transition from boyhood to manhood? What is boyhood and what is manhood? Boyhood is a state where the world of fantasy runs free. The mind floats with the clouds. The boy has muscles that can uproot trees. He has a voice that can make the meanest thug shiver. He can cause the heart of the loveliest maiden to flutter. Boyhood also has its dark sides. His father shouts at him if his grades are poor. The school bully takes away his lunch money. Children laugh and mock his ethnicity.
In worse cases, he is abused spiritually, mentally and physically. All of this abuse is transformed into fantasies where he is the hero who saves the world.

Manhood is the state where the male is able to distinguish between fantasy and reality. The man who has reached manhood makes a resolve and keeps it against great odds. How does this transformation occur? Think about this question. How did it occur in your own case? Manhood does not simply appear with age. Guru Gobind Singhji's Sahabzadas were quite young, but Zorawar Singh and Fateh Singh had already reached manhood. How attractive it must have seemed to buckle down, as the wall that eventually bricked them alive was being built around them.

Through imagination alone can a man truly ride the decked mare?
Can a eunuch love a woman fair? Is a bull milked simply by being tethered?
Is a lion pursued by a cow's herder? Can one install a ram as the milk-cow of gods?
Can one with no capital go out to trade? Nanak, absorb the Lord's Name in your mind.
Meditate on Him who is always your friend.
Guru Arjun Dev (GGS p. 198)

Crumbling Resolve
A young boy has few occasions in which to test whether or not he has resolve in his beliefs. He is usually shielded by his parents. He is not subjected to corrupt bosses. He can daydream with little responsibility. As the boy physically grows he faces the world. He gets a job and soon has to make decisions which test his resolve. Should he be firm in his convictions and lose an important promotion, or should he go along with the unethical practices of his boss and get a hefty pay raise?

When the young man gets married, his fantasy is seriously jarred. His commitment is truly tested. Should he abandon his family and go far away to once again enjoy a carefree life? Or should he hunker down and sacrifice his own pleasures to raise healthy children? On the social scene, the young man faces new challenges. Practices he had ridiculed as a boy seem quite reasonable and even necessary to him. Should he go out with his buddies and have a drink in the bar or should he go home and spend time with his wife and children? Should he buy an expensive car to impress his neighbors and friends, or should he save the money for some other noble cause?

In the second watch of night, O my merchant-friend, waves of youth surge within you.
Good and bad you cannot distinguish; your mind is intoxicated with Self.
You distinguished not between good and evil; while the way ahead is arduous.
You served not your True Guru, while the fierce Yama stood overhead.
When Dharamraja seizes you, how then will you respond?
Says Nanak, "In the second watch of night, youth was like surging waves."
Guru Arjun Dev (Guru Granth Sahib, p. 77)

The Desire to Flee
Perhaps the most important aspect of manhood is fatherhood. Fatherhood is by far the most important job in the world for a man. However, modern society has created forces that want men to abandon this role. Fatherhood is a great test of a man's resolve to fulfill a commitment. In the U.S.A., the world's richest country, more than half the children are raised today without the presence of a father. The devastation this lack of manhood has caused in the world's richest country is incalculable. Nobody is lamenting this sad state of affairs more than the religious and social leaders of the United States. They realize that the United States of America was built on very solid principles of self-sacrifice and family values. In order to remain the great country that it is, these values must be restored.

Why is it that men who are capable of heading multi-national corporations cannot raise their sons and daughters? Why is it that men who can launch powerful rockets into space, build the fastest computers, become senators in the most powerful nation not be able to hug their sons and be there for them? Because they have not been able to leave the fantasy land of boyhood. Fatherhood is indeed the ultimate test of manhood. So important is fatherhood that every Sikh Guru who reached adulthood experienced the fatherhood test.

Does Initiation Into Manhood Require a Wound?
In most old cultures there are important traditions that have been used for centuries to help a boy become a man. Many sociologists have praised the value of these traditions and they have lamented the loss of such traditions from modern societies. Often, the boyhood to manhood initiation traditions involve a wound or hurt. Sociologists say that this is an important part of becoming a man.

In certain societies young boys live essentially with the women until they are ready to be initiated. In an elaborate ceremony, a group of men attack the boy's house and abduct him. They take him to a dark hut where they make him sit in a circle with other men. A knife is produced and each man cuts open a vein and lets some blood into a container. The terrified boy also has to do so. At the end, each person takes a sip. The boy emerges forever transformed.

In other societies an adult circumcision is committed on a boy as he is initiated. In bastardized versions of the boyhood to manhood initiation practiced at many University campuses, young men are made to drink alcohol until they pass out. In certain regiments young recruits are subjected to terrible humiliation. It is not clear whether the recruits reach manhood. But they do make ruthless killers as a result of these demeaning rituals.

Physical deprivations and suffering bring no approval.
Neither does changing robes or application of dust to the limbs.
When the link to Nam is snapped, only grief results.
Guru Nanak (GGS) p. 226)

The Guru's Initiation
For the Sikhs, the initiation ceremony from boyhood to manhood does not involve any circumcisions or blood-letting ceremonies. The main initiation is carried out by the Creator Himself. As a boy reaches the adult age of sixteen to eighteen a remarkable change occurs in his body. The smooth face of the baby is slowly transformed into the face of a man. This is nature's own initiation into manhood This is an extremely difficult time for the young man. His entire self-image undergoes a transformation.

Why has nature decided to make such a dramatic transformation? Nature is in its own way preparing the male for the task ahead. And the task is enormous. The transformation has to be enormous, too! In modern societies, with rare exceptions, the response of the family and the son to this transformation is uniformly the same...scrape the hair off the face with blades and razors! Nature's great gift is rejected! The boy does not accept nature's invitation into manhood.

By accepting nature's invitation, the Sikh boy needs no more initiation. If he extends this spirit of acceptance and resolve into other aspects of his life, he has entered manhood. Of course, a Sikh who accepts kesh without realizing the significance and without extending this spirit to other aspects of his life remains a boy.

Accepting Face
As nature begins its initiation from boyhood to manhood, powerful forces start aligning to suppress this process. The boy himself does not want to be a man...after all who does not want to continue living in a fantasy? The fashion and razor industries see enormous profits in keeping the boy from accepting his facial hair. The social pundits think that by accepting his newly developing face, the boy may become wild and too individualistic. How will he be controlled?

The forces which work to keep the boy from accepting Nature's initiation also work to prevent a development of other facets of manhood. Enormous money is to be made by the fashion industry from the boy-man. A large chunk of our world economy now depends upon keeping men in a state of infantile fantasy. And often reality has become so painful for men that they are willing to give up everything near and dear to them to remain ensconsed in fantasy. Consider this: for more than a decade the United States of America has mobilized its army, border patrol, and thousands of drug agents to stop the flow of cocaine and other drugs...with no success. Men willingly squander away their lives for a “hit.”

The Sikh accepts his facial hair as part of Nature's gift. The beard, while initially unruly like the lion's mane, soon gives the Sikh's face a dignity and aura. Unlike a shaven face, his face does not feel like sandpaper...smooth from afar, but prickly and grating to the touch. The untrimmed, unshaven facial hair the Sikh accepts is soft to the touch.