Ik onkar opens the line before any other word is allowed to qualify it, written with the numeral one fused to the sign for onkar so that oneness is asserted in a character rather than argued in a sentence. What follows names the one reality by a chain of attributes rather than by a proper name: sat nam, whose name is truth, karta purakh, the creating being, nirbhau, without fear, nirvair, without enmity, akal murat, timeless in form, ajuni, unborn, saibhang, self existent, and gur prasad, known through the guru's grace. Each phrase forecloses a way the divine could be misunderstood, as many, as fearful, as hostile, as bound by time, as born and therefore mortal, as dependent on something prior to itself.
The closing phrase is the hinge on which Sikh commentators disagree: gur prasad can be read as the last clause of the Mul Mantar proper, making the formula end there, or as the opening of the next line, jap, the imperative to recite, which would carry the confession one phrase further into an instruction to practice. Guru Nanak placed the completed statement first in the Guru Granth Sahib, ahead of the Japji Sahib that it introduces, and a shortened form of it, typically ik onkar sat nam through gur prasad or a still briefer version, recurs at the head of nearly every subsequent scriptural division as a signature marking the text that follows as continuous with this one theological claim.