God and Individual Self

The main feature of God’s nature is His freedom which is unlike the other things of the world. Everything in the world either hasa form or it is formless. Earth has a form but akasa has no form. Earth cannot become formless and akasa cannot have a form. If they do so, they no longer remain as earth or akasa . There are many things like moon also in the universe. These things become formless from a form-entity and vice versa . Earth, akasa and moon are examples of rupa, arupa and ruparupa respectively. All these three types of objects retain their nature and they cannot have a different nature other than what it originally has. When we experience these objects, we limit its nature of freedom and it is determinate. If God were formless, He also becomes limited like akasa. Similar will be the case in all other form or form-formless conditions. Hence Shivajnana Siddhiyar is careful in defining the nature of God by not limiting His reality. Shivajnana Siddhiyar admits that He is also a person but His personality is not conditioned by any factor. He performs cosmic functions with form / formless / form-non-form conditions. It means that He has unlimited freedom which is not the case for other individual selves. The individual selves are given forms as per their karma . The conditioning of the self by its karma is not applicable to God since He comes out to help the other selves because of His Grace only. Hence He is totally free to take any form. He takes a “sakala ” form when He appears as “Guru ” to liberate the selves.

Here a doubt may naturally arise as to whether God will not be affected by various forms He acquires. Umapati Shivam explains that He is spirit with full freedom whereas pasha is non-spirit, meaning thereby that it is incapable of any action on its own. God is distinguished in that pashu has freedom limited by its previous karma . Hence Shivam, Pati and Shakti have supreme autonomy. He is also distinguished for His transcendence.^[1] He transcends the finite structures of human experience which is subject to space and time and thing-hood.^[2]

Human experience is by definition limited to the forms and its categories. If a thing is present here, then it cannot be present anywhere else whereas God transcends the epistemological side of the finitude. (Epistemology is the theory of knowledge, especially with regard to its methods, validity and scope and the distinction between justified belief and opinion.) This finitude can be considered from the side of ontology also. (Ontology is the branch of metaphysics dealing with the nature of beings). Whatever is known as an object to a subject to the temporality, it has some relationship with time.^[3] God is unique in nature being beyond the comprehension of all others.^[4] It means that God, being eternal, cannot be an object in demonstrative knowledge to a knowing subject. God is all-pervasive, eternal and has all forms and at the same time no form in particular. Everwhelming [Overwhelming?] likes and dislikes cannot even touch Him.^[5]