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THE SIKH DOCTRINE OP LIBERATION
187
TI
and watches it through hukamu.8
The destiny of the whole creation depends upon God's will or hukumu. All are subject to His will. The glory or power of God is thus visualized in His creation. The Guru describes the majestic power of God when he says :
Hukamai andar sabh koi, bāhar huk amu na koi. All are under the Divine will, none is out of Divine will. He further says:
Jo tis bhāvi soi hoi, whatever He wills, happens. The will of God is the divine law which controls the whole creation and is thus responsible for its preservation and regulation.
The words nirbhau and nirvairu describe God's power and glory. God is fearless, that is to say, He is almighty. He is devoid of ill-will, that is to say, He is friendly and merciful. Though God is sometimes. described as attributeless, in one of His aspects He certainly has attributes and good qualities in abundance. In other words, God is endowed with perfect attributes (saguna).
The word akāl-mūrati literally means 'Eternal Image'; but as the Sikhs believe that God is without any image or form, this epithet has to be understood in the sense of “Timeless Reality'. The term kāl (Sanskrit kāla) means time; it also means death. God is timeless and deathless. In this latter sense, God is immortal (amar), a perfection which follows from His being unborn.
The word ajūni (Sanskrit ayoni) means unborn; it represents the eternal nature of God. It is stated that God has no father or mother. He is born of none. He has no form or features, nor does He belong to any of the varņas. He feels no hunger or thirst. He is ever satisfied. Because He is unborn, so He is free from all conditions that govern those who are born.
The term saibhang glorifies God as self-existent. It is a Prakrit or Punjabi form of Sanskrit svayambhu and means 'He who is self-born' or 'who has come into existence by Himself'. In other words, God is causa sui, that is, self-caused. God is unborn and eternal. He is the First Cause from which everything proceeds; that which is uncaused and is eternally existent is saibhang or svayambhủ.9
He is the creator and cause of everything. All things emanate
8. 9.
Adi Granth, vol. IV, p. 1243. Dr L.M. Joshi points out that the word svayambhū as an epithet of Buddha occurs already in the Saddharmapundarikasūtra, I. 67.
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