காலமிலாக் கடவுளுடன் கலந்தான் சித்தன்
கடவுளே யில்லையென்றாற் கால மேது?
காலமென வேநில்லாக் கதிதா னேது?
கணுவேதிங் கணுவேது கருத்து மேது?
ஓலமுறு முலகேதங் குயிர்க ளேது?
ஓங்கிய விஞ்ஞானத்தி னுயிர்ப்பு மேது?
சீலமூற லேதுபவச் செயல்களேது?
சீச்சீச்சீ நாயாவான் தெய்வமில்லான்?
Kaalamilaak kadavuludan kalandhaan siththan
Kadavule yillaiyenraar kaal methu?
Kaalamena venillaak kathithaa nethu?
Kanuvething kanuvethu karuththu methu?
Olamuru mulakethang kuyirga lethu?
Ongiya vijnyaanaththi nuyirppu methu?
Seelamoora lethupavach seyalgalethu?
Seechcheechchee naayaavaan theyvamillaan?
The Siddha merged with the God who is without time.
If you say, “There is no God,” then what is time?
If time itself does not stand (as a fixed thing), then what is movement/going?
What is the atom (aṇu)? What is the atom (aṇu) (again)? What is thought/intention (karuttu)?
What is this world that resounds (with clamour)? What are the living beings?
What is the animating breath/pulse of the towering “science/knowledge” (vijñānam)?
What is the arising of virtue/character (sīlam)? What are the deeds of bondage/samsāra?
Shame, shame, shame—(is) he a dog, that godless one?
The Siddha, having dissolved into the timeless Absolute, speaks by way of pointed questions: deny the Divine ground, and the very categories by which one explains existence—time, change, atomistic matter, thought, the noisy world of experience, life, breath, knowledge, ethics, and karma—lose their footing. The closing rebuke targets not subtle non-dual realization, but a crude denial that leaves no ultimate basis for meaning, order, or lived experience.
This verse is structured as a chain of rhetorical negations aimed at exposing the hidden presuppositions behind atheistic/materialistic claims.
1) “Timeless God” and the Siddha’s merger: In Siddhar idiom, “God” (kaṭavuḷ) need not mean a separate, person-like deity; it can indicate the ultimate reality that is beyond time (kālam ilā). The Siddha “mixing/merging” (kalantān) signals yogic identity with that reality—akin to a non-dual attainment where the knower and the known are not two.
2) Time and movement: By asking “If there is no God, what is time?”, the text treats time not as an independent substance but as something dependent on a deeper principle (often consciousness or the Absolute). The follow-up—“If time does not stand, what is motion?”—links change/movement to temporality: without a coherent ground for time, the notion of “going” (gati) also becomes incoherent.
3) Atom and thought: “Aṇu” (atom/minute particle) points to an atomistic explanation of reality (matter as ultimate). The repetition (“what is the atom, what is the atom?”) can read as: even if you posit particles, what gives them definability, order, or intelligibility? “Karuttu” (thought/intention) then shifts the focus to mind: even if matter is asserted, what accounts for cognition, meaning, and intention?
4) World, life, and “vijñāna”: The “resounding world” evokes the sensory, social, and mental turbulence of samsāra. “Uyir” (life/living beings) and “uyirppu” (breathing/animation/pulse) bring in prāṇic and vitalist dimensions: life is not merely inert matter. “Vijñānam” can mean discriminative knowledge, specialized learning, or “science”; the verse asks what “animates” even this elevated knowledge—suggesting that cognition depends on a living consciousness-principle.
5) Ethics and karma: “Sīlam” (virtue/character/conduct) and “pava-seyal” (acts of bondage; samsāric karma) imply a moral-causal order. If one denies any ultimate ground, the verse presses: on what basis do virtue, vice, responsibility, and karmic consequence stand?
6) The harsh closing: Siddhar speech can be deliberately abrasive. Calling the “godless” person a “dog” functions as a polemical device—condemning a denial understood as spiritually obtuse (not necessarily a careful philosophical non-theism). It also preserves the Siddhar insistence that realization is not mere intellectual negation: denying “God” while remaining bound to worldly categories is portrayed as confusion.
Overall, the verse argues that rejecting the Divine/Absolute as the ground of being undermines the coherence of both physical explanations (time, motion, atom) and experiential/moral realities (mind, life-breath, knowledge, virtue, karma).