IQBAL'S METAPHYSICS – III

(21.4.1968)

As can easily be recognised through Iqbal's painstaking analysis of the concept of time and of selfhood; be is not at one with those who consider as Islamic a withdrawal from reality, a passive contemplation of what they call the spirit, a use of the Quranic verses as magic incantations and formulas for miraculous transformation of reality against the principles of natural laws.

If he is a "materialist" he is one in the sense that he has explained in the above quotations. If he is a "spiritualist" he has also given his sense of the word. For him the world is real and concrete. It is a process not a thing. it is engaged in a perpetual self moving, spontaneous activity in which all the selves including the self called Man, are working out their destinies from within, unfolding themselves concretely and eternally in the context of the over all Absolute Reality which is mysteriously related to every atom of this universe.

His concepts of the Fall of Man, of 'Jannat' of heaven and hell of 'Iman' are no less revolutionary.

"The Quranic legend of the Fall has nothing to do with the first appearance of man on this planet. Its purpose is rather to indicate man's rise from a primitive state of instintive appetite to the conscious possession of a free self capable of doubt and disobedience ... Nor does the Quran

regard the earth as a torture-hall where an elementally wicked humanity is imprisoned for an original act of sin. Man's first act of disobedience was also his first act of free choice; and that is why, according to the Quranic narration, Adam's first transgression was forgiven. Now goodness is not a matter of compulsion … A being whose movements are wholly determined like a machine cannot produce goodness. Freedom is thus a condition of goodness... Good and Evil therefore, though opposites, must fall within the same whole. There is no such thing as an isolated fact; for facts are systematic wholes, the elements of which must be understood by mutual reference. Logical judgment separates the elements of a fact only to reveal their interdependence. (Lectures. p.85-86)

"Heaven and Hell are states not localities. The descriptions in the Quran are visual representations of an inner fact, i.e. character. Hell, in the words of the Quran, is God's kindled fire which mounts above the hearts' -- the painful realisation of one's failure as a man. Heaven is the joy of triumph over the forces of disintegration … Hell, therefore, is a corrective experience which may make a hardened ego once more sensitive to the living breeze of Divine Grace. Nor is Heaven a holiday. Life is one and continuous. Man marches always onward to receive ever fresh illumination from an Infinite Reality which every moment appears in a new glory". (p. 123).

"The vital way (of making the world our own) is the absolute" acceptance of the inevitable necessity of life regarded as a whole which in evolving its inner richness creates serial time. This vital way of appropriating the universe is what the Quran describes as Iman. Iman is not merely a passive belief in one or more propositions of a certain kind: it is living assurance begotten of a rare experience ... Intuitive experience is not the finite ego effacing its own identity by some sort of absorption into the Infinite Ego; it is rather the infinite passing into the loving embrace of the finite It is life and boundless power which recognises no obstruction". (109-110).

But enough. The Islam of Iqbal is not what the obscurantists and the neo-obscurantists have been trying to foist on him. It is a revolutionary's image of Man, Universe and God, and the vital intimate relationship between the three. It is once again the creed of Mansur Hallaj, who said, "The unity is created out of the meeting of the created, the Creator and Man". This creed is the creed of revolutionaries always, as it is in our times. And it is spreading.

It is emerging, by stages, and in the necessary unfolding of the universal process of being and becoming, as a universal faith, not because of the mullah's azan but because of that of the Mujahid. That is Iqbal's meaning when he says: "There is no difference between the words, and the meanings; and yet mullah's azan is one thing and the Mujahid's azan is another". (Hal-o-Maqal).

Again: "It is quite likely that you have attained nearness to God; but the level of Man is quite hidden from your sight. In your namaz there is neither power nor beauty; in your azan is not the message of my dawn". (Mulla-i-Haram).

NOTES:

1. Published in The Pakistan Times. 21.4.1968.