The Republic of IQBAL

By Mohsin Qasmi

Dr. Allama Muhammad Iqbal, A Philosopher Poet, A Genius Linguist, A Man of Foresight, A Man of Strong Faith in All Mighty God, A Man of Peace and Unity, A Man of Justice and Equality, A Man of Love and Humility, A Man of Wisdom and above all, The Artist of First Ever Islamic Republic, which got freedom in name of Islam.

Dr. Muhammad Iqbal, who was a great Indian Nationalist in his early days. Who wanted equality and justice for all in India. Who dreamt of an Independent and Free India, which was then a British Colony. Dr. Iqbal, who kept on opposing British Rule in India even when he was awarded with the honorary name of "Sir" by the Royal Crown of Britain. Dr. Iqbal, who was beyond the differences of religion, region, colour, race, caste and social status:-

Dr. Muhammad Iqbal, A Man of Peace and Equality for every Indian regardless of race, religion, region and caste, who dreamt of a strong and united India free from British Rule. A Man who loved humanity irrespective of religion, who was enforced to be disappointed in his "dream India". Who, despite of all his love and unity messages, was let down by his own Country mates, his own people who discriminated each other on the basis of religion. Dr. Muhammad Iqbal, who sang songs and wrote poems for India in his early days, got disappointed on superior and unjust attitude of the High Caste Hindu dominated India towards other Minorities including Muslims, Sikhs, Christians and Low Caste Hindus. Same Patriot, same Nationalist and same Supporter of Free and United India changed his mind after getting disappointed on attitude of Hindu Community of India:-

Dr. Muhammad Iqbal, who helped his people, the slaves Muslims of India, in realizing social and political worth of the Indian Muslims:-

Dr. Muhammad Iqbal, who dreamt of United India with equality and justice for all, stood up for his people, his religious people, his sisters and his brothers in Islam, the slave Muslims of India. Dr. Iqbal not only defended his people from British, but also from the Hindus, who had given all clues and hints of being the future masters of the slave Muslims of India:-

Dr. Muhammad Iqbal, who failed to kept his eyes closed from the atrocities of British and Hindus towards his people, the Muslims of India, claimed for an Independent and Free Muslim Country.

Dr. Muhammad Iqbal, A Man who devoted his life for his people. The dynamic leader of slave Muslims of India, who dared to preach Self-Respect to subjugated and exploited Muslims of India. Who had been the first drop of rain, who taught the lesson of Dignity, Prestige and Grace to his people, who had been socially destroyed and physically trampled by the British Rulers.

Dr. Muhammad Iqbal, who kept on fighting against all anti-Muslim factors in India, also raised voice against black sheep in the Muslim Sector. He pointed out those so-called, self-declared scholars of Islam, who were playing negative role intentionally or un-intentionally. Dr. Muhammad Iqbal was the Man, who exposed the vicious faces of those Muslims, who wanted to exercise clergy and theocracy in Islam. Dr. Muhammad Iqbal taught his people about the Holy Verses of The Noble Quran in which, All Mighty Allah has clearly mentioned that there is no clergy or theocracy in Islam. Dr. Muhammad Iqbal was the person, who reminded his Muslim people about the Last Sermon of the Holy Prophet, the Blessing for the Whole Humanity and Universe, Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him). Dr. Muhammad Iqbal was the person, who reminded his people about Holy Verses of The Noble Quran in which it is clearly Commanded by Allah All Mighty, not to divide into sectors and stand as one united Ummah (Nation). No wonder, some of the so-called Muslim scholars opposed Dr. Muhammad Iqbal and creation of Pakistan, since their clergy was threatened. Dr. Muhammad Iqbal took all anti-Muslim elements including corrupt Muslims, with iron hands

Dr. Muhammad Iqbal criticized Muslims, who were playing negative role and he also guided his lost Muslim people. In that era of slavery and disappointment, words of Iqbal were nothing less than a blessing of All Mighty Allah, who taught Muslims of India to consult the Holy Book of Allah All Mighty, The Noble Quran:-


It was the year of 1930, and the place was Allahabad, India, when Dr. Muhammad Iqbal, the President of Indian Muslims, Political and Social Representative Party All India Muslim League, demanded for a separate Homeland for the slave Muslims of India. It was a historical meeting in which, Dr. Iqbal claimed an Independent Muslim State comprising of Muslim Majority States of India. Later, this address of Dr. Muhammad Iqbal became the foundation of an Independent Muslim State, the very first Muslim Republic of the world which emerged at the globe in name of Islam. Today, the dream of Dr. Muhammad Iqbal stands as one of the most respectable Islamic Countries of the world, the only Muslim Nation with strongest and impregnable defense system, the only nuclear Muslim State and the 10th Nuclear State of the world, Islamic Republic of Pakistan.

Dr. Muhammad Iqbal, A Man who loved his people, who was not like ordinary leaders, who was not power or fame hungry, found out the right person for administration and management for Independent Muslim State Resolution and handed over all authorities of All India Muslim League to him. This dynamic and bright leader of Indian Muslims was the famous Barrister Mr. Muhammad Ali Jinnah. Mr. Jinnah, who himself used to be a great Indian Nationalist, who left no stone unturned in uniting all religions of India on a single platform, who was given name of "Ambassador of Hindu-Muslim Unity" due to his services and just like Dr. Iqbal, who was disappointed in the attitude of Hindus and had left India forever. This Jewel was traced by Dr. Iqbal and a few other prominent Muslim Leaders, and was requested to come back to India for the sake of his people, the Muslims of India. Yet another well wisher of his people, Mr. Jinnah came back to India with a great determination, which eventually resulted in creation of the Independent Islamic State, Pakistan and Mr. Jinnah, the leader of Freedom Struggle for Muslims, was chosen the First ever Governor General (President) of Islamic Republic of Pakistan. Mr. Jinnah, who fixed his monthly salary Re. 1/- for the sake of setting example for his people and who was given the graceful name of The Quaid-e-Azam (The Greatest Leader). Dr. Muhammad Iqbal kept on playing his role after handing over affairs to Mr. Jinnah. Dr. Muhammad Iqbal kept on reminding the principles and keys of success to Mr. Jinnah:-

Dr. Muhammad Iqbal, The Originator of Two Nation Theory on the basis of which, a free Independent Muslim State Pakistan was created on August 14th, 1947, passed away before Pakistan's emergence on the globe and never had an opportunity to watching his dream coming true. But Pakistan, which is 53 years old now by the grace of Allah Almighty, stood up in August 1947 as per dreams and desires of it's great architect.

دگرگوں ہے جہاں ، تاروں کي گردش تيز ہے ساقي

دگرگوں ہے جہاں ، تاروں کي گردش تيز ہے ساقي
دل ہر ذرہ ميں غوغائے رستا خيز ہے ساقي
متاع دين و دانش لٹ گئي اللہ والوں کي
يہ کس کافر ادا کا غمزئہ خوں ريز ہے ساقي
وہي ديرينہ بيماري ، وہي نا محکمي دل کي
علاج اس کا وہي آب نشاط انگيز ہے ساقي
حرم کے دل ميں سوز آرزو پيدا نہيں ہوتا
کہ پيدائي تري اب تک حجاب آميز ہے ساقي
نہ اٹھا پھر کوئي رومي عجم کے لالہ زاروں سے
وہي آب و گل ايراں ، وہي تبريز ہے ساقي
نہيں ہے نااميد اقبال اپني کشت ويراں سے
ذرا نم ہو تو يہ مٹي بہت زرخيز ہے ساقي
فقير راہ کو بخشے گئے اسرار سلطاني
بہا ميري نوا کي دولت پرويز ہے ساقي

متاع بے بہا ہے درد و سوز آرزو مندي

متاع بے بہا ہے درد و سوز آرزو مندي
مقام بندگي دے کر نہ لوں شان خداوندي
ترے آزاد بندوں کي نہ يہ دنيا ، نہ وہ دنيا
يہاں مرنے کي پابندي ، وہاں جينے کي پابندي
حجاب اکسير ہے آوارہ کوئے محبت کو
ميري آتش کو بھڑکاتي ہے تيري دير پيوندي
گزر اوقات کر ليتا ہے يہ کوہ و بياباں ميں
کہ شاہيں کے ليے ذلت ہے کار آشياں بندي
يہ فيضان نظر تھا يا کہ مکتب کي کرامت تھي
سکھائے کس نے اسمعيل کو آداب فرزندي
زيارت گاہ اہل عزم و ہمت ہے لحد ميري
کہ خاک راہ کو ميں نے بتايا راز الوندي
مري مشاطگي کي کيا ضرورت حسن معني کو
کہ فطرت خود بخود کرتي ہے لالے کي حنا بندي

لا پھر اک بار وہي بادہ و جام اے ساقي

لا پھر اک بار وہي بادہ و جام اے ساقي
ہاتھ آ جائے مجھے ميرا مقام اے ساقي!
تين سو سال سے ہيں ہند کے ميخانے بند
اب مناسب ہے ترا فيض ہو عام اے ساقي
مري مينائے غزل ميں تھي ذرا سي باقي
شيخ کہتا ہے کہ ہے يہ بھي حرام اے ساقي
شير مردوں سے ہوا بيشہء تحقيق تہي
رہ گئے صوفي و ملا کے غلام اے ساقي
عشق کي تيغ جگردار اڑا لي کس نے
علم کے ہاتھ ميں خالي ہے نيام اے ساقي
سينہ روشن ہو تو ہے سوز سخن عين حيات
ہو نہ روشن ، تو سخن مرگ دوام اے ساقي
تو مري رات کو مہتاب سے محروم نہ رکھ
ترے پيمانے ميں ہے ماہ تمام اے ساقي!

گيسوئے تاب دار کو اور بھي تاب دار کر

گيسوئے تاب دار کو اور بھي تاب دار کر
ہوش و خرد شکار کر ، قلب و نظر شکار کر
عشق بھي ہو حجاب ميں ، حسن بھي ہو حجاب ميں
يا تو خود آشکار ہو يا مجھے آشکار کر
تو ہے محيط بے کراں ، ميں ہوں ذرا سي آبجو
يا مجھے ہمکنار کر يا مجھے بے کنار کر
ميں ہوں صدف تو تيرے ہاتھ ميرے گہر کي آبرو
ميں ہوں خزف تو تو مجھے گوہر شاہوار کر
نغمہء نو بہار اگر ميرے نصيب ميں نہ ہو
اس دم نيم سوز کو طائرک بہار کر
باغ بہشت سے مجھے حکم سفر ديا تھا کيوں
کار جہاں دراز ہے ، اب مرا انتظار کر
روز حساب جب مرا پيش ہو دفتر عمل
آپ بھي شرمسار ہو ، مجھ کو بھي شرمسار کر

اگر کج رو ہيں انجم ، آسماں تيرا ہے يا ميرا

اگر کج رو ہيں انجم ، آسماں تيرا ہے يا ميرا
مجھے فکر جہاں کيوں ہو ، جہاں تيرا ہے يا ميرا؟
اگر ہنگامہ ہائے شوق سے ہے لامکاں خالي
خطا کس کي ہے يا رب! لامکاں تيرا ہے يا ميرا؟
اسے صبح ازل انکار کي جرات ہوئي کيونکر
مجھے معلوم کيا ، وہ راز داں تيرا ہے يا ميرا؟
محمد بھي ترا ، جبريل بھي ، قرآن بھي تيرا
مگر يہ حرف شيريں ترجماں تيرا ہے يا ميرا؟
اسي کوکب کي تاباني سے ہے تيرا جہاں روشن
زوال آدم خاکي زياں تيرا ہے يا ميرا؟

ترے شيشے ميں مے باقي نہيں ہے
بتا ، کيا تو مرا ساقي نہيں ہے
سمندر سے ملے پياسے کو شبنم
بخيلي ہے يہ رزاقي نہيں ہے

BAL-I JIBRIL (1935)

Introduction
Bal-i Jibril (Gabriel's Wing) continues from Bang-i Dara. Some of the verses had been written when Iqbal visited Britain, Italy, Egypt, Palestine, France, Spain and Afghanistan.

The work contains 15 ghazals addressed to God and 61 ghazals and 22 quatrains dealing the ego, faith, love, knowledge, the intellect and freedom. The poet recalls the past glory of Muslims as he deals with contemporary political problems.

BANG-I DARA (1924)

Introduction
First written in Urdu, Bang-i Dara (Caravan Bell) was translated into Urdu by popular demand. An anthology of poems written over a period of 20 years, is divided into 3 parts:

1. Poems written up to 1905, the year Iqbal left for England. These include nursery, pastoral and patriotic verses. Taranayi Hindi (The Song of India) has become an anthem and is sung in India on Independence Day.

2. Poems written between 1905 and 1908, the period he spent as a student in Europe. He praises the rationality and pragmatism of the West, but complains about its overt materialism, loss of spirituality and narrow patriotism, which promises suffering. (The first world war proved him right.) This situation strengthened his belief in the universal values of Islam and he resolved to use his poetry to stir Muslims to their renaissance.

3. Poems written between 1908 and 1923, in which Iqbal reminds Muslims of their past greatness and calls for the brotherhood and unity that transcend territorial boundaries. He urges the ummah to live a life of servitude to God, of sacrifice and of action so that they may attain once more the high civilisation that was once theirs. Yam Awr Syair (The Poet and the Cradle), Shikwa (Complaint to God), Jawab-i-Shikwa (Response to a Complain), Kiezr-i-Rah (Guidance) and Tulu'i Islam (Light of Islam) are considered among the greatest Islamic poems. Love and the Self reverberate as important themes throughout this section. Back

Iqbal on Nietzsche

The life and thought of Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900) intrigued Iqbal, who, in many places in his prose and poetry, cites and discusses the German philosopher's views. Iqbal's interest in Nietzsche has been the subject of several studies.

We are grateful to Professor Bernd Manuel Weischer for the permission to reprint the following article, which originally appeared as a contribution in H. R. Roemer and A. North, eds., Studien zur Geschichte und Kultur des Vorderen Oriens. Festschrift B. Spuler (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1981). Iqbal's well-known observation about Nietzsche, namely, that his heart believes but his mind disbelieves (quoted in the beginning of this article), occurs in "Nietzche, "a poem in Payām-i Mashriq (in Kulliyyat-i Iqbal-Fārsī, 329), the original Persian being: qalb-i ū mu'min dimāghash kāfar ast. Here, following, is a translation of Iqbal's Urdu note to the observation (see the Ghulam 'Alī and Sons edition of Kulliyyāt-i Iqbal-Fārs-i, Lahore, 1970, p. 371).

Nietzsche subjects Christian ethical philosophy to severe criticism. His mind is a disbeliever in God since he denies God, though his ideas are, in respect of some of their implications, very close to the religion of Islam. "His mind is a disbeliever, but his heart is a believer"-the Noble Prophet [Muḥammad]. made a similar remark about Umayyah b. Abī ṣ-Ṣalṭ (an Arab poet).- A mana lisānuhū wa-kafara qalbuhū ("His tongue believes, but his heart disbelieves").

The word Allama, "Great Scholar," which occurs before Iqbal's name more than once in the following piece, is often used as an appellation for Iqbal.

In this reprint, the footnotes of the original article have been converted to endnotes, and one or two minor typographical errors have been corrected; otherwise, the format of the original has been retained.]

When I discussed some time ago with a leading German philosopher some aspects of Nietzsche's philosophy and quoted to him Allama Mohammed Iqbal's statement on Nietzsche, expressed in one of the poems in the 'Payām-i mashriq': the 'Message of the East': "His brain is unbelieving, but his heart believing"1, he said to me: "Never did I hear a more concise and appropriate judgment on the life and work of Nietzsche! "-That the tragic figure of Nietzsche occupied Iqbal's mind more than any other Western philosopher is widely known.



And as we know Iqbal planned to write a book in the style of 'Thus spoke Zarathustra' under the title of 'The Book of a Forgotten Prophet', but unfortunately this plan was never carried out. A contemporary of Allama Iqbal and a religious poet like him was the Libanese Jibran Khalil Jibran who among other poems and novels wrote a book with the title 'The Prophet'. He admired Nietzsche deeply, but the influence of Nietzsche's work on him originated more from its style than from its content. Jibran Khalil Jibran, not being a philosopher, rejected the main ideas of Nietzsche and was shocked by his atheism.2 Allama Iqbal on the other hand, while also not agreeing with Nietzsche's atheism and many of his ideas, yet, as a philosopher, poet and mystic had a much deeper insight into the personal experience as well as the philosophical system of Nietzsche, its suppositions and consequences. Thus he discovered common ideas and attitudes of mind.

If we now speak about the 'Nietzsche-conception' of Allama Iqbal, it must be made clear that we cannot expect from him a dry philosophical treatise about the development of metaphysics in Europe and the decisive role Nietzsche played in it. But his often aphoristic remarks on Nietzsche in the context of very different writings are so striking, fundamental, and comprehensive-because Iqbal as an Oriental thinker did not separate the tragic life from the intellectual achievements of the German philosopher as many Western philosophers do-that we can rightly call it a 'Nietzscheconception'. Iqbal was already strongly influenced by the vitalistic current of Western philosophy, by R. Eucken and especially H. Bergson, although he criticizes them sometimes. The dynamic concept of this philosophy, involving the gradual development of the self in the reality of this world,-a kind of prophetic outlook-was very close to Iqbal's intentions in his philosophy of personality and the rediscovery of the dynamic concept of Islam. L. Massignon made the remarkable statement on the relationship of M. Iqbal with H. Bergson: "Une affinite spirituelle semitique!"3

But Allama Iqbal drew much more support for his dynamic philosophy from Nietzsche, who in one sense can be seen as the culmination of the vitalist movement. Some thoughts, allusions, and symbols (e.g. diamond and coal) in the 'Asrār-i Knudī' may be traced to Nietzsche's 'Thus spoke Zarathustra', and the whole set of Iqbal's book and his main idea of the 'Perfect Man, which of course stems from Islamic mysticism, can be compared in a certain way with Nietzsche's Superman. The idea of the 'Superman' perhaps acted as a catalyst in the formulation of Iqbal's ideas. The great difference between the 'Perfect Man' and the 'Superman' is the following: In Nietzsche's system the exaggerated affirmation of this world and the intellectual self-realisation of the human being to the highest and most independent degree-to a quasi-divine existence-is conditioned by the negation of God, of the transcendental world, and immortality. The will to power Per Wille zur Macht) explains being as a continuous becoming or development to a higher state, the eternal recurrence Pie ewige Wiederkehr) being the existential basis of the liberty and independence of the individual in a world which becomes quasi-eternal, a kind of secularisation of eternity. Allama Iqbal, as a religious genius, immediately and intuitively realized the 'punctum saliens' for the failure of Nietzsche, namely his Luciferian basis: I will not serve! This is where the great difference lies between Nietzsche and Iqbal, who had a certain sympathy with this brilliant Western thinker in his quest for the absolute. So he contrasts the Superman (Ubermensch) independent from God with the idea of the 'Perfect Man' in Islamic Mysticism whom he describes in his Bāl-i Jibrīl as follows: "The perfect man's arm is really God's arm, dominant, creative, resourceful, efficient, human, but angel-like in disposition, a servant with the Master's attributes". And in his Jāvīdnāme Iqbal describes how Nietzsche is flying between the heaven of Saturn and Paradise in eternal circles-a symbol of the eternal recurrence, which Iqbal strictly rejected-and he says about him:

"In his inebriation he broke every glass,
separated himself from God and at the same time from the Self"

and some lines further on he says about Nietzsche in an Islamic way of expression:

"He did not come from '1ā ilāh' to 'i11ā ilāh' (i.e. from the negation to the affirmation of God)
and he did not know the meaning of the word 'abduhu' (his servant)"4

This brilliant statement touches again on the point of difference described above.

Another time Iqbal wrote in a letter: "Poor Nietzsche thought that his vision of the ultimate Ego could be realized in the world of space and time".5 In the 'Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam' he describes and rejects Nietzsche's idea of the eternal recurrence in a very enlightened way, first in the lecture 'The Human Ego, his freedom and immortality' and then in the lecture 'Is Religion Possible?'. Rightly he points to Schopenshauer's influence on Nietzsche in this respect, through his main work 'The World as Will and Imagination'. He says 6 : "In modern Europe Nietzsche, whose life and activity form, at least to us Easterns, an exceedingly interesting problem in religious psychology, was endowed with some sort of a constitutional equipment for such an undertaking. His mental history is not without a parallel in the history of Eastern Sufism. That a really 'Imperative' Vision of the Divine in man did come to him cannot be denied. I call his vision 'Imperative' because it appears to have given him a kind of prophetic mentality which, by some kind of technique, aims at turning its visions into permanent life-forces. Yet Nietzsche was a failure; and his failure was mainly due to his intellectual progenitors such as Schopenhauer, Darwin, and Lange, whose influence completely blinded him to the real significance of his vision. Instead of looking for a spiritual rule which would develop the Divine even in a plebeian and thus open up before him an infinite future, Nietzsche was driven to seek the realisation of his vision in such schemes as aristocratic radicalism. As I have said of him elsewhere:.

The 'I am' which he seeketh,
lieth beyond philosophy, beyond knowledge,
The plant that groweth only from the invisible soil of the heart of man,
Groweth not from a mere heap of clay!

Thus failed a genius whose vision was solely determined by his internal forces, and remained unproductive for want of external guidance in his spiritual life": I do not want to discuss the second text of Iqbal on Nietzsche because it would lead us to the complicated question of time problems found also in the work of H. Bergson.7

But let us come back to some aspects of Nietzsche's philosophy which are near to Iqbal's concept. I mean the fight of Nietzsche against Platonism and its wrong interpretation, especially in the Christian theology of the last centuries: i.e. the concept of God as a pure 'causa prima' supported by philosophical terms and concepts, a concept of God which is quite the opposite of the notion of God in the prophetic religions and in the Semitic way of thinking. In this context Iqbal said in his Jāvīdnāme about Nietzsche8 :

"Had he ever lived in the times of Ahmad,
he would have entered into the eternal joy".

That is to say: Had Nietzsche known the prophetic notion of God, as found in the Islamic tradition, he would not have failed. Thus Nietzsche in his first period was not just an atheist and nihilist who preached the complete revolution and conversion of all values, and his sentence 'God is dead' is not to be understood in this simple way: it rather means that occidental metaphysics with its Greek and Platonic heritage in Nietzsche's philosophy came to an end. He once said: "The greatest recent event-that God has died, that the belief in the Christian God has become untrustworthy, begins to throw its first shadows over Europe".

The leading philosopher of this century, M. Heidegger, in his profound studies on Nietzsche, his phrase 'God is dead' and its role in the movement of European nihilism, has something in common with Iqbal's intuitive remarks on Nietzsche. He says that Nietzsche remained Platonist in spite of his sarcastic fight against Platonism, because he remained on the same basis, the belief in an intellectual truth. Nietzsche himself was of course not conscious of it. The conversion of all values or the negation of known values is for Nietzsche only the starting point for the affirmation, of the 'will to power', according to him the most intrinsic essence of all beings. After giving up the belief in the divine essence as the inmost essence of all beings, Nietzsche had intellectually to fill up this emptiness.

If we now once again look at Iqbal's statement "His brain is unbelieving, but his heart believing", we see how rightly it describes the case of the German philosopher. That Allama's philosophy of personality differs basically from the system of Nietzsche is evident. In Iqbal's concept the ultimate Ego is God himself, and the highest development of man consists in his gradual growth in self-possession and self-realisation, in the uniqueness and intensity of his activity as an ego. But the emphasis on will and activity in the higher and real ego of man and mankind in general-this dynamic concept of life and development-is very near to Nietzsche's Superman and is a prototype of developed and perfect humanity. The difference is that Allama Iqbal develops his philosophy clearly on the ground of the Islamic faith, on the basis of the principle of the submission to the Divine, the ultimate Ego of the whole cosmos.

MUHAMMAD IQBAL AND GERMANY ‘A Correspondence of the Heart’

By M. A. H. Hobohm

It is well known that the poet-philosopher Muhammad Iqbal had a deep admiration for Germany, German thought, German poetry and there are innumerable instances in his writings, in his poems, in letters and in recorded conversations with him which indicate clearly that the works of German philosophers and poets have been a source of great inspiration to him.

Foremost among them was Goethe to whom he refers again and again of whom he says, I though not a prophet, he has a book namely ‘Faust, and whom he compares to Ghālib the great poet of Urdu and Persian of the nineteenth century and to that illustrious sage of the East, Maulāna Jalāl al‑Dīn Rūmī. In a poem in the Payām‑i‑Mashriq Iqbal imagines Goethe meeting Rūmī in paradise and reciting Faust to him. Rūmī listens and extols Goethe as one who has really understood the Great Secret. In bringing Goethe and Rūmī together, Iqbal brought together not only two of the greatest spirits of the East and West, but also the two men who have influenced him more than anyone else in his career as a thinker and as a poet.

None other than Iqbal himself has told us sol. In his preface to the Payām‑i‑Mashriq, the book in which Iqbal’s art probably reached the height of its power and perfection, he writes these Lines: ‘The Payām-i-Mashriq owes its inspiration to the Western Divan of Goethe, the German ‘Philosopher of Life’, about which, Heine, the Israelite poet of Germany says: ‘This is a nosegay presented by the West to the East as a token of high regard. This Divan bears testimony to the fact that the West, being dissatisfied with its own spiritual life is turning to the bosom of the East in search of spiritual warmth.’

The Payām-i-Mashriq is Iqbal’s response to Goethe’s West-östlicher Divan on the title page of which —I should like to recall to our memory— Goethe had written in his own hand the following words in Arabic language and script: ‘Ad-Dīwān Sharqī lil Mu’allif al-Gharbī’ —An Eastern Divan by a Western Author.

Iqbal’s introduction to the Payām-i-Mashriq also contains a short but extremely interesting account of the ‘Oriental Movement’ in German literature. It serves to give us a glimpse of the extent of Iqbal’s contacts with German culture, just as his philosophical work, as for instance reflected in his Lectures The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam reveals his profound knowledge of, and his deep admiration for German thought, inspite of his frequent differences with German thinkers as for instance Nietzsche. Though Iqbal was a great admirer of Nietzsche and there is much that they both had in common observes Justice Javid Iqbal ‘the poet’s son in an essay on Iqbal and Nietzsche, there are fundamental differences between the two, namely their sources of inspiration and basic to their whole concept of, and outlook on life, their conception of God.

In an article, entitled ‘Conversations with Iqbal’, by Syed Nazir Niazi, a close friend of Iqbal, who has had extensive conversations with him, which he recorded from time to time, we have another treasure trove of information on Iqbal’s preoccupations with German culture and German thought. Again it is Goethe who figures most prominently in their conversations. Writes Niazi: ‘Perhaps what life needs most are men who can understand its ultimate purpose. Goethe was such a man and so was Iqbal. And it was Iqbal who turned our attention to Goethe. It is a remarkable episode in our history that Iqbal alone should have resisted the force of a whole literature and culture, namely English, which was dominating our life through political control. It is a fact that we accepted Goethe rather than Shakespeare. Shakespeare is no doubt admired, but Goethe is the favourite. Shakespeare is a unique artist whom we all recognize, but Goethe is one of us who has secured a place in our heart. If we bear this point in mind a glimpse of the perfect man or Vicegerent of God or Mu’min or Man of Faith and his character, disposition as conceived by Iqbal, is seen to some extent in Faust a creature of Goethe’s thoughts, and not for instance in the ‘Superman of Nietzsche.

The sources from which we can glean information on Iqbal’s connections and contacts with Germany and the instances in his writings where he expresses himself on her poets and thinkers are numerous and manifold.

It is my privilege today to contribute to that material by presenting to the public for the first time a report on a collection of letters written by Iqbal which have an immediate and direct bearing on his connections with and his feelings for my country. They are letters and postcards addressed by Iqbal to his German language tutor in Heidelberg, Miss Emma Wegenast, letters and postcards of which I possess photo copies and some originals.

The collection is a gift which Miss Wegenast, the recipient, made in the early sixties, shortly before her death, to the Pakistan‑German Forum, a bilateral cultural association of which at the time the late Mr. Mumtaz Hasan was President while I had the honour to be its honorary General Secretary.

The Pakistan‑German Forum, being an organisation whose aim it was and is to promote and strengthen cultural relations between the two countries, was fully aware that Muhammad Iqbal is the greatest cultural link that exists between Germany and Pakistan. It was only natural, therefore, that when Mr. Mumtaz Hasan and I were invited to visit Germany in the summer of 1959, we made it a point not only to visit the cities and universities of Heidelberg and Munich where Iqbal had stayed and studied in 1905 and 1906 but to make every effort and attempt to trace any person still alive who had met Iqbal during his days in Germany.

It was in the pursuit of this aim that with the help of friends we were able to find and to contact Miss Emma Wegenast to whom our attention had been drawn by references to her in Begum Atiya Fayzee’s book on, Iqbal.

Although we could not meet Miss Wegenast personally, a correspondence developed between Mr. Mumtaz Hasan and her. As a result of this correspondence she made over to the Forum the letters she had received from Iqbal with the request to pass them on to any archive in Pakistan where they could be accessible to scholars engaged in research into Iqbal’s life and work. Mr. Mumtaz Hasan was kind enough to prepare for me a complete set of photocopies which he gave to me along with two original letters. Since, I had to leave Pakistan on transfer soon after, I do not know the present whereabouts of the letters that were donated by Miss Wegenast.

But before examining the letters further let me return once again very briefly to our visit to Germany which yielded yet another fruit: we succeeded in persuading Inter Nations, a German organisation founded in Bonn in 1952 to promote intercultural relations and contacts with other nations to locate the original thesis submitted by Iqbal to the University of Munich for his Ph.D. and to have it copied for the Forum. The thesis was found and thanks to the late Dr. Richard Mönnig, the Director of Inter Nations, who himself had taken a keen interest in Iqbal, some 30 photo-mechanical reprints of the thesis were produced.

The thesis is properly proceeded by a ‘Lebenslauf’, a curriculum vitae, presumably compiled by Iqbal himself and signed by him, in which he gives his date of birth as the 3rd of Dhū Qa‘dah 1294 A. H., with the year 1876 in brackets. The method of calculation which led to this year: of the Christian era was probably the one widely used by Orientalists in Germany and elsewhere at that time. It follows the formula year A. H. minus year A.H. divided by 33 plus 622 equals the year of the Christian era.

The thesis was submitted with the approval of Professor Dr. Friedrich Hommel, Iqbal’s supervisor or doctor‑father as he is called in Germany, to the Faculty of Philosophy, Section I (respectively II) of the Ludwig Maximilians University at Munich. It was published in London in 1908 by Luzac & Co. and was printed by E.J, Brill of Leiden in Holland. I would like to add the remark that at the time when Iqbal obtained his degree in Munich, it was quite customary, even obligatory at German universities to submit Ph. D. Theses or ‘Inaugural Dissertationen’ as they are called in German, in print, and in a set fairly large number of copies to be distributed to important libraries and relevant research centres in the country and abroad.

But let me now turn to the letters. They are altogether 27 in numbers including two postcards. They cover two distinct periods, namely the year from 1907 to the outbreak of the Great War in 1914 and the years from 1931 to 1933. The long silence between these periods is only interrupted once by a letter written in 1919.

There is every possibility that I may have lost some of my photocopies in the course of several moves from one continent to another and that the original collection is larger than mine. I have a faint recollection that there were altogether more than 40 letters plus some photographs.

As I already mentioned, the person to whom the letters were addressed is Miss Emma Wegenast. She was Iqbal’s German language tutor in Heidelberg at the ‘Pension Scherer’, one of those highly respectable boarding houses for students—so common in German university towns before the advent of the students hostel tower blocks.

‘Pension Scherer’ or the Heidelberg School, as Iqbal calls it in one of his letters, seems to have been a boarding house mainly for foreign students, which explains the tutorial facilities. Fraulein Wegenast was in her twenties when she and Iqbal met and we have it on the authority of Begum Atiya Fayzee that she was very beautiful and highly accomplished, polished young lady.

Iqbal was very fond of her—there is no doubt about that— but as the letters reveal, it was a pure and innocent fondness. I have the feeling when reading the letters, that to Iqbal Fraulein Emma Wegenast was the embodiment of all that he loved and respected of all that he was so strongly attracted by, in German culture, in German thought, in German literature, perhaps in German life as a whole.

Iqbal addresses her throughout very formally as ‘Mein liebes Fraulein Wegenast’ or ‘My dear Fraulein Wegenast’ with only the ‘Mein’ hinting at his fondness for her.’ But it is fondness coupled with respect, for in all the letters written in German and they all belong to the first period when his memories of her were the freshest and his feelings for her must have been the strongest, he always uses the formal and respectful ‘Sie’ in addressing her, not once lapsing into the intimate ‘Du’.

The letters do not reveal anything sensational. They are rather ordinary letters as any two friends would exchange among themselves: no deep thoughts, no poetry, and yet they answer some of the questions about Iqbal which were still open and they certainly throw further light on Iqbal’s feelings for my country.

The first question answered is the one posed by Syed Nazir Niazi in his essay on conversations with Iqbal. When he writes: ‘I had always been curious to find out how far Iqbal had studied the German language… I personally believe he had made a deep and penetrating study of German literature in original. He must have been well-versed in German Language. But he never used any German word in his conversations, not even at the time when his children were under the care of a German governess who lived in his house.

Well, the letters certainly provide an answer to this question. All his letters written before the outbreak of the Great War except two are written in German, and although Iqbal complains in them time and again about severe shortcomings in his knowledge of that language and of his inability to express himself in the way he would like to, even apologizing for insulting the reader by his ‘schlechte Deutsch’, (bad German). I can only say that when Iqbal does so, he is much too modest. I find it remarkable how well he expresses himself in that language, a language after all, in which he has had tuition for only a relatively short time. No, he knew German alright, as the letters reveal, though in latter years, his active knowledge of that language must have progressively faded away, and quite understandably so.

In his first detailed letter after his return to a native country, dated 11th January 1909, Lahore, he gives a very lucid and fluent account in German of the overwhelming welcome accorded to him by his countrymen.

As a by-product, so to say, the letters yield another, hitherto unknown piece of information: the addresses at which Iqbal stayed in London in 1908 and again in 1931 and 1932 when he attended the Round Table Conferences. They are: 49, Elsham Road in Kensington in 1908, 113 A St. James Court, Buckingham Gate in 1931 and lastly Queen Anne’s Mansion, St. James Park in 1932. Now these addresses are known, the Buildings Advisory Committee of the Greater London Council should be requested to put up a blue plaque at one of these addresses, in commemoration of him who is one of the greatest sons of Pakistan, if not the greatest.

However much I should like to do so, the time at my disposal today does not permit me to quote extensively from the letters I feel however, that I owe it to you to read out one passage at least which is particularly expressive. On receipt of the news that Fraulein Wegenast’s father had died, he sent her the following message of condolence:

Dear Miss Wegenast,

I am extremely sorry to hear the sad news of your father’s death; and though my letter must reach you a good many days after this sad event, yet neither time nor distance can make my sympathy with you in your bereavement any the less warm. The news has pained me very much indeed, and I pray that Almighty God may be pleased to shower his choicest blessings on the venerable old man, and to give you strength to endure your sorrow. ‘Verily we are for God and to God we return. This is the sacred text that we recite when we hear the news of death. And I recited this verse over and over again on reading your painful letter. Such events though do happen in everybody’s life and we must meet our troubles like those who left us their lives to imitate. You remember that Goethe said in the moment of his death —‘More Light! Death opens up the way to more light and carries us to those regions where we stand face to face with eternal Beauty and Truth.’ I remember the time when I read Goethe’s poems with you and I hope, you also remember those happy days when we were so near to each other —so much so that I spiritually share in your sorrows, Please write to me when you feel inclined to do so, I wish I had been in Germany to convey my sympathy to you personally. May God be with you.

Yours ever,

Mohammad Iqbal

Some more representative quotations could be cited as follows:

‘I remember the time when I read Goethe’s poems with you and I hope you also remember those happy days when we were so near to each other spiritually speaking’.

Here it is: Fraulein Wegenast, that is Goethe, Heine, Kant and Schopenhauer, it is Heidelberg, the Neckar, Germany —it is those happy days!’

And that is the Leitmotif of Iqbal’s letters to Emma Wegenast.

‘My body is here, my thoughts are in Germany’.

‘It is impossible for me to forget your beautiful country where I have learned so much. My stay in Heidelberg is nothing now but a beautiful dream. How I’d wish I could repeat it!’

‘I am very fond of Germany. It has had a great influence on my ideals and I shall never forget my stay in that country.’

‘Never shall I forget the days I spent at Heidelberg when you taught me Goethe’s Faust and helped me in many ways. Those were happy days indeed.’

‘I’d wish I could see you once more at Heidelberg or Heilbronn whence we shall together make a pilgrimage to the sacred grave of the great master Goethe.’

‘The other day, I was reading Heine and I thought of the happy days when we read the poet together.’

And a final quotation:

‘Germany was a kind of second home to my spirit. I learned much and I thought much in that country. The home of Goethe has found a permanent place in my soul.’

Yes indeed! Fraulein Wegenast that is Goethe and Heine, Kant and Schopenhauer, Heidelberg’ the Neckar ‘Germany’ those happy days —And those happy days, Germany the Neckar, Heidelberg Schopenhauer and Kant, Heine and Goethe that to Iqbal was Fraulein Wegenast, as this correspondence not of the mind, not of the intellect, but of the heart reveals.

IQBAL’S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE

By Dr.KHURSHID ANWAR


The epistemology of Iqbal is in fact the epistemology of the Quran. Like the Qur’an, Iqbal makes full allowance for all kinds of experiences. Such as sense-perception, reason, intuition (Love), prophetic revelation... all these sources are various means to acquire knowledge. For Iqbal ‘Knowledge” is not a deterministic nor limited concept which would have had only one or two sources. He regards knowledge as a great boon. He starts from sense-perception, passes through intellect arrives at his distinction, love. Thus we will categorize his theory of knowledge in terms of sense-perception, reason and Love. This last word he understands in its broad sense of religious experience, intuition and prophetic revelation.

He defines knowledge as “sense-perception elaborated by understanding”.[1] In order to vindicate his claim he takes some quotations from the Qur’an, emphasizing the point that man is endowed with the faculty of naming things, (as the Quran says “O Adam inform them of the names”) that is to say forming concepts of them is capturing them.

Thus the character of man’s knowledge is conceptual and it is with the weapon of this conceptual knowledge that man approaches the observable aspects of reality.[2]

But what is this “observable aspect of reality” which , according to Iqbal only be approached through man’s conceptual knowledge? It is the universe, it is “nature”. ter a reflective observation on the nature, man has, consciousness of what this nature symbolizes.

Iqbal further points out that the Qur’an sees signs of e ultimate reality in the sun, the moon, the lengthening t of the shadows, the alternation of day and night, the variety of human colours and tongues...in fact in the le of nature as revealed to the sense-perception of man. And that the Muslim’s duty is to reflect on these signs and not pass by them as if he is deaf and blind.[3] On another place Iqbal says: ‘It is through thinking that our knowledge grows and thinking is determined by our sensuous experience. So when the nature of our senses undergoes a change, the world is changed for us. Rest, Motion, Quality and Quantity take a new significance”.[4]

Why was Iqbal so strongly concerned of the fact that knowledge is actually based on sense-perception. One reason could be that he was greatly shocked by Greek thought which had influenced the Muslim’s thinking for centuries and the impressions of which are still existing.

Referring to this fact Muhammad Iqbal asserts that “the cultures of Asia and, in fact of the whole ancient world failed because they approached Reality exclusively from within and moved from within outwards”.[5]

The first object of Iqbal’s condemnation was Plato who regarded imagination and fantasies as true while he disbelieved knowledge furnished by the natural instruments (like the eyes and the ears). Iqbal was also hostile to the teachings of Socrates, Mutazilites and other idealists who looked upon this world as of no use and value; Socrates’ inquiry restricted itself to the moral problems of mankind. To him the proper study of man was man and not the world of plants, insects and stars. How unlike the Quran, which sees in the humble bee a recipient of Divine inspiration and constantly calls upon the reader to observe the perpetual change of the winds, the alternation of day and night, the clouds, the starry heavens and the planets swimming through infinite space.[6]

Similarly Plato, considers sense-perception as incapable of giving real knowledge, it can only give mere opinion. He fashions and moulds his supreme Reality out of his ideas. For him only ideas give the true and infallible knowledge of the ultimate Reality.

Sense-perception is for him a mere illusion. Therefore Iqbal violently attacks Plato at various places in his works. He says that Plato despised sense-perception which in his view, yielded mere opinion and no real knowledge. How unlike the Quran which regards “hearing” and “sight” as the most valuable Divine gifts and declares them to be accountable to God for their activity in this world”.[7] Iqbal named Plato one of the “Flock of Sheeps” who actually exploited the former Muslim students of the Quran who studied under the classical speculation and read the Quran in the light of Greek thought. Iqbal has given us a very vivid poem in his “Secrets of Self” and likewise warned us to beware of such a Flock of Sheep. It is necessary here to reproduce that poem in order to fully understand Iqbal’s thoughts about the visible aspects of reality. He maintains that:

“Plato the Prime ascetic and sage was one of that ancient flock of sheep, His Pegasus went astray in the darkness of idealism, and dropped its shoe amidst the rocks of actuality.



He was so fascinated by the invisible that he made hand, eye, and ear of no account. “To die”, said he “is the secret of life: The candle is glorified by being put out”.

He dominates our thinking, His cup sends us to sleep and takes the sensible world away from us.

He is a sheep in man’s clothing,



The soul of the Sufi bows to his authority. He soared with his intellect to the highest heaven



And called the world of phenomena a myth. Twas his work to dissolve the structure of Life And cut the bough of life’s fair tree asunder. The thought of Plato regarded loss as profit, His philosophy declared that being is not-being.

His nature drowsed and created a dream His mind’s eye created a mirage.

Since he was without any taste for action, His soul was enraptured by the non-existent.

He disbelieved in the material universe And became the creator of invisible Ideas. Sweet is world of phenomena to the living spirit:

Dear is the world of ideas to the dead spirit:

Its gazelles have no grace of movement,

Its partridges are denied the pleasure of walking daintily.

Its dewdrops are unable to quiver,

Its birds have no breath in their breasts, Its seed does not desire to grow,

Its moths do not know how to flutter. Our recluse has no remedy but flight:

He could not endure the noise of this world. He set his heart on the glow of a quenched flame

And depicted a word steeped in opium. He spread his wings towards the sky

And never came down to his nest again. His phantasy is sunk in the jar of heaven:

I know not whether it is the dregs or the brick of the wine-jar.

The peoples were poisoned by his intoxication:

He slumbered and took no delight in deeds”[8]

Iqbal also attacked Ibn-i-Rushed and Al-Ghazzali because Ibn-i- Rushed defended Greek philosophy while Ghazzali attacked it. Both for Iqbal have trodden the same path as far as the avoidance of sense-perception is concerned.

Ibn-i-Rushed through his doctrine of the immortality of the active intellect, a doctrine which once influenced France and Italy and which is opposed to the view of Quran, has taken notice of the value and the destiny of the human ego. And thus for Iqbal “Ibn-i-Rushed lost sight of the ideas of Islam” which obscured man’s vision of himself, his God and his world.[9] Similarly the Quran does not justify al-Ghazzali’s philosophic scepticism. Al-Ghazzali was a reaction to the extreme rationalism. He was a great protagonist of intuition, mystic experience and religious experience. Iqbal has the following opinion of al-Ghazzali: “That Ghazzali finding no hope in analytic thought moved to mystic experience and there found an independent content for religion. In this way he succeeded in securing for religion the right to exist independently of science and metaphysics. But the revelation of the total infinite in mystic experience convinced him of the finitude and inconclusiveness of thought and drove him to draw a line of cleavage between thought and intuition. He failed to see that thought and intuition are organically related and that thought must necessarily stimulate finitude and inconclusiveness because of its alliance with serial time.

The idea that thought is essentially finite, and for this reason unable to capture the infinite, is based on a mistaken notion of the movement of thought in knowledge”.[10]

To give a better explanation of what he means by knowledge; he writes in a letter, “that I have generally used the word ‘knowledge’ in the sense of knowledge based on the senses. It gives man power which should be subordinated to religion. If it is not subordinated to religion it is a satanic force. This knowledge is the first step to true knowledge as I have pointed out in ‘Javid Noma’. The knowledge of truth is gained first through the senses and then through direct realization. Its ultimate stages cannot be encompassed within consciousness.

Knowledge which cannot be circumscribed within consciousness and which is the final stage of truth, is also called love or intuition[11] He emphasizes the sense perception as the first source of knowledge through which he sees the ultimate Reality. For him the reality shows itself in its own appearances and “man in his obstructing environment cannot afford to ignore the visible”.[12] He awakes the people from their slumbers and asks them to get up and open their eyes and not to consider this necessitated world as mean.

Because “This world of colour and fragrance is worthy of contemplation. And in this green valley there are so many flowers awaiting thy recreation”.[13] He replies to those who regard this world as of no value and use, that the spirit and the matter are not opposed entities, and that this world for him is not a torture hall where an elementally wicked humanity is imprisoned for an original act of sin”.[14] For him the ultimate Reality is spiritual and its life is wholly consisted in its temporal activity”. The spirit finds its opportunities in the natural, the material and secular... There is no such thing as a profane world. All this immensity of matter constitutes a scope for the self- realization of spirit. All is holy ground”.[15] All this means that Iqbal strongly defends his views about the visible and concrete reality. He does not agree with the opinion that only man’s speculative and contemplative spirit will lead to the extent of the ultimate reality. And he does not encourage man’s (withdrawal) from the world of matter, since it is with its temporal flux and shifting phenomena, organically related to the ultimate reality”.

There is no possibility of thought emerging from concrete experience. On the contrary, one should take one’s start from here because it is the intellectual seizure of and power over the concrete that makes it possible for the intellect of man to pass beyond the concrete.[16] For he who does not see these signs in this life, will remain blind to the realities of the life to come. They are the manifestations of Divine effulgence and reflective observation leads into their ultimate nature and reveals the secret of Divine Reality”.[17] For him the “knowledge of nature is the knowledge of God’s behaviour”.[18] Iqbal believes in sense-perception, which he regards as the normal level of experience and he sees the ultimate Reality through sense-perception. Still he believes that the ultimate Reality is lying outside the normal level of experience, inaccessible to sense perception and pure reason. And for him the only question is whether the normal level is capable of yielding knowledge. Certainly not because the normal level (sense-perception and intellect) is not capable of approaching ultimate Reality parse.

For Iqbal “intellect merely lights the way but it is not itself a goal nor a destination”[19]. Kant is supposed to have ruined the importance and necessity of Pure Reason. Therefore he is still influential in the history of philosophy “as God’s greatest gift to his country”.[20] Iqbal says about Kant that “His Critique of Pure reason revealed the limitations of human reason and reduced the whole work of the rationalists to a heap of ruins”[21] But the approach of Kant to pure reason was based on his failure to see that thought in the very act of knowledge passes beyond its own finitude. The finitudes of nature are reciprocally exclusive not so the finitude of thought which is in its essential nature, incapable of limitation and cannot remain imprisoned in the narrow circuit of its own individuality.

In the wide world beyond itself nothing is alien to it. It is in its progressive participation in the life of the apparently alien that thought demolishes the walls of its finitude and enjoys a potential infinitude. Its movement becomes possible only because of the implicit presence in its finite individuality of the infinite, which keeps alive within it the flame of aspiration and sustains it in its endless pursuit. It is a mistake to regard thought as inconclusive, for it too in its way is a greeting of the finite with the Infinite”.[22] The real problem for Iqbal was that he wanted to see religion garbed in the attire of rationalism.

In this regard he got some help from Whitehead an English philosopher and mathematician, who once said that “The ages of faith are the ages of rationalism”[23]. Iqbal believes that the attempt of doing so is not new, it has begun with the Prophet of Islam. The Prophet of Islam, in a broad sense, was himself the foundation of rational thinking in religion (Islam). Iqbal claims that “The search for rational foundation in Islam may be regarded to have begun with the Prophet himself. His constant prayer was: “God! grant me knowledge of the ultimate nature of things”.[24]

Let us not overlook the following sentence of Iqbal that “The birth of Islam is the birth of inductive intellect”.[25]

As we have already mentioned Iqbal’s epistemology is constructed on the pattern of Quranic epistemology, in which sense-perception and reason are the imitations to the acquisition of knowledge. These two sources are insufficient as far as the knowledge of the ultimate Reality is concerned. As a consequence they need to be completed by another source of knowledge, on which Iqbal, following the Quran, puts most emphasis. He identifies this source of knowledge with love (ISHQ) and intuition and religious experience. For him love, intuition, religious experience and prophetic revelation are just the same in their very nature. This kind of knowledge is direct, immediate and will unveil to him new spheres of illumination, wherein vistas of reality, comprehending Divine presence itself. In contrast, the knowledge yielded by intellect is fragmentary because it is involved in the labyrinth of space and time.

The Knowledge through intuition is not imparted partially and indirectly.

It is grounded in the deeper and higher self of man. “It is incorporeal and eternal and leads directly to the incorporeal and the eternal”.[26]

The main characteristics of the mystic experience are the following:

1) The mystic experience is immediate experience. This kind of experience, Iqbal says, does not differ from other levels of human experience which supply data for knowledge. It gives the direct apprehension of ultimate Reality. Mystic experience or love or intuition apprehends the ultimate Reality as the sense-perception perceives the sensible reality. As regions of normal experience are subject to interpretation of sense-data for knowledge of the external world, so the region of mystic experience is subject to interpretation for our knowledge of God. The immediacy of mystic experience simply means that we know God just as we know other objects.

“God is not a mathematical entity nor a system of concepts mutually related to one another and having no reference to experience.[27]

2) The mystic experience is an unanalysable whole. This is a sort of giving reality an indivisible organic unity. As in normal experience innumerable data of experience fall into a single experience and selected data which fall into the order of space and time, will be referred to a certain sensible reality. But in mystic state, Iqbal says “that this kind of analysis of stupendous experience is not possible”. William James thinks the the mystic experience is some kind of mysterious faculty and having discontinuance with the normal consciousness. It is the same reality operating on us. It is unique, unanalysable and indivisible.

The ordinary rational consciousness, in view of our practical need of adaptation to our environment takes that reality piecemeal, selecting successively isolated sets of stimuli for response. The mystic state brings us into contact with the total passage of reality in which all the diverse stimuli merge into one another and form a single unanalysable unity in which the ordinary distinction of subject and object does not exist”.[28]

3) The ultimate Reality is transcending, encompassing the whole universe. It is the unique other self or what Iqbal regards as the Ultimate Ego. And the mystic state is the moment of intimate association with this ultimate Reality or unique other self. This mystic state, Iqbal says, is highly objective. It is the unique other self transcending and encompassing the private personality of the finite individual.

Our experience of other minds is immediate and direct.[29]

4) Iqbal says that mystic experience cannot be communicated. Mystic experience is feeling rather than thought. The content of mystic or religious consciousness can be communicated to others in the form of propositions, but the content it self cannot be transmitted.

This kind of experience has two aspects a non-temporal and a temporal one. The non-temporal is feeling and the temporal is idea. Feeling is outward-pushing, as idea is outward reporting and no feeling is so blind as to have no idea of its own object. Every direction has some objective.

A feeling has some direction as an activity does, therefore feeling cannot be regarded without a direction.[30]

5) Iqbal says that this mystic experience, though it is intimately associated with the eternal, cannot break the relation with serial time.

Mystic state is related to the normal experience. And this is why Iqbal maintains that the “Mystic’s condemnation of intellect as an organ of knowledge does not really find any justification in the history or religion”[31].

When this mystic experience is finished, it leaves a sense of authority behind it. This means that experience is experienced during a certain period. Though this period is not fixed (concerning its where and when). Once happened will “be fraught with infinite meaning for mankind”.[32]

Love or intuition means knowledge through the heart, wherein we have change but not success,- pure duration but not serial time. This experience which he also calls religious experience, is ranked among the other existing normal levels of experience. Iqbal says: “the facts of religious experience are facts among facts of human experience and in the capacity of yielding knowledge by interpretation one fact is as good as another”.[33]

What is a heart which is supposed to be the seat of love or religious experience? If love comes from the heart and intellect from the mind then we are authorized to raise a question: “What is the difference between heart and mind?”

Until now, we have heard of a dualism between mind and body but not of a battle between mind, body and heart. Still the question asked above suggests this three dimensional man. Actually heart and mind are the same; heart is the seat of loving and hating, thinking and doubting, cognition and feeling. For Bergson intuition (Love) is only a higher kind of intellect.[34] Al-Ghazzali, a mystical philosopher, defines heart in the following words “The first step to knowledge is to know that thou art composed of outward shape called body and the inward entity called the heart or soul. By heart I do not mean that piece of flesh situated in the left of our bodies, but that which uses all the other faculties as its instrument and servant. In truth, it does not belong to the visible world but to the invisible and has come into this world as a traveler visits a foreign country for the sake of merchandise and will presently return to his native land, It is the knowledge of this entity and its attributes which is the key to the knowledge of God”.[35]

Iqbal has put forward views about the meaning of the heart not different from those of Ghazzali or the Quran. For him (Iqbal) “The heart is a kind of inner intuition or insight which in the beautiful words of Rumi (a Persian mystic poet whom Iqbal considers his spiritual leader), feeds on the rays of the sun and brings us into contact with aspects of reality other than those open to sense-perception. It is, according to the Quran, something which “Sees” and its reports, if properly interpreted, are never false. We must not however, regard it as a mysterious special faculty: it is rather a mode of dealing with Reality in which sensation in the physiological sense of the word, does not play any part. Yet the vista of experience thus opened to us is as real and concrete as any other experience”.[36]

The questions is, why this kind of experience is not generally acknowledged by everybody in contrast to sense-perception for instance which is open to everybody. Why do people still consider it a mysterious kind of faculty? The answer to these questions is based on the fact that if all knowledge had come to heart in this easy way, the idea of seeking by reason would have gone to perdition. There would have been no empirical knowledge, no quest for the comprehension of this universe.

Everything derives from human seeking and struggle. Everything is based on the human desires. When you desire something you start seeking for it and your desiring and seeking for that something brings you in an intimation with it. As Iqbal asserts:

“Life is preserved by purpose

Because of the goal its caravan bell tinkles. Life is latent in seeking,

Its origin is hidden in desire.

Keep desire alive in thy heart,

Lest the little dust become a tomb.

Desire is the soul of this world of hue and scent.

The nature of everything is a store house of desire.

Desire sets the heart dancing in the breast.



And by its glow the breast is made bright as a mirror.

It gives to earth the power of soaring.

It is a Khidr to the Moses of perception.

From the flame of desire the heart takes life,

And when it takes life, all dies that is not true.

Then it refrains from forming desires,

Its pinion breaks and it cannot soar.

Desire keeps the self in perceptual uproar. It is a restless wave of the self’s sea”.[37]



The whole philosophy of Iqbal rests on the foundation of love. His work, especially his poetry, is the exhortation of love. And for him love is the ultimate, clear and distinct source of knowledge. He has shown to us that the Ego or self can be strengthened by the force of love. By love an ego can be made more lasting, more living, more burning and more glowing. Whatever disease exists in the mind of human beings, love can heal this sickness very easily and remove all the doubts there of. Iqbal defines love by asking:



“What is love? It is to hurl unity, At your heart like a thunderbolt and then to hurl your self at every obstacle”.[38]

And again some where else he defines it as follows:



“What is love? It is journeying without a break, transcending limits, ending ends. Love knows no ending, no finality; Its morning has no evening in its wake.

Its path like wisdom’s has its turns and bends.

But it goes forward instantaneously unerring”.[39]

Iqbal has at many places in his works compared love to reason. He says for instance:[40]

“A true Believer exists by “Love” and Love exits by his being

Whatever is “impossible” for us. Is quite possible for “Love”

“The only Substance with Reason Is “Fear” and “Doubt”.

But a firm Faith and Determination Are indispensable to “Love”

“Reason says: “O Man

Be always happy.

And enjoy your Life to its Less

But Love says:

Be obedient to God.

And then enjoy a perfect Freedom Reason’s a knot-resolving slave, Faith mid convention’s lard to grave, For in the breast there beats a heart, The unseen target of love’s dart”.[41]

Therefore this does not mean that Iqbal has fully demolished or belittled the value of reason.

Though he considers reason alone a satanic force which leads humanity astray still is a divine light if wedded with love. So reason and love together create a new world. This idea of Iqbal can be seen in the following verses:

“For westerner doth reason furnish all accoutrement of life and for the East love is the key of mystery.

Love-led can reason claim the lord and reason-lit love strikes from roots.

When integrated, these two, draw the pattern of a different World.

Let love and reason intermixed be to chart a world all new”.[42]

“If it be diversed from love.

Then knowledge is but satan’s progeny;

But if it blends with love, it joins the ranks of high celestial spirits. Love-bereft

All knowledge is but cold as death, the shaft of intellect its target fails to reach.

But let love’s sight restore a vision to one who is blind and so in darkness gropes;

And make a Hayder of this Bu-lahab”.

Both are in quest of the Ultimate Reality. Both are indispensable to each other as he indicates in his verse:

“Both are in quest of one abode

And both would lead upon the Road.

Reason tries every strategem,

But love pulls gently by the hem”.[43]

The same idea can be found in the following lines;[44]

“(both intuition and reason) are in need of each other for mutual rejuvenation. Both seek vision of the same Reality which reveals itself to them in accordance with their function in life”.[45]

IQBAL’S GOD AND GI TA’S LORD

By PURUSOTTOMA BILIMORIA

Preamble: In this paper I attempt to make some comparisons between Iqbal’s conception of the Ultimate, with reference to some idealist notions he was introduced to, and a conception that appears in the celebrated Hindu scripture, the Bhagavadgita (Gita).

I show that in both conceptions there is tension between the immutable-absolute and the dynamic-personal, and that Iqbal and the Gitâ resolve this in somewhat similar ways. Why I chose to compare Iqbal with the Gitâ is because Iqbal said he had been “inspired” by the Gitâ.

As though Muhammad Iqbal had borrowed the pan-idealist symbolism of the self (and not-self), he believed that the ultimate is best described in terms of the Ego (Khudî) which he used interchangeably with self. The supreme is conceived as the ultimate ego. The term “ego” is appropriate, he believed, because it refers to a centre of experience and all experience must have a centre if it is to be distinguished as experience.[1] The individual ego is distinguished from ultimate ego as the centre that marks the focus of experience at the cosmic level and is given the proper name Allah in the Qur’an. But “Allah as a distinct individual or person is conceived in terms of “pure duration” and it is in terms of pure duration that we can conceive of “thought, life and purpose”, and hence, to exist in pure duration gives us ultimate organic unity which can be called a self.”[2]

This dense ontology needs unpacking. Let us look at it another way. Personal identity is best explained in terms of “I am”. “I am” or ego as the centralizing focus of experience that is self-referentially identifiable qua experience.[3] All self is distinguished from not-self by virtue of this capacity for self-referentiality, but the Ultimate ego exists in pure duration with not-self in organic unity. Iqbal gives a phenomenological with not-self in organic unity. Iqbal gives a phenomenological elaboration: “To exist in pure duration is to be a self, and to be a self is to be able to say” “I am”. Only that truly exists which can say “I am”. It is the degree of the intuition of “I-amness” that determines the place of a thing in a scale of being.”[4] The “I-amness” of the individual marks the limits of the particular experiences.

In the cosmic vastness there is the ultimate ego or self which is the centre of all experience since it is the ground for the possibility of any experience; this transcendent Self also expresses itself as “I am”; therein lies its personal identity. There is a fundamental distinction to be made between our inner sense of the ego and that of God’s: “We too say” I am”. But our I-amness is dependent and arises out of the -distinction between self and not-self. The individual self, though possessed also of volition, is limited in its freedom and is dependent on the world, while the ultimate self, in the words of the Qur’an “can afford to dispense with all the worlds”.[5] And unlike the individuated ego, the ultimate ego never changes into something else, and this accounts for the permanency and stability (thubut or thabat) of the universe. Allah is therefore best characterized as the cosmic personality, its source and sustainer and this is not an anthropocentric conception either.[6]

Nor for that matter is this a pantheistic outlook, because we cannot say that there is a straightforward identification of God and the world, or that God is the world, or alternatively that God as absolute alone is with the world merely as his mirrored illusion. Consequently, Iqbal resolves that Allah has both a permanent and a relative or dynamic nature. As permanent Allah is the ultimate ego; as relative Allah is the evolving and changing nature qua God’s presence as the organic unity of the whole in pure duration, Reminiscent of Rumi’s evolutionary spiral, and not unlike Alexander’s conception of ‘Emergent Evolution’. This is essentially a finite conception of deity because durational change is admitted in the absolute; if God is infinite, should we not look separately at the transcendent, the absolute beyond all change? To be sure, however, for Iqbal there is no absolute that goes over the ultimate ego: The absolute is the ultimate ego integrated through Personality and inclusive of the universe; thus there is no separation, of the absolute from the personal God. The ultimate is transcendence-cum-immanence in such a way that the world or rather the creative order of nature is within God’s being. Yet it is not quite clear whether the identity of the world and God established through His presence is one of essentiality or of substantiality. It seems he might mean both.

In any case, it is strictly a panentheistic view. As Vahid puts it: “By regarding the Universe as the ego, Iqbal parts company with the pantheists; and the fact that he holds the Ultimate Ego to be a personality with the attributes of creativeness, omniscience and eternity make him a theists. But Iqbal’s God comprehends the whole universe and in Him alone the finite egos find their being...in short God is personalistic, theistic and pluralistic”[7].

There are analogues to this in the notion of the essential inseparability of paramâtman and the world as Isvara’s sarira in the Hindu-Vedanta philosopher, Ramanuja[8], but more significantly in Hegel’s doctrine of the dialectical evolution of the Spirit. One can trace a fair deal of Hegelian influence on Iqbal, as well as the Hegelian impact on Whiteheadian ‘process philosophy’ which has its religious Counterpart in ‘process theology’ (more recently popularised by Charles Harthshorne in the West and Keiji Nishitani in the East (Japan)). Whitehead portrayed God as having a “primodial” and a “consequent” nature, that is, He is integral to the universe and vice versa; He develops, to some extent at least, in the development of the universe. He might be said to be transcendentally immanent in it.[9]

Iqbal claims his source to be orthodox and refers to a verse in the Qur’an: “And it is He Who hath ordained the night and day to succeed one another for those who desire to think on God or desire to be thankful”.[10] From this Iqbal argues for the notion of ultimate reality as pure duration “in which thought, life, and purpose interpenetrate to form an organic unity.” (Ibid) This is anything but the ‘Unity of Being’ doctrine that the Sufis since Ibn-al Arabi had made popular. The Sufis considered the world of phenomena to be as waves of an ocean that emerged from the Infinite Being only to sink back into God, thereby erasing the distinction between being and non-being, time and timelessness. Far from a pure Oneness of Being, with its implications of illusionariness of the world in time, this unity in Iqbal is conceived as a “Unity of a self - an all-embracing self the ultimate source of all individual life and thought”.[11] The “Unity of Appearance” that Sirhindi upheld in re-interpreting al-Hallaj’s controversial and unorthodox proclamation of aria al-haqq[12], (“I am Truth/God”) is here integrated with the “Unity of Being”, (wandat al-wujud, al-tawhid) to form as it were two sides of the self-same concrete reality, thereby giving ontic status to the ‘Unity of Appearance’. Iqbal takes over from Bergson the distinction between (finite) time and pure duration, which helps to refute the absoluteness of- time and space postulated by Ash’ari (d. 953). But Iqbal criticizes Bergson for conceiving pure duration as prior to self, to which self is predicated (i.e. a priori condition for the ground of existence); Iqbal locates the self in a pure space-time continum but not separate from it. This may be comparable to Spinoza’s notion of Extension as one of the two attributes of God that makes causality a real possibility (Ethica 11 passim). Unlike Bergson, Iqbal would argue that: “It is the appreciative act of an enduring self only which can seize the multiplicity of duration - broken up into an infinity of constants-and transforms it to the organic wholeness of a synthesis”.[13]

Thus, unlike McTaggart’s time, which is essentially unreal, Time for Iqbal is ‘an element of the ultimate reality’ itself, and it is the a priori condition for the unity of the organic whole as it is for the unity of apperception of the ultimate ego. Iqbal looks to Einstein, and Haldane amongst others to evolve this view: ‘Time conceived as Pure duration ‘is a kind of device by which Reality exposes as ceaseless creative activity to quantitative measurement.[14] This reveals, to Iqbal, as M.S. Rascid acutely observes, the meaning of the Qur’anic verse, “And of Him is the change of the night and of the day” (Qur’an 15:161).[15] Indeed Krsna also speaks of the ‘Night and Day of Brahman’ (BG VIII 17-19). Rascid has criticized Iqbal for reading pure duration as coextensive with self, and argues that Iqbal is operating here with a limited and to some extent mistaken notion of time-this is a problem indeed. But Rascid’s criticism rests basically on his observation that (a.) Iqbal has taken Bergson further than Bergson would go, and (b) the verse that Iqbal invokes from the Qur’an to support the view does not really lend itself to such a metaphysical interpretation[16]. Rascid may be right; but what to me is significant is the affinity there is between this view and some things said in -the Gitâ as Krsna attempts to convey a sense of his ontic magnitude to an inquisitive Arjuna.



The Bhagavad Gita

The divine Personhood in a non-absolutists sense is a notion that is also asserted in the Gitâ. Arjuna suggests to Krsna that He is- the supreme Brahman, the supreme abode, the divine and eternal Person, the primordial god, unborn and “yet”, observes Arjuna, “You permeate the world by your divine ubiquities.”[17] Thus Krsna can say that “All the world is strung on me in the form of the Unmanifest (avyakta); all creatures exist in me, but I do not exist in them”. That is, god is immanent in nature by inclusiveness (BG XIII. 27) and, paradoxically, “the creatures do not exist in me... while sustaining the creation and giving them being, my self does not exist in them” (BG IX.4-6) That is, God transcends nature by exclusiveness: this imperishable is transcendent because of its beginningless and its being beyond the gunas. (qualities) (BGXIII.31). Iqbal’s world of created nature, as we saw, is not so different: “What we call Nature or not-self is only a fleeting moment in the life of God. His “I-amness” is independent, elemental, absolute”. It is doubtful, though that by ‘absolute’ Iqbal would have us understand that God is an absolute being, impersonal and of single unity or Oneness, for, as we remarked, the duration of being allows the possibility of an organic growth of nature inseparable from the ultimate self. “Nature... is a structure of events, a systematic mode of behaviour, and as such organic to the ultimate self. Nature is to the Divine Self as character is to the human self,”[18] or in Gitâ’s less personalised metaphor: Self is the hub of the wheel of samsâra set in endless motion. Iqbal ventures another oblique analogy: “In the picturesque phrase of the Qur’an it is the habit of Allah “[19]. This does remind us, again, of Ramanjua’s suggestion of the world as though it were the sarira, organic body, of God which Ramanuja had read into these very verses of the Gitâ. Although, we must point out, the special ontological status that individuated self or “soul” qua jivâtman is accredited with in Ramanuja, in respect of its identity-cum-difference relation to Isvara, entails a much more sophisticated metaphysical doctrine of being than the ‘unity of organic nature’ doctrine could cope with. At least Ramanuja is clearer in this respect in that there is for him essential identity but substantial differentia. What makes communion possible in Iqbal is the fact of the ‘ego’ or personhood as the centralising focus of experience that both the human and God share. Man shares equally the creative activity of God, but beyond that man is intrically part of nature, albeit the organic unity of nature. The total oneness of God and man is conceivable at an expistemological level, but not at a metaphysical level, for Iqbal does admit appreciative intuition (of which ‘we have a first-hand knowledge...from within’), which “reveals life as a centralizing’ ego’. This knowledge constitutes ‘a direct revelation of the ultimate reality[20].

Notwithstanding these ‘facts of experience’, Iqbal is aware of the limitations of the human mind in being able to fathom the complete mystery of being, and so “from the human point of view it is an interpretation which, in our present situation, we put on the creative activity of the Absolute Ego”.[21] But at best it is an inference. He is almost suggesting that we end up with an anthropocentric view of the ultimate. Or is Iqbal alluding to what Krsna tells Arjuna: “The deluded disregard me in my human form, being ignorant of my higher nature as the great lord of the creatures.. [they do not understand that] I am the eternal source of the creatures (created nature, sarvab hutânam).[22] Clearly though, the self-affirmation in respect of the “I-amness” that only an higher transcendental being is capable of recurs several times over in Krsna’s sermon - thus for instance, Krsna makes it plain to Arjuna: “I am the eternal source of sacrifice, I am the libation too.. I am the fire... I am the father to this world, its mother...source, destruction and continuity, container (and) imperishable seed. I am immortality and death... the existent and non-existent[23] (IX. 16-19). The apparently contradictory juxtapositioning of existence and non-existence is also not a difficulty for Iqbal, for he finds a verse in the Qur’an that says something like that: Naught is like him; yet He hears and sees. [Emphasis added to distinguish from individual subjectivity][24]

Is this assertion of “I-amness”, however, of the same order as Iqbal would have his ultimate ego pronounce. I think so, if what we mean by this statement is that the “I-amness” reflects the profoundly subtle and self-conscious but at once detached organising principle in synthetic unity with the created or self-emanated collective, i.e. Nature, intending it towards a purposive in teleological goal. That God has a purpose for his creation is beyond a shred of doubt in the Qur’an: ‘God is equal to his purpose, but most men know it not’ (12:21). Krsna expands further on his identification with organic unity of the world by elaborating on the divine ubiquities by which he is permeated in the world, i.e. the extent of his spirit-immanence in the world of matter: “I am the self that dwells in all beings, I am the beginning, the middle, and the end of beings. Of the Vedas I am the Samaveda, of the gods I am Vasave, (Indra) of the senses the mind, of the creatures of the consciousness ... I am the wisdom of self among all wisdom, I am ‘A’ among syllables, I am everlasting Time, the Placer who looks everywhere, and the how of things to be. I am victory, the resolution (will), the courage of courages...not a being standing or moving can exist without me. There is no limit to my divine ubiquities...” (BG X. 20-42) Krsna speaks as though there were infinite time, and the spirit stretched out, as it were, throughout its boundless limits, in which his Will and Thought played sport, and when he gets tired then: “I am Time, grown old [resolved to] destroy the world”. (BG.XI. 32).

In the thirteenth chapter Krsna explains that this body is called the field and the one who knows calls this “field” the “guide” to this field. (‘l am the ksetrajna in the Ksetra”). This is buddhi in its mahat form in its role of directing “field” in reflective synthesis. To Iqbal, thought qua intuition has the function of moving into the infinitude of knowledge or organic unity.

Now I am not suggesting that what Iqbâl says on nature and the relation of nature to divinity is exactly what the Gitâ postulates. One can’t, though, but be impressed at the distinctive resemblance in the two characterizations. Iqbâl’s idea that “nature is not a pure mass of materiality occupying a void, but is a structure of events and a systematic mode of behaviour”, albeit determined from within the absolute ego, is, as we saw, not alien to the Gitâ’s view. Further, the unity of thought and will, intelligence and vitality, and the boundlessness of the creative extension of the ultimate ego in which nothing limits its finality, may be stretched into Krsna’s assertion that “Resting on my own nature I create, again and again, this entire aggregate of creatures involuntarily by the force of my own nature (BG IX.9).[25] Elsewhere Krsna attribute immeasurability, infinitude and monopoly to this power. (11.25; x. 39-42) Nature, then, must be understood as a living, ever growing organism whose growth has no final external limits. Its only limit is internal, i.e. the immanent self which immanent animates and sustains the whole. Or, as Iqbâl would put it, “The Ultimate Ego that makes the emergent emerge is immanent in nature, and is described by the Qur’ân as the First and last, the visible and the invisible”[26]. Indeed, how much this sounds like the ‘manifest’ and the ‘unmanifest’ of the Gitâ. But what are the limitations of the immanent and what causes them? Iqbâl is not so clear here, though he agrees that “all activity is a limitation without which it is impossible to conceive God as a concrete operative Ego”[27] Gitâ is more specific about the internal constraints, which have largely to do with the wheel of Karma, set rather early in motion, a bit like the divine clockwork of Spinoza’s God. There is further constraint as a result of people not adhering to dharma and therefore bringing about disequilibrium in the universal retributive system. To Iqbâl, ‘the twin fact of moral and physical evil stand out prominent in the life of Nature.[28] The increase in adharma, according to Gitâ, it seems, upsets the efficiency of the ultimate ego and impels it as it were to gather its expansive unmanifest force, like the tentacles of an octopus, into its centre only to burst upon nature in some manifest form: this is the avatara-thesis of the Gitâ. (BG IV 4-8) Indeed, this is not unlike Iqbâl’s near admission to the plausibility of the buruz of Muhammad, (suggested by the Qadiyanias), - or lahut-nasut of Hallaj- as though he were a re-incarnation in the Aryan sense, for the purposes of bringing prophethood to its finality. But Iqbâl rejected this claim on some other grounds.[29]

Was Krsna a Prophet? Sirhindi did not deny that India had been sent prophets, but lamented that the messages of the prophets were either rejected at immense cost to the land, or they were misused by Brahmins in their selfish claim that the divine dwelled within them as a means to attracting favours and worship from the people[30]. Iqbâl might have been happier and to settle for Krsna as a pre-Qur’anic prophet than as an avatara, whatever that might mean.

The picture that emerges, in Iqbâl at least, has the absolute ego as the whole of reality. But the imperishable, unchanging, and permanent reality also has another side to it, but no apart from it, which is dynamic, changing, located in space and time in a non- finite continuum. But change is not interpreted as a perishable series of appearances: the ultimate ego exists in pure duration wherein change ceases to be a succession of varying attitudes, and reveals the true character as continuous creations; untouched by weariness; not ‘unseizable’ by slumber or sleep.[31] Indeed, Krsna describes himself as though he were the first unmoved mover, ceaselessly engaged in action that, however, does not bind him since he remains disinterested in their fruits (IX. ibid) Like Gitâ, Iqbâl could not conceive the ultimate ego as changeless for this would be “to conceive Him as utter inaction, a motiveless, stagnant neutrality, an absolute nothingness”. To us change might imply imperfection - as it certainly did also to Plato - but to the :”Creative Self change cannot mean imperfection. he remains untouched by it as the calm in the centre of a whirlpool”. God’s life is one of continuous self-manifestation. And when Krsna utters that “I am the source of that which is not yet”, Iqbâl would say in the same vein that the “not-yet” of God means unfailing realisation of the infinite creative possibilities of his being, which retains its wholeness throughout the entire process.[32]

Iqbâl concludes that “Ultimate Reality is a rationally directed life. To interpret life as ego is not to fashion God after the image of man. It is only to accept the simple fact of experience that life is not a formless fluid, but an organising principle of unity, a synthetic activity which holds together and focalizes the dispersing desposition of the living organism for a constructive purpose[33]. This sort of teleological basis for the existence of nature is something Krsna tries hard to convey to Arjuna with all the optipimism of an Iqbal drunk not on an intellectual view of life - which he says is necessarily pantheistic - but on an intuitive-pragmatist vision. Though in points of analysis, I find it difficult sometimes to distinguish Iqbâl’s ontology from a pantheistic one; perhaps, as we suggested earlier, panentheistic is a better designation for his view. The symbolism that comes to mind here is that of the upside down asvatthah tree with its roots above and fruits below (BG XV.I). But Iqbâl would have the roots descend and entwine more and more into the world of the fruits; and yet God might be a mystery far beyond human comprehension. But it is the link between God’s personality and our own personality that makes the bridge less formidable, and thus in the “I-thou” relation there is a distinct possibility of union between man and divine. On this point at least, Iqbâl and the Gitâ converge.

GOD AND THE UNIVERSE IN IQBAL’S PHILOSOPHY

By Dr. Riffat Hassan



Concept of God

For Iqbal the ultimate ground of all experience is a rationally directed will or an ego. He points out that in order to emphasize the individuality of the Ultimate Ego, the Quran gives Him the proper name of Allah.[1] As Bergson has stated in Creative Evolution individuality is a matter of degrees and is not fully realized even in the case of a human being.[2] “In particular, it may be said of individuality,” says Bergson, “that, while the tendency to individuate in everywhere opposed by the tendency towards reproduction. For the individuality to be perfect, it would be necessary that no detached part of the organism could live separately. But then reproduction would be impossible. For what is reproduction, but the building up of a new organism with a detached fragment of the old? Individuality therefore harbours its enemy at home.”[3] According to Iqbal, the perfect individual. God, cannot be conceived as harbouring its own enemy at home, and must therefore be regarded as a superior to the antagonistic tendency of reproduction.[4] “This characteristic of the perfect ego is one of the most essential elements in the Quranic conception of God; and the Quran mentions it over and over again, not so much with a view to attack the current Christian conception as to accentuate its own view of a perfect individual.”[5]

Iqbal refers to the Quranic verse which identifies God with light: “God is the light of heaven and earth: the similitude of his light is as a niche in a wall, wherein a lamp is placed, and the lamp enclosed in a case of lass, the glass appears as it were a shining star.”(24:35).[6] We have already noted that Iqbal denies the pantheistic interpretation of this verse. He uses this verse to support his own personalistic conception of God as the Absolute “No doubt,” says Iqbal, “the opening sentences of the verse gives the impression of an escape from an individualistic conception of God. But when we follow the metaphor of light in the rest of the verse, it gives just the opposite impression. The development of the metaphor is meant rather to exclude the suggestion of a formless cosmic element by centralizing the light in a flame which is further individualized by its encasement in a glass likened into a well-defined star.”[7] In “Gulshan-e-Raz-e-Jadid” Iqbal writes:

ãÌæ ãØáÞ ÏÑیŸ ÏیÑ ã˜ÇÝÇÊ
˜À ãØáÞ äیÓÊ ÌÒ äæÑÇáÓãٰæÊ[8]



Professor Schimmel refers to the Naqshbandi mystic Khwaja Mir Dard of Delhi (1720-1784) who reached the conclusion that the metaphor of light for God suggests both Absolutism and Omnipresence which covers both transcendentalism and all-immanency of the Supreme Being.[9]

For Iqbal then, God is a Person. God is an ego also because God responds to our reflection and our prayer; for the real test of a self is whether it responds to the call of another self.[10] Iqbal, however refutes the charge of anthropomorphism: “Ultimate Reality,” he says, “is a nationally directed creative life. To interpret this life as a personality is not to fashion God after image of humanity. It is only to accept the simple fact of experience that life is not a formless fluid but an organizing principle of unity-a synthetic activity which holds together and focalizes the dispersing dispositions of the living organism for a creative purpose.”[11]

Iqbal thus, conceives of God as a Person. The question then arises: does not individuality imply finitude? According to Iqbal, “God cannot be conceived as infinite in the sense of spatial infinity. In matters of spiritual valuation mere immensity counts for nothing.”[12] True infinity does not mean infinite extension which cannot be conceived without embracing all available finite extensions its nature consists in intensity and not extensity. “The ultimate limit, “says Iqbal, “is to be sought not in the directions of stars, but in an infinite cosmic life and spirituality.”[13] In contrast to the classical conception of God, Iqbal emphasizes the idea of a changing God.[14] For him “the infinity of the Ultimate Ego consists in infinite inner possibilities of his creative activity of which the universe as known to us, is only a partial expression. In one word, God’s infinity is intensive, not extensive. It involves an infinite series, but is not that series.”[15] Iqbal writes:

ÏÑæäÔ ÎÇáی ÇÒ ÈÇáÇ æ ÒیÑ ÇÓÊ
æÿ ÈیÑæä Çæ æÓÚÊ ÐیÑ ÇÓÊ[16]



Iqbal’s universe is dynamic. The Ultimate Ego is essential creative. By means of His Creativeness, He affirms His Reality. God is not a more contriver working on something given. Iqbal believes that God created the world out of Himself. In orthodox Islamic theology. however creation aways means creation ex nihilo.[17] Professor Whittemore observes “On this point it may well be that Iqbal has reconstructed Islamic religious thought somewhat more extensively than the original architects would care to acknowledge.”[18]

Iqbal points out that we are apt “to regard the act of creation as a specific past event, and the universe appears to us as a manufactured article....Thus regarded the universe is a mere accident in the life of God and might not have been created... from the Divine point of view, there is no creation in the sense of a specific event having a ‘before’ and a ‘after’.”[19] Creation is a continuous and continuing process in time.

ŠªÀÑÊÇ äÀیŸ ˜ÇÑæÇä æÌæÏ
˜À ÀÑ áÍÙÀ Àÿ ÊÇÒÀ ÔÇä æÌæÏ[20]


Professor Bausani states that in Muslim thought, utmost importance has always been given to creation, even going so far as to consider human acts as created in order to save the idea of the absolute creativeness of God.[21] The Ash’arites, in order to abolish the Aristotelien “causae secundae” which could compromise the freedom of the creative act of God, elaborated the theory of atomism.[22] According to the Ash’arites, the world is composed of ‘Jawahir’ -infinitely small parts or atoms which are indivisible. The essence of the atom is independent of its existence i.e. existence is a quality imposed on the atom by God. Before receiving this quality, the atom lies dormant. Since the creative activity of God is ceaseless, fresh atoms come to being every moment and therefore the universe is constantly growing.[23] Iqbal too, as we have seen, believes in a growing universe, but unlike the Ash’ arites, he thinks that the universe changes not “in an atomistic development moving from point to point but in a never ceasing organic movement in the Divine Ego itself. This is proved, for the philosopher poet, by the Quranic attestation that God adds to Creation as God pleases (Surah Fatir, 35:I) which hints at the ever fresh possibilities that may emerge from the fathomless depths of the intensive ,Divine life and be manifested in the created serial time”[24] In a well-known couplet, Iqbal says:

یÀ ˜ÇÆäÇÊ ÇȪی äÇÊãÇã Àÿ ÔÇیÏ
˜À  ÑÀی Àÿ ÏãÇÏã ÕÏÇÆÿ ˜ä Ýی˜æä![25]


and in a letter to Professor Nicholson, “the universe is not a completed act: it is still in the course of formation.[26]

Opposing the Ash’arites’ ideas on substance and creation, Iqbal points out that “they used the word substance or atom with a vague implication of externality; but their criticism, actuated by a pious desire to defend the idea of divine creation, reduced the Universe to a mere show of ordered subjectivities which, as they maintained like Berkeley found their ultimate explanation in the Will of God.[27]

The Ultimate Ego is omniscient. In the case of finite beings, knowledge even if extended to the point of omniscience, must always remain relative to the confronting ‘other’ and cannot, therefore be predicates of the Ultimate Ego who, being all-inclusive, cannot be conceived as having a perspective like the finite ego.[28] Discursive knowledge cannot be predicted of an ego who knows and who also forms the ground of the object known.

For Iqbal omniscience does not, however, mean a single indivisible act of perception which makes God immediately aware of the entire sweep of history, regarded as an order of specific wants, in an eternal ‘now’, Dawani, Iraqi, and Royce conceive of God’s knowledge in this way[29]. Iqbal observes, ‘there is an element of truth in this conception. But it suggests a closed universe, a fixed futurity, a pre-determined, unalterable order of specific events which, like a superior fate, has once for all determined the directions of God’s creative activity.”[30] Divine knowledge is not ‘passive omniscience’ but ‘a living creative activity to which the objects that appear to exist in their own right are organically related.[31] If God’s knowledge is conceived as a kind of a mirror reflecting preordained events, there is no room left for initiative and free creativeness. We must, therefore conceive of His knowledge as a perfectly self-conscious living, creative activity -an activity in which knowing and creating are one.”[32]

Iqbal points out that omnipotence, abstractly conceived, is merely a blind, capricious power without limits. The Quran finds Divine omnipotence closely related to Divine wisdom, and finds God’s power revealed, not in the arbitrary and the capricious, but in the recurrent, the regular and the orderly. Simultaneously, the Quran conceives of God as holding all goodness in God’s Hands.[33] ‘If, then, the rationally directed Divine will is good,’ then, asks Iqbal, ‘how is it...Possible to reconcile the goodness and omnipotence of God with the immense volume of evil in His creation. The painful problem is really the crux of Theism.”[34] Iqbal wonders if, with Browning, one is to regard God as all-good, or, with Schopenhauer as all evil.[35] According to Iqbal sin or evil is not something which hangs over mankind as a curse. It is looked upon as a challenge. It is the presence of evil which makes us recognize good, and acts as a whetstone for the development of personality. Iqbal’s point resembles that of William James.[36] (as indeed he intends that it should since he adapts James’s language to his purposes).[37] ‘The teaching of the Quran, which believes in the possibility of improvement in the behaviour of man and his control over natural forces, is neither optimism nor pessimism. It is meliorism, which recognizes a growing universe and is animated by the hope of man’s eventual victory over evil.”[38] Professor Bausani points out that in Iqbal’s conception of a continuously creative God there ‘lies also hidden a new solution of the old problem, the crux of theism, i.e. the problem of Evil. Nature is neither bad nor good in itself, it is one of the first exercises of God.”[39] As the Quran says: ‘Say, Go through the earth, and see how he originally produceth creatures afterwards will God reproduce another Production.’ (29:19)[40]

God is eternal but not so in the sense in which a thing is supposed to last for all time. This implies a wrong view of time making it external to God.[41] Iqbal’s God is a changing God but change does not mean serial change. God lives both in eternity and in serial time. To Iqbal the former means non-successional change, while the latter is organically related to eternity in so far as it is a measure of non-successional change. ‘In this sense alone it is possible,’ says Iqbal ‘to understand the Quranic verse: ‘To God belongs the alternation of day and night. (23:82).”[42]


God and the Universe

According to Iqbal ‘the universe does not confront the Absolute. Self in the same way as it confronts the human self.”[43] It is a fleeting moment in the life of God. ‘It is a structure of events, a systematic mode of behavior, and as such organic to the Ultimate self. Nature is to the Divine Self as character is to the human self. In the picturesque phase of the Quran it is the habit of Allah.”[44]

Nature is ego as event and act. ‘Reality’, says Iqbal, “is...essentially spirit. But, of course, there are degrees of spirit...I have conceived the Ultimate Reality as an Ego; and I must add now that from the Ultimate Ego only egos proceed. The creative energy of the Ultimate ego, in which deed and thought are identical, functions as ego‑functions.

The world, in all its details, from the mechanical movement of what we call the atom of matter to the free movement of thought in the human ego, is the great revelation of the ‘Great I am’“.[45]

Iqbal supports Einstein’s view that the universe is finite but boundless.[46] It is finite because it is a passing phase of God’s extensively infinite consciousness, and boundless because the creative power of God is intensively infinite.[47] Nature has no external limits, its only limit is the immanent self which creates and sustains the whole[48]. According to Iqbal the universe is liable to increase.[49] He translates the Quranic words “Inna ila rabbika al-muntaha”(53:43) as “And verily towards God is thy limit.” Professor Bausani comments: “This is a good instance of a characteristic of Iqbal, that of interpreting in modern terms some Quranic passages which no doubt mean something else if literally translated. So here it seems that a literal translation would amount simply to say that every being’s end is in God, a return to God. However, the metaphysical implications Iqbal wants to find in the verse are in no wise, in my opinion, contrary to the spirit of Qur’an.[50] Since Nature is organically related to the creative self, it can grow, and is consequently infinite in the sense that none of its limits is final-nature is organically finite only towards the innermost essence of God.[51] Iqbal expresses this thought thus in “Gulshan-e-Raz-e-Jadid”.

ÍÞیÞÊ áÇÒæÇá æ áÇã˜Çä ÇÓÊ
ãÑ ÏیÑ ˜À ÚÇáã Èÿ ˜ÑÇä ÇÓÊ
˜ÑÇä Çæ ÏÑæä ÇÓÊ æ ÈÑæŸ äیÓÊ
ÏÑæäÔ ÇÓÊ ÈÇáÇ ˜ã ÝÒæŸ äیÓÊ[52]


The relation of the Ultimate ego to the finite ego may be conceived in several ways. For instant the Ultimate Ego or God may be regarded as the sole reality absorbing all the finite egos, or as holding the finite egos within God’s own Self without obliterating their individuality, or as existing apart from finite egos.[53] The first of the afore-mentioned positions is rooted in pantheism even though it attributes personality to Ultimate Reality. It is an advance on those pantheistic modes of thought which regard the ultimate nature of Reality as being impersonal in character e.g.,light or force.[54] However, it negates the individuality of the finite egos. Professor Sharif points out that in the first period of his thought, extending from 1901 to about 1908, Iqbal’s writing had a pantheistic tinge. “God is universal and all-inclusive like the ocean, and the individual is like a drop. Again, God is like the sun and the individual is like a candle, and the candle ceases to burn in the presence of the sun. Like a bubble or a spark, lift is transitory-nay, the whole of life is transitory.”[55]

The first part of Bang-e-Dara contains several poems referring to the doctrine of the immanence of God (wahdat-al-wujud”). Nature from being the Word of God becomes God. God’s immanence is described thus:

æÀی ی˜ ÍÓä Àÿ¡ áی˜ä äÙÑ ÂÊÇ Àÿ ÀÑ Ôÿ ãیŸ[56]


At this stage, Iqbal’s God is Beauty rather than Love and the same Beauty manifests itself in all things; here it is Light there it is Sweet smell.

ÍÓä ÇÒá ˜ی یÏÇ ÀÑ یÒ ãیŸ ̪ᘠÀÿ
ÇäÓÇä ãیŸ æÀ ÓÎä Àÿ¡ Ûäÿ ãیŸ æÀ Š˜ Àÿ
˜ËÑÊ ãیŸ Àæ یÇ Àÿ æÍÏÊ ˜Ç ÑÇÒ ãÎÝی
̐äæ ãیŸ Ìæ ã˜ Àÿ¡ æÀ ªæá ãیŸ ãÀ˜ Àÿ[57]



This idea is delicately expressed at one place when the poet refers to the ‘promise’ of God to reveal God self on the Day of Judgment. Since God is visible in everything, he asks:

Ïی˜ªäÿ æÇáÿ یÀÇŸ ªی Ïی˜ª áیÊÿ ÀیŸ Ê̪ÿ
ªÑ یÀ æÚÏÀ ÍÔÑ ˜Ç ÕÈÑ ÂÒãÇ ˜یæä˜Ñ ÀæÇ[58]



In ‘Shama’ (The Candle) Iqbal states the doctrine of “wahdat-al-wujud” in much the same way as Ibn ‘Arabi might have done i.e. he makes the beloved identical with the lover, since he considers the relation between the world and God as one of identity.[59]

ÕیÇÏ Â¡ ÍáÞÀ ÏÇã ÓÊã Ȫی ![60]



Iqbal’s position here resembles that of Ghalib:[61]

ÇÕá ÔÀæÏ æ ÔÇÀÏ æ ãÔÀæÏ Çی˜ Àÿ
ÍیÑÇŸ À柡 ªÑ ãÔÇÀÏÀ Àÿ ˜Ó ÍÓÇÈ ãیŸ



Iqbal’s pantheistic ideas derive from Plato’s conception of God as Eternal Beauty which is manifest in all things.” This Platonic conception, as interpreted by Plotinus, adopted by the early Muslim scholastics and adapted to pantheism by the pantheistic mystics, came down to Iqbal as a long tradition in Persian and Urdu poetry, and was supplemented by his study of the English romantic poets”.[62]

Iqbal however, soon outgrew his pantheism. His old teacher at Cambridge, McTaggartt wrote to him on reading Nicholson’s translation of Asrar-e-khudi, “Have you not changed your position very much?, Surely, in the days when we used to talk philosophy together, you were much more of a pantheist and mystic.”[63] This remark is very illuminating. For Iqbal, in his later thought, the relation of the finite to Infinite ego is one in which “true infinite does not exclude the finite,” but rather “embraces the finite without effacing its finitude and explains and justifies its being.”[64] “It is clear”, says Professor Whittemore, that Iqbal does not intend that the Infinite be regarded merely as an abstract totality of finites.”[65] Iqbal’s doctrine is not pantheism (meaning by this term the doctrine that the world is identical with God). This is confirmed by the fact that nowhere in his philosophy does Iqbal refer to God in terms of featureless totality.[66] Referring to Farnell’s view on the attributes of God, Iqbal remarks that the history of religious thought discloses various ways of escape from an individualistic conception of the ultimate Reality which is conceived as some vague, vast, and pervasive cosmic element, such as light. this is the view that Farnell has taken ... I agree that the history of religion reveals modes of thought that tend towards pantheism: but I venture to think that in so far as the Quranic identification of God with light is concerned Farnell’s view is incorrect… Personally, I think the description of God as light, in the revealed literature of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, must now be interpreted differently… The metaphor of light-as applied to God… must, in view of modern knowledge, be taken to suggest the absoluteness of God and not His Omnipresence which easily lends itself to pantheistic interpretation.”[67] Iqbal always refers to God in terms such “Ultimate Ego”, Creative Self,” “Omnipsyche” and to the finite in terms of egos or selves. “The reference is always plural. Even in his doctrine of transformation (transmutation) Iqbal is at pains to stress his conviction that the individual is neither in time nor eternity lost in God.”[68] In Iqbal’s words, “the end of the ego’s quest is not emancipation from the limitations of individuality; it is, on the other hand, a more precise definition of it.”[69]

Iqbal rejects deism, the view that the world is separate from God. Outside of God there is nothing, so deism is meaningless.[70] Neo-Platonic ideas resembling the Buddhist Vedantas culminated in the famous doctrine of Monism. This doctrine preached the belief in an immanent God and considered the world as a mere incarnation. It substituted pantheistic deism for the personal and transcendent God of the Qur’an, and led to the blossoming of pseudo-mysticim.[71] Iqbal attacked Monism on practical ground also. For him “all life is individual; there is no such thing as universal life.”[72]

Iqbal’s view is panentheistic, panentheism being the doctrine that the world is not identical with God, nor separate from God, but in God, who in God’s divine nature transcends it. iqbal’s view is panentheistic because “according to it God as individual, while not other than that universe which is His physical being, is more than the sum of, egos and sub-egos of which this universe is composed.[73]

The relation of the Ultimate Ego to the finite egos in Iqbal’s philosophy has been summarised thus: “the Ultimate Ego holds the finite egos in His own Being without obliterating their existence. The Ultimate Reality must be regarded as of the nature of the self. But further this self does not lie apart from the universe, as if separated by a space lying between Him and ourselves. The Ultimate Self, therefore is not transcendent, as is conceived by the anthropomorphic theists. He is immanent, for He comprehends and encompasses the whole universe. But he is not immanent in the sense of the pantheists of the traditional type, because He is a personal and not an impersonal reality ... He is in short immanent and transcendent both, and yet neither the one nor the other. Both immanence and transcendence are true of the Ultimate Reality. But Iqbal emphasizes the transcendence of the Ultimate Ego rather than His immanence”[74]

In his rejection of the doctrine of unityism or ‘wahdat-al-Wujud’ Iqbal was deeply influenced by Shaikh Ahmad Sirhindi, also known as Mujaddid-e-Alf-e-Sani. In a letter written in 1917 Iqbal said “I have very great respect in my heart for Mujaddid Sirhind.”[75] Like Iqbal, the Mujaddid passed through ‘wujudiyyat’ or unityism and reached ‘abdiyyat’ or servitude.[76] The Mujaddid stressed the transcendence of God. “He is beyond all ‘shuyun-o-i’tibarat’ or modes and relations, all ‘zuhur-o-butun’ extermalisation and internalization, beyond all ‘buruz-o­kumun’or projection and introjection, beyond all ‘mawsul-o-mafsul’ or realisable and explicable, beyond all ‘Kashf-o-shuhud’ or mystic intuition and experience; may even beyond all ‘ mahsus-o-ma’qul’ , empirical and rational, and beyond all ‘mawhum-o-mutakhayall’ or conceivable and imaginable ... He the Holy One is beyond the Beyond, again beyond the Beyond, again beyond the Beyond.”[77]