Alhassanain(p) Network for Heritage and Islamic Thought

Lecture III: THE CONCEPTION OF GOD AND THE MEANING OF PRAYER

1. Cf.Creative Evolution , p. 13; also pp. 45-46.

2.Ibid ., p. 14.

3. See Qur’an, for example, 2:163, 4:171, 5:73, 6:19, 13:16, 14:48, 21:108, 39:4 and 40:16, on the Unity of Allah and 4:171, 6:101, 10:68, 17:111, 19:88-92 emphatically denying the Christian doctrine of His sonship.

4. Cf. L.R. Farnell, The Attributes of God, p. 56.

5. The full translation here is ‘a glistening star’, required by the nass of the Qur’an, ‘Kaukab-un îurrây-ën ’.

6. On this fine distinction of God’s infinity being intensive and not extensive, see further Lecture IV, p. 94.

7. For the long-drawn controversy on the issue of the creation of the universe, see, for instance, Ghazz«lâ, Tah«fut al-Fal«sifah, English translation by S.A. Kam«lâ:Incoherence of the Philosophers , pp. 13-53, and Ibn Rushd,Tah«fut al-Tah«fut, English translation by Simon van den Bergh:The Incoherence of the Incoherence , pp. 1-69; cf. also G.F. Hourani, ‘Alghaz«lâ and the Philosophers on the Origin of the World’,The Muslim World , XLVII/2(1958), 183-91, 308-14 and M. Saeed Sheikh, ‘Al-Ghaz«lâ: Metaphysics’,A History of Muslim Philosophy ed. M.M. Sharif, I, 598-608.

8. Cf.Lecture II, 28, 49.

9. A.S. Eddington,Space, Time and Gravitation , pp. 197-98 (italics by Allama Iqbal).

10. For AbuHashim’s theory of atomism cf. T.J. de Boer, ‘Atomic Theory (Muhammadan)’,Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics , II, 202-03. De Boer’s account is based on Abë Rashâd Sa‘âd’sKit«b al-Mas«’il Fi’l-Khil«f , ed. and trans. into German by Arthur Biram (Leyden,1902).

11. Cf. Ibn Khaldën,Muqaddimah , English translation by F. Rosenthal, III, 50-51, where B«qill«nâ is said to have introduced the conceptions of atom(al-jawhar al-fard), vacuum and accidents into the Ash‘artie Kal«m. R. J. McCarthy, who has edited and also translated some of B«qill«nâ’s texts, however, considers this to be unwarranted; see his article ‘al-B«kâll«nâ’s’ in theEncyclopaedia of Islam (New edition), I, 958-59. From the account of Muslim atomism given in al-Ash‘arâ’sMaq«l«t al-Isl«miyân , this much has, however, to be conceded that atomism was keenly discussed by the Muslim scholastic theologians long before B«qill«nâ.

12. For the life and works of Maimonides and his relationship with Muslim philosophy, cf. S. Pines,The Guide of the Perpelexed (New English translation, Chicago University Press, 1963), ‘Introduction’ by the translator and an ‘Introductory Essay’ by L. Strauss; cf. also Sarton,Introduction to the History of Science , II, 369-70 and 376-77.

13. D.B. Macdonald, ‘Continuous Re-creation and Atomic Time in Moslem Scholastic Theology’,The Moslem World , XVII/i (1928), 6-28; reprinted fromIsis , IX (1927), 326-44. This article is focussed on Maimonides’ well-known ‘Twelve Propositions of the Katam’.

14. Macdonald, ‘Continuous Re-creation and Atomic Time . .’ inop. cit ., p.’24.

15.Ibid ., pp. 25-28. See alsoThe Religious Attitude and Life in Islam , p. 320, where Macdonald traces the pantheistic developments in later sufi schools to Buddhistic and Vedantic influences.

16. Qur’an, 35:1.

17. Cf. de Boer, ‘Atomic Theory (Muhammadan)’, in op. cit., II, 203.

18. Cf. Eddington,op. cit ., p. 200.

19. For an account of Naïï«m’s notion ofal-tafrah or jump, see Ash‘arâ,Maq«l«t al-Isl«miyân , II, 18; Ibn Àazm,Kit«b al-FiÄal , V, 64-65, and Shahrast«nâ,Kit«b al-Milal wa’l-NiÁal , pp. 38-39; cf. also Isr«’ânâ,Al-Tabsâr , p. 68, Majid Fakhry,Islamic Occasionalism , p. 39, and H.A. Wolfson:The Philosophy of the Kal«m , pp. 514-17.

20. A.N. Whitehead,Science and the Modern World , p. 49.

21. A view, among others held by B«qill«nâ who bases it on the Quranic verses 8:67 and 46:24 which speak of the transient nature of the things of this world. Cf. Kit«b al-Tamhâd, p. 18.

22. Lecture I, p. 3; see also Lecture V, p. 102, note 21.

23. For Ash‘arites’ theory of the perpetual re-creation of the universe basing it on the Absolute Power and Will of God, cf. Majid Fakhry,Islamic Occasionalism , pp. 15, 117 ff. and M. Saeed Sheikh, ‘Al-Ghaz«lâ; Metaphysics’, inop. cit ., I, 603-08.

24. In R.A. Nicholson’s edition of theMathnawâ this verse (i.1812) reads as under:

Wine became intoxicated with us, not we with it;

The body came into being from us, not we from it.

25. Viscount Richard Burdon Haldane, the elder brother of John Scott Haldane, from whose Symposium Paper Allama Iqbal has quoted at length in Lecture II, p. 35, was a leading neo-Hegelian British philosopher and a distinguished statesman who died on 19 August 1928. Allama’s using the expression ‘the late Lord Haldane’ is indicative of the possible time of his writing the present Lecture which together with the first two Lectures was delivered in Madras (5-8 Jan. 1929). The ‘idea of degrees of reality and knowledge’, is very vigorously expounded by Haldane inThe Reign of Relativity (1921) as also in his earlier two-volume Gifford Lectures:The Pathway to Reality (1903-04) in which he also expounded the Principle of Relativity on purely philosophical grounds even before the publication of Einstein’s theory; cf. Rudolf Metz,A Hundred Years of British Philosophy , p. 315.

26. This is a reference to the Qur’an, 20:14.

27.Ibid ., 50:16.

28. For further elucidation of the privacy of the ego, see Lecture IV, pp. 79-80.

29. Cf. p. 64 where Iqbal says that God ‘out of His own creative freedom . . has chosen finite egos to be participators of His life, power, and freedom’.

30. The tradition: ‘Do not vilify time, for time is God’ referred to in Lecture I, p. 8.

31. Cf. The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, Vol. I, Definition viii, Scholium i.

32. Cf. Louis Rougier,Philosophy and the New Physics (An Essay on the Relativity Theory and the Theory of Quanta), p. 143. The work belongs to the earlier phase of Rougier’s philosophical output, a phase in which he was seized by the new discoveries of physicists and mathematicians such as Henry Poincare (celestial mechanics and new geometry), Max Planck (quantium theory) Nicolas L. Carnot (thermodynamics), Madame Curie (radium and its compounds) and Einstein (principle of relativity). This was followed by his critical study of theories of knowledge: rationalism and scholasticism, ending in his thesis of the diversity of ‘metaphysical temperaments’ and the ‘infinite plasticity’ of the human mind whereby it takes delight in ‘quite varied forms of intelligibility’. To the final phase of Rougier’s philosophical productivity belongsLa Metaphysique et le langage (1960) in which he elaborated the conception of plurality of language in philosophical discourse. Rougier also wrote on history of ideas (scientific, philosophical, religious) and on contemporary political and economical problems - hisLes Mystiques politiques et leurs incidences internationales (1935) andLes Mystiques economiques (1949) are noteworthy.

It is to be noted that both the name ‘Louis Rougier’ and the title of his bookPhilosophy and the New Physics cited in the passage quoted by Allama Iqbal are given puzzlingly incorrectly in the previous editions ofReconstruction including the one by Oxford University Press (London, 1934); and these were not noticed even by Madame Eva Meyerovitch in her French translation:Reconstruire la pensee religieuse de l’Islam (Paris, 1955, p. 83). It would have been well-nigh impossible for me to find out the author’s name and title of the book correctly had I not received the very kindly help of the Dutch scholar the Reverend Dr. Jan Slomp and Mlle Mauricette Levasseur of Bibliothé que Nationale, Paris, who also supplied me with many useful particulars about the life and works of Rougier. The last thing that I heard was that this French philosopher who taught in various universities including the ones in Cairo and New York and who participated in various Congresses and was the President of the Paris International Congress of Scientific Philosophy in 1935, passed away on 14 October 1982 at the age of ninety-three.

33. Cf. Space,Time and Deity , II, 396-98; also Allama Iqbal’s letter dated 24 January 1921 addressed to R.A. Nicholson (Letters of Iqbal , ed. B.A. Dar, pp. 141-42) where, while disagreeing with Alexander’s view of God, he observes: ‘I believe there is a Divine tendency in the universe, but this tendency will eventually find its complete expression in a higher man, not in a God subject to Time, as Alexander implies in his discussion of the subject.’

34. The Sufi poet named here as well as in Lectures V and VII as (Fakhr al-Dân) ‘Ir«qâ, we are told, is really ‘Ain al-Quî«t Abu’l-Mu‘«lâ ‘Abdullah b. Muhammad b. ‘Alâ b. al-Àasan b. ‘Alâ al-Miy«njâ al-Hamad«nâ whose tractate on space and time:Gh«yat al-Imk«n fi Dir«yat al-Mak«n (54 pp.) has been edited by Rahim Farmanish (Tehran, 1338 S/1959); cf. English translation of the tractate by A.H. Kamali, section captioned: ‘Observations’, pp. i-v; also B.A. Dar, ‘Iqbal aur Mas‘alah-i Zam«n-o-Mak«n’ inFikr-i Iqbal ke Munawwar Goshay , ed. Salim Akhtar, pp. 149-51. Nadhr S«birâ, however, strongly pleads that the real author of the tractate was Shaikh T«j al-Dân Mahmëd b. Khud«-d«d Ashnawâ, as also hinted by Allama Iqbal in his Presidential Address delivered at the Fifth Indian Oriental Conference (1928) (Speeches, Writings and Statements of Iqbal,’p. 137). Cf. Shaikh Mahmëd Ashnawâ’s tractate:Gh«yat al Imk«n fi Ma‘rifat al-Zam«n wa’l-Mak«n (42 pp.) edited by Nadhr S«birâ, ‘Introduction’ embodying the editor’s research about the MSS of the tractate and the available data of its author; also H«jâKhalâfah,Kashf al-Zunën , II, 1190, and A. Monzavi,A Catalogue of Persian Manuscripts , vol. II, Part I, MSS 7556-72.

Cf. also Maul«n«Imti«z ‘AlâKh«n ‘Arshâ, ‘Zam«n-o-Mak«n kâ Bahth ke Muta‘allaq ‘All«mah Iqb«l k« aik Ma’«khidh: ‘Ir«qâya Ashnawâ’,Maq«l«t: Iqb«l ‘ÿlamâ K«ngras (Iqbal Centenary Papers Presented at the International Congress on Allama Mohammad Iqbal: 2-8 December 1977), IV, 1-10 wherein Maul«n«’ Arshâ traces a new MS of the tractate in the Raza Library, Rampur, and suggests the possibility of its being the one used by Allama Iqbal in these Lectures as well as in his Address: ‘A Plea for Deeper Study of Muslim Scientists’.

It may be added that there remains now no doubt as to the particular MS of this unique Sufi tractate on ‘Space and Time’ used by Allama Iqbal, for fortunately it is well preserved in the Allama Iqbal Museum, Lahore (inaugurated by the President of Pakistan on 26 September 1984). The MS, according to a note in Allama’s own hand dated 21 October 1935, was transcribed for him by the celebrated religious scholar Sayyid Anwar Sh«h K«shmârâ Cf. Dr Ahmad Nabi Khan,Relics of Allama Iqbal (Catalogue), p. 12.

For purposes of present annotation we have referred to Rahi`m Farmanish’s edition of Hamad«nâ’sGh«yat al-Imk«n fi Dir«yat al-Mak«n (Tehran, 1338/1959) and to A.H. Kamali’s English translation of it (Karachi, 1971) where needed. This translation, however, is to be used with caution.

35. Cf. ‘Ain al-Quz«t Hamad«nâ,op. cit ., p. 51; English translation, p. 36.

36. The Quranic expression ummal-kit«b occurs in 3:7, 13:39 and 43:4.

37. Cf.al-Mab«hith al-Mashriqâgah , I, 647; the Arabic text of the passage quoted in English is as under:

38. Reference here is in particular to the Qur’an 23:80 quoted in Lecture II, p.’37.

39. Cf. Lecture II, p. 49, where, summing up his philosophical ‘criticism’ of experience, Allama Iqbal says: ‘facts of experience justify the inference that the ultimate nature of Reality is spiritual and must be conceived as an ego.’

40. Cf. ‘Ain al-Quz«t Hamad«nâ,op. cit ., p. 50; English translation, p. 36. For Royce’s view of knowledge of all things as a whole at once (totum simul ), see his World and the Individual, II, 141.

41. About the cosmic harmony and unity of Nature the Qur’an says: ‘Thou seest no incongruity in the creation of the Beneficent. Then look again. Canst thou see any disorder? Then turn thy eye again and again - thy look will return to thee concused while it is fatigued’ (67:3-4).

42. Qur’an, 3:26 and 73: see also 57:29.

43. Cf. Joseph Friedrich Naumann,Briefe ü ber Religion , p. 68; also Lecture VI, note 38. The German text of the passage quoted in English is as under:

"Wir haben eine Welterkenntnis, die uns einen Gott der Macht und Starke lehrt, der Tod und Leben wie Schatten und Licht gleichzeitig versendet, und eine Offenbarung, einen Heilsglauben, der von demselben Gott sagt, dass er Vater sei. Die Nachfolge des Weltgottes ergibt die Sittlichkeit des Kampfes ums Dasein, und der Dienst des Vaters Jesu Christi ergibt die Sittlichkeit der Barmherzigkeit. Es sind aber nicht zwei Gotter, sondern einer. Irgendwie greifen ihre Arme ineinander. Nur kann kein Sterblicher sagen, wo und wie das geschieht."

44. Reference is to Browning’s famous lines in ‘Pippa Passes’:

God is in the heaven -

All is right with the world.’

45. Cf. Schopenhauer,World as Will and Idea , trans. R.B. Haldane and J. Kemp, Book iv, section 57.

46. For the origin and historical growth of the legend ofFaust before Goethe’s masterly work on it, cf. Mary Beare’s article ‘Faust’ in Cassell’sEncyclopaedia of Literature , 1, 217-19.

47. Cf. Genesis, chapter iii.

48. Strictly speaking, the word Adam for man in his capacity of God’s vicegerent on earth has been used in the Qur’an only in 2:30-31.

49. Cf. Genesis, iii, 20.

50. Qur’an, 7:19.

51.Ibid ., 20:120.

52. Cf. Genesis, iii, 24.

53.Ibid ., iii,17.

54. Qur’an, 2:36 and 7:24.

55. Cf. also verses 15:19-20.

56.Ibid ., 71:17.

57.Ibid ., 52:23.

58.Ibid ., 15:48.

59.Ibid ., 20:118-119.

60.Ibid ., 2:35-37; also 20:120-122.

61.Ibid ., 95:4-5.

62. Cf. also verses 2:155 and 90:4.

63.Ibid ., 2:31-34.

64. Lecture I, pp. 10-11.

65. Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831-1891) is a noted spiritualist and theosophist of Russian birth, who in collaboration with Col. H.S. Olcott and W.A. Judge founded Theosophical Society in New York in November 1873. Later she transferred her activities to India where in 1879 she established the office of the Society in Bombay and in 1883 in Adyar near Madras with the following three objects: (i) to form a nucleus of the universal brotherhood of humanity; (ii) to promote the study of comparative religion, philosophy and science, and (iii) to investigate the unexplained laws of nature and powers latent in man.The Secret Doctrine (1888) deals, broadly speaking, with ‘Cosmogenesis’ and ‘Anthropogenesis’ in a ponderous way; though largely based on Vedantic thought the ‘secret doctrine’ is claimed to carry in it the essence of all religions.

For the mention of tree as ‘a cryptic symbol for occult knowledge’ inThe Secret Doctrine , cf. I, 187: ‘The Symbol for Sacred and Secret knowledge in antiquity was universally a Tree, by which a scripture or a Record was also meant’; III, 384: ‘Ormzad . is also the creator of the Tree’ (of Occult and Spiritual Knowledge and Wisdom) from which the mystic and the mysterious Baresma is taken’, and IV, 159: ‘To the Eastern Occultist the Tree of Knowledge (leads) to the light of the eternal present Reality’.

It may be added that Allama Iqbal seems to have a little more than a mere passing interest in the Theosophical Society and its activities for, as reported by Dr M. ‘Abdull«h Chaghat«‘â, he, during his quite busy stay in Madras (5-8 Jan. 1929) in connection with the present Lectures, found time to pay a visit to the head office of the Society at Adyar. One may also note inDevelopment of Metaphysics in Persia (p. 10, note 2) reference to a small workReincarnation by the famous Annie Besant (President of the Theosophical Society, 1907-1933, and the first and the only English woman who served as President of the Indian National Congress in 1917) and added to this are the two books published by the Theosophical Society in Allama’s personal library (cf.Descriptive Catalogue of Allama Iqbal’s Personal Library , No. 81 andRelics of Allama Iqbal; Catalogue IV, 11). All this, however, does not enable one to determine the nature of Allama Iqbal’s interest in the Theosophical Society.

66. Qur’an, 17; 11; also 21:37. The tree which Adam was forbidden to approach (2:35 and 7:19), according to Allama Iqbal’s remarkably profound and rare understanding of the Qur’an, is the tree of ‘occult knowledge’, to which man in all ages has been tempted to resort in unfruitful haste. This, in Allama’s view, is opposed to the inductive knowledge ‘which is most characteristic of Islamic teachings’. He indeed, tells us in Lecture V (p. 101) that ‘the birth of Islam is the birth of inductive intellect.’ True, this second kind of knowledge is so toilsome and painfully slow: yet this knowledge alone unfolds man’s creative intellectual faculties and makes him the master of his environment and thus God’s true vicegerent on earth. If this is the true approach to knowledge, there is little place in it for Mme Blavatsky’s occult spiritualism or theosophism. Allama Iqbal was in fact opposed to all kinds of occultism. In one of his dialogues, he is reported to have said that ‘the forbidden tree’ (shajr-i mamnë‘ah ) of the Qur’an is no other than the occultistictaÄawwuf which prompts the patient to seek some charm or spell rather than take the advice of a physician. ThetaÄawwuf , he added, which urges us to close our eyes and ears and instead to concentrate on the inner vision and which teaches us to leave the arduous ways of conquering Nature and instead take to some easier spiritual ways, has done the greatest harm to science. [Cf. Dr Abu’l-Laith Siddâqâ,Malfëz«t-i Iqb«l , pp. 138-39]. It must, however, be added that Allama Iqbal does speak of a genuine or higher kind oftaÄawwuf which soars higher than all sciences and all philosophies. In it the human ego so to say discovers himself as an individual deeper than his conceptually describable habitual selfhood. This happens in the ego’s contact with the Most Real which brings about in it a kind of ‘biological transformation’ the description of which surpasses all ordinary language and all usual categories of thought. ‘This experience can embody itself only in a world-making or world-shaking act, and in this form alone’, we are told, ‘can this timeless experience . make itself visible to the eye of history’ (Lecture VII, p. 145).

67. Qur’an, 2:36; 7:24; 20:123.

68.Ibid ., 2:177; 3:200.

69. Lecture II, p. 58.

70. Lecture V, pp. 119ff.

71. The Principles of Psychology, I, 316.

72. Cf. R.A. Nicholson (ed. and tr.),The Mathnawi of Jalalëddân Rëmâ , Vol. IV (Books i and ii - text), ii, w. 159-162 and 164.

73. Cf. ibid., Vol. IV, 2 (Books i and ii - translation), p. 230. It is to be noted that quite a few minor changes made by Allama Iqbal in Nicholson’s English translation of the verses quoted here from theMathnawâ are due to his dropping Nicholson’s parentheses used by him for keeping his translation literally as close to the text as it was possible. Happily, Allama’s personal copies of Volumes 2-5 and 7 of Nicholson’s edition of the Mathnawi are preserved in Allama Iqbal Museum (Lahore) and it would be rewarding to study his usual marginal marks and jottings on these volumes.

74. Cf. the Quranic verse 3:191 where so far as private prayers are concerned the faithful ones are spoken of remembering God standing and sitting and lying on their sides.

75. The Qur’an speaks of all mankind as ‘one community’; see verses 2:213, 10:19.

76. Ibid., 49:13.

Lecture IV: THE HUMAN EGO - HIS FREEDOM AND IMMORTALITY

1. Cf. Qur’an, 6:94, 19:80 and 19:93-95; see also p. 93 where Allama Iqbal, referring to these last verses, affirms that in the life hereafter the finite ego will approach the Infinite Ego ‘with the irreplaceable singleness of his individually’.

2. This is, in fact translation of the Quranic text:wa l«taziru w«zirat-unw wizra ukhr« which appears in verses 6:164; 17:15; 35:18; 39:7 and 53:38. Chronologically the last verse 53:38 is the earliest on the subject. The implication of this supreme ethical principle or law is three-fold: a categorical rejection of the Christian doctrine of the ‘original sin’, refutation of the idea of ‘vicarious atonement or redemption’, and denial of the possibility of mediation between the sinner and God (cf. M. Asad,The Message of the Qur’an , p. 816, note 31).

3. Again, translation of the Quranic verse 53:39 which is in continuation of the verse last referred to above.

4. Cf. O. Spengler,The Decline of the West , I, 306-07. Also Lecture V, p. 114 where Allama Iqbal makes the important statement: ‘Indeed my main purpose in these lectures has been to secure a vision of the spirit of Islam as emancipated from its Magian overlayings’ (italics mine). This may be read in conjunction with Allama’s reply to a Parsi gentleman’s letter published inStatesman . This reply makes it clear that: ‘Magian thought and religious experience very much permeate Muslim theology, philosophy and Sufism. Indeed, there is evidence to show that certain schools of Sufism known as Islamic have only repeated the Magian type of religious experience . . There is definite evidence in the Qur’an itself to show that Islam aimed at opening up new channels not only of thought but the religious experience as well. Our Magian inheritance, however, has stifled the life of Islam and never allowed the development of its real spirit and aspirations’ (Speeches, Writings and Statements of Iqbal , ed. A.L. Sherwani, p. 170). It is important to note that, according to Allama Iqbal, Bahaism and Qadianism are ‘the two forms which the modern revival of pre-Islamic Magianism has assumed’, cf. his article ‘Qadianis and Orthodox Muslims’, ibid., p. 162. This is reiterated in ‘Introduction to the Study of Islam’, a highly valuable synopsis of a book that Allama contemplated to write. Under section ‘E’ Sub-section (iii) one of the topics of this proposed book is: ‘Babi, Ahmadiyya, etc. Prophecies. All More or Less Magian’ (Letters and Writings of Iqbal , p. 93; italics mine). Earlier on pp. 87-88 there is an enlightening passage which reads: ‘Empire brought men belonging to earlier ascetic cultures, which Spengler describes as Magian, within the fold of Islam. The result was the conversion of Islam to a pre-Islamic creed with all the philosophical controversies of these creeds:Rëh ,Nafs ; Qur’an;Àadâth orQadâm . Real Islam had very little chances.’ This may be compared with Allama’s impassioned statement in his article: ‘Islam and Mysticism’ (Speeches, Writings and Statements of Iqbal , p. 122): ‘The Moslems of Spain, with their Aristotelian spirit, and away from the enervating influences of the thought of Western and Central Asia, were comparatively much closer to the spirit of Islam than the Moslem races of Asia, who let Arabian Islam pass through all the solvents of Ajam and finally divested it of its original character. The conquest of Persia meant not the conversion of Persia to Islam, but the conversion of Islam to Persianism. Read the intellectual history of the Moslems of Western and Central Asia from the 10th century downwards, and you will find therein verified every word that I have written above.’ And Allama Iqbal wrote this, be it noted, in July 1917, i.e. before Spengler’s magnum opus:The Decline of the West was published (Vol. I, 1918, revised 1923, Vol. II, 1922; English translation, Vol. I, 23 April 1926, Vol. II, 9 November 1928) and before the expressions such as ‘Magian Soul’, ‘Magian Culture’ and ‘Magian Religion’ came to be used by the philosophers of history and culture.

5. Cf. the Quranic verses 41:53 and 51:20-21, which make it incumbent on men to study signs of God in themselves as much as those in the world around them.

6. Cf. Husain b. Mansër al-Àall«j,Kit«b al-ñaw«sân , English translation by Aisha Abd Ar-Rahman, also by Gilani Kamran, (Ana al-Haqq Reconsidered , pp. 55-108),ñ«sân VI, 23, containing al-Àall«j’s ecstatic utterance:an« al-Haqq , and L. Massignon’s explanatory notes on it translated by R.A. Butler in his article ‘Kit«b al-Taw«sân of al-Hall«j’Journal of the University of Baluchistan , 1/2 (Autumn 1981), 79-85; cf. also A. Schimmel,Mystical Dimensions of Islam , pp. 66 ff.

It may be noted that Allama Iqbal in his, in many ways very valuable, article ‘McTaggart’s Philosophy’ (Speeches, Writings and Statements of Iqbal , pp. 143-51), compares McTaggart to Àall«j (pp. 148-49). In the system of this ‘philosopher-saint’, ‘mystical intuition, as a source of knowledge, is much more marked than in the system of Bradley . . In the case of McTaggart the mystic Reality came to him as a confirmation of his thought . . When the mystic Sultan Abë Sa‘id met the philosopher Abë ‘Alâ ibn Sân«, he is reported to have said, ‘I see what he knows.’ McTaggart both knew and saw’ (pp. 145-46). The key to McTaggart’s system indeed, is his mysticism as is borne out from the concluding sentence of his first work Studies in the Hegelian Dialectic: ‘All true philosophy must be mystical, not indeed in its methods, but in its final conclusions.’

This in-depth article on ‘McTaggart’s Philosophy’ also contains Allama Iqbal’s own translation of two passages from his poem The New Garden of Mystery (Gulshan-i R«z-i Jadâd ) dealing with Questions VI and VIII; the latter Question probes into the mystery of Àall«j’s ecstatic utterance: ‘I am the Truth’. Cf. B.A. Dar (tr.),Iqbal’s Gulshan-i R«z-i Jadâd and Bandagâ N«mah , pp. 42-43, 51-54.

7. Cf.The Muqaddimah , trans. F. Rosenthal, II, 76-103.

8. Note Iqb«l significant observation that ‘modern psychology has not yet touched even the outer fringe of religious life and is still far from the richness and variety of what is called religious experience’ (Lecture VII, p. 152).

9. Cf.Ethical Studies (1876), pp. 80 f.

10. Cf.The Principles of Logic (1883), Vol. II, chapter ii.

11. Cf.Appearance and Reality (1893), pp. 90-103.

12.Jâv«tm« is the individual mind or consciousness of man or his soul distinguished from the cosmic mind, cosmic consciousness or world-soul; cf. ‘Atman’,Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics , II,195, also XII, 597.

13. Cf.Appearance and Reality , p. 89; also ‘Appendix’, p. 497.

14. Misprinted as, mutual, states in the previous editions.

15. For Ghaz«lâ’s concept;ion of the soul, cf. M. Saeed Sheikh, ‘Al-Ghaz«lâ:Mysticism’, A History of Muslim Philosophy , ed. M.M. Sharif, I, 619-21.

16. Reference here is to what Kant named ‘Paralogisms of Pure Reason’, i.e. fallacious arguments which allege to prove substantiality, simplicity, numerical identity and eternality of the human soul; cf.Critique of Pure Reason , pp. 328-83.

17.Ibid ., pp. 329-30.

18.Ibid ., pp. 372-73; this is, in fact, Kant’s argument in refutation of the German Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn’s ‘Proof of the Permanence of the Soul’; cf. Kemp Smith,Commentary to Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason , pp. 470-71.

19. Cf.Principles of Psychology , Vol. I, chapter ix, especially pp. 237-48.

20. Ibid., p. 340.

21. Ibid., p. 339; cf.Critique of Pure Reason , p. 342, note (a) where Kant gives an illustration of a series of elastic balls in connection with the third paralogism to establish the numerical identity of the ego. Kemp Smith in his Commentary p. 461, has rightly observed that William James’s psychological description of self-consciousness is simply an extension of this illustration.

22. Qur’an, 7:54.

23. Cf. pp. 84-85, where Allama Iqbal gives a philosophical answer to this question in terms of contemporary theory of emergent evolution as expounded by S. Alexander (Space, Time and Deity , 2 vols., 1920) and C.L. Morgan (Emergent Evolution , 1923). The theory distinguishes between two kinds of effects: ‘resultants’ which are the predictable outcome of previously existing conditions and ‘emergents’ which are specifically new and not completely predictable. According to Alexander, who in his original conception of emergence was indebted to Morgan (cf.Space, Time and Deity , II, 14), mind is ‘an ‘emergent’ from life, and life an emergent from a lower physico-chemical level of existence’ (ibid.). When physico-chemical processes attain a certain degree of Gestalt-like structural complexity life emerges out of it. Life is not an epiphenomenon, nor is it an entelechy as with Hans Driesch but an ‘emergent’ - there is no cleft between life and matter. At the next stage of ‘configurations’ when neural processes in living organisms attain a certain level of structural complexity, mind appears as a novel emergent. By reasonable extrapolation it may be assumed that there are emergents (or ‘qualities’) higher than mind.

This is very close to Maul«n« Rëmâ’s ‘biological future of man’, ‘Abd al-Karâm al-Jâlâ’s ‘Perfect Man’ and Nietzsche’s ‘Superman’. No wonder that Allama Iqbal in his letter dated 24 January 1921 to R.A. Nicholson (Letters of Iqbal , pp. 141-42), while taking a strict notice of E.M. Forster’s review ofThe Secrets of the Self (translation of his epoch-makingAsr«r-i Khudâ ) and particularly of the Nietzschean allegation against him (cf. Forster’s review in Dr Riffat Hassan, TheSword and the Sceptre , p. 284) writes: ‘Nor does he rightly understand my idea of the Perfect Man which he confounds with the German thinker’s Superman. I wrote on the Sufi doctrine of the Perfect Man more than twenty years ago, long before I had read or heard anything of Nietzsche . . The English reader ought to approach this idea, not through the German thinker, but through an Englishthinker of great merit (italics mine) - I mean Alexander - whose Gifford Lectures (1916-18) delivered at Glasgow were published last year.’ This is followed by a quotation from Alexander’s chapter on ‘Deity and God’ (op. cit., II, 347, II, 1-8) ending in a significant admission: ‘Alexander’s thought is much bolder than mine (italics mine).

24. More generally known as James-Lange theory of emotions. This theory was propounded by the Danish physician and psychologist, Carl George Lange in a pamphletOm Sindsbevaegelser in 1885, while William James had already set forth similar views in an article published inMind in 1884. For a full statement of the theory, see William James, Principles of Psychology, II, 449 ff. and for its refutation (as hinted at by Allama Iqbal), Encyclopaedia Britanica, s.v., XII, 885-86.

25. For Iqbal’s very clear and definitive verdict of body-mind dualism, cf. Lecture VI, p. 122.

26. Reference is to the Quranic verse (7:54) quoted on p. 82.

27. Cf. Lecture II, p. 28.

28. Qur’an, 57:3.

29. Cf. William James,op. cit ., II, 549.

30. More generally known as Gestalt Psychology, this German school of psychology was the result of the combined work of M. Wertheimer, K. Koffka and W. Kö hler during 1912-14. It came as a reaction against the psychic elements of analytic or associationistic psychology, insisting upon the concept of gestalt, configuration, or organized whole which, if analyzed, it was averred, would lose its distinctive quality. Thus it is impossible to consider the phenomenon of perception as in any way made up of a number of isolable elements, sensory or of any other origin, for what we perceive are ‘forms’, ‘shapes’ or ‘configurations’. From ‘perception’ the gestalt-principle has been extended throughout psychology and into biology and physics. Important for Iqbal scholars are the suggestions recently made to discern some ‘points of contact’ between the Gestalt and the philosophies of J. C. Smuts (holism) and A.N. Whitehead (philosophy of organism); cf. K. Koffka, ‘Gestalt’,Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences , VI, 642-46; also J. C. Smuts, ‘Holism’,Encyclopaedia Britannica , XI, 643.

31. The concept of ‘insight’ was first elaborately expounded by W. Kö hler in his famous work:The Mentality of Apes (first English translation in 1924 of hisIntelligerprufü ngen an Menschenaffen , 1917); cf. C.S. Peyser, ‘Kohler, Wolfgang (1887-1967)’,Encyclopedia of Psychology , II, 271.

32. In the history of Islamic thought, this is one of the finest arguments to resolve the age-long controversy between determinism and indeterminism and to establish the soundest basis for self-determinism.

33. Cf.The Decline of the West , II, 240, where Spengler says: ‘But it is precisely the impossibility of an Ego as a free power in the face of the divine that constitutes Islam. (italics by Spengler); earlier on p. 235 speaking of Magian religions (and for him Islam is one of them) Spengler observes: ‘the impossibility of a thinking, believing, and knowing Ego is the presupposition inherent in all the fundamentals of all these religions’.

34. Cf. Lecture II, p. 40.

35. Cf. Introduction to theSecrets of the Self (English translation of Allama Iqbal’s ‘philosophical poem’:Asr«r-i Khudâ ), pp. xviii-xix.

36. See Ibn Qutaibah,Kit«b al-Ma‘«rif , ed. ‘Ukashah, p. 441; cf. also Obermann, ‘Political Theology in Early Islam’: Àasan al-Basrâ’s Treatise on qadar’,Journal of the American Oriental Society , LV (1935), 138-62.

37. Cf. D. B. Macdonald,Development of Muslim Theology , pp. 123-24, for a brief mention of ‘the origin of the theory of the accomplished fact’ with reference to the political attitude of the Murjâ‘ites, and Khuda Bukhsh,Politics in Islam , p. 150, for Ibn Jam«’ah’s view on the subject as contained in his work on constitutional law of Islam:TaÁrâr al-Ahk«m fâ Tadbâr Ahl al-Isl«m (ed. Hans Kofler), p. 357. It may be added that Allama Iqbal did take notice of Ibn Jama`’ah’s view (of bai‘ah through force) and observed: ‘This opportunist view has no support in the law of Islam’: cf. his article ‘Political Thought in Islam’Sociological Review , I (1908), 256, II, 15-16; reproduced inSpeeches, Writings and Statements of Iqbal , ed. A. L. Sherwani, p. 115.

38. Cf. Renan,Averrö es et l’averroisme (pp. 136f.) as quoted in R.A. Tsanoff,The Problem of Immortality , p. 76.

39. Cf. William James,Human Immortality , p. 32.

40.Ibid ., p. 28.

41.Ibid ., p. 29.

42. Cf. Lecture II, pp. 26-28; also p. 83.

43. This passage in its entire import seems to be quite close to the one quoted from Eddington’s widely readNature of the Physical World (p. 323) in Lecture VII, p. 147.

44. Cf. R. A. Tsanoff,op. cit ., pp. 143-78, for a commendable account of Nietzsche’s doctrine of Eternal Recurrence.

45. Cf. H. Spencer,First Principles , pp. 549 ff.

46. Cf. Tsanoff,op. cit ., pp. 162-63.

47. Cf. Oscar Levy (ed.),Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche , XIV, 248 and 250, quoted in Tsanoff,op. cit ., p. 163.

48. Cf. Levy,op. cit ., XVI, 274, and Tsanoff,op. cit ., p. 177.

49. Cf. Lecture V, p. 113 where Iqbal says: ‘Whatever may be the criterion by which to judge the forward steps of creative movement, the movement itself, if conceived as cyclic, ceases to be creative. Eternal recurrence is not eternal creation, it is eternal repetition’.

50.Barzakh , according to Lane’sArabic-English Lexicon , means ‘a thing that intervenes between any two things, or a bar, an obstruction, or a thing that makes a separation between two things’. As signifying the state between death and resurrection the word barzakh occurs in the Qur’an, 23:99-100.

51. Reference is to the Quranic verses 23:12-14 quoted on p. 83.

52. See also verses 6:94 and 19:80.

53. Translation of the Quranic expressionajr-un ghairu mamnun-in found in verses 41:8; 84:25 and 95:6.

54. Reference here is among others to the Quranic verses 69:13-18; 77:8-11.

55. Cf. also the Quranic verses 20:112; 21:103; 101:6-7.

56. This alludes to the difference of the Prophet’s encounter with God as stated in the Quranic verse 53:17 from that of Prophet Moses’ as given in verses 7:143. Referring to the Persian verse (ascribed by some to the Sufâ poet Jam«lâ of Delhi who died in 942/1535), Iqbal in his letter to Dr Hadi Hasan of Aligarh Muslim University observes: ‘In the whole range of Muslim literature there is not one verse like it and these two lines enclose a whole infinitude of ideas’. See B.A. Dar (ed.),Letters and Writings of Iqbal , pp. 2-3.

57. So important is ‘action’ or ‘deed’ according to the Qur’an that there are more than one hundred verses urging the believers to act righteously - hence, the opening line of Allama Iqbal’s Preface to the Lectures; see M. Fu‘«d ‘Abd al-B«qâ’s al-Mu‘jam al-Mufahras li Alf«z al-Qur’an al Karâm, verses under the radicals: ml, slh and hsn.

58. This, according to Helmholtz, one of the greatest scientists of the nineteenth century, was about thirty metres per second. Before Helmholtz the conduction of neural impulse was thought to be instantaneous, too fast to be measured. After he had demonstrated its measurement through his experimental studies; his researches came to be used in experiments on reaction time (cf. Gardner Murphy,Historical Introduction to Modern Psychology , p. 138 and N. A. Haynie’s article: ‘Helmholtz, Hermann von (1821-1894)’ inEncyclopedia of Psychology , II, 103. Allama Iqbal’s Hypothetical statement with reference to Helmholtz’s discovery: ‘If this is so, our present physiological structure is at the bottom of our present view of time’ is highly suggestive of new physiological or biological studies of time. It is to be noted that some useful research in this direction seems to have been undertaken already; cf. articles: ‘Time’ and ‘Time Perception’ inThe New Encyclopaedia Britannica (Macropaedia), XVIII, 420-22.

59. See George Sarton,Introduction to the History of Science , I, 597, where it is said that the Kit«b al-Hayaw«n of al-J«Áiï contains the germs of many later theories: evolution adaptation, animal psychology. Cf. also M. Plessner, ‘Al-J«Áiï’ inDictionary of Scientific Biography , VII, 63-65.

60. For a statement of the views of ‘Brethren of Purity’ with regard to the hypothesis of evolution, cf. Seyyed Hossein Nasr,An Introduction to Islamic Cosmological Doctrines , pp. 72-74.

61. See Lecture V, p. 107, for Ibn Maskawaih’s very clear conception of biological evolution, which later found expression in the ‘inimitable lines’ of ‘the excellent Rëmâ’ quoted in the next passage as well as in Lecture VII, pp. 147-48.

62. Cf. E. H. Whinfield (tr.),Masnavi , pp. 216-17; this is translation of verses 3637-41 and 3646-48 of Book iv of Rëmâ’ sMathnawâ - cf. Allama Iqbal’s observation on these verses in hisDevelopment of Metaphysics in Persia , p. 91.

63. For the keeping of a book or record of whatever man does in life here, there is repeated mention in the Qur’a`n; see, for example, verses 18:49; 21:94; 43:80 and 45:29.

64. Reference seems here to be to the Quranic verse 29:20 though ‘second creation’ is also alluded to in such verses as 10:4; 27:64; 30:11. See also 56:61.

65. Qur’an, 17:13.

66. Reference here is to the Quranic description of life hereafter such as is to be found in verses 37:41-49 and 44:51-55 for the state of life promised to the righteous, and 37:62-68 and 44:43-49 for the kind of life to be suffered by the wicked. See also 32:17.

67. Qur’an, 104:6-7.

68. Reference is to the Quranic expression h«wâyah (for hell) in 101:9.

69. See the Quranic verse 57:15 where the fire of hell is spoken of as man’s friend (maul« ), i.e. ‘the only thing by which he may hope to be purified and redeemed’ (cf. M. Asad,The Message of the Qur’an , p. 838, note 21).

70. Qur’an, 55:29.