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.