Sir Muhammad Iqbal

“ The more we advance in evolution, the nearer we get to him. In approaching him we are raising ourselves in the scale of life. The development of humanity both in mind and body is a condition precedent to his birth. For the present he is a mere ideal; but the evolution of humanity is tending towards the production of an ideal race of more or less unique individuals who will become his fitting parents. Thus the Kingdom of God on earth means the democracy of more or less unique individuals, presided over by the most unique individual possible on this earth. ”

“ All that brings drowsiness and makes us shut our eyes to Reality around, on the mastery of which alone Life depends, is a message of decay and death. There should be no opium-eating in Art. The dogma of Art for the sake of Art is a clever invention of decadence to cheat us out of life and power. ”

“ Iqbal’s philosophy is religious, but he does not treat philosophy as the handmaid of religion. Holding that the full development of the individual presupposes a society, he finds the ideal society in what he considers to be the Prophet’s conception of Islam. ”

“ Iqbal has drunk deep of European literature, his philosophy owes much to Nietzsche and Bergson, and his poetry often reminds us of Shelley; yet he thinks and feels as a Moslem, and just for this reason his influence may be great. He is a religious enthusiast, inspired by the vision of a New Mecca, a world-wide, theocratic, Utopian state in which all Moslems, no longer divided by the barriers of race and country, shall be one. ”

“ Thou hast fled, like a scent, from thine own garden;
Thou hast made thy prison with thine own hand.
Our Time, which has neither beginning nor end, 1575
Blossoms from the flower-bed of our mind.
To know its root quickens the living with new life: [Pg 138]
Its being is more splendid than the dawn.
Life is of Time, and Time is of Life:
“Do not abuse Time!” was the command of the Prophet. 1580
Oh, the memory of those days when Time’s sword
Was allied with the strength of our hands! [107]
We sowed the seed of religion in men’s hearts
And unveiled the face of Truth ”

“ Its nature remains untouched by the glow of Love, 1485
It is ever engaged in a joyless search.
Love is the Plato that heals the sicknesses of the mind: [101]
The mind’s melancholy is cured by its lancet.
The whole world bows in adoration to Love,
Love is the Mahmúd that conquers the Somnath of intellect. [102] 1490
Modern science lacks this old wine in its cup,
Its nights are not loud with passionate prayer. [Pg 131]
Thou hast misprized thine own cypress
And deemed tall the cypress of others.
Like the reed, thou hast emptied thyself of Self 1495
And given thine heart to the music of others. ”

“ The true person not only absorbs the world of matter; by mastering it he absorbs God Himself into his Ego. Life is a forward assimilative movement. It removes all obstructions in its march by assimilating them. Its essence is the continual creation of desires and ideals, and for the purpose of its preservation and expansion it has invented or developed out of itself certain instruments, e.g. senses, intellect, etc., which help it to assimilate obstructions. ”

“ If wine pours from my grapes, he is the cause.
I am dust, but his sun hath made me as a mirror:
Song can be seen in my breast.
From Ali’s face the Prophet drew a fair omen, 975
By his majesty the true religion is glorified.
His commandments are the strength of Islam:
All things pay allegiance to his House.
The Apostle of God gave him the name Bú Turáb;
God in the Koran called him “the Hand of Allah.” 980
Every one that is acquainted with Life’s mysteries
Knows what is the inner meaning of the names of Ali.
The dark clay, whose name is the body—
Our reason is ever bemoaning its iniquity. ”

“ A love that was born in the Holy Place and died in the house of idols!
Oh, if thou hast the coin of poesy in thy purse,
Rub it on the touchstone of Life!
Clear-seeing thought shows the way to action,
As the lightning-flash precedes the thunder. 790 [Pg 69]
It behoves thee to meditate well concerning literature,
It behoves thee to go back to the Arabs:
Thou must needs give thine heart to the Salmá of Araby, [61]
That the morn of the Hijáz may blossom from the night of Kurdistan. ”

“ Bergson has taught us that time is not an infinite line (in the spatial sense of the word ‘line’) through which we must pass whether we wish it or not. This idea of time is adulterated. Pure time has no length. Personal immortality is an aspiration: you can have it if you make an effort to achieve it. It depends on our adopting in this life modes of thought and activity which tend to maintain the state of tension. Buddhism, Persian Súfism, and allied forms of ethics will not serve our purpose. ”

“ Through self-knowledge he acts as God’s Hand,
And in virtue of being God’s Hand he reigns over all.
His person is the gate of the city of the sciences:
Arabia, China, and Greece are subject to him.
If thou wouldst drink clear wine from thine own grapes, 1005
Thou must needs wield authority over thine own earth. [Pg 89]
To become earth is the creed of a moth;
Be a conqueror of earth; that alone is worthy of a man.
Thou art soft as a rose. Become hard as a stone,
That thou mayst be the foundation of the wall of the garden! 1010
Build thy clay into a Man,
Build thy Man into a World! ”

“ Only those Egos will survive this state of relaxation who have taken good care during the present life. Although life abhors repetition in its evolution, yet on Bergson’s principles the resurrection of the body too, as Wildon Carr says, is quite possible. By breaking up time into moments we spatialise it and then find difficulty in getting over it. The true nature of time is reached when we look into our deeper self. [15] Real time is life itself, which can preserve itself [Pg xxv] by maintaining that particular state of tension (personality) which it has so far achieved. ”

“ The Ego attains to freedom by the removal of all obstructions in its way. It is partly free, partly determined, [9] and reaches fuller freedom by approaching the Individual who is most free—God. In one word, life is an endeavour for freedom. ”

“ In a note on “Our Prophet’s criticism of contemporary Arabian poetry” (The New Era, 1916, p. 251) Iqbal writes: “The ultimate end of all human activity is Life—glorious, powerful, exuberant. All human art must be subordinated to this final purpose, and the value of everything must be determined in reference to its life-yielding capacity. The highest art is that which awakens our dormant will-force and nerves us to face the trials of life manfully. ”

“ He dreams [Pg xi] of a world ruled by religion, not by politics, and condemns Machiavelli, that “worshipper of false gods,” who has blinded so many. It must be observed that when he speaks of religion he always means Islam. Non-Moslems are simply unbelievers, and (in theory, at any rate) the Jihád is justifiable, provided that it is waged “for God’s sake alone.” A free and independent Moslem fraternity, having the Ka ́ba as its centre and knit together by love of Allah and devotion to the Prophet—such is Iqbal’s ideal. ”

“ The son of a rich man who inherits his father’s wealth is an ‘asker’ (beggar) ; so is every one who thinks the thoughts of others. Thus, in order to fortify the Ego we should cultivate love, i.e. the power of assimilative action, and avoid all forms of ‘asking,’ i.e. inaction. The lesson of assimilative action is given by the life of the Prophet, at least to a Mohammedan.
“In another part of the poem [18] I have hinted at the general principles of Moslem ethics and have tried to reveal their meaning in connexion with the idea of personality. ”

“ While the Hindu philosophers, in explaining the doctrine of the unity of being, addressed themselves to the head, Iqbal, like the Persian poets who teach the same doctrine, takes a more dangerous course and aims at the heart. ”

“ The sword of resolution is whetted by the stones in the way
And put to proof by traversing stage after stage.
What is the use of eating and sleeping like a beast?
What is the use of being, unless thou have strength in thyself? 1130
When thou mak’st thyself strong with Self,
Thou wilt destroy the world at thy pleasure. [Pg 99]
If thou wouldst pass away, become free of Self;
If thou wouldst live, become full of Self! [85]
What is death? To become oblivious to Self. ”

“ Iqbal, therefore, throws himself with all his might against idealistic philosophers and pseudo-mystical poets, the authors, in his opinion, of the decay prevailing in Islam, and argues that [Pg xiii] only by self-affirmation, self-expression, and self-development can the Moslems once more become strong and free. He appeals from the alluring raptures of Hafiz to the moral fervour of Jalálu ́ddín Rúmí, from an Islam sunk in Platonic contemplation to the fresh and vigorous monotheism which inspired Mohammed and brought Islam into existence. ”

“ But on this occasion it is allied with the revolutionary force of Western philosophy, which Iqbal hopes and believes will vitalise the movement and ensure its triumph. He sees that Hindu intellectualism and Islamic pantheism have destroyed the capacity for action, based on scientific observation and interpretation of phenomena, which distinguishes the Western peoples “and especially the English.” Now, this capacity depends ultimately on the conviction that khudí (selfhood, individuality, personality) is real and is not merely an illusion of the mind. ”

“ We are subject to time so long as we look upon time as something spatial. Spatialised time is a fetter which life has forged for itself in order to assimilate the present environment. In reality we are timeless, and it is possible to realise our timelessness even in this life. ”

“ Khánsár, which lies about a hundred miles northwest of Isfahan, was the birth-place of several Persian poets.
[Pg 16]
I
Showing that the system of the universe originates in the Self and that the continuation of the life of all individuals depends on strengthening the Self.
The form of existence is an effect of the Self,
Whatsoever thou seest is a secret of the Self.
When the Self awoke to consciousness,
It revealed the universe of Thought. 190
A hundred worlds are hidden in its essence:
Self-affirmation brings Not-self to light. ”

“ It is individual: its highest form, so far, is the Ego (Khudí) in which the individual becomes a self-contained exclusive centre. Physically as well as spiritually man is a self-contained centre, but he is not yet a complete individual. The greater his distance from God, the less his individuality. He who comes nearest to God is the completest person. ”

“ Here Iqbal interprets in his own way the Súfí doctrine of the Insán al-kámil or Perfect Man, which teaches that every man is potentially a microcosm, and that when he has become spiritually perfect, all the Divine attributes are displayed by him, so that as saint or prophet he is the God-man, the representative and vicegerent of God on earth. ”

“ There can be no complete truth about the universe, for the universe has not yet become ‘whole.’ The process of creation is still going on, and man too takes his share in it, inasmuch as he helps to bring order into at least a portion of the chaos. The Koran indicates the possibility of other creators than God. ”

“ Thou art an advertiser of falsehood, like idols.
Thou wert the Elixir, and thou hast become a peck of dust;
Thou wert born the conscience of Truth, and thou hast become a lie!
Art thou a Moslem? Then cast off this girdle!
Be a candle to the feast of the religion of the free! 1560
Knowing not the origin of Time,
Thou art ignorant of everlasting Life.
How long wilt thou be a thrall of night and day?
Learn the mystery of Time from the words “I have a time with God.” [106]
Phenomena arise from the march of Time, 1565 [Pg 137]
Life is a part of the contents of Time’s consciousness. ”

“ Nietzsche, however, abhors this ‘rule of the herd’ and, hopeless of the plebeian, he bases all higher culture on the cultivation and growth of an Aristocracy of Supermen. But is the plebeian so absolutely hopeless? The Democracy of Islam did not grow out of the extension of economic opportunity; it is a spiritual principle based on the assumption that every human being is a centre of latent power, the possibilities of which can be developed by cultivating a certain type of character. ”

“ In man the centre of life becomes an Ego or Person. Personality is a state of tension and can continue only if that state is maintained. If the state of tension is not maintained, relaxation will ensue. Since personality, or the state of tension, is the most valuable achievement of man, he should see that he does not revert to a state of relaxation. ”

“ That which tends to maintain [Pg xxii] the state of tension tends to make us immortal. Thus the idea of personality gives us a standard of value: it settles the problem of good and evil. That which fortifies personality is good, that which weakens it is bad. Art, [10] religion, and ethics [11] must be judged from the standpoint of personality. ”

“ Iqbal made no recantation, but since the passage had served its purpose and was offensive to many, he cancelled it in the second edition of the poem. It is omitted in my translation.
[3] The principles of Islam, regarded as the ideal society, are set forth in the author’s second poem, the Rumúz-i Békhudí or “Mysteries of Selflessness.” He explains the title by pointing out that the individual who loses himself in the community reflects both the past and the future as in a mirror, so that he transcends mortality and enters into the life of Islam, which is infinite and everlasting. ”

“ Its highest form is the creation of values and ideals and the endeavour to realise them. Love individualises the lover as well as the beloved. The effort to realise the most unique individuality individualises the seeker [Pg xxvi] and implies the individuality of the sought, for nothing else would satisfy the nature of the seeker. ”

“ The Asrár-i Khudí is composed in the metre and modelled on the style of the famous Masnaví. In the prologue Iqbal relates how Jalálu ́ddín Rúmí, who is to him almost what Virgil was to Dante, appeared in a vision and bade him arise and sing. Much as he dislikes the type of Súfism exhibited by Hafiz, he pays homage to the pure and profound genius of Jalálu ́ddín, though he rejects the doctrine of self-abandonment taught by the great Persian [Pg xv] mystic and does not accompany him in his pantheistic flights. ”