- There are three kinds of egos (selves) according to Iqbal: (a) Ultimate; (b) collective; (c) individual.
(a) Ultimate ego is God. Collective ego is a mystery which reveals itself as destiny. Rumi has explained it at length in the opening passages of Volume 2 of Masnavi: “only animals have separate souls, the soul of all human beings is just one.” Saadi later stated it more bluntly as “children of Adam are limbs to one another.”
(b) According to Iqbal, this collective ego of humanity is REAL. Individual ego is VIRTUAL. Hence individuals need to extinguish their egos, or selves, in the collective ego in order to become real.
(c) A nation which adopts the Unity of God as its basic principle becomes the collective ego on earth. Islam is one such nation, and hence for a Muslim the way to REALIZE his or her self is by extinguishing their individual self in the collective ego of the nation. This has been explained in ‘Asrar-i-Khudi’ also but in more detail in ‘Rumooz-i-Bekhudi’ (both parts together form ASRAR-O-RUMOOZ, the first published book of Iqbal’s poetry).
Khurram Ali Shafiq
It is not easy to understand this highly mystical work, where reality transcends the bounds of time and space. It can only happen if Rumi and Iqbal take us to that immemorial ride. It is full of symbols and meaningful archetypes describing evolution in human history. I wish I were blessed with such elevation in consciousness that truth does not remain mystery for me and becomes reality for me.
We can convert any object into energy, if we throw it or move it with
the square of speed of light.
THREE STEPS—EMOTIONS, REASONING, REALIZATION
by Ghayyur Ayub (UK)
The destiny of our disposition depends upon three steps that we take in our life. The first step is taken independently with our own free will. The second is taken with the help of a guide who should be wise. The third is taken through a command from the Supreme Being. The first is based on emotions, the second on reasoning and the third on realization.
Emotions are the products of desires, and the craving for desires generates waves of emotions, thus creating vicious circles. These circles are controlled by the available divergent choices of right and wrong. It is this duality of nature which leads us to form different types of personalities—good or bad, positive or negative, moral or immoral. The faculty of free will, which looks after freedom of choice and deals with emotional desires, is intimately related to our conscious and placed at the lowest level of self. It deals with the five basic senses of our body and fundamental desires, such as hunger, sex and ego.
To satisfy these and other similar desires, we use emotion as the driving force. Depending on the strength of desires, this force can bring down a highly educated and civilized person to a primitive state, where his good judgment, his notion of honor and dishonor, and his choosing between good and bad become clouded. As a result, he might make a decision which could be detrimental to his betterment. This is the negative side of emotions. There is a positive aspect too, as when a sudden burst of goodwill, mercy and sympathy might make him take a step which he normally would have avoided. If the former decision gives him pleasure and the latter brings grief, then his sense of correct differentiation is misguided.
It is this faculty which plays an important role in determining a person’s future identity by selecting one direction from various directions, adopting one modality out of several and accepting one option among many options. This awareness acts like an axis in the world of emotions. The Quran calls it Nafs Mulhimah. On one side of this perception lies lust, greed, hate, jealousy and ego, and on the other side, humility, kindness, patience, compassion and honesty. Moving in a negative direction will take a person to Nafs Amara, while advancing in a positive direction will take him towards Nafs Mutmaina. The genesis of these preferences is knowledge, which is gained from readings and observations and is then spent freely in the market of various choices.
This knowledge becomes the mirror through which a people see their deeds, and whatever they do become their reflections. The emotional use of knowledge might create delinquency, inequity and guilt, or it might not leave any imprint behind.
The latter pulls a person into the darkness of Amara, where they remain moody, egoistic, restless, getting kicks from minor pleasures followed by prolonged depressions, because of a false, non-lasting, unstable and shaky temperament.
The former pushes a person to the light of Mutmaina, where they stay sober, contented and quenched, getting kicks from real, lasting pleasure with no depressive fallouts.
So far, we have found that in the field of emotions, which is the first step in developing a personality, we are attracted to and rely on our basic desires through the faculty of free will. Some of us slide into a negative balance affecting our characters accordingly, while others go into positive equipoise, creating equalizing states. The one who stays behind in negativity makes his own small circles of nondurable pleasures and recurrent grief which cause him prolonged spells of depression and despondency. Sometimes he cannot take worldly pressures and terminates his life. A person who goes forward positively joins bigger circles of lasting joy where worldly failures do not discourage him and he keeps aiming at higher goals.
He accepts life as it comes, and with this attitude he takes the second step with enhanced rectitude. This step takes him to the orb of mindfulness, where knowledge is wrapped in doubts which can only be cleared through reasoning. So, in this new sphere, he can end up in complete disarray, unless he finds a man of faith and wisdom as a guide, who clears his confusion. With the help of this guide, his thinking becomes philosophical and his deeds rational. He might take the path of knowledge or of deeds separately or jointly, depending on the advice of his guide. His guide directs him in finding the validity of events and the reality of entities. Thus, the seeker keeps peeling off his doubts through logic and carries on refining his deeds through love. In the end, he finds that any unwanted action does not affect his attitude profoundly. He envisages its resultant reaction and takes events as a whole, bringing parity in totality and creating a balance in his approach and understanding. He also realizes the impermanence of events, which brings him closer to an understanding of reality. Even in that state of balanced personality, he can still be misguided by something or someone, through the weapon of logic, which is prevented by the guide through his wisdom.
After shunning all the doubts and becoming a believer in his knowledge and loving in his deeds, he takes the third step and enters the realm of actual reality and impeccable truth. There, pure love and absolute obedience are explored with or without the help of a guide. The actualities are unveiled by factual realization through a command from the Supreme Being. The time of the appearance of this command is not known; it comes as light (Nur), making one enlightened, gaining complete wisdom and certain faith, being elevated to the commander of time and healer of humanity. This sphere of factual realization completes the third step in the gradual advance through worldly ranks (Marateb-e-Insani) towards divine ranks (Marateb-e-Elahi) on a single straight path (Sirat-ul-Mustaqeem) in Sufism.
There is a story about Vishnu in Hinduism. It says that at one time the Three Worlds—the underworld, the earth and the heavens—were ruled by a demon after defeating gods and rendering them powerless. Vishnu decided to defeat the tyrant and was born as a dwarf to two hermits. One day, he heard that the demon was going to perform a great sacrifice and, as part of the ceremony, he wanted to give generous alms. Vishnu, the dwarf dressed as a beggar, appeared before him and said, “O Lord of the three worlds, will you give a poor beggar as much land as he can cover with three steps?” The demon, amused with the request of the little creature, answered, “As much as you can cover with three steps, you may have as your own.” Then Vishnu placed one foot upon the lower world, the second on the earth and with the third step he reached the heavens. Thus the world was saved.
A Sufi poet of Pushtu, Rehman Baba, says in one of his poems, “Sa yau qadam e tar Arsh puri rasi, Ma lidale de raftar tha Derveshano” (“I have seen the stride of dervishes, where they reach the heavens with one step”). It looks like Rehman Baba was talking of the step taken by Vishnu in his last stride. Bayazid Bistami, another Sufi, said, “I reached God by two steps, one on my own Nafs (self) and the other in the street of the beloved.”