The Human Ego – His Freedom and Immortality

In modern times the line of argument for personal immortality is on the whole ethical. But ethical arguments, such as that of Kant, and the modern revisions of his arguments, depend on a kind of faith in the fulfilment of the claims of justice, or in the irreplaceable and unique work of man as an individual pursuer of infinite ideals. With Kant immortality is beyond the scope of speculative reason; it is a postulate of practical reason, an axiom of man’s moral consciousness. Man demands and pursues the supreme good which comprises both virtue and happiness. But virtue and happiness, duty and inclination, are, according to Kant, heterogeneous notions. Their unity cannot be achieved within the narrow span of the pursuer’s life in this sensible world. We are, therefore, driven to postulate immortal life for the person’s progressive completion of the unity of the mutually exclusive notions of virtue and happiness, and the existence of God eventually to effectuate this confluence. It is not clear, however, why the consummation of virtue and happiness should take infinite time, and how God can effectuate the confluence between mutually exclusive notions. This inconclusiveness of metaphysical arguments has led many thinkers to confine themselves to meeting the objections of modern Materialism which rejects immortality, holding that consciousness is merely a function of the brain, and therefore ceases with the cessation of the brain-process. William James thinks that this objection to immortality is valid only if the function in question is taken to be productive.

The mere fact that certain mental changes vary concomitantly with certain bodily changes, does not warrant the inference that mental changes are produced by bodily changes. The function is not necessarily productive; it may be permissive or transmissive like the function of the trigger of a crossbow or that of a reflecting lens. This view which suggests that our inner life is due to the operation in us of a kind of transcendental mechanism of consciousness, somehow choosing a physical medium for a short period of sport, does not give us any assurance of the continuance of the content of our actual experience. I have already indicated in these lectures the proper way to meet Materialism. Science must necessarily select for study certain specific aspects of Reality only and exclude others. It is pure dogmatism on the part of science to claim that the aspects of Reality selected by it are the only aspects to be studied. No doubt man has a spatial aspect; but this is not the only aspect of man. There are other aspects of man, such as evaluation, the unitary character of purposive experience, and the pursuit of truth which science must necessarily exclude from its study, and the understanding of which requires categories other than those employed by science.

There is, however, in the history of modern thought one positive view of immortality - I mean Nietzsche’s doctrine of Eternal Recurrence. This view deserves some consideration, not only because Nietzsche has maintained it with a prophetical fervour, but also because it reveals a real tendency in the modern mind. The idea occurred to several minds about the time when it came to Nietzsche like a poetic inspiration, and the germs of its are also found in Herbert Spencer. It was really the power of the idea rather than its logical demonstration that appealed to this modern prophet. This, in itself, is some evidence of the fact that positive views of ultimate things are the work rather of Inspiration than Metaphysics. However, Nietzsche has given his doctrine the form of a reasoned out theory, and as such I think we are entitled to examine it. The doctrine proceeds on the assumption that the quantity of energy in the universe is constant and consequently finite. Space is only a subjective form; there is no meaning in saying that the world is in space in the sense that it is situated in an absolute empty void. In his view of time, however, Nietzsche parts company with Kant and Schopenhauer. Time is not a subjective form; it is a real and infinite process which can be conceived only as ‘Periodic’. Thus it is clear that there can be no dissipation of energy in an infinite empty space. The centres of this energy are limited in number, and their combination perfectly calculable. There is no beginning or end of this ever-active energy, no equilibrium, no first or last change. Since time is infinite, therefore all possible combinations of energy-centres have already been exhausted. There is no new happening in the universe; whatever happens now has happened before an infinite number of times, and will continue to happen an infinite number of times in the future. On Nietzsche’s view the order of happenings in the universe must be fixed and unalterable; for since an infinite time has passed, the energy-centres must have, by this time, formed certain definite modes of behaviour. The very word ‘Recurrence’ implies this fixity. Further, we must conclude that a combination of energy-centres which has once taken place must always return; otherwise there would be no guarantee for the return even of the superman.

‘Everything has returned: Sirius and the spider, and thy thoughts at this moment and this last thought of thine that all things will return . . . . Fellow-man! your whole life, like a sand-glass, will always be reversed, and will ever run out again. This ring in which you are but a gain will glitter afresh for ever.’

Such is Nietzsche’s Eternal Recurrence. It is only a more rigid kind of mechanism, based not on an ascertained fact but only on a working hypothesis of science. Nor does Nietzsche seriously grapple with the question of time. He takes it objectively and regards it merely as an infinite series of events returning to itself over and over again. Now time, regarded as a perpetual circular movement, makes immortality absolutely intolerable. Nietzsche himself feels this, and describes his doctrine, not as one of immortality, but rather as a view of life which would make immortality endurable. And what makes immortality bearable, according to Nietzsche? It is the expectation that a recurrence of the combination of energy-centres which constitutes my personal existence is a necessary factor in the birth of that ideal combination which he calls ‘superman’. But the superman has been an infinite number of times before. His birth is inevitable; how can the prospect give me any aspiration? We can aspire only for what is absolutely new, and the absolutely new is unthinkable on Nietzsche’s view which is nothing more than a Fatalism worse than the one summed up in the word Qismat. Such a doctrine, far from keying up the human organism for the fight of life, tends to destroy its action-tendencies and relaxes the tension of the ego.

Passing now to the teaching of the Qur’«n. The Quranic view of the destiny of man is partly ethical, partly biological. I say partly biological because the Qur’«n makes in this connexion certain statements of a biological nature which we cannot understand without a deeper insight into the nature of life. It mentions, for instance, the fact of Barzakh - a state, perhaps of some kind of suspense between Death and Resurrection. Resurrection, too, appears to have been differently conceived. The Qur’«n does not base its possibility, like Christianity, on the evidence of the actual resurrection of an historic person. It seems to take and argue resurrection as a universal phenomenon of life, in some sense, true even of birds and animals .

Before, however, we take the details of the Quranic doctrine of personal immortality we must note three things which are perfectly clear from the Qur’«n and regarding which there is, or ought to be, no difference of opinion:

(i) That the ego has a beginning in time, and did not pre-exist its emergence in the spatio-temporal order. This is clear from the verse which I cited a few minutes ago.

(ii) That according to the Quranic view, there is no possibility of return to this earth. This is clear from the following verses:

‘When death overtaketh one of them, he saith, "Lord! send me back again, that I may do the good that I have left undone!" By no means These are the very words which he shall speak. But behind them is a barrier (Barzakh), until the day when they shall be raised again.

‘And by the moon when at her full, that from state to state shall ye be surely carried onward’ .

‘The germs of life - Is it ye who create them? Or are We their Creator? It is We Who have decreed that death should be among you; yet We are not thereby hindered from replacing you with others, your likes, or from creating you again in forms which ye know not!.

(iii) That finitude is not a misfortune:

‘Verily there is none in the heavens and in the earth but shall approach the God of Mercy as a servant. He hath taken note of them and numbered them with exact numbering: and each of them shall come to Him on the Day of Resurrection as a single individual.

This is a very important point and must be properly understood with a view to secure a clear insight into the Islamic theory of salvation. It is with the irreplaceable singleness of his idividuality that the finite ego will approach the infinite ego to see for himself the consequences of his past action and to judge the possibilities of his future.

‘And every man’s fate have We fastened about his neck: and on the Day of Resurrection will We bring forthwith to him a book which shall be proffered to him wide open: "Read thy book: there needeth none but thyself to make out an account against thee this day" ).

Whatever may be the final fate of man it does not mean the loss of individuality. The Qur’«n does not contemplate complete liberation from finitude as the highest state of human bliss. The ‘unceasing reward’ of man consists in his gradual growth in self-possession, in uniqueness, and intensity of his activity as an ego. Even the scene of ‘Universal Destruction’ immediately preceding the Day of Judgement cannot affect the perfect calm of a full-grown ego:

‘And there shall be a blast on the trumpet, and all who are in the heavens and all who are in the earth shall faint away, save those in whose case God wills otherwise.

Who can be the subject of this exception but those in whom the ego has reached the very highest point of intensity? And the climax of this development is reached when the ego is able to retain full self-possession, even in the case of a direct contact with the all-embracing Ego. As the Qur’«n says of the Prophet’s vision of the Ultimate Ego:

‘His eye turned not aside, nor did it wander.

This is the ideal of perfect manhood in Islam. Nowhere has it found a better literary expression than in a Persian verse which speaks of the Holy Prophet’s experience of Divine illumination:

‘Moses fainted away by a mere surface illumination of Reality. Thou seest the very substance of Reality with a smile.

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