QUESTION 6
Explanatory Note
Question 6 corresponds to Question 11 of Shabistari. It deals with the problem of "part" that is greater than the "whole" and the way of finding that part.
To Shabistari, the "part" is the Absolute, while the "whole" is the phenomenal existence which is Absolute Being's particularisation. Everthing phenomenal is transitory and the Absolute Being alone is the object worthy of our search. But to Iqbal the "part" is the ego and far more important than any "whole" one can think of. Apparently, it is enclosed in body and, therefore, subject to spatial time but in reality it has the potentiality of transcending these limits and becoming free. As confined in body, the ego is determined and subject. to mechanical laws which operate in the physical sphere but is capable of rising beyond these, limits, and travelling into its inner depth, it is free and creative. Thus' Iqbal fully endorses the prophetic tradition according to which faith lies between freedom and determinism. The free and creative aspect of the ego enables him to control the forces of visible and invisible worlds-alike and therefore the aim of every moral system should be to help an individual attain this super-temporal and super-spatial level for as long and as frequently as possible. And the only requisite, according to Iqbal, is to pass from intellect to intuition or what in this context he calls "lamentation," for intellect is not fit to understand or grasp the significance of eternity. When the ego attains this high status of freedom and creativity, even death loses its pangs. Death may be extinction for an ego who remains at the phenomenal level, but for others who have steeled themselves against dissolution by creative efforts, death means nothing but a passage from space-time cosmos to a world where eternity rules. Even death will not be able to break the unity of the strong ego.