Wednesday, April 22, 2009

10th IS session (18/04/09) - Summary

The session of 18th April moved around certain key points from Iqbal’s book, The Reconstruction of Religion Thought in Islam. Iqbal prophesied a time when “unsuspected harmonies” between science and religion will be discovered.

Recent schemes of study have not only introduced unbridgeable gaps between these essential modes of life but also insist on dichotomy between spirit and matter. Iqbal was completely opposed to this school of thought and on the contrary found matter and spirit to be interconnected. The main concern for him was the collective ego – as the Holy Quran says, “Your creation and resurrection are like the creation and resurrection of a single soul.”

Iqbal suggested a method whose highlights were collective ego, unity of soul, concrete type of mind and transcending the need for philosophical arguments about religious experience.

Once society begins to feel itself as a single organism it actually transforms into a more understanding and culturally agreeable mass. This may be the point which Iqbal defined as “a real collective ego”. Through attainment of this state, the reality of external world may also be grasped truly. But for that we must apply the method of becoming “thousand eyes with one vision.”

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