←IndexThe Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam

Lecture 3: The Conception of God and the Meaning of Prayer

Section 5 of 12

Motion, accidents, and the spiritual nature of reality

Section summary

In brief

Iqbal turns the Ash'arite system against its own conclusion: the fundamental unit of reality is not the material atom but the psychic act, and reality is therefore essentially spirit organised in degrees. From the Ultimate Ego only egos proceed — and human self-consciousness is the highest degree of reality available to creation.

Section 4 laid out the architecture of Ash'arite atomism: a world of indivisible atoms (jawāhir) that are not self-subsisting substances but discrete pulses of divine creative energy, each receiving existence from God at every moment. That section answered the structural question — what is the world made of? Section 5 now confronts the dynamic question: if atoms have position but no magnitude, and space is generated only by their aggregation, how is motion possible? And what sustains the atom in existence from one moment to the next?

The section advances through four major movements, each building on the last and each raising the stakes of Iqbal's argument.

The first movement addresses the problem of motion in discrete space. If space is not a continuous backdrop but an emergent product of atomic aggregation, then the classical picture of a body gliding smoothly through space is incoherent. The Muʿtazilite thinker al-Naẓẓām proposed the concept of ṭafrah (jump): a moving body does not pass through all the intervening positions between its start and destination but leaps from one discrete position to the next. Iqbal confesses he does not entirely understand this solution, but he immediately notes that modern physics — specifically Planck's quantum theory as interpreted by Whitehead — has arrived at the same difficulty and proposed a structurally identical solution: the electron does not continuously traverse its path but appears at a series of discrete positions.

The second movement introduces the doctrine of accidents (aʿrāḍ): qualities such as life, death, motion, and rest that are perpetually created by God and on which the atom's continued existence depends. Two propositions follow: nothing has a stable nature, and the soul (nafs) is either a finer kind of matter or merely an accident. Iqbal accepts the first proposition as genuinely faithful to the Qur'anic spirit of continuous creation and calls on future theologians to reconstruct the Ash'arite theory in contact with modern science.

The third movement is the section's philosophical pivot. Iqbal rejects the second proposition — that the soul is an accident — and turns the Ash'arite system against its own conclusion. If the atom's continuity depends on the perpetual creation of accidents, and if motion is inconceivable without time, and if time itself derives from psychic life, then it is not the atom that is fundamental but the nafs — the psychic act. The body is merely the act become visible. Iqbal argues that the Ash'arites vaguely anticipated the modern notion of the point-instant but failed to see that the instant (the temporal, psychic element) is more fundamental than the point (the spatial, material element). In a decisive judgement, he declares Rūmī more faithful to the spirit of Islam than Ghazālī on this question.

The fourth movement draws the metaphysical consequence: reality is essentially spirit, and there are degrees of spirit. Iqbal traces the idea of degrees of reality through Suhrawardī Maqtūl, Hegel, and Haldane, then arrives at his own central doctrine: the Ultimate Reality is an Ego, and from this Ultimate Ego only egos proceed. Every atom of divine energy is an ego; but egohood admits of degrees, rising from the mechanical movement of matter to its perfection in human self-consciousness. Man alone, of all God's creations, is capable of consciously participating in the creative life of his Maker — and it is this capacity that constitutes his unique dignity and reality.

The section is the hinge of Lecture III. Everything before it has been exposition and critique of the Ash'arite system. Everything after it will work within the framework that this section establishes: a spiritual pluralism grounded in the concept of the ego, in which the degree of reality of any entity is determined by the degree to which it is conscious of its own existence. This is the metaphysical core of Iqbal's entire philosophy — the doctrine of Khudi translated into cosmological terms.

Original text

Again we have seen that each atom occupies a position which does not involve space. That being so, what is the nature of motion which we cannot conceive except as the atom's passage through space? Since the Ash'arite regarded space as generated by the aggregation of atoms, they could not explain movement as a body's passage through all the points of space intervening between the point of its start and destination. Such an explanation must necessarily assume the existence of void as an independent reality. In order, therefore, to get over the difficulty of empty space, Naẓẓām resorted to the notion of ṭafrah or jump; and imagined the moving body, not as passing through all the discrete positions in space, but as jumping over the void between one position and another. Thus, according to him, a quick motion and a slow motion possess the same speed; but the latter has more points of rest. I confess I do not quite understand this solution of the difficulty. It may, however, be pointed out that modern atomism has found a similar difficulty and a similar solution has been suggested. In view of the experiments relating to Planck's Theory of Quanta, we cannot imagine the moving atom as continuously traversing its path in space. ‘One of the most hopeful lines of explanation’, says Professor Whitehead in his Science and the Modern World,

‘is to assume that an electron does not continuously traverse its path in space. The alternative notion as to its mode of existence is that it appears at a series of discrete positions in space which it occupies for successive durations of time. It is as though an automobile, moving at the average rate of thirty miles an hour along a road, did not traverse the road continuously, but appeared successively at the successive milestones, remaining for two minutes at each milestone.’

Another feature of this theory of creation is the doctrine of accident, on the perpetual creation of which depends the continuity of the atom as an existent. If God ceases to create the accidents, the atom ceases to exist as an atom. The atom possesses inseparable positive or negative qualities. These exist in opposed couples, as life and death, motion and rest, and possess practically no duration. Two propositions follow from this: (i) Nothing has a stable nature. (ii) There is a single order of atoms, i.e. what we call the soul is either a finer kind of matter, or only an accident.

I am inclined to think that in view of the idea of continuous creation which the Ash'arite intended to establish there is an element of truth in the first proposition. I have said before that in my opinion the spirit of the Qur'an is on the whole anti-classical. I regard the Ash'arite thought on this point as a genuine effort to develop on the basis of an Ultimate Will or Energy a theory of creation which, with all its shortcomings, is far more true to the spirit of the Qur'an than the Aristotelian idea of a fixed universe. The duty of the future theologians of Islam is to reconstruct this purely speculative theory, and to bring it into closer contact with modern science which appears to be moving in the same direction.

The second proposition looks like pure materialism. It is my belief that the Ash'arite view that the Nafs is an accident is opposed to the real trend of their own theory which makes the continuous existence of the atom dependent on the continuous creation of accidents in it. It is obvious that motion is inconceivable without time. And since time comes from psychic life, the latter is more fundamental than motion. No psychic life, no time: no time, no motion. Thus it is really what the Ash'arites call the accident which is responsible for the continuity of the atom as such. The atom becomes or rather looks spatialized when it receives the quality of existence. Regarded as a phase of Divine energy, it is essentially spiritual. The Nafs is the pure act; the body is only the act become visible and hence measurable. In fact the Ash'arite vaguely anticipated the modern notion of point-instant; but they failed rightly to see the nature of the mutual relation between the point and the instant. The instant is the more fundamental of the two; but the point is inseparable from the instant as being a necessary mode of its manifestation. The point is not a thing, it is only a sort of looking at the instant. Rūmī is far more true to the spirit of Islam than Ghazālī when he says:

Reality is, therefore, essentially spirit. But, of course, there are degrees of spirit. In the history of Muslim thought the idea of degrees of Reality appears in the writings of Shihābuddīn Suhrawardī Maqtūl. In modern times we find it worked out on a much larger scale in Hegel and, more recently, in the late Lord Haldane's Reign of Relativity, which he published shortly before his death. I have conceived the Ultimate Reality as an Ego; and I must add now that from the Ultimate Ego only egos proceed. The creative energy of the Ultimate Ego, in whom deed and thought are identical, functions as ego-unities. The world, in all its details, from the mechanical movement of what we call the atom of matter to the free movement of thought in the human ego, is the self-revelation of the ‘Great I am’. Every atom of Divine energy, however low in the scale of existence, is an ego. But there are degrees in the expression of egohood. Throughout the entire gamut of being runs the gradually rising note of egohood until it reaches its perfection in man. That is why the Qur'an declares the Ultimate Ego to be nearer to man than his own neck-vein. Like pearls do we live and move and have our being in the perpetual flow of Divine life.

Thus a criticism, inspired by the best traditions of Muslim thought, tends to turn the Ash'arite scheme of atomism into a spiritual pluralism, the details of which will have to be worked out by the future theologians of Islam. It may, however, be asked whether atomicity has a real seat in the creative energy of God, or presents itself to us as such only because of our finite mode of apprehension. From a purely scientific point of view I cannot say what the final answer to this question will be. From the psychological point of view one thing appears to me to be certain. Only that is, strictly speaking, real which is directly conscious of its own reality. The degree of reality varies with the degree of the feeling of egohood. The nature of the ego is such that, in spite of its capacity to respond to other egos, it is self-centred and possesses a private circuit of individuality excluding all egos other than itself. In this alone consists its reality as an ego. Man, therefore, in whom egohood has reached its relative perfection, occupies a genuine place in the heart of Divine creative energy, and thus possesses a much higher degree of reality than things around him. Of all the creations of God he alone is capable of consciously participating in the creative life of his Maker. Endowed with the power to imagine a better world, and to mould what is into what ought to be, the ego in him, aspires, in the interests of an increasingly unique and comprehensive individuality, to exploit all the various environments on which he may be called upon to operate during the course of an endless career. But I would ask you to wait for a fuller treatment of this point till my lecture on the Immortality and Freedom of the Ego. In the meantime, I want to say a few words about the doctrine of atomic time which I think is the weakest part of the Ash'arite theory of creation. It is necessary to do so for a reasonable view of the Divine attribute of Eternity.

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4. Ash'arite atomism and the method of creation

6. The problem of time and divine eternity

Original text

‘is to assume that an electron does not continuously traverse its path in space. The alternative notion as to its mode of existence is that it appears at a series of discrete positions in space which it occupies for successive durations of time. It is as though an automobile, moving at the average rate of thirty miles an hour along a road, did not traverse the road continuously, but appeared successively at the successive milestones, remaining for two minutes at each milestone.’