←IndexThe Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam

Lecture 7: Is Religion Possible?

Section 2 of 11

Kant reversed — other levels of experience

Section summary

In brief

Iqbal confronts Kant's verdict that the realities religion cares about lie beyond possible knowledge, and reverses it: citing Ibn ʿArabī, he argues that God may be the percept and the world the concept, and that Kant's exclusion holds only if the normal level of experience is the only level. He then defends the seriousness of religion against science by insisting that the ego's contact with Reality is achieved through the deed rather than the concept — a stake of the whole person that no 'as-if' fictionalism can match.

Section 1 mapped religious life into three developmental periods — Faith, Thought, and Discovery — and defined the lecture's concern as religion in the third sense: direct experiential contact with Ultimate Reality, reframed not as life-denying mysticism but as a form of radical empiricism older and deeper than modern science. Section 2 now takes up the philosophical obstacle that stands in the way of this claim: Kant's denial that metaphysics — and by extension, knowledge of the realities in which religion is interested — is possible.

The section is the longest and most philosophically dense in the lecture, advancing through five major movements. First, Iqbal states Kant's position: the thing-in-itself falls beyond the boundaries of experience, and its existence cannot be rationally demonstrated. Second, he notes but sets aside the possibility that modern physics (matter as 'bottled-up light waves,' Heisenberg's indeterminacy) might rehabilitate rational theology — this is not the route he wishes to take. Third, he executes the lecture's central philosophical manoeuvre: the reversal of Kant. Kant's verdict holds only if we assume that the normal level of experience is the only level. But what if the position is reversed? What if, as Ibn ʿArabī observed, 'God is a percept; the world is a concept' — what if it is the external world, not God, that is the intellectual construction? Fourth, Iqbal addresses the objection that non-conceptual experience cannot yield universal or communicable knowledge, and transforms this objection into a positive discovery: the incommunicability of religious experience reveals the ego's ultimate nature as an individual deeper than its conceptually describable habitual selfhood. Fifth, he draws the consequences for the relative seriousness of science and religion as modes of engaging Reality: science deals in symbols and conventions and can afford to treat its objects as fictions; religion, which stakes the entire career of the ego, cannot.

The section closes by asserting the legitimacy of the question 'Is religion possible?' on the grounds that 'the evidence of religious experts in all ages and countries is that there are potential types of consciousness lying close to our normal consciousness.' This sets up Sections 3–5, which will argue for the timeliness of the question from scientific, cultural, and historical perspectives.

The philosophical architecture of this section is the foundation on which the entire lecture rests. If Iqbal's reversal of Kant fails — if the normal level of experience really is the only level — then the lecture's argument collapses. Everything that follows depends on the possibility that there are 'other levels of human experience capable of being systematized by other orders of space and time.'

Original text

As we all know, it was Kant who first raised the question: ‘Is metaphysics possible?’² He answered this question in the negative; and his argument applies with equal force to the realities in which religion is especially interested. The manifold of sense, according to him, must fulfil certain formal conditions in order to constitute knowledge. The thing-in-itself is only a limiting idea. Its function is merely regulative. If there is some actuality corresponding to the idea, it falls outside the boundaries of experience, and consequently its existence cannot be rationally demonstrated.

This verdict of Kant cannot be easily accepted. It may fairly be argued that in view of the more recent developments of science, such as the nature of matter as ‘bottled-up light waves’, the idea of the universe as an act of thought, finiteness of space and time and Heisenberg’s principle of indeterminacy³ in Nature, the case for a system of rational theology is not so bad as Kant was led to think. But for our present purposes it is unnecessary to consider this point in detail.

As to the thing-in-itself, which is inaccessible to pure reason because of its falling beyond the boundaries of experience, Kant’s verdict can be accepted only if we start with the assumption that all experience other than the normal level of experience is impossible. The only question, therefore, is whether the normal level is the only level of knowledge-yielding experience. Kant’s view of the thing-in-itself and the thing as it appears to us very much determined the character of his question regarding the possibility of metaphysics. But what if the position, as understood by him, is reversed? The great Muslim Sufi philosopher, Muḥyiddīn Ibn al-ʿArabī of Spain, has made the acute observation that God is a percept; the world is a concept.⁴ Another Muslim Sufi thinker and poet, ʿIrāqī, insists on the plurality of space-orders and time-orders and speaks of a Divine Time and a Divine Space.⁵ It may be that what we call the external world is only an intellectual construction, and that there are other levels of human experience capable of being systematized by other orders of space and time — levels in which concept and analysis do not play the same role as they do in the case of our normal experience.

It may, however, be said that the level of experience to which concepts are inapplicable cannot yield any knowledge of a universal character, for concepts alone are capable of being socialized. The standpoint of the man who relies on religious experience for capturing Reality must always remain individual and incommunicable. This objection has some force if it is meant to insinuate that the mystic is wholly ruled by his traditional ways, attitudes, and expectations. Conservatism is as bad in religion as in any other department of human activity. It destroys the ego’s creative freedom and closes up the paths of fresh spiritual enterprise. This is the main reason why our medieval mystic techniques can no longer produce original discoveries of ancient Truth.

The fact, however, that religious experience is incommunicable does not mean that the religious man’s pursuit is futile. Indeed, the incommunicability of religious experience gives us a clue to the ultimate nature of the ego. In our daily social intercourse we live and move in seclusion, as it were. We do not care to reach the inmost individuality of men. We treat them as mere functions, and approach them from those aspects of their identity which are capable of conceptual treatment. The climax of religious life, however, is the discovery of the ego as an individual deeper than his conceptually describable habitual selfhood. It is in contact with the Most Real that the ego discovers its uniqueness, its metaphysical status, and the possibility of improvement in that status.

Strictly speaking, the experience which leads to this discovery is not a conceptually manageable intellectual fact; it is a vital fact, an attitude consequent on an inner biological transformation which cannot be captured in the net of logical categories. It can embody itself only in a world-making or world-shaking act; and in this form alone the content of this timeless experience can diffuse itself in the time-movement, and make itself effectively visible to the eye of history. It seems that the method of dealing with Reality by means of concepts is not at all a serious way of dealing with it. Science does not care whether its electron is a real entity or not. It may be a mere symbol, a mere convention. Religion, which is essentially a mode of actual living, is the only serious way of handling Reality.

No doubt the deed, i.e. the control of psychological and physiological processes with a view to tune up the ego for an immediate contact with the Ultimate Reality is, and cannot but be, individual in form and content; yet the deed, too, is liable to be socialized when others begin to live through it with a view to discover for themselves its effectiveness as a method of approaching the Real. The evidence of religious experts in all ages and countries is that there are potential types of consciousness lying close to our normal consciousness. If these types of consciousness open up possibilities of life-giving and knowledge-yielding experience, the question of the possibility of religion as a form of higher experience is a perfectly legitimate one and demands our serious attention.

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1. Three periods of religious life

3. Why this question now — the scientific case

Original text