Traditional, Modern and Post-modern

Conceptual Shifts on Reality:

Underpinnings of Iqbal’s Perspective

Muhammad Suheyl Umar

The task of describing the nature of the philosophy developed in the Indian subcontinent and defining its worldview comes close to being the object of an entire book. I will not try to compress here it into the limits of a brief talk but rather try to focus on some of its aspects with reference to Iqbal. Moreover I would like to take an approach slightly different from the one of comparative study of civ0ilizations and would try to address the issue from a conceptual point of view, by referring to the overarching perspective or the paradigm that governs each conceptual shift. The present audience, I presume, agrees that with regard to the view of Reality we can speak of the entire Premodern world in the singular and simply assume that a common metaphysical “spine” underlies the differences in the worldviews, the theologies of the classical languages of the human soul, the world’s great religions or wisdom traditions. This is coupled with the claims of all the Premodern civilizations, including the pre-renaissance Western civilization, that people need worldviews, that reliable ones are possible, and that they already exist. It is only Modernity that made the totalizing claim for the truth of a single worldview and Postmodernism which categorically denies the existence or the possibility of reliable worldviews. I will come back shortly to the question of these conceptual shifts between traditional, modern and postmodern but let me first situate Iqbal in the context of our present discussion.

Iqbal is the best articulated Muslim response to Modernity that the Islamic world has produced in the twentieth century. His response has three dimensions:

• A creative engagement with the conceptual paradigm of modernism at a sophisticated philosophical level through his prose writings, mainly his The Reconstruction…., which present his basic philosophic insights

• His Urdu and Persian poetry which is the best embodiment of poetically mediated thought, squarely in the traditional continuity of Islamic literature and perhaps the finest flowering of wisdom poetry,^[1] or contemplative poetry^[2] or inspired poetry^[3] in the modern times.

• As a political activist/ social reformer – rising up to his social responsibility, his calling at a critical phase of history.

I have referred to the three periods of traditional, modern and Postmodern with regard to their respective conceptual shifts and also the word Modernity. For the rest of my presentation I would use Modernism in place of Modernity. In the wake of its Traditional and Modern periods, the Western world is now generally regarded as having become Postmodern. Both Modernity and Postmodernity refer to a life-style. Modernism and Postmodernism, by contrast, suggest an outlook: the basic sense of things that gave rise to Modernity and Postmodernity in the first place and now reflects its way of life.

Contrasts tend to throw things into relief, so I shall define these terms by contrasting these outlooks with one another; the tra­ditional, the modern and the Postmodern, using epistemology as my point of entry.

Even today, when traditional peoples want to know where they are – when they wonder about the ultimate context in which their lives are set and which has the final say over them – they turn to their sacred texts; or in the case of oral, tribal peoples (what comes to the same thing), to the sacred myths that have been handed down to them by their ancestors. Modernity was born when a new source of knowledge was discovered, the scientific method. Because its controlled experiment enabled scientists to prove their hypotheses, and because those proven hypotheses demonstrat­ed that they had the power to change the material world dramatically, Westerners turned from revelation to science for the Big Picture. Intellectual historians tell us that by the nineteenth century Westerners were already more certain that atoms exist than they were confident of any of the distinctive things the Bible speaks of.

This much is straightforward, but it doesn’t explain why Westerners aren’t still modern rather than Postmodern, for science continues to be the main support of the Western mind. By headcount, most Westerners probably still are modern, but I am thinking of frontier thinkers who chart the course that others follow. These thinkers have ceased to be modern because they have seen through the so-called scientific worldview, recognizing it to be not scientific but scientistic. They continue to honour science for what it tells us about nature or the natural order/natural world, but as that is not all that exists, science cannot provide us with a worldview – not a valid one. The most it can show us is half of the world, the half where normative and intrinsic values, existential and ultimate meanings, teleologies, qualities, immaterial realities, and beings that are superior to us do not appear.^[4]

In his second lecture, “The Philosophical Test of the Revelations of Religious Experience” in “The Reconstruction of Religious thought in Islam”, Iqbal has made a very perceptive remark:[5]

There is no doubt that the theories of science consti­tute trustworthy knowledge, because they are verifiable and enable us to predict and control the events of Nature. But we must not forget that what is called science is not a single systematic view of Reality. It is a mass of sectional views of Reality– fragments of a total experi­ence which do not seem to fit together. Natural Science deals with matter, with life, and with mind; but the moment you ask the ques­tion how matter, life, and mind are mutually related, you begin to see the sec­tional character of the various sciences that deal with them and the in­ability of these sciences, taken singly, to furnish a complete answer to your question. In fact, the various natural sciences are like so many vul­tures falling on the dead body of Nature, and each running away with a piece of its flesh. Nature as the subject of science is a highly artificial affair, and this artificial­ity is the result of that selective process to which science must subject her in the interests of precision. The mo­ment you put the subject of science in the total of human experience it begins to disclose a different character. Thus religion, which demands the whole of Reality and for this reason must occupy a central place in any synthesis of all the data of human experience, has no reason to be afraid of any sectional views of Reality. Natural Science is by nature sectional; it cannot, if it is true to its own nature and function, set up its theory as a complete view of Reality.

Where, then, do we now turn for an inclu­sive worldview? Postmodernism hasn’t a clue. And this is its deepest definition.^[6] The generally accepted definition of Postmodernism now that Jean-Francois Lyotard fixed in place decades ago in The Postmodern Condition is, “incredulity toward metanarratives”.^[7] Having deserted revelation for science, the West has now abandoned the scientif­ic worldview as well, leaving it without replacement. In this it mirrors the current stage of Western science which leaves nature unimaged. Before modern sci­ence, Westerners accepted Aristotle’s model of the earth as surrounded by concentric, crystalline spheres. Newton replaced that model with his image of a clockwork universe, but Postmodern, quantum-­and-relativity science gives us not a third model of nature but no model at all. Alan Wallace’s Choosing Reality delineates eight different interpretations of quantum physics, all of which can claim the support of physics’ proven facts.^[8] A contemporary philosopher described the situation as “the Reality Market Place”– you can have as many versions of reality as you like.

Another analogy can pull together all that we have just said and summarize the difference alluded to in these remarks. If we think of traditional peoples as looking out upon the world through the window of revelation (their received myths and sacred texts), the window that they turned to look through in the modern period (science) proved to be stunted. It cuts off at the level of the human nose, which (metaphysically speaking) means that when we look through it our gaze slants downward and we see only things that are inferior to us.^[9] As for the Postmodern window, it is boarded over and allows no inclusive view whatsoever. In the words of Richard Rorty, “There is no Big Picture.”

Iqbal mediates between these conflicting views by pointing out to the shortcomings and achievements of all the three paradigms objectively. He agrees that there is a Big Picture and his writings give us to understand that the Postmodern view of the self and its world is in no way nobler than the ones that the world’s religions proclaim. Postmoderns yield to their dilapidated views, not because they like them, but because they think that reason and human historicity now force them upon us. Iqbal would argue that it is not necessarily the case and the present predicament is the result of a tunnel vision that we have adopted but which really is not the only option for us. At the same time he is keenly aware of the fact it ideals of irreducible dignity of the individual human being, the equality of all human beings before the law and the value/worth of the material and profane worlds have been successfully embodied in the Modern and Postmodern paradigms. In conjunction with other ideas and in tension with still some others, these three ideals have shaped the social, political and educational institutions of the modern West. Speaking in the most general terms, it can be said that modern civil law, the modern political state and the modern secular academy/university represent the institutionalization of these ideals. While the depth and breath of institutionalization of these ideals has varied greatly in different Western societies, the past 3-4 centuries of Western history show an inexorable movement in this direction. But at the same time he raises a very troubling question about the past. If it is indeed the case that Islam affirms the irreducible dignity of the individual, equality of all before the law and the inherent goodness of the material/profane worlds then the question emerges: why is it that the modern, secular West has succeeded in institutionalizing these ideals with a greater degree of consistency than the traditional Muslim society? The posing of this question and an honest facing up to it opens up the possibility of contemporary Islam gaining a better understanding of the historical development of which it is a product. To gain an insight into that question we shall refer to our earlier remarks again and take a look at those three major stages of our intellectual history from a different angle.

In Iqbal’s view a worldview is an inclusive outlook, and it is useful to distinguish its social, cosmological, and metaphysical components. The social component of past worldviews included, at times, justifications for slavery and the divine right of kings, while its cosmological components described the physical universe as understood by the science of the day – Ptolemaic astronomy or whatever. The contents of those two components obviously change, so are not perennial. The perennial, unchanging philosophy is metaphysical, or more precisely, ontological. It concerns such matters as the distinction between the Absolute and the relative, and the doctrine of the degrees of reality that is consequent thereon.

Following this threefold criteria I would like to say a few words about the Metaphysical, Cosmological and Sociological achievements/ shortcomings of Tradition, Modernity and Postmodernism, respectively. When we align these problems with the three^[10] major periods in human history: the traditional period,^[11] the Modern period,^[12] and Postmodernism,^[13] it is obvious that each of these periods poured more of its energies into, and did better by, one of life’s inescapable problems than did the other two. Specifically, Modernity gave us our view of nature,^[14] Postmodernism is tackling social injustices more resolutely than people previously did. This leaves worldviews – metaphysics as dis­tinct from cosmology, which restricts itself to the empirical uni­verse. In Iqbal’s view it is our ancestors, whose accomplishments on that front have not been improved upon.^[15] Let us shuffle the historical sequence of the periods and proceed topically – from nature, through society, to the Big Picture, tying each topic to the period that did best by it. Modern first, then Postmodernism, leaving the traditional period for last.

Cosmological Achievements of Modernity

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Europe stumbled on a new way of knowing that we refer to as the scientific method. It centres in the controlled experiment and has given us modern science^[16] which adds proof to generic science by its controlled experiment. True hypotheses can be separated from false ones, and brick by brick an edifice has been erected from those proven truths. We commonly call that edifice the scientific worldview, but scientific cosmology is more precise because of the ambiguity of the word world. Iqbal would argue that the scientific edifice is a worldview only for those who assume that science can in principle take in all that exists. The scientific cosmology is so much a part of the air we breathe that it is hardly necessary to describe it.^[17] Taught from primary schools onward, this story is so familiar that further details would only clutter things.

Tradition’s Cosmological Shortcomings

That this scientific cosmology retires traditional ones with their six days of creation and the like goes without saying. Who can possi­bly question that when the scientific cosmology has landed people on the moon?^[18] And there is another point. There is a naturalism in Taoism, Zen Buddhism, Islamic Cosmological doctrines and tribal outlooks that in its own way rivals science’s calculative cosmology, but Iqbal would argue that it is the naturalism of the artist, the poet, and the nature lover^[19] not that of Galileo and Bacon. For present purposes, aesthetics is irrelevant. Modern cosmology derives from laboratory experiments, not landscape paintings.

Postmodernism’s Cosmological Shortcomings

With traditional cosmology out of the running, the question turns to Postmodernism. Because science is cumulative, it follows as a matter of course that the cosmology we have in the twenty-first century is an improvement over what we had in the middle of the twentieth, which on my timeline is when modernity phased into Postmodernity. But Iqbal would argue that the refinements that postmodern scientists (it is well to say postmodern physics here) have achieved have not affected life to anything like the degree that postmodern social thrusts have, so the social Oscar is the one Postmodernists are most entitled to.^[20] Be that as it may, in Iqbal’s view Postmodernism’s discoveries (unlike modern discoveries in physics – the laws of gravity, thermodynamics, electromagnetism, relativity theory, and quantum mechanics, which continue to be used to make space shuttles fly and to help us understand how hot electrons behave in semiconductors) have concerned details and exotica.^[21]

Outranking the foregoing reason for not giving the cosmological Oscar to Postmodernism is the fact that the noisiest postmodernists have called into question the very notion of truth by turning claims to truth into little more than power plays.^[22] This relativizes science’s assertions radically and rules out even the possibility of its closing in on the nature of nature.^[23] As there are no neutral standards by which to judge these paradigms, Kuhn’s thesis (if unnuanced) leads to relativism among paradigms that places Hottentot science on a par with Newton’s. Kuhn himself phrased his thesis carefully enough to parry such relativism, but even taken at its best, it pro­vides no way that science could get to the bottom of things. This demotes the whole enterprise of science as understood by Modernity, and in doing so provides a strong supporting reason for not giving Postmodernism the cosmological prize. It does better with social issues so now we discuss Postmodernism’s achievements on the social front.

Postmodernism’s Fairness Revolution

The magic word of Postmodernism is society. This is not surprising. With the belief that there is nothing beyond our present world, nature and society are all that remain, and of the two, nature has become the province of specialists.^[24] This leaves society as the domain that presses on us directly and the one in which there is some prospect of our making a difference. Iqbal forcefully advocated the changes and changes are occurring.^[25] A quick rehearsal of some changes that have occurred in a single lifetime makes it clear that social injustices are being recognized and addressed more earnestly today than they were by our ancestors.^[26]

Tradition’s Social Shortcomings

These signs of progress acquire additional life when they are set against the unconcern of earlier times regarding such matters. There is no reason to think that traditional peoples were more callous than we are. Iqbal would argue that on the whole they saw their obligations as extending no further than to members of their primary communi­ties: Buddhism’s dana (gifts), Jesus’ “cup of water given in my name,”. Islam’s “pure due” and their likes. Encountered face-to-face, the hungry were fed, the naked were clothed, and widows and orphans were provided for as means allowed, but there human obligations ended. Injustices that were built into institutions (if such injustices were even recognized) were not human beings’ responsibility.^[27]

Modernity changed this attitude. Accelerating travel and trade brought encounters between peoples whose societal structures were very different from one another, and these differences showed that such institutions were not like natural laws after all; they were humanly devised and could therefore be critiqued. The French Revolution put this prospect to a historic test; scrapping the divine right of kings, it set out to create a society built on liberty, equality, and fraternity. In Iqbal’s view the experiment failed and the backlash was immediate, but its premise – that societies are malleable – survived.

Modernity’s Social Shortcomings

Modernity deserves credit for that discovery, and (if we wished) we might excuse it for its poor handling of its discovery on grounds that it was working with a new idea. The record itself, however, is by Postmodern standards, deplorable. Iqbal would argue that under the pretext of shoul­dering “the white man’s burden” to minister to “lesser breeds without the law”, it ensconced colonialism, which raped Asia and Africa, hit its nadir in the Opium Wars of 1841-42, and ended by subjecting the entire civilized world to Western domination^.[28]

Having dealt with nature and society, let us turn now to the third inescapable issue that human beings must face: the Big Picture.

Modernity’s Metaphysical Shortcomings

Iqbal would argue that Modernity was metaphysically sloppy. Ravished by science’s accom­plishments, it elevated the scientific method to “our sacral mode of knowing” (Alex Comfort), and because that mode registers nothing that is without a material component, immaterial realities at first dropped from view and then (as the position hardened) were denied existence. In the distinction registered earlier, this was metaphysics reduced to cosmology.^[29] Modernity’s Big Picture is materialism, as we noted in Iqbal’s observation earlier, or (in its more plausible version) naturalism, which acknowledges that there are immaterial things – thoughts and feelings, for example – while insisting that those things are totally dependent on matter. Iqbal would argue that both versions are stunted when compared with the traditional outlook. It is important to understand that neither materialism nor naturalism is required by anything science has discovered in the way of actual facts. Iqbal would argue that we have slid into this smallest of metaphysical positions for psychological, not logical, reasons.

Postmodernity’s Metaphysical Shortcomings

As for Postmodernity, it sets itself against the very idea of such a thing as the Big Picture. It got off on the right foot by critiquing the truncated worldview of the Enlightenment, but from that reasonable beginning it plunged on to argue unreasonably that worldviews (often derisively referred to as grand narratives) are misguided in principle.^[30] Stated in the in-house idiom Postmodernists are fond of, worldviews “total­ize” by “marginalizing” minority viewpoints. They are oppressive in principle and should be resolutely resisted. If hardcore Postmodernism  were accurate in this charge one should stop in one’s tracks, but it has not proved that it is accurate – it merely assumes that it is accurate and rests its case on examples of oppression that, of course, are not lacking. Iqbal would argue that what has not been demonstrated is the impossibility of a worldview that builds the rights of minorities into its foundations as an essential building block. There is irony here, for the very Postmodernism that is dismissing the possibility of a comprehensive humane outlook is working toward the creation of such through its fairness revolution – its insistence that everybody be given an equal chance at the goods of life. The deeper fact, however, is that to have or not to have a worldview is not an option, for peripheral vision always conditions what we are attending to focally, and in conceptual “seeing” the periphery has no cut off. The only choice we have is to be consciously aware of our worldviews and criticize them where they need criticizing, or let them work on us unnoticed and acquiesce to living unexamined lives.

Tradition’s Metaphysical Excellence

Neither Modernity nor Postmodernism handled the metaphysical problem well. It is, of course, no proof that Tradition handled it better. But there is a unanimous view. We have mentioned earlier that a common metaphysical “spine” underlies the differences in the theologies of the world’s great religions. If mainline and polemical Postmodernism were to recede, the obsession with life’s social dimension that they saddled us with would relax and we would find ourselves able to think ontologically again and see what Iqbal has emphasized in his writings time and again; the universality of the traditional worldview. An important consequence of this would be that we would then perceive how much religious outlooks have in common. For one thing, they all situate the manifest, visible world within a larger, invisible whole.^[31] The further unanimous claim of religious cosmologies, though, finds no echo in science, for (being a value judgment) it is beyond science’s reach. Not only is the invisible real; regions of it are more real and of greater worth than the visible, material world.

This is a very basic insight that informs Iqbal’s worldview. He is on the side of Tradition in this regard. The inclusive, presiding paradigm for Tradition is the Great Chain of Being, com­posed of links ranging in hierarchical order from meagre existents up to the ens perfectissimum; and the foremost student of that concept, Arthur Lovejoy, reported that “most educated persons everywhere accepted [it] without question down to late in the eighteenth century”.^[32] To that endorsement, Ken Wilber has added that the Great Chain of Being is “so overwhelmingly widespread...that it is either the single greatest intellectual error ever to appear in humankind’s history – an error so colossal­ly widespread as to literally stagger the mind – or it is the single most accurate reflection of reality yet to appear.”^[33]

An obvious moral emerges from what has been said. If we run a strainer through our past to lift from each of its three peri­ods the gold it contains and let its dross sink back into the sands of history what do we get? In the light of Iqbal’s views Modernity’s gold i.e. science is certain to figure importantly in the third millennium, and Postmodernity’s focus on jus­tice likewise stands a good chance of continuing. It is the worldview of Tradition that is in jeopardy and must be rehabilitated if it is to survive. Being more specific, the present challenge to the Muslim world is reversed in the sense that it must learn to be tolerant of a world which threatens its very existence without losing its identity and the secularized West must learn the very difficult lesson that its Modern and Postmodern understanding of man and the world is not universal. Moreover, since religion does not acknowledge any principles higher than its own, not even the survival of the human race, if asked to establish peace, it will do so in its own way or not at all.

*****

There is an other way in which Iqbal achieves that grand synthesis and that overarching view, some times with greater success. It is through the medium of his poetically mediated thought in his Urdu and Persian poetry which transmits the ethos in a captivating manner. Sapiential poetry or wisdom poetry is a means and a vehicle for the expression of truth and it complements logic in that it deals with forms of knowledge which are not accessible to the unaided logical faculties of man.

It is, therefore, significant and not a matter of mere coincidence that the words which denote poetry or poetic activity in all the major Islamic languages^[34] and the word which denotes consciousness (shu‘ur) share the common triliteral verbal root sh.‘.r which means ‘to become aware of’, ‘to be conscious of’. It perfectly speaks for the conceptual underpinning of poetry in the Islamic civilization.

The most central and total manifestation of the Divine Consciousness, a self-disclosure (tajalli) of the Divine Attribute of Knowledge (‘ilm), is the human intelligence. In the same way, it is only man, which has the gift of speech because he alone among earthly creatures is made in the image of God^[35] in a direct and integral manner. It is the summit and perfection of human intelligence and, therefore, of human consciousness.  Speech is as it were the immaterial, though sensory, body of our will and our understanding.^[36] Similarly, human speech or human language attains to its full plenitude or perfect deployment in poetry. If the summit and perfection of human consciousness is human language, then poetry or the poetic art could likewise be termed as the summit and perfection of human language. This necessarily entails that, not only in the Islamic traditional perspective but also in the traditional oriental theories of art, poetry is a conscious activity never separated from the Intellect.

Let us return to the question of the worldview, the big picture and the presiding paradigm for Tradition of a hierarchical view of reality. Already at the opening of the last century, when Postmodernism had not yet emerged on the scene, Yeats was warning that things were falling apart, that the centre didn’t hold. Gertrude Stein followed him by noting that “in the twentieth century nothing is in agreement with anything else”, and Ezra Pound saw man as “hurling himself at indomitable chaos” – the most durable line from the play Green Pastures has been, “Everything that’s tied down is coming loose”. T. S. Eliot found “The Wasteland” and “The Hollow Men” as appropriate metaphors for the outward and the inward aspects of our predicament.[37] Poetry of first magnitude or great poetry itself works as a bridge and with inevitable particularities always carries an aspect of universality. It brings you face to face with questions that are truly perennial human questions and not just Muslim or Christian or Hindu questions; who am I? What does it mean to be human? Where have I come from? Where am I going? What is this universe and how am I related to it? Great poetry may seem grounded in a certain particular idiom or a specific universe of discourse but it always opens out onto the universal. Let me illustrate it with reference to T. S. Eliot whom I have just mentioned. Ash Wednesday derives its title from the Catholic ritual of the same name– a ritual that devout Catholics still do in Pakistan as well as some of their counterparts among the Muslim ascetics. But the poem speaks to a universal human question, the essential question of the transience of human life and its destiny beyond the grave.

Iqbal, though standing as an outpost of the sensibility and the worldview which the great masters^[38] of traditional Islamic literature adhered to, was at the same time a man of the modern age.^[39] His way of handling the big picture is interesting. The idea of a graded universe, of the multiple levels of reality – visible, invisible and beyond – run through all of his poetry but it becomes very prominent when it comes to his magisterial Persian magnum opus Javid Nama which in its epic sweep not only encompasses the multiple levels of being but also works across worldviews, civilizations and epochs.  To catch glimpse of it we can have a look at the staggering variety of figures that appear in the Javid Nama – the Zaratustra, ancient Persian sage, the Indian sage, Buddha, Christ, Rumi, Tosltoi, Afghani, Saeed Halim,  Ancient gods, Pharaoh, Kichtner, Mahdi Sudani, the Maritian sage, Hallaj, Ghalib and Tahira, Iblis, Nietzhe, Ali Hamadani, Ghani, Abdali, Tipu. At the face of it Javid Nama looks like an Islamic universe of discourse but always opens out onto the universal through these characters.

Let us look at a more specific example. In Javid Nama when Zinda – Rud reaches the sphere of Mars, he meets a Maritian sage. In the five pages that follow in the form of a dialogue, Iqbal talks about subjects ranging from the human vocation, epistemology, relationship between the divine and the human, social and economic justice and the ecological problem always keeping an eye on the Big Picture and with reference to the multicultural dimension.

Rumi

I am of the skies, my companion is of the earth,

intoxicated, yet he has not tasted the veins of the vine;

a man intrepid, his name is Zinda‑Rud,

his drunkenness derived from contemplating existence.

We who have chanced thus upon your city

are in the world, yet free from the world.

In our quest for ever new apparitions

be our companion on the road for a little time.

The Martian Sage

These are the environs of Marghadin of Barkhiya —

Barkhiya is the name of our ancestor.

Farzmarz, the tempter to all evil,

came up to Barkhiya once in Paradise;

‘How can you remain here content?’ he cried.

‘For many ages you have been dominated by God.

There is a world far better than your abode,

compared with which Paradise itself is but a moment’s springtide;

that world is loftier than all other worlds,

that world is more sublime than spacelessness.

God Himself knows nothing of that world;

I have never seen a world more free.

God does not interfere in its ordering,

it has no Book, no Prophet, no Gabriel,

no circumambulations, no prostrations there,

no prayers, no thanksgivings.’

Barkhiya replied, ‘Depart, you sorcerer,

pour your own image upon that world!’

Since our ancestor did not succumb to his guile

God entrusted to us another world.

So enter this God‑given kingdom;

behold Marghadin and its laws and customs.

Tour of the City of Marghadin

Marghadin and those lofty edifices —

what can I say of that noble city?

Its inhabitants sweet of speech as honey,

comely their faces, gentle their manners, simple their apparel,

their thoughts innocent of the burning fever of gain,

they were intimate with the secrets of the sun’s alchemy;

who so of them desires silver or gold gathers it from light,

even as we gather salt from the briny sea.

The aim of science and art there is service,

no one weighs work done against gold;

no one is even acquainted with dinars and dirhams,

these idols may not enter the sanctuary.

The demon of the machine has no power over nature,

the skies are not blackened by smoke;

the lamp of the hard‑toiling farmer is always bright,

he is secure from the plundering of the landlords,

his tillage is not a struggle for water,

his harvest is his own, no other shares in it.

In that world there are no armies, no squadrons,

none gains his livelihood by killing and murder;

In Marghadin no pen wins lustre

from inscribing and disseminating lies;

in the market places there is no clamour of the workless,

no whining of beggars afflicts the ear.

The Martian Sage

No one here is a mendicant or destitute,

slave and master, ruler and ruled, here are none.

Zinda–Rud

Mendicant and destitute are so by God’s decree,

by God’s decree ruler and ruled;

none but God is the creator of destiny

and against destiny human design is powerless.

The Martian Sage

If your heart bleeds on account of one destiny,

petition God to decree another destiny;

if you pray for a new destiny, that is lawful,

seeing that God’s destinies are infinite.

Earthlings have gambled away the coin of selfhood,

not comprehending the subtle meaning of destiny;

its subtlety is contained in a single phrase —

‘If you transform yourself, it too will be transformed.’

Be dust, and fate will give you the winds;

be a stone, and it will hurl you against glass.

Are you a dew‑drop? Your destiny is to perish;

are you an ocean? Your destiny is to endure.

Every moment you are fashioning new Lats and Manats;

inconstant one, do you look for constancy from idols?

So long as your faith is to accord not with your self

the world of your thoughts is your prison;

toil without treasure such is destiny;

treasure without toil such is destiny!

If this is the foundation of faith, ignorant fellow,

then the needy will become still more in need.

Woe to that religion which lulls you to sleep

and still holds you in sleep profound!

Is this religion, or magic and enchantment?

Is this religion, or a grain of opium?

Do you know whence comes the penetrating nature,

whence came this houri into your tenement of clay?

Do you know whence comes the sages’ power of thought,

whence the potency of prayer in God’s interlocutors?

Do you know whence came this heart, and its visitations,

whence these arts, these miracles?

Do you have fire of speech? That comes not from you;

do you have flame of action? That comes not from you.

All this is an overflow of the springtime of nature,

nature which derives from nature’s Creator.

What is life? A mine of gems;

you are the trustee, its owner is Another.

A radiant nature glorifies the man of God,

to serve all God’s creatures, that is his aim —

Service belongs to the wont and way of prophethood;

to seek a reward for service is mere commerce.

Even so this wind, earth, cloud, field,

orchard, meadow, palace, street, stones, bricks —

you who say, ‘Our property is of ourselves’,

ignorant one, all this belongs to God.

If you regard God’s earth as your own,

then what means the verse, Work not corruption?

Adam’s sons have given their hearts to Iblis,

and from Iblis I have seen only corruption.

None should convert a trust to his own use;

blessed is he who renders God’s property up to God.

You have carried off what does not belong to you;

my soul sorrows for so unworthy a deed.

If you own a thing, that is meet and right,

but if you do not, say yourself, how is that proper?

Return to God the property of God

so that you may loose the knot of your involvement;

for why is there poverty and want under heaven’s arch?

Because you say what is the Lord’s belongs to you.

The man who has not leaped forth from water and clay

has shattered his own glass with his own stone.

You who cannot tell goal from path,

the value of every thing is measured by the regard.

So long as the pearl is your property, it is a pearl,

otherwise it is a pebble, worth less than a farthing.

View the world otherwise, and it will become other,

this earth and heaven will be transformed.

****

Notes And References