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The
Human Ego – His Freedom and Immortality (continued)
In modern times the line
of argument for personal immortality is on the whole ethical. But ethical arguments,
such as that of Kant, and the modern revisions of his arguments, depend on a
kind of faith in the fulfilment of the claims of justice, or in the irreplaceable
and unique work of man as an individual pursuer of infinite ideals. With Kant
immortality is beyond the scope of speculative reason; it is a postulate of
practical reason, an axiom of man’s moral consciousness. Man demands and
pursues the supreme good which comprises both virtue and happiness. But virtue
and happiness, duty and inclination, are, according to Kant, heterogeneous notions.
Their unity cannot be achieved within the narrow span of the pursuer’s
life in this sensible world. We are, therefore, driven to postulate immortal
life for the person’s progressive completion of the unity of the mutually
exclusive notions of virtue and happiness, and the existence of God eventually
to effectuate this confluence. It is not clear, however, why the consummation
of virtue and happiness should take infinite time, and how God can effectuate
the confluence between mutually exclusive notions. This inconclusiveness of
metaphysical arguments has led many thinkers to confine themselves to meeting
the objections of modern Materialism which rejects immortality, holding that
consciousness is merely a function of the brain, and therefore ceases with the
cessation of the brain-process. William James thinks that this objection to
immortality is valid only if the function in question is taken to be productive.40
The mere fact that certain mental changes vary concomitantly with certain bodily
changes, does not warrant the inference that mental changes are produced by
bodily changes. The function is not necessarily productive; it may be permissive
or transmissive like the function of the trigger of a crossbow or that of a
reflecting lens.41 This view which suggests that our inner life is
due to the operation in us of a kind of transcendental mechanism of consciousness,
somehow choosing a physical medium for a short period of sport, does not give
us any assurance of the continuance of the content of our actual experience.
I have already indicated in these lectures the proper way to meet Materialism.42
Science must necessarily select for study certain specific aspects of Reality
only and exclude others. It is pure dogmatism on the part of science to claim
that the aspects of Reality selected by it are the only aspects to be studied.
No doubt man has a spatial aspect; but this is not the only aspect of man. There
are other aspects of man, such as evaluation, the unitary character of purposive
experience, and the pursuit of truth which science must necessarily exclude
from its study, and the understanding of which requires categories other than
those employed by science.43
There is, however, in the
history of modern thought one positive view of immortality - I mean Nietzsche’s
doctrine of Eternal Recurrence.44 This view deserves some consideration,
not only because Nietzsche has maintained it with a prophetical fervour, but
also because it reveals a real tendency in the modern mind. The idea occurred
to several minds about the time when it came to Nietzsche like a poetic inspiration,
and the germs of its are also found in Herbert Spencer.45 It was
really the power of the idea rather than its logical demonstration that appealed
to this modern prophet. This, in itself, is some evidence of the fact that positive
views of ultimate things are the work rather of Inspiration than Metaphysics.
However, Nietzsche has given his doctrine the form of a reasoned out theory,
and as such I think we are entitled to examine it. The doctrine proceeds on
the assumption that the quantity of energy in the universe is constant and consequently
finite. Space is only a subjective form; there is no meaning in saying that
the world is in space in the sense that it is situated in an absolute empty
void. In his view of time, however, Nietzsche parts company with Kant and Schopenhauer.
Time is not a subjective form; it is a real and infinite process which can be
conceived only as ‘Periodic’.46 Thus it is clear that there
can be no dissipation of energy in an infinite empty space. The centres of this
energy are limited in number, and their combination perfectly calculable. There
is no beginning or end of this ever-active energy, no equilibrium, no first
or last change. Since time is infinite, therefore all possible combinations
of energy-centres have already been exhausted. There is no new happening in
the universe; whatever happens now has happened before an infinite number of
times, and will continue to happen an infinite number of times in the future.
On Nietzsche’s view the order of happenings in the universe must be fixed
and unalterable; for since an infinite time has passed, the energy-centres must
have, by this time, formed certain definite modes of behaviour. The very word
‘Recurrence’ implies this fixity. Further, we must conclude that a
combination of energy-centres which has once taken place must always return;
otherwise there would be no guarantee for the return even of the superman.
‘Everything has returned:
Sirius and the spider, and thy thoughts at this moment and this last thought
of thine that all things will return . . . . Fellow-man! your whole life, like
a sand-glass, will always be reversed, and will ever run out again. This ring
in which you are but a gain will glitter afresh for ever.’47
Such is Nietzsche’s
Eternal Recurrence. It is only a more rigid kind of mechanism, based not on
an ascertained fact but only on a working hypothesis of science. Nor does Nietzsche
seriously grapple with the question of time. He takes it objectively and regards
it merely as an infinite series of events returning to itself over and over
again. Now time, regarded as a perpetual circular movement, makes immortality
absolutely intolerable. Nietzsche himself feels this, and describes his doctrine,
not as one of immortality, but rather as a view of life which would make immortality
endurable.48 And what makes immortality bearable, according to Nietzsche?
It is the expectation that a recurrence of the combination of energy-centres
which constitutes my personal existence is a necessary factor in the birth of
that ideal combination which he calls ‘superman’. But the superman
has been an infinite number of times before. His birth is inevitable; how can
the prospect give me any aspiration? We can aspire only for what is absolutely
new, and the absolutely new is unthinkable on Nietzsche’s view which is
nothing more than a Fatalism worse than the one summed up in the word Qismat.
Such a doctrine, far from keying up the human organism for the fight of life,
tends to destroy its action-tendencies and relaxes the tension of the ego.49
Passing now to the teaching
of the Qur’南. The Quranic view of the destiny of man is partly ethical,
partly biological. I say partly biological because the Qur’南 makes in
this connexion certain statements of a biological nature which we cannot understand
without a deeper insight into the nature of life. It mentions, for instance,
the fact of Barzakh50 - a state, perhaps of some kind of suspense
between Death and Resurrection. Resurrection, too, appears to have been differently
conceived. The Qur’南 does not base its possibility, like Christianity,
on the evidence of the actual resurrection of an historic person. It seems to
take and argue resurrection as a universal phenomenon of life, in some sense,
true even of birds and animals (6:38).
Before, however, we take
the details of the Quranic doctrine of personal immortality we must note three
things which are perfectly clear from the Qur’南 and regarding which there
is, or ought to be, no difference of opinion:
(i) That the ego has a
beginning in time, and did not pre-exist its emergence in the spatio-temporal
order. This is clear from the verse which I cited a few minutes ago.51
(ii) That according to
the Quranic view, there is no possibility of return to this earth. This is clear
from the following verses:
‘When death overtaketh
one of them, he saith, "Lord! send me back again, that I may do the good
that I have left undone!" By no means These are the very words which he
shall speak. But behind them is a barrier (Barzakh), until the day when
they shall be raised again’ (23:99-100).
‘And by the moon when
at her full, that from state to state shall ye be surely carried onward’
(84:18-19).
‘The germs of life
- Is it ye who create them? Or are We their Creator? It is We Who have decreed
that death should be among you; yet We are not thereby hindered from replacing
you with others, your likes, or from creating you again in forms which ye know
not!’ (56:58-61).
(iii) That finitude is
not a misfortune:
‘Verily there is none
in the heavens and in the earth but shall approach the God of Mercy as a servant.
He hath taken note of them and numbered them with exact numbering: and each
of them shall come to Him on the Day of Resurrection as a single individual’
(19:93-95).52
This is a very important
point and must be properly understood with a view to secure a clear insight
into the Islamic theory of salvation. It is with the irreplaceable singleness
of his idividuality that the finite ego will approach the infinite ego to see
for himself the consequences of his past action and to judge the possibilities
of his future.
‘And every man’s
fate have We fastened about his neck: and on the Day of Resurrection will We
bring forthwith to him a book which shall be proffered to him wide open: "Read
thy book: there needeth none but thyself to make out an account against thee
this day" (17:13-14).
Whatever may be the final
fate of man it does not mean the loss of individuality. The Qur’南 does
not contemplate complete liberation from finitude as the highest state of human
bliss. The ‘unceasing reward’53 of man consists in his
gradual growth in self-possession, in uniqueness, and intensity of his activity
as an ego. Even the scene of ‘Universal Destruction’ immediately preceding
the Day of Judgement54 cannot affect the perfect calm of a full-grown
ego:
‘And there shall be
a blast on the trumpet, and all who are in the heavens and all who are in the
earth shall faint away, save those in whose case God wills otherwise’ (39:68).55
Who can be the subject
of this exception but those in whom the ego has reached the very highest point
of intensity? And the climax of this development is reached when the ego is
able to retain full self-possession, even in the case of a direct contact with
the all-embracing Ego. As the Qur’南 says of the Prophet’s vision
of the Ultimate Ego:
‘His eye turned not
aside, nor did it wander’ (53:17).
This is the ideal of perfect
manhood in Islam. Nowhere has it found a better literary expression than in
a Persian verse which speaks of the Holy Prophet’s experience of Divine
illumination:
‘Moses fainted away
by a mere surface illumination of Reality. Thou seest the very substance of
Reality with a smile!’56
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Date/Time Last Modified: 6/18/2002 8:03:27 AM
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