Iqbal's Peer-i-Rumi

Hazrat Molvi is Maulana Rume. Allama treasured Rumi profoundly not for his poetry based on knowledge, philosophy of universe but for his Kalam based on love (Ishq) .Otherwise Allama was also influenced and impressed with western thinkers like Nietzsche, Bergson, etc,. But got satisfying answers from Peer-i-Rumi based on certainty and not from western thinkers where he found uncertainty and pure knowledge. In a dialogue created by Allama himself in Bal-e-Jibreal,the poem titled as Peer-o-Mureed. He calls himself Mureed-i-Hindi and attributes Hazrat-e-Molvi as Peer-i-Rumi.Iqbal has amply benifitted from Masnavi Maulana Rume and termed Molvi as his lover and spiritual guide.

That is why in his different couplets,he wrote lines like:

Suhbat-e-pir-e Rume se Mujpar hua yeh Raaz Faash

…Ek Behre-Pur aashob pur asrar hai Rumi

…Zi Ashaar-r Jaludin Rumi

..Ki tu hai Nagmaye Rumi se Beniyaz abtak

No matter how logical humans became or are expected to become in future, we will always face one common question, the question that started with baba Adam himself that ‘What is the reality of existence? What position do we occupy in the schema of creation and in what relation do we stand with the creator of this infinite cosmos? The great philosophies are those that circumambulate these issues. Ghalib was perhaps also inquisitive about this world of colors when he wrote:

“sabza o gul kahan se aaye hain

Abr kya cheez ,yeh hawa kya hai”?

On referring to Rumi’s and Iqbal’s poetry, to be precise “higher poetry” one vividly finds that both try to fathom into the depths of reality. Reality of man is the theme that reverberates both in Iqbal’s as well as Rumi’s writings. The philosophy of ego “falsafai khudi”, the most influential subject surfaced by Iqbal, is in fact a modified version of Rumi’s spiritualistic interpretation of universe. Whereas Rumi believes universe is a collection of spiritual particles and identifies God as “Ruh ul Arwah”, Iqbal renames these spiritual particles as individual egos and identifies God as “Super ego”. An understanding of the emergence of the human person in evolutionary terms is to be found in Rumi as well as in Iqbal. Such an understanding relates humans to the world around them. As opposed to the monists who had discarded Neo-Platonism, Rumi describes a differentiated universe where human beings belong to both the spiritual and material dimensions:

(The one substance boiled like an egg and became the Sea

It foamed the foam became the Earth and from its spray arose the sky.

Then from the spiritual world, the human army came.

Reason was its vizier and the Soul went forth and became King)

In a famous passage in the Reconstruction, this is how Iqbal presents his view of the relation of the universe to God and of the emergence of the human ego: 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 experience is an ego. But there are degrees in the expression of ego-hood. Throughout the entire gamut of being runs the gradually rising note of ego-hood 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”. In seeking refuge in Rumi’s teachings, Allama doesn’t merely regard him as a philosopher or as a poet but sees Rumi as a spiritual master. The central role played by Maulana Rumi in “Javed Nama” vividly reflects the nature of this student-teacher relationship. The reverence for Maulana Rumi that Iqbal had is well illustrated by the couplet

“The master of Rum transmuted my base earth to gold, He has fired this puff of dust with splendour” Numerous couplets akin to this are scattered hitherto in “BaaliJibril”, “Asrar I Khudi” and “Javed Nama”, thereby reflecting in depth relation of “Peer I Rumi” and “Mureed I hindi”. The prime reason that enticed Iqbal to Rumi was because of Rumi’s unprecedented appreciation for love. For both Iqbal and Rumi the universe is but a reflection of the Eternal Beauty and love for this Beauty is such that it burns up everything, except the Beauty itself. Rumi’s diction of giving love a higher pedestal than reason fitted very well in the niche of Iqbal and provided him a firm base to establish his “philosophy of Ishq”. Thus Iqbal says:- “Ishq ki garmi se hai, Mourikaye Qayinaat” Same views are proclaimed by Rumi when he says:-

(“By love the cross becomes a throne, by it the rider the lowly mount By love the King becomes a slave and by it the dead are raised to life”) There is, of course, much more that Iqbal and Rumi have in common: their understanding of God, of the nature of revelation and of human destiny. The concept of devolution of spirit from its source as developed in Rumi’s republic finds equivalence with Iqbal’s saying that egos are deteriorated by carnal and worldly affairs. Iqbal’s “Mard I Moomin” is in fact same whom Rumi addresses as:- “madhiiee Aadam kinamash mi baram Qasiram ghar ta qayamat ba shamram”

(To the praise of the Adam whom I have mentioned I cannot do full justice to the end of time) To understand Iqbal’s nexus with Rumi one fully needs to analyse the deep parallelism that runs in thought process of both dramatis persona. This analysis forces us to believe that besides other things both of them base their teachings on Quranic dictums. Both of them see love as an “élan vital”of universe. Both of them believe in human free will and both propagate the indestructibility of human ego. The common message propagated by both of them stresses on reconstruction of religious thought based on reconstruction of human ego. Rumi and Iqbal both are messengers are renaissance and restlessness. They preach continuous motion, the motion that causes evolution of ego, to reinstate its original pedestal. Both of them provoke to take up a spiritual journey, the journey whose destination is God himself. In Rumi’s words:-

(In this way be ever exerting yourself, until your last breath do not be unoccupied for a moment)

Allama says:

Tub hi hai uss qafilaye shouq main Iqbal

Jis Qafilaye Shouq ka Salaar hai Rumi

(Adfar Shah & Amir Suhail are Columnists at Kashmir Images)

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