The spirit of philosophy is one of free inquiry. It suspects all authority. Its function is to trace the uncritical assumptions of human thought to their hiding places, and in this pursuit it may finally end in denial or a frank admission of the incapacity of pure reason to reach the Ultimate Reality. The essence of religion, on the other hand, (is generally considered) is faith; and faith, like the bird, sees its 'trackless way' unattended by intellect which, in the words of the great mystic poet of Islam, 'only waylays the living heart of man and robs it of the invisible off wealth of life that lies within'.

Yet (although almost always overlooked, or underestimated by the proponents of the so called rational school) it cannot be denied that faith is more than a mere feeling. It has something like a cognitive content, and the existence of rival parties - scholastic and mystics - in the history of religion shows that this idea is a vital element in religion.

Now, since the transformation and guidance of man's inner and outer life is the essential aim of religion, it is obvious that the general truths which it embodies must not remain unsettled. No one would hazard action on the basis of a doubtful principle of conduct. Indeed, in view of its function, religion stands in greater need of a rational foundation of its ultimate principles than even the dogmas of science. Science may ignore a rational metaphysics; indeed, it has ignored it so far. Religion can hardly afford to ignore the search for a reconciliation of the oppositions of experience and a justification of the environment in which humanity finds itself. That is why Professor Whitehead has acutely remarked that 'the ages of faith are the ages of rationalism'.

But to rationalize faith is not to admit the superiority of philosophy over religion. Philosophy, no doubt, has jurisdiction to judge religion, but what is to be judged is of such a nature that it will not submit to the jurisidction of phisloophy except on its own terms. While sitting in judgement on religion, philosophy cannot give religion an inferior place among its data. Religion is not a departmental affair; it is neither mere thought, not mere feeling, nor mere action; it is an expression of the whole man.

Nor is there any reason to suppose that thought and intuition are essentially opposed to each other. They spring up from the same root and compliment each other. The one grasps Reality piecemeal, the other grasps it in its wholeness. The one fixes its gaze on the eternal, the other on the temporal aspect of Reality. Both seek visions of the same Reality which reveals itself to them in cordance with their function in life. In fact, intuition, as Bergson rightly says, is only a higher kind of intellect.

There is no doubt that the treatment of religious experience, as a source of Divine knowledge, is historically prior to the treatment of other regions of human experience for the same purpose.... We must not, however, regard it as a mysterious special faculty; it is rather a mode of dealing with Reality, in which sensation, in the phisiological sense of the word, does not play any part. Yet the vista of experience thus opened to us is as real and concrete as any other experience. To describe it psychic, mystical or supernatural does not detract from its value as experience. To the primitive man all experience was supernatural. Prompted by the immediate necessities of life he was driven to interpret his experiences, and out of this interpretation gradually emerged 'Nature' in our sense of the word. The total-Reality, which enters our awareness and appears on interpretation as an empirical fact, has other ways of invading our conciousness and offers further opportunities of interpretation. The revealed and mystic literature of mankind bears ample testimony to the fact that religious experience has been too enduring and dominant in the history of mankind to be rejected as mere illusion.

There seems to be no reason, then, to accept the normal level of human experience as fact and reject its other levels as mystical and emotional. The facts of religious experience are facts among other facts of human experience and, in the capacity of yeilding knowledge by interpretation, one fact is as good as another. Nor is there anything irreverent in critically examining this region of human experience. The Prophet of Islam was the first critical observer of psychic phenomena. Bukhari and other traditionalists have given us a full account of his observation of the psychic jewish youth, Ibn-i-Sayyad, whose ecstatic moods attracted the Prophet's notice.

All that I can do is to offer a few general observations only on the main characteristics of mystic experience:

1. The first point to note is the immediacy of this experience. In this respect it does not differ from other levels of human experience which supply data for knowledge. All experience is immediate. As regions of normal experience are subject o interpretation of sense-data for our knowledge of the external world, so the region of mystic experience is subject to interpretation of our knowledge of God.

2. The second point is the unanalyzable wholeness of mystic experience. When I experience the table before me innumerable data of experience merge into the single experience of the table. Out of this wealth of data I select those that fall into a certain order of space and time and round them off in reference to the table. In the mystic state, however vivid and rich it may be, thought is reduced to minimum and analysis is not possible. But this difference of the mystic state from the ordinary ration conciousness does not mean discontinuance with the normal consciousness, as Professor William James erroneously thought.

3. Since the quality of mystic experience is to be directly experienced, it is obvious that it cannot be communicated. Mystic states are more like feeling than thought. The interpretation which the mystic or the Prohpet puts on the content of his religious consciousness can be conveyed to others in the form of propositions, but the content itself cannot be so transmitted. It must, however, be noted that mystic feeling, like all feeling, has a cognitive element also; and it, I believe because of this cognitive element that it lends itself to the form of idea. In fact, it is the nature of feeling to seek expression in the thought.

For the purposes of knowledge, then, the reigion of mystic experience is as real as any other region of human experience and cannot be ignored merely because it cannot be traced back to sense-perception. Nor is it possible to undo the spiritual value of the mystic state by specifying the organic conditions which appear to determine it. Even if the postulate of modern psychology as to the inter-relation of body and mind is assumed to be true, it is illogical to discredit the value of the mystic state as a revelation of truth. Psychologically speaking, all states whether their content is religious or non-religious, are organically determined. The scientific form of mind is as much organically determined as the religious. Our judgement as to the creations of genious is not at all determined or even remotely affected by what our psychologists may say regarding its organic conditions. A certain kind of temperament may be necessary condition for a certain kind of receptivity; but the antecedent condition cannot be regarded as the whole truth about the character of what is received. The truth is that the organic causation of our mental states has nothing to do with the criteria by which we judge them to be superior or inferior in point of value.

In fact, it must be said in justice to religion that it insisted on the necessity of concrete experience in religious life log before science learnt to do so. The conflict between the two is due not to the fact that the one is, and the other is not, based on concrete experience. Both seek concrete experience as a point of departure. Their conflict is due to the misapprehension that both interpret the same data of experience.

The foregoing discussion, however, is sure to raise an important question in your mind. Religious experience, I have tried to maintain, is essentially a state of feeling with a cognitive aspect, the content of which cannot be communicated to others except in the form of judgement. Now when a judgement which claims to be the interpretation of a certain region of human experience, not accessible to me, is placed before me for my assent, I am entitled to ask, what is the guarantee of its truth? Are we in possession of a test which would reveal its validity? If personal experience had been the only ground for acceptance of judgement of this kind, religion would have been the possession of a few individuals only. Happily we are in possession of tests which do not differ from those applicable to other forms of knowledge.

(Excepts from Muhammad Iqbal)

Hope to make a future post explaining more about these from his book.