Making of the Perfect Man

Abstract

Man alone has been described as the bearer of the Divine Trust which was granted to him by God on his own consent and which the heavens and the earth and the mountains had earlier refused to accept. Neither according to genuine sufism nor in the thought-system of Iqbal himself does this personality–denying phenomenon stand for self-mortification or asceticism. Iqbal’s emphasis on the disclosure of the inner being of man is simply aimed, as shown above, at the realization of one’s own Divine nature. Another requirement for the attainment of moral perfection is faith in, and gnostic awareness of, the existence of God. This is because in order to be assuredly stationed at the highest level of moral excellence man is to realize that he is also answerable to God Himself in the capacity of being His vicegerent on earth. It is not man who, by assimilating more and more of Divine attributes, is finally absorbed in God but rather it is God Who in a way is absorbed in him. ‘Immortality in the life hereafter’ is another postulate that is generally identified by writers on moral subjects. Iqbal has in general conceived the nature as well as importance of this one of the basic articles of Muslim faith against the context of the character of life that man lives here and now. Quranic emphasis on rebirth after death, followed by the impending system of rewards and punishments for an unending span of time, is intended for one thing to persuade human beings to perform good actions and to dissuade them from performing evil ones. Every individual, we know, continues to make choices throughout his practical life. There are various degrees of the authenticity of these choices relevant to the different levels of the refinement and sophistication of the corresponding free acts.