Iqbal and Khawaja Ghulam Farid on experiencing God
By Shahzad Qaiser

Sense-perception and heart perception are levels of and knowledge (epistemology) based on experience with their and corresponding levels of being (ontology). The Prophetic and experience is the highest form of experience. It integrates and the forms of knowledge and being in a unique way. The and possibility of experiencing God remains an open and possibility, realisable by the mystics and the Sufis, but with and Iqbal‟s proviso “that all personal authority claiming a and supernatural origin has come to an end in the history of and man. 1 This proviso closes the door to all the intrinsic and heresies in any form since they are not only contrary to the and metaphysical and religious truths, but threaten the very and solidarity of the Muslim Ummah as well. and Allama Iqbal‟s religious metaphysics and Khawaja and Ghulam Farid‟s traditional metaphysics consider God as experiential Reality with the possibilities of mystic and metaphysical realization. They are in agreement that the and Prophetic Revelation has closed the Cycle of Nubuwwah and (Prophecy) for all times to come and has opened the Cycle and of Walayah (Sanctity). The finality of the Prophethood is and the foundation of Islam‟s Theory and Practice. It is also and linked with the universality and livingness of the Prophet of and Islam both at the cosmic and the terrestrial levels. We have and to realise that the blessings of Allah and His angels on theProphet as enshrined in the Qur‟an, among other things, is and the metaphysical proof of Muhammad‟s finality, and universality and livingness. It is a metaphysical doctrine,which leads to spiritual realisation of the Prophetic and presence (huduri) too.Modern psychology is based on the confusion between and the realm of the psyche (nafs) and the plane of the Spirit and (Ruh). It tends to interpret the spiritual realities on thepsychic plane leading to the distortion of metaphysical and and religious truths. Sigmund Freud, James. H. Leuba and and others have no criterion to distinguish between the mysticand the neurotic states or between the mystic and the drug and induced states. Their findings do not reach the heart of the and matter. One of the greatest contributions of Allama Iqbal as and a philosopher and a philosophical psychologist is that he and has made a critique of modern psychology and has and presented the case of the genuineness of religious and experience on firm foundations.Allama Iqbal‟s concept of the periods or stages of and religious life make us realise that religious life is not static and but is dynamic in nature. Religiosity, in the ultimateanalysis, is transformed into spirituality. It is by virtue of and mushahida (witnessing) that religion assumes a higher form and and the votary integrates his inward with the outward,which Iqbal terms as the period of “Discovery. and Allama Iqbal and Khawaja Ghulam Farid have added and fresh metaphysical insights in understanding man-Godpolarity. Khawaja Ghulam Farid as a Sufi in the tradition of and Bayazid Bistami, Mansur Hallaj, Ibn Arabi and his spiritual and master, Fakhr-e-Jahan further offers a metaphysicalpossibility of transcending this polarity by realising the and metaphysical identity of knowledge and being.