Iqbal revived the Sufi symbol of falcon
(a favorite of Rumi) in works such as The
Message of the East (1923) and, more prominently,
in Gabriel’s Wing
(1935). As he explained in a famous letter written to
a young intellectual soon afterwards, his purpose was
to emphasize such traits as self-respect, vision and so
on.
The symbol lends itself to further
interesting implications when applied to the field of
knowledge. Here, the philosophers (and by implication
many intellectuals) appear to be pouncing upon dead ideas
– “In fact, the various natural sciences are
like so many vultures falling on the dead body of Nature,
and each running away with a piece of its flesh,”
Iqbal says in the second lecture of the Reconstruction.
By contrast, the genuine schools
of Sufism, nourishing their souls on a wholesome experience
of life, were like falcons preying upon the prey –
“The more genuine schools of Sufism have, no doubt,
done good work in shaping and directing the evolution
of religious experience in Islam,” Iqbal says in
the preface of the Reconstruction.
In that preface, he also observes
that the contemporary mystics, “owing to their ignorance
of the modern mind”, had become “absolutely
incapable of receiving any fresh inspiration from modern
thought and experience.” In Gabriel’s
Wing, these latter-day representatives of Sufi schools
are compared with crows in the poem ‘The Rebellious
Disciples’ (immediately following the poem ‘The
Falcon’).
So, who are the “falcons”
in modern times? In the light of the preface of the Reconstruction,
it seems that the essence of the teachings of the genuine
Sufis – the “falcons” of the past –
was a living experience of the biological unity of the
humankind. In modern times, this requires “a method
physiologically less violent and psychologically more
suitable to a concrete type of mind.” Hence, Iqbal’s
“falcons” would be those who pursue such a
method.
Special
thanks to Iqbal Academy Pakistan
