Rise From One State Of Being To Another

Thinketh man that he shall be thrown away as an object of no use? Was he not a mere embryo? Then he became thick blood of which God formed him and fashioned him, and made him twain, male and female. Is not He powerful enough to quicken the dead? (Kıyamet - 75: 36-40)

When attracted by the forces around him, man has the power to shape and direct them; when thwarted by them, he has the capacity to build a much vaster world in the depths of his own inner being, wherein he discovers sources of infinite joy and inspiration. Hard his lot and frail his being, like a rose-leaf, yet no form of reality is so powerful, so inspiring, and so beautiful as the spirit of man! Thus in his inmost being man, as conceived by the Qur'an, is a creative activity, an ascending spirit who, in his onward march, rises from one state of being to another:

"But Nay! I swear by the sunset's redness and by the night and its gatherings and by the moon when at her full, that from state to state shall ye be surely carried onward." (İnşikak: 84: 16-19)

Muhammad Iqbal - The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam