The Secrets of the Self

The Secrets of the Self (Asrar-i Khudi) is a philosophical poem in Persian by Muhammad Iqbal, first published in Lahore in 1915. It electrified the Muslim world with its radical message: that the Self (Khudi) is real, not illusion, and that life's purpose is to strengthen it through desire, love, and action. Drawing on Rumi, Nietzsche, and Bergson, Iqbal rejects the passive mysticism of Hafiz and Plato, arguing instead for self-affirmation and creative will. The poem is modelled on the Masnavi and weaves together philosophical argument, fables (the sheep and the tigers, the diamond and the coal, the bird and the dewdrop), and passionate invocations. This translation by the Cambridge scholar R.A. Nicholson (1920) remains the standard English rendering, preserving both the argument's force and the verse's beauty.