Songs of Kabir | Page 6

by Suso,
the music heard by Rolle, the celestial perfumes which filled St.
Catherine of Siena's cell, the physical wounds felt by St. Francis and St.
Teresa. These are excessive dramatizations of the symbolism under
which the mystic tends instinctively to represent his spiritual intuition
to the surface consciousness. Here, in the special sense-perception
which he feels to be most expressive of Reality, his peculiar
idiosyncrasies come out.
Now Kabîr, as we might expect in one whose reactions to the spiritual
order were so wide and various, uses by turn all the symbols of sense.
He tells us that he has "seen without sight" the effulgence of Brahma,

tasted the divine nectar, felt the ecstatic contact of Reality, smelt the
fragrance of the heavenly flowers. But he was essentially a poet and
musician: rhythm and harmony were to him the garments of beauty and
truth. Hence in his lyrics he shows himself to be, like Richard Rolle,
above all things a musical mystic. Creation, he says again and again, is
full of music: it is music. At the heart of the Universe "white
music is blossoming": love weaves the melody, whilst renunciation
beats the time. It can be heard in the home as well as in the heavens;
discerned by the ears of common men as well as by the trained senses
of the ascetic. Moreover, the body of every man is a lyre on which
Brahma, "the source of all music," plays. Everywhere Kabîr discerns
the "Unstruck Music of the Infinite"--that celestial melody which the
angel played to St. Francis, that ghostly symphony which filled the soul
of Rolle with ecstatic joy. [Footnote: Nos. XVII, XVIII, XXXIX, XLI,
LIV, LXXVI, LXXXIII, LXXXIX, XCVII.] The one figure which he
adopts from the Hindu Pantheon and constantly uses, is that of Krishna
the Divine Flute Player. [Footnote: Nos. L, LIII, LXVIII.] He sees the
supernal music, too, in its visual embodiment, as rhythmical movement:
that mysterious dance of the universe before the face of Brahma, which
is at once an act of worship and an expression of the infinite rapture of
the Immanent God.'
Yet in this wide and rapturous vision of the universe Kabîr never loses
touch with diurnal existence, never forgets the common life. His feet
are firmly planted upon earth; his lofty and passionate apprehensions
are perpetually controlled by the activity of a sane and vigorous
intellect, by the alert commonsense so often found in persons of real
mystical genius. The constant insistence on simplicity and directness,
the hatred of all abstractions and philosophizings,[Footnote: Nos.
XXVI, XXXII, LXXVI] the ruthless criticism of external religion:
these are amongst his most marked characteristics. God is the Root
whence all manifestations, "material" and "spiritual," alike proceed;
[Footnote: Nos. LXXV, LXXVIII, LXXX, XC.] and God is the only
need of man--"happiness shall be yours when you come to the Root."
[Footnote: No. LXXX.] Hence to those who keep their eye on the "one
thing needful," denominations, creeds, ceremonies, the conclusions of
philosophy, the disciplines of asceticism, are matters of comparative
indifference. They represent merely the different angles from which the

soul may approach that simple union with Brahma which is its goal;
and are useful only in so faras they contribute to this consummation. So
thorough-going is Kabîr's eclecticism, that he seems by turns Vedântist
and Vaishnavite, Pantheist and Transcendentalist, Brâhman and Sûfî. In
the effort to tell the truth about that ineffable apprehension, so vast and
yet so near, which controls his life, he seizes and twines together--as he
might have woven together contrasting threads upon his loom--symbols
and ideas drawn from the most violent and conflicting philosophies and
faiths. All are needed, if he is ever to suggest the character of that One
whom the Upanishad called "the Sun-coloured Being who is beyond
this Darkness": as all the colours of the spectrum are needed if we
would demonstrate the simple richness of white light. In thus adapting
traditional materials to his own use he follows a method common
amongst the mystics; who seldom exhibit any special love for
originality of form. They will pour their wine into almost any vessel
that comes to hand: generally using by preference--and lifting to new
levels of beauty and significance--the religious or philosophic formulæ
current in their own day. Thus we find that some of Kabîr's finest
poems have as their subjects the commonplaces of Hindu philosophy
and religion: the Lîlâ or Sport of God, the Ocean of Bliss, the Bird of
the Soul, Mâyâ, the Hundred- petalled Lotus, and the "Formless Form."
Many, again, are soaked in Sûfî imagery and feeling. Others use as
their material the ordinary surroundings and incidents of Indian life: the
temple bells, the ceremony of the lamps, marriage, suttee, pilgrimage,
the characters of the seasons; all felt by him in