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