common life, the universal experience. It is by the simplest
metaphors, by constant appeals to needs, passions, relations which
all men understand--the bridegroom and bride, the guru and
disciple, the pilgrim, the farmer, the migrant bird-- that he
drives home his intense conviction of the reality of the soul's
intercourse with the Transcendent. There are in his universe no
fences between the "natural" and "supernatural" worlds; everything
is a part of the creative Play of God, and therefore--even in its
humblest details--capable of revealing the Player's mind.

This willing acceptance of the here-and-now as a means of
representing supernal realities is a trait common to the greatest
mystics. For them, when they have achieved at last the true
theopathetic state, all aspects of the universe possess equal
authority as sacramental declarations of the Presence of God; and
their fearless employment of homely and physical symbols--often
startling and even revolting to the unaccustomed taste--is in
direct proportion to the exaltation of their spiritual life. The
works of the great Sûfîs, and amongst the Christians of Jacopone
da Todì, Ruysbroeck, Boehme, abound in illustrations of this law.
Therefore we must not be surprised to find in Kabîr's songs--his
desperate attempts to communicate his ecstasy and persuade other
men to share it--a constant juxtaposition of concrete and
metaphysical language; swift alternations between the most
intensely anthropomorphic, the most subtly philosophical, ways of
apprehending man's communion with the Divine. The need for this
alternation, and its entire naturalness for the mind which
employs it, is rooted in his concept, or vision, of the Nature of
God; and unless we make some attempt to grasp this, we shall not
go far in our understanding of his poems.