58 Spirituality Studies 9-1 Spring 2023 The tone in these lines is very matter-of-fact. Although the poet feels that he is the only “dimwit”, there is no attempt to become like others who appear to be “smart”. Rather, he states that he was not born like this and it is the quaint path of “Bhakti” that made him so. The deep exploration of one’s own subjectivity that the poet sets out to, does not give any room for a reversal of path. Despite not knowing what lies ahead, the devotee has to tread the path even as others live their lives without even a thought about the dimension of the beyond. This nebulous stage where all the certainties about the truth gets unsettled is an inevitable phase in the spiritual journey of an ardent seeker. In the poems that questioned the falsehood of a socially conditioned quotidian life, the poetic voice is affirmative about what is not “true”. But Kabir’s poems that detail the pangs of seeking are about the pain of not realising the truth. Here, he is less concerned about the falsehood that vast majority of the society invests their lives in; on the contrary, the poet compares his plight with the seeming confidence of others and is perplexed by their casual attitude. The realisation of the truth about the facticity of phenomenality evolves into confusion about the ultimate certitude of being in these poems. 4 Poetry of the Mystic Awe In Kabir’s poetry, extreme vulnerability is a phase that the saint goes through before settling into the boundless experience of spiritual oneness. In the poems that describe the clarity of anchoring one’s being in the spaciousness of the divine dimension; we find the poet much more affirmative about his perception of truth. There is a clinical precision about these poems in the way they state the suchness of existence. They are the words emanating from a human consciousness that has seen the vacuity of the phenomenal world and has gone through the turmoil of a mind troubled by the ignorance of the transcendent Absolute. After going through these stages, the poetic voice in these poems is affirmatively stating the ultimate truth of life (Kabir 1983, 125): If you are true, a curse can’t reach you And death can’t eat you; Walking from truth to truth, What can destroy you? “Truth” referred to in this poem, is not the relative truth of the moment, but the metaphysical truth which Kabir considers to be the foundation for the phenomenal world. It is described as beyond transience and death, and one who is constantly in touch with this dimension transcends the relativity of phenomenal existence. The relative world of phenomenality as a whole is dismissed by the poet as “monstrous lie”, leaving the metaphysical oneness of life as the only truth (Kabir 2011,105). Can’t you see that Rama is the only truth, says Kabir Everything else a monstrous lie? This dismissal of the phenomenal world is the ultimate stage in a gradual evolution of truth. When the mystic calls the entire reality of the physical phenomenon a mirage, he does so, after going through a wide range of experiences that are part of the physical reality. It is the intensity of a life in the most ordinary and profane circumstances that brings out the dimension of the sacred in Kabir’s poetry. What we find here is a spiritual journey that is driven by intensity of life in a given moment which Robert Bly (2004, xvii) identifies as the very basis of Kabir’s spiritual method: “Kabir says when you do interior work, the work is not done by the method, but by intensity.” The intense attention to the vast saga of life that is played out in space and time, takes the mystic to an altogether different reality that is beyond the spatiotemporal limitations. Even after reaching the sublimity of the transcendent truth, he does not get completely withdrawn from the play of en-
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