From the Facticity of Phenomenality to the Mystic Absolute: Variations of Truth in Kabir’s Poetry

Kabir is a sixteenth century mystic-poet whose words permeate the socio-cultural life of Indian subcontinent, bringing the dimension of the beyond to the everyday life of ordinary people. This study, through a close textual analysis of select poems of Kabir, seeks to map the variations of “truth” in his poetry and contends that there are three phases in the poet’s spiritual seeking-1. the stage of complete negation of everything that one finds to be a lie and seeing the phenomenal world exactly the way it is without any distortions from the mind; 2. the pain of not experiencing the ultimate truth and the longing for it; 3. experience of the transcendent mystic truth. By juxtaposing an analysis of poems that illustrate these three variations of truth, this study argues that even as truth takes on different meanings in his poetry, there is a common factor to the “different truths” of Kabir-a close and intense attention to what one perceives to be true at a given moment.