Padasj General Introduction 9 realisers revelling in their description of mystical experience, such as Gorakhnath, Dharamdas and Yari, and finally of the two great Maratha saints who have also contributed to the mystical literature in Hindi, namely, Ekanath and Mahipati, the first because he was a citizen of Paithan in the Deccan which was under Mohammedan influence, as well as because he later lived at Banaras for some time in the maturity of his spiritual experience; and the second, because he settled and died at Gwalior. After the description of the varieties of mystical experience by these great saints, we shall pass on to Group II which contains the famous description by Charandas of the psychological and moral effects of God-realisation. Then, we shall proceed to Group III wherein we shall find Kabir describing the sublimity and ineffability of mystical experience in language which cannot be surpassed. Kabir is not satisfied with a mere description of spiritual experience in the ordinary terminology of the mystics, but goes on, as we shall see in Group IV, to rejoice in his description of what the present writer has called "Flavourism", in which Dadu also joins him. Closely allied to the description of Flavourism, we have in Group V Kabir's inebriated description of God- intoxication, which reconciles the madness of intoxi- cation both with equanimity and freedom. As a result of this God-intoxication, we have in the next Group the description by Kabir of the lifting of the Cosmic Deceit. As the former Group contains a Sufistic descrip- tion of mystical experience by Kabir, the present one contains his account of mystical experience in a II
