The apophatic move. If I say God is in me, the universe protests; if I say He is outside me, that's a lie. There are no words. Pseudo-Dionysius in sixth-century Syria built a whole theology out of this — the via negativa, saying what God is not, because every affirmation falls short. Kabir is doing the same thing in Hindi verse. The Upanishads have the phrase "neti neti" — not this, not this. What stays when you can't say this or that is the silence the mystics point to: an emptiness full of presence.Pseudo-Dionysius, Mystical Theology; Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 2.3.6.
Neither manifest nor hidden, neither revealed nor unrevealed. The double negation on each pair is doing the Madhyamaka move a millennium after Nagarjuna made it famous. Any positive statement about the ultimate, in this logic, is half-true; the opposite is also half-true; both together fail. What remains is a silence that isn't emptiness and isn't fullness. Kabir, who is rarely accused of sophistication, is using one of the most sophisticated tools in the mystical repertoire. The Cloud of Unknowing's anonymous English author was doing something very similar around the same time: saying you must not-know God even with your mind that thinks it knows.Nagarjuna, Mula-madhyamaka-karika 18.8; Cloud of Unknowing chapter 4.