Wine of the Mystic: The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

Praise for Paramahansa Yogananda’s Wine of the Mystic…

Wine of the Mystic — The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam: A Spiritual Interpretation

(published by Self-Realization Fellowship, 1994)

Winner of the 1994 Benjamin Franklin Award in the Field of Religion

A glowing spiritual interpretation....Highly recommended.— LIBRARY JOURNAL

Richly illustrated....Paramahansa Yogananda explores the riddles of life, death, karma, reincarnation, and free will....Named the best book [of 1994] in the field of religion by Publishers Marketing Association.— LOS ANGELES TIMES

"All seekers will appreciate Yogananda’s clear discussion on such topics as karma, reincarnation, destiny and free will, maya, meditation, perfecting love, life’s problems, true security, the cosmic drama, and more. Yogananda’s spiritually illuminating commentary...is a living treasure which can be read and reread, for each reading will unveil another truth in the infinite mystery of life."— YOGA INTERNATIONAL

The book is a shaft of sunshine....Yogananda predated scholarly opinion by decades in recognizing Khayyam as a Sufi [mystic]....His wish was not to prove or disprove a point of controversy but rather to show the way to God.— INDIA-WEST

Unlocks rich treasures for countless readers. This literary contribution enhances the enormous achievements and innumerable accomplishments that distinguish Paramahansa Yogananda as among the world’s great spiritual geniuses.— DANIEL ROSS CHANDLER, PH.D., Coordinator, The Academy, 1993 Parliament of the World’s Religions

Wine of the Mystic is truly intoxicating…an immense source of comfort and inspiration.— NANI A. PALKHIVALA, Former Ambassador of India to the United States

At a time when interreligious disharmony is more the norm rather than the exception, Paramahansa Yogananda’s book works as a soothing balm....An eye-opening spiritual interpretation.— INDIA JOURNAL

A book to be savored over and over again....I defy anyone to open and read this book without being moved.— FRIEND’S REVIEW

A magic carpet ride through Persian poetry, spirituality, and smashing artwork....Will change the way the Rubaiyat is read.— THE PALM BEACH POST

A work of art....Everything about [Wine of the Mystic] bespeaks the yogic teachings which it embodies.— HINDUISM TODAY

Exquisitely illustrated....Inspiring....Will become known as the finest interpretation of this great Persian classic.— NEW AGE RETAILER

Yogananda presents a fascinating journey into little-known realms of mystical experience….Full of truth and depth…makes the joys of Spirit seem [as] attainable as the more familiar pleasure of the senses and infinitely more alluring.— NEWS INDIA-TIMES

A compelling, meticulous excursion into light.— THE BOOK DEALER

About This Book

Paramahansa Yogananda’s spiritual interpretation of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, as translated by Edward FitzGerald, was originally published serially by Self- Realization Fellowship more than fifty years ago in its Inner Culture magazine (now known as Self Realization). The series ran from 1937 through 1944. An expanded version, with additional material that had not been included in the earlier serialization, appeared in Self Realization magazine from 1971 through 1990 and is being made available now for the first time in book form. Self Realization Fellowship is pleased to present Paramahansa Yogananda’s complete commentaries on this beloved literary classic.

We acknowledge with appreciation the work of artists Helen Marie, Kevin Miller, and Self-Realization Fellowship monastics who created the original illustrations and decorative borders for this book; and of Massoud Valipour, who did the calligraphy of the Persian text of the poem.

Copyright © 1994, 2019 Self-Realization Fellowship

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The Self-Realization Fellowship name and emblem (shown above) appear on all SRF books, recordings, and other publications, as an assurance that a work originates with the society established by Paramahansa Yogananda and faithfully conveys his teachings.

Ebook edition, 2022.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 94-66217

ISBN: 978-0-87612-226-8 (paperback)

ISBN: 978-0-87612-853-4 (Kindle edition)

ISBN: 978-0-87612-852-7 (ePub edition)

Contents

Introduction

Foreword

Quatrain

1. Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night

2. Dreaming when Dawn’s Left Hand was in the Sky

3. And, as the Cock crew, those who stood before

4. Now the New Year reviving old Desires

5. Iram indeed is gone with all its Rose

6. And David’s Lips are lock’t; but in divine

7. Come, fill the Cup, and in the Fire of Spring

8. And look — a thousand Blossoms with the Day

9. But come with old Khayyam, and leave the Lot

10. With me along some Strip of Herbage strown

11. Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough

12. ‘How sweet is mortal Sovranty!’ — think some

13. Look to the Rose that blows about us — ‘Lo

14. The Worldly Hope men set their Hearts upon

15. And those who husbanded the Golden Grain

16. Think, in this batter’d Caravanserai

17. They say the Lion and the Lizard keep

18. I sometimes think that never blows so red

19. And this delightful Herb whose tender Green

20. Ah, my Beloved, fill the Cup that clears

21. Lo! some we loved, the loveliest and the best

22. And we, that now make merry in the Room

23. Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend

24. Alike for those who for Today prepare

25. Why, all the Saints and Sages who discuss’d

26. Oh, come with old Khayyam, and leave the Wise

27. Myself when young did eagerly frequent

28. With them the Seed of Wisdom did I sow

29. Into this Universe, and why not knowing

30. What, without asking, hither hurried whence?

31. Up from Earth’s Centre through the Seventh Gate

32. There was a Door to which I found no Key

33. Then to the rolling Heav’n itself I cried

34. Then to this earthen Bowl did I adjourn

35. I think the Vessel, that with fugitive

36. For in the Market-place, one Dusk of Day

37. Ah, fill the Cup: — what boots it to repeat

38. One Moment in Annihilation’s Waste

39. How long, how long, in Infinite Pursuit

40. You know, my Friends, how long since in my House

41. For ‘Is’ and ‘Is-not’ though with Rule and Line

42. And lately, by the Tavern Door agape

43. The Grape that can with Logic absolute

44. The mighty Mahmud, the victorious Lord

45. But leave the Wise to wrangle, and with me

46. For in and out, above, about, below

47. And if the Wine you drink, the Lip you press

48. While the Rose blows along the River Brink

49. ‘Tis all a Chequer-board of Nights and Days

50. The Ball no Question makes of Ayes and Noes

51. The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ

52. And that inverted Bowl we call The Sky

53. With Earth’s first Clay They did the Last Man’s knead

54. I tell Thee this — When, starting from the Goal

55. The Vine had struck a Fibre; which about

56. And this I know: whether the one True Light

57. Oh, Thou, who didst with Pitfall and with Gin

58. Oh, Thou, who Man of baser Earth didst make

59. Listen again. One evening at the Close

60. And, strange to tell, among the Earthen Lot

61. Then said another — ‘Surely not in vain

62. Another said — ‘Why, ne’er a peevish Boy

63. None answer’d this; but after Silence spake

64. Said one — ‘Folks of a surly Tapster tell

65. Then said another with a long-drawn Sigh

66. So while the Vessels one by one were speaking

67. Ah, with the Grape my fading Life provide

68. That ev’n my buried Ashes such a Snare

69. Indeed the Idols I have loved so long

70. Indeed, indeed, Repentance oft before

71. And much as Wine has play’d the Infidel

72. Alas, that Spring should vanish with the Rose!

73. Ah, Love! could thou and I with Fate conspire

74. Ah, Moon of my Delight, who know’st no wane

75. And when Thyself with shining Foot shall pass

Addenda

Omar’s Dream-Wine of Love, by Paramahansa Yogananda

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (consecutive quatrains 1 – 75)

About the Author

Paramahansa Yogananda: A Yogi in Life and Death

Aims and Ideals of Self-Realization Fellowship

The Spiritual Legacy of Paramahansa Yogananda

His Complete Writings, Lectures, and Informal Talks

Paramahansa Yogananda founded Self-Realization Fellowship in 1920 to disseminate his teachings worldwide and to preserve their purity and integrity for generations to come. A prolific writer and lecturer from his earliest years in America, he created a renowned and voluminous body of works on the yoga science of meditation, the art of balanced living, and the underlying unity of all great religions. Today this unique and far-reaching spiritual legacy lives on, inspiring millions of truth-seekers all over the world.

In accord with the express wishes of the great master, Self-Realization Fellowship has continued the ongoing task of publishing and keeping permanently in print The Complete Works of Paramahansa Yogananda. These include not only the final editions of all the books he published during his lifetime, but also many new titles — works that had remained unpublished at the time of his passing in 1952, or which had been serialized over the years in incomplete form in Self-Realization Fellowship’s magazine, as well as hundreds of profoundly inspiring lectures and informal talks recorded but not printed before his passing.

Paramahansa Yogananda personally chose and trained those close disciples who formed the Self-Realization Fellowship Publications Council since his passing, giving them specific guidelines for the preparation and publishing of his teachings. The members of the SRF Publications Council (monks and nuns who have taken lifelong vows of renunciation and selfless service) honor these guidelines as a sacred trust, in order that the universal message of this beloved world teacher will live on in its original power and authenticity.

The Self-Realization Fellowship emblem (shown above) was designated by Paramahansa Yogananda to identify the nonprofit society he founded as the authorized source of his teachings. The SRF name and emblem appear on all Self-Realization Fellowship publications and recordings, assuring the reader that a work originates with the organization founded by Paramahansa Yogananda and conveys his teachings as he himself intended they be given.

— Self-Realization Fellowship

Introduction

By Paramahansa Yogananda

Long ago in India I met a hoary Persian poet who told me that the poetry of Persia often has two meanings, one inner and one outer. I remember the great satisfaction I derived from his explanations of the twofold significance of several Persian poems.

One day as I was deeply concentrated on the pages of Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat, I suddenly beheld the walls of its outer meanings crumble away, and the vast inner fortress of golden spiritual treasures stood open to my gaze.

Ever since, I have admired the beauty of the previously invisible castle of inner wisdom in the Rubaiyat. I have felt that this dream-castle of truth, which can be seen by any penetrating eye, would be a haven for many shelter-seeking souls invaded by enemy armies of ignorance.

Profound spiritual treatises by some mysterious divine law do not disappear from the earth even after centuries of misunderstanding, as in the case of the Rubaiyat. Not even in Persia is all of Omar Khayyam’s deep philosophy understood in its entirety, as I have tried to present it.

Because of the hidden spiritual foundation of the Rubaiyat it has withstood the ravages of time and the misinterpretations of many translators, remaining a perpetual mansion of wisdom for truth-loving and solace-seeking souls.

In Persia Omar Khayyam has always been considered a highly advanced mystical teacher, and his Rubaiyat revered as an inspired Sufi scripture.¹ The first great Sufi writer was Omar Khayyam, writes Professor Charles F. Horne in the Introduction to the Rubaiyat, which appears in Vol. VIII of The Sacred Books and Early Literature of the East series (Parke, Austin & Lipscomb, London, 1917). "Unfortunately, Omar, by a very large number of Western readers, has come to be regarded as a rather erotic pagan poet, a drunkard interested only in wine and earthly pleasure. This is typical of the confusion that exists on the entire subject of Sufism. The West has insisted on judging Omar from its own viewpoint. But if we are to understand the East at all, we must try to see how its own people look upon its writings. It comes as a surprise to many Westerners when they are told that in Persia itself there is no dispute whatever about Omar’s verses and their meaning. He is accepted quite simply as a great religious poet.

"What then becomes of all his passionate praise of wine and love? These are merely the thoroughly established metaphors of Sufism; the wine is the joy of the spirit, and the love is the rapturous devotion to God….

Omar rather veiled than displayed his knowledge. That such a man would be regarded by the Western world as an idle reveler is absurd. Such wisdom united to such shallowness is self-contradictory.

Omar and other Sufi poets used popular similes and pictured the ordinary joys of life so that the worldly man could compare those ordinary joys of mundane life with the superior joys of the spiritual life. To the man who habitually drinks wine to temporarily forget the sorrows and unbearable trials of his life, Omar offers a more delightful nectar of enlightenment and divine ecstasy which has the power, when used by man, to obliterate his woes for all time. Surely Omar did not go through the labor of writing so many exquisite verses merely to tell people to escape sorrow by drugging their senses with wine!

J. B. Nicolas, whose French translation of 464 rubaiyat (quatrains) appeared in 1867, a few years after Edward FitzGerald’s first edition, opposed FitzGerald’s views that Omar was a materialist. FitzGerald refers to this fact in the introduction to his own second edition, as follows:

M. Nicolas, whose edition has reminded me of several things, and instructed me in others, does not consider Omar to be the material epicurian that I have literally taken him for, but a mystic, shadowing the Deity under the figure of wine, wine-bearer, etc., as Hafiz is supposed to do; in short, a Sufi poet like Hafiz and the rest….As there is some traditional presumption, and certainly the opinion of some learned men, in favor of Omar’s being a Sufi — even something of a saint — those who please may so interpret his wine and cup-bearer.

Omar distinctly states that wine symbolizes the intoxication of divine love and joy. Many of his stanzas are so purely spiritual that hardly any material meanings can be drawn from them, as for instance in quatrains XLIV, LX, and LXVI.

With the help of a Persian scholar, I translated the original Rubaiyat into English. But I found that, though literally translated, they lacked the fiery spirit of Khayyam’s original. After I compared that translation with FitzGerald’s, I realized that FitzGerald had been divinely inspired to catch exactly in gloriously musical English words the soul of Omar’s writings.

Therefore I decided to interpret the inner hidden meaning of Omar’s verses from FitzGerald’s translation rather than from my own or any other that I had read.²

In order to grasp readily the logic and depth of the Spiritual Interpretations,