At first glance, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam is a collection of poems encouraging the reading to celebrate worldly pleasures and to live for the present moment. However, Omar Khayyam was considered to be highly advanced in the Sufi mystical tradition, and accordingly is full of hidden meanings.
Paramahansa Yogananda wrote of an encounter with a hoary Persian poet who told him that “the poetry of Persia often has two meanings, one inner and one outer.” Applying this understanding to the Rubaiyat, he meditated on the Rubaiyat and described a personal experience wherein “the outer meanings crumbled away, revealing the vast inner fortress of golden spiritual treasures.”
Yogananda considered the Rubaiyat to be an allegory of the soul’s romance with God. He interpreted the “wine” as the bliss of God-realization, and “earthly love” as the divine romance between the devotee and the Infinite Beloved. The “tavern” symbolized the bodily life, and the “cup” the consciousness.
Paramahansa Yogananda’s extensive commentary on the Rubaiyat is compiled in the book “Wine of the Mystic: The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, A Spiritual Interpretation.” In this work, he provides detailed explanations for each quatrain, revealing what he believed to be their underlying spiritual truths.
As an example, here is one of the famous quatrains, and the meaning ascribed to this Edward Fitzgerald translation by Yogananda:
“Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night
Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight:
And Lo! the Hunter of the East has caught
The Sultan’s Turret in a Noose of Light.”
“Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night”: Yogananda interprets “Night” as the darkness of ignorance and delusion that envelops the soul. “Morning” symbolizes the dawn of spiritual awakening and the light of wisdom. The “Bowl of Night” represents the consciousness still steeped in this ignorance. The call to “Awake!” is a summons to rise from spiritual slumber and recognize the illusory nature of the material world.
“Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight”: The “Stone” is interpreted as the power of spiritual discipline and the awakening of inner will. This “stone” of conscious effort, when “flung” into the “Bowl of Night” (the darkened consciousness), dispels the “Stars,” which represent the twinkling, often alluring but ultimately temporary, desires and attachments of the material world. These desires, like stars, lose their brilliance and fade away in the face of the rising sun of wisdom.
“And Lo! the Hunter of the East has caught”: “The Hunter of the East” symbolizes the Divine Consciousness or the soul awakened in the East (the spiritual source). This awakened consciousness is actively seeking and capturing higher spiritual truths.
“The Sultan’s Turret in a Noose of Light”: The “Sultan’s Turret” represents the ego, the seat of pride and the feeling of being a separate ruler of one’s own destiny. The “Noose of Light” is the illuminating power of divine wisdom and love. The awakened soul, like a hunter, uses this “Noose of Light” to gently but firmly capture the ego, bringing it under the influence of the Divine and dispelling its darkness and false sense of independence.
In essence, Yogananda sees this opening verse as a powerful call to spiritual awakening. It describes the process of using inner discipline to overcome the darkness of ignorance and the allure of material desires, allowing the soul to rise and be drawn towards the light of divine consciousness, ultimately leading to the subjugation of the ego. He emphasizes the urgency of this awakening, as suggested by the exclamation “Awake!” and the swift action of the morning dispelling the night.
