I have just received as a gift a wonderful book, 'Wine of The Mystic', which contains the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, the great Persian Sufi poet. Its beautifully illustrated and illuminated. But its actually the commentary on each quatrain of Omar Khayyams poetry by Yogananda, author of the famous book, Autobiography of a Yogi. Yogananda says that in his youth he met a Sufi who taught him how there is a second, hidden meaning in all of Omar Khayyams poetry. Knowing this, Yogananda suddenly felt that a barrier of unseeing had been lifted from his eyes, and the real, inner meaning of Omar Khayyams poetry lay revealed to him.
There have been previous HP threads on to what degree astrology, predictions, horoscopes, and special coming dates (e.g. 2012) are important or not. Here is a quatrain from Omar Khayyam on this. After each quatrain, Yogananda gives a Glossary to help our understanding, a Spiritual Interpretation, and thirdly a Practical Application.
Quatrain LII with Yogananda's commentary:
And that inverted Bowl we call The Sky,
Whereunder crawling coopt we live and die,
Lift not thy hands to It for help for It
Rolls impotently on as Thou or I
GLOSSARY
Inverted bowl we call the sky: The celestial canopy limited to a shape like all created things. Lift not thy hands to it for help: Do not wait for astrological influences to aid in changing your destiny. The symbolic planetary pattern of your birth was drawn by your own past actions. Call not on any outside or environmental power, but on the Maker of the heavens and earth, for deliverance and true freedom.
Spiritual Interpretation
If you implore help from the blue heavens or guidance from the circling stars, you are foolish, for the heavens themselves are performing their exact movements in conformity with the decrees of cosmic law, the law by which your own karma (past actions) ordained the selfsame planets to shed their specific influences on you. Not the stars, but your own efforts to contact God, the Creator of the stars, will be effectual in changing your mortal destiny.
Practical Application
The stars are symbols of the governing or restraining influences of our own past karma. We should seek help only from Almighty God and our own will power, unceasingly striving to surmount our difficult material, mental, and spiritual problems.
Stars and human lives alike are governed by the cosmic law of cause and effect. Thus it is foolish for us to wait for destiny to change its mechanically operating, unalterable decrees. By adopting, in the present, the antidotes to our past, baneful actions, and by the unlimited help of God through meditation and prayer, we can nullify the dictates of our past deeds. What we have already done we can undo, or at least modify, by special acts of our will and by meditation and prayer, whereby our consciousness becomes suffused with a Higher Power.
Since stars symbolically influence our lives according to a certain pattern drawn by our consciously initiated past deeds, the best course we can pursue is to consciously adopt actions that will counteract the evil effects of our past misdeeds in previous lives, or in this life.
A great many people become foolishly fatalistic and resolve to do nothing until the planetary positions change. While it is not unwise to initiate good projects in astrologically auspicious hours, nevertheless it should be fully remembered that if anything is done with full faith in God it will be blessed with more auspicious influences than can ever be given by the favourable aspects of the stars.
RE: Astrology, Omar Khayyam, and Yogananda
Ah beloved Omar......his humour wonderful and teachings sublime.
A true blessing indeed.
I always remember him saying to me if you ever wish to contact me have a glass of Rose wine or give yourself a healing treatment, he did like wine, women and song during his incarnation as Omar.
I and others now know him as Serapis Bey. I agree with what you have shared Venetian but we can go even further, all one needs is concious intent and the will-of-GOD one does not even need to meditate or pray, although these can be good stepping stones to realising the next ones.
The mind of man is far more powerful then we realise hence why Jesus said 'if you just have the faith of a mustard seed you can move mountains' so faith in self and one's own abilities is crucial if humankind is to reach its fullest potential of GOD power.
What we think we do create and we can change anything as above so below. As energy follows thought and as man is changing so is our perception of the cosmos and our inter-dependent relationship with it.
So it is good to see other interpretations of Omar's words.
Glory be to GOD
Kim xx
RE: Astrology, Omar Khayyam, and Yogananda
I am guided to share another and different perspective.
Romans. 8:27 And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of GOD. 28: And we know that all things work together for good to them that love GOD, to them who are called according to his purpose. 29: For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son. That he might be the first born among many breathen. 30: Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified and whom he justified, them he also glorified. 31: What shall we say to things? If GOD be for US, who can be against us?
Now Archangel Michael says All karma is good karma and maybe this insight that I received last night gives us more insight into this message.
In each of us there is a triangle, the analogy given was Robin Hood, Maid Marian and the darkness of the Sheriff of Nottingham. We are now realising through reconciliation that there is also a 4th element that is GOD.
Through transmutation of the cosmic fire we become one and in so doing all darkness turns towards divine love and this then melts into the souls will-to-good and pre-destined purpose.
The power of darkness to activate the power of light within cannot be under-estimated!
But it takes a willingness for the recipient to see that darkness as good purpose and to find out what it means. Through accessing the meaning for its purpose one then comes further into the light. E.g. The more the dark shadows draw close to you the larger your Christ Light becomes if one has the willingness to seek out the meaning and in so doing transmute it.
In uniting Robin Hood and Maid Marian or another analogy Jesus redeeming the divine feminine of Mary within, the devil is transmuted and then one can achieve complete oneness with GOD.
Then the power of man is omnipotent just as GOD intended it to be, in GODs image.
And so it is that one can break karmic contracts but yet if they are for our highest good why would wish to do so? If we chose it pre-destination? Why would we wish to take ourselves off course, away from our divine purpose and reason for being on planet earth and our agreement with GOD?
Would it not be more advantageous to simply surrender to GOD and get on with the purpose and ask for GOD's help to fulfil GOD's will?
Blessings in abundance
Kim xx
RE: Astrology, Omar Khayyam, and Yogananda
On misrepresentations of Omar Khayyam:
There’s an interesting tale associated with the first-ever translation into English of Omar Khayyam’s ‘Rubaiyat’ poetry. The first translation was made at first anonymously by Edward FitzGerald, and published in 1859. FitzGerald was not a spiritual man at all and somewhat humorously didn’t even ‘get’ the fact that the poet was clearly writing in metaphors. Thus, a phrase such as ‘wine’ was taken literally by FitzGerald, whereas the poet is now known by all scholars and those of a mystical inclination to have been referring, in phrases such as ‘wine’, to spiritual bliss. The Rubaiyat is built by metaphor upon metaphor, and all is symbolical, not literal.
FitzGerald actually wrote, ‘He is said to have been especially hated and dreaded by the Sufis, whose practice he ridiculed.’ Whereas in fact the poet almost certainly was a Sufi himself, and foremost amongst them. He read, translated, and wrote commentaries upon Sufi works. Fitzgerald, having no spiritual insight, painted Omar Khayyam as a spiritual cynic and even as a hedonist, whereas the poet was in fact a mystic, a brilliant scholar, and later a recluse (though probably among other Sufis).
The Foreword to my book, quoted from in the first post here, ‘Wine of The Mystic’, is written by Self-Realization Fellowship, and includes these passages:
“In the history of literature, Omar Khayyam (1048-1122 CE) is an enigma. Surely no other poet of any epoch has achieved such extraordinary fame through such a colossal misreading of his work…
“FitzGerald included in his editions of the Rubaiyat a biographical sketch called ‘Omar Khayyam: The Astronomer-Poet of Persia,’ in which he set forth his conviction that Khayyam was an anti-religious materialist who believed that life’s only meaning was to be found in wine, song, and worldly pleasures.
“A more historically accurate portrait emerges from the research of modern-day scholars of both East and West, who have established that far from ridiculing the Sufis, Omar Khayyam probably counted himself among their number…. His keen intelligence and strong memory, we are told, enabled him to become adept in the academic subjects of his day by the age of seventeen. A tract he wrote on algebra won him the patronage of a rich and influential doctor in Samarkand. By his mid-twenties, Khayyam had become the head of an astronomical observatory and had authored additional treatises on mathematics and physics. He played a leading role in the reformation of the Persian calendar, devising one more accurate than the Gregorian. He became proficient in studies of the Koran, in history and languages, astrology, mechanics, and clay modelling.
“From 1092 he apparently lived as a recluse. Over the last sixteen years of his life there is drawn an impenetrable veil. Some scholars say he spent the second half of his life pursuing the spiritual disciplines of the Sufis, and in writing the mystical poems that have survived as the Rubaiyat…. His goals, (from his later writings) were almost identical to those of India’s yogis.”
N.B. A point of interest to those who accept the reality of the Masters or Mahatmas. The Master Serapis Bey first became known to the public through Helena P. Blavatsky and the Theosophical Society, to which disciples, from the very beginning of the West’s knowledge of him, Serapis Bey, an Egyptian Master, confirmed that he had been an Adept, and had not since taken incarnation nor ever again would, since before the time of Christ. This is accepted by Theosophists and those of all other movements having reverence for Serapis: that his round of incarnations concluded over two thousand years ago. He therefore, in his own words, did not incarnate as Omar Khayyam. e.g. http://www.tsl.org/Masters/Serapis.asp
RE: Astrology, Omar Khayyam, and Yogananda
Yes a truly wonderful man Venetian was he Omar Khayyam, I agree with a majority of what you have said so thank you for sharing.
As far as the link that you provided on Serapis Bey as we know this organisation have been astray on other things e.g. prophecy which as been covered on other threads, so I have no intent of rediscussing thus. The problem with world views put forward by one individual is that others follow like sheep and the information then goes into consciousness of those followers. Fortunately for me and colleagues that I have connected with, we knew nothing of Serapis or the organisation that you mention. Our Gnosis came through personal and independent investigation, research into Egypt and the library that Serapis apparently founded.
So just like you cite the incorrect translation of the Rubaiyat so too many other things have been misinterpreted by individuals that put out worldviews.
Hence why I have been taught by those that guide me to promote how important it is to seek for oneself, to know for thyself the truth that one experiences.
You provided a lovely explanation about the wine perhaps you would be willing to do the same about the women?
In integrity
Kim xx