The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Explained Hardcover - 1994

From the publisher

In the East, Omar Khayyam's famous poem, The Rubaiyat, is known not as a hymn of praise to sensual delights, but as a deep allegory of the soul's romance with God. Now after eight centuries, Paramhansa Yogananda, one of the great mystics of our time, explains the mystery behind Omar's famous poem. This literary masterpiece was edited by J. Donald Walters, a close, direct disciple of Paramhansa Yogananda since 1948, and author of more than 60 books. In 1950, Yogananda personally gave Walters the task of editing his writings on The Rubaiyat. Includes 75 poetic quatrains translated into English by Edward FitzGerald, as well as beautiful black and white illustrative art.

...In the conscious state, the mind is made aware of the world through the senses. In the subconscious state, the mind withdraws from sensory awareness as the life-force retires to partial rest in the hidden "grottoes, ' or chakras, of the spine. In the superconscious state, the consciousness and life-force together pass upward through the spinal "gates" to the brain, and thence outward into the omnipresence of Spirit.

...This thirty-first stanza of The Rubaiyat shows clearly Omar's advancement on the path of yoga: not a primrose path of wine and drunkenness, but the secret, arduous, yet infinitely rewarding path of divine"intoxication".