Shri Nathji would often
refer to the verses of the Persian poet, Omar Khayyam. He would sometimes read
the verses of Omar Khayyam, in the solitude of the winter evenings at Mussoorie.
He would have his own interpretation of Khayyam, which was quite different from
the conventional interpretation of the English translator, Edward Fitzgerald.
According to Shri
Nathji, Khayyam was not an agnostic or a hedonist as Fitzgerald had made him
out to be. Rather, he was a genuine seeker after truth. The wine he spoke of was
a spiritual feeling, a divine intoxication experienced only through communication
with God.
Several different
authors and philosophers have given different versions of what they thought
Khayyam really stood for. But Shri Nathji’s version must have been the most accurate,
because he was, amongst other things, the Creator of Khayyam.
Perhaps, Khayyam died
too early. What a thrill would have run through his heart to have seen the God
he was addressing in his poetry, reading his poetry in human form, in the twentieth
century. His prayers, supplications and queries had finally reached God.
Shri Nathji would
sometimes quote Omar Khayyam’s verse in Persian:
"Aamad saihare nidaa
za maikhaanaye maa
Ki ai rinde kharaabaatiye
deewaanaye maa
Barkhez ke pur kunem
paimaanaa zamai
Zaan pesh ke pur
kunand paimaanaye maa."
Early in the morning
from within the tavern, came a cry,
’O thou,
ever-wandering, lover, mine,
Arise, that I might
fill thy cup with wine!
Ere my cup of life be
filled, let me fill thine.
Shri Nathji’s
interpretation of this verse was a spiritual one. The voice from within the tavern
was the voice of the Perfect Master, calling out to his loved one, his devotee,
who often erred and wandered but never left the lane of God. The wine the
Perfect Master had, was the bliss of a divine ecstasy–the bliss of
God-realisation. And his cry was:
"O man! Let me
fill the cup of your heart
with the wine of
divine intoxication, before
the cup of my life is
filled, and I must be gone!"
Shri Nathji was fond
of narrating the following verse of Khayyam to his devotees to illustrate the
importance of reverence on the spiritual path:
"Abreeke mai maraa
shikasti rabbi
Bar man dare aish raa
babasti rabbi
Bar khaak barekhti
mai naab maraa
Khaakam ba dahan
magar to masti rabbi."
O God, thou hast
broken my cup of wine,
And shut the door of
intoxication upon me,
Thou hast thrown this
precious wine on dust,
And the dust is in my
mouth!–but wert thou intoxicated Thyself, O God!
According to Shri
Nathji, Khayyam was referring to a spiritual state. God dashed to pieces his
hopes of realising Him; he stopped him in his progress, and scattered the
spiritual bliss he had been experiencing into the dust of his body. This was
the complaint of a seeker after truth to God: wert thou intoxicated Thyself to
have done such a thing? It was an impudent rebuke to God, and Khayyam never
forgave himself for the impertinence.
It was a verse that
was to cause infinite agony to the soul of Khayyam. He would not forgive
himself. He – a mere poet! And he had dared say to God that He was drunk! Khayyam
became a man in despair, like a lost soul seeking shelter. His face turned an ashen
grey, and his body trembled and shriveled with fear. Tears streamed from his eyes.
The agony of repentance tore at his soul.
Shri Nathji had
frequently warned seekers after truth to proceed on the spiritual path with care.
"The moods of Emperors are unpredictable," he would say,
"sometimes a salute may offend them, and an insult please them! A devotee
of God must be ever humble before that Supreme Power, ever repentant for
follies and impertinence, real or imagined."
"Never say you
have not done wrong," said Shri Nathji, "for that would be a great
wrong in itself! Before God, one can only say ‘Bhalaaji’, or ‘Bhoolaji’ i.e.–
‘Thou art right’, or ‘I have erred’.
Shri Nathji added:
"Your devotion must
be so perfect as to agree with everything that your Master says. If your Master
calls day night, then you must not contradict him, but rather agree with him
and say, ‘Oh, what beautiful stars are in the skies, what a beautiful moon!" Shri
Nathji quoted another verse that Khayyam wrote to cover the folly of the first:
"Naa kardaa
gunaah dar jahaan keesth bago
Vaankas ke gunaah na
kard choon zeesth bago
Man bad kunamoh to
bad makaafaat dahi
Pas farke miyaane
mano to cheesth bago."
Who is there in the
world that hath not sinned?
And how has he lived
– he, who has not sinned?
If I do wrong, and
thou dost answer likewise,
What difference then,
between thou and me?"
There was only one
way left to God – and that was to forgive Khayyam. And it is said, that the
light of God came back to the poet. There was the verse that Khayyam wrote, of a
potter thumping clay, and the clay saying:
"Gently brother,
gently, pray!" It was
Khayyam’s description
of man being
buffeted by the hands
of Fate.
Shri Nathji would
say:
"Afsos Khayyam
mar gayaa, varnaa main
usse bataataa ke
kumhaar matti ko torrne ke
liye naheen thhapkaar
rahaa, balki ussko
sundar shakl dene ke
liye!”
“It is said that
Khayyam died before this,
otherwise I would
have told him that the
potter was thumping
the clay, not to destroy
it, but to mould a
beautiful shape out of it!
“This hope must
remain with man. The hand of God appears to be harsh and heavy, but it is, in
fact, the hand of an artist seeking to bring perfection to his art!"
Shri Nathji had also said:
“Agar aapko jyotishi
kaihtaa hai ke kal kaa
din aap par bhaari
hogaa, to fikar kyon karte
hain? Abhi to kal aur
aaj men raat baaki hai!
“If the astrologer
tells you that tomorrow is
going to be a bad day
for you, then why
worry? There is still
the night left between
tomorrow and today!”
The Persian poet,
Omar Khayyam, had written:
The moving finger
writes, and having writ, moves on
Nor all thy piety nor
wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a line Nor all thy tears wash out a word
of it. But the moving finger was the finger of God, who was not only All
Powerful but also All Merciful. If he were sufficiently moved by the prayers
and supplications of anyone He could alter what he had written and write it
afresh.
This was the message
of Shri Nathji. While Omar Khayyam, was a mere human who was speculating on the
Divine Will, Shri Nathji was the One who had the pen in his hands.
Shri Nathji often
recited the words of Omar Khayyam, in Persian:
"Aamad saihare nidaa
za maikhaanaye maa
Ki ai rinde
kharaabaatiye deevaanaye maa
Barkhez ke pur kunem
paimaana za mai
Zaan pesh ke pur
kunand paimaanaye maa."
Early in the morning
I heard a voice within the Tavern cry,
O thou sinful seeker,
thou who art my lover,
Arise! Let me fill
thy cup with wine,
Ere my cup of life be
filled!
When a man came to
Shri Nathji and said: " Sir, if we have to suffer as a consequence of our
Karmas–the actions performed by us, what can God do for us? The suffering
that we have to endure is then the Will of God in accordance with His
Laws."
Shri Nathji said:
" Have you seen a potter beat a lump of clay into the shape of a vessel?
He beats the clay with one hand, while he places the other hand inside the
vessel to soften the impact of the blows. Even if man must undergo suffering,
the Hand of God comes to give him comfort from within. Either you will be
released from the suffering or you will be given strength to bear it!
"Omar Khayyam,
the famous Persian poet, was greatly distressed upon seeing the scene of the
potter thumping the clay. And he wondered why the potter was so harsh on the
clay. It was sad that Khayyam died before I came on the scene, or else I would
have told him: 'The potter is thumping the clay not to break it, but rather to
make a beautiful shape out of it!'
Shri Nathji had said
that there was just a silence–the silence of the ages; which was why the Advent
of the Avatar had become so important. Otherwise the world would have turned to
Omar Khayyam's verse in despair; those who received no consolation from an
invisible God would have said:
"And that
inverted bowl we call the sky,
Wherein crawling
coopt we live and die
Lift not thy hands to
it for help –
For it rolls impotently
on as thou and I!"
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Omar Khayyám (18 May
1048 – 4 December 1131) was a Persian polymath, philosopher, mathematician,
astronomer and poet. He also wrote treatises on mechanics, geography,
mineralogy, music, and Islamic theology.
Born in Nishapur,
Iran at a young age he moved to Samarkand(Uzbekistan) and obtained his
education there. Afterwards he moved to Bukhara and became established as one
of the major mathematicians and astronomers of the medieval period. He is the
author of one of the most important treatises on algebra written before modern
times, the Treatise on Demonstration of Problems of Algebra, which includes a
geometric method for solving cubic equations by intersecting a hyperbola with a
circle. He contributed to a calendar reform.
His significance as a
philosopher and teacher, and his few remaining philosophical works, have not
received the same attention as his scientific and poetic writings. Persians
referred to him as “the philosopher of the world”. Many sources have testified
that he taught for decades the philosophy of Avicenna in Nishapur where Khayyám
was born and buried and where his mausoleum today remains a masterpiece of
Iranian architecture visited by many people every year.
Outside Iran and
Persian speaking countries, Khayyám has had an impact on literature and
societies through the translation of his works and popularization by other
scholars. The greatest such impact was in English-speaking countries; the
English scholar Thomas Hyde (1636–1703) was the first non-Persian to study him.
The most influential of all was Edward FitzGerald (1809–83), who made Khayyám
the most famous poet of the East in the West through his celebrated translation
and adaptations of Khayyám's rather small number of quatrains in the Rubaiyat
of Omar Khayyam.
Omar Khayyám died in
1131 and is buried in the Khayyam Garden at the mausoleum of Imamzadeh Mahruq
in Nishapur. In 1963 the mausoleum of Omar Khayyam was constructed on the site
by architect Hooshang Seyhoun, the photo of which is given here.
