Omar Khayyam: [32] There was a Door to which I found no Key:

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[32] There was a Door to which I found no Key:

Omar Khayyam, Omar Khayyam poetry, Muslim / Sufi, Muslim / Sufi poetry, poetry, [TRADITION SUB2] poetry, poetry

by Omar Khayyam
(11th Century) Timeline

English version by
Edward FitzGerald

Original Language
Persian/Farsi

There was a Door to which I found no Key:
There was a Veil through which I could not see:
Some little Talk awhile of Me and Thee
There seemed -- and then no more of Thee and Me.

-- from The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, by Omar Khayyam / Translated by Edward FitzGerald

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/ Photo by Hamed Saber /

Recommended Books

	The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, by Omar Khayyam / Translated by Edward FitzGerald
	The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, by Omar Khayyam / Translated by Peter Avery
	The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (Illustrated Edition), by Omar Khayyam / Translated by Edward FitzGerald
	The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Explained, by Paramhansa Yogananda / Edited by J. Donald Walters (Kriyananda)
	The Sufism of the Rubaiyat or the Secret of the Great Paradox, by Norton F. W. Hazeldine

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First, just take a moment to speak these lines aloud. Really feel its rhythm on you tongue, and let its rhyme dance in your ear.

I'm not normally a big fan of strictly rhymed verse, especially in translation, but something about Edward FitzGerald's translations of Omar Khayyam bring a big smile to my face every time I read them. You can taste the sugar in each line.

There was a Door to which I found no Key:
There was a Veil through which I could not see...

The door that has no key and the veil through which one cannot see is the final barrier that separates us from the Divine Beloved. That barrier is dualism itself.

Some little Talk awhile of Me and Thee
There seemed

At first there is the dualistic perception of "Me and Thee," of the separate identities of the lover and Beloved. That sense of separation -- separation from God, separation from Source, separation from the True Self -- is the fundamental pain of the soul.

Caught in the midst of this dynamic, we feel pain, we struggle, we encounter a terrible emptiness we try to hide from through the dramas of life. But looking back from the perspective of deep realization, it can be seen as a sort of dialog between the soul and the Eternal. The dramas of life... "Some little Talk awhile of Me an Thee..." But there is only a surface appearance here, a seeming -- "There seemed"

-- and then no more of Thee and Me.

When we look, when we learn to really see, that's when an amazing thing happens -- suddenly that final veil falls away. The barrier is passed, not through some action or "key," but through the instantaneous recognition that the barrier does not, in truth, exist at all. We are stunned to discover that there is no separation (only the ego's pretense of a separation). And then -- "no more of Thee and Me," only Divine Presence within, without, everywhere!

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