«A perfect character is first and fundamentally powerful. It is based upon the One, be it in idea or in action. Next, it is so simple and direct that all extraneous thoughts and purposes are unknown to it. These two sides condition one another. No power without simplicity and no directness without power. The third side of a great character is love or human feeling; a fullness that seeks to draw all men to the One, and the fourth and last characteristic is harmony or a welding together into One of all these four. The last characteristic is, of course, an impossibility where the others do not exist; nor can the others attain any vividness or fullness without love.
«A perfect character is rare. We see, however, glimpses of it here and there. Omar Khayyam was a type of perfect character. He is full of the One; he knows of nothing but the One; he burns to draw his fellow-men to the One; he belongs nowhere but in the One, in whom he indeed can be said to move, live, and have his being. In the One he attained Wholeness, harmony. Omar's philosophy is that of the Sufis. In that, too, he is consistent. The one is Truth; Truth is the reality of things, Truth burns to draw men to Itself; Truth is the Law or ‹Universe.› His method is Symbolism, viz.: he chooses the transparencies of Nature in order to show his hearers how Truth or Wisdom and Love or Devotion everywhere appear to be the reality behind ‹the magic Shadow-shapes that come and go.› His most prominent symbols are Wine and Love; Roses, Springtime, and Death.
«Omar's ethics are not those of Mohammedanism. He advocates Resignation, to be sure, but not Mohammedan fatalism as popularly understood. His morals spring from his conception of the fullness of the One, and as such they are in harmony with the most universal notions of mankind. In one word, Omar's theology, philosophy, method, and morals are Sufistic, Sufism taken in the highest sense as the unifying notion for Wholeness, Love, Truth, and Power. A study of Sufism will reveal the real Omar—hitherto but little known, if known at all.
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«No one has attempted, so far as I know, to classify the various Sufistic systems. It is not so difficult to do so when a key can be found to them. The best key is that four-foldness which manifests itself in all human character, endeavor, and work. Corresponding to the four-foldness of character delineated above, I shall now take the terms Life, Love, Light, and Law and say that Al-Ghazzali and Jelaladdin represent the first and, as a proof, point to their constant emphasis of will as being the dominant power of existence, and the prominence they give to moral worth. The type of Love, in the form of poetry and feeling, is represented by Hafiz and Jami. The third group is fully and completely filled by Shabistani, the author of ‹Gulshan-i-Raz.› It is Light, and its form is Philosophy, Truth, and Understanding. The last, the fourth, sums up in a measure, the three preceding, and is also a clearly defined group by itself. It is Law, Order, Unity, and Reality. There is more independence in it than in any of the others, because it is the nearest approach known in existence to Wholeness or Unity. It contains the opposites of existence, both cosmic and human, viz.: the protest of the Mystic and also his affirmation, and the new Hope he represents.
«Omar Khayyam belongs to this fourth group. I do not say he alone fills it. But he exhibits that Independence and Protest which is the first and outward characteristic of it. He is also from time to time soaring into the realms of the Truth or Unity, in a way not found in any other Sufi poet or doctor.
«Under the garb of the Mystic's favorite method of Doubt and Protest, the Sufi (Omar) pictures the process of the Awakening of the Soul. That is the purpose of the ‹Magic Shadow-shapes that come and go› in the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. His pictures are sufficiently transparent for us to see The Reality Behind.
«While so much is claimed for Omar, it must not be forgotten that it has not been said that he is the only perfect Sufi. It is not our intention to say or to intimate that. Omar is great enough when we attribute to him the office of an Awakener; not merely that of a John the Baptist, but the office of one who is himself full of the Awakening he preaches. Such an one is a unique character, and is truly an At-oner, one who heals all wounds and binds up broken limbs.»
I have already stated, if not in actual words, at least by inference, that Khayyam's philosophical and religious opinions were in certain essential points based upon the teaching of the Vedantas. He must have been familiar with the general scope of their philosophy, although attaching himself, as we have seen, to the ranks of the Sufi Mystics. Sufism and Babism are probably the most widely spread doctrines current in modern Persia, and after all are but forms of Vedantic pantheism despoiled of real significance by the effort to accommodate themselves to the creed of Islam. We learn from El Kifti that Khayyam «exhorted to the seeking of the One, the Ruler, by the purification of bodily movements, for the cleansing of the human soul,» an unmistakable exposition of Sufi practices, although based originally upon the customs of the Vedantic sages.
He certainly did not practice asceticism and other quasi-religious forms, which had been grafted upon the austere simplicity of the original Vedantic creed, but he did inculcate the necessity of acquiring «the knowledge of the unity of the soul with God»—the one thing important—which can only be achieved by the renouncement of desire, the purification of the soul from the lusts of the world, and the practice of kindliness, goodness, universal sympathy with mankind, and the patience which brings perfect work.