The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám · Chapter
LXVI explained
The poet sends his Soul into the invisible realm to learn the secret of the afterlife, but the Soul returns with the revelation that Heaven and Hell are not external places but are within the self.
What happens
The poet sends his Soul into the invisible realm to learn the secret of the afterlife, but the Soul returns with the revelation that Heaven and Hell are not external places but are within the self.
Themes in this chapter
The Quest for Meaning
The Soul's journey into the Invisible represents the search for ultimate truth about existence and the afterlife.
Skepticism and Doubt
The revelation that Heaven and Hell are within the self challenges traditional religious doctrines of external reward and punishment.
Characters to notice
- Omar Khayyám
The poet who sends his Soul on a quest to understand the afterlife.
Key passages
“I sent my Soul through the Invisible, Some letter of that After-life to spell: And by and by my Soul return’d to me, And answer’d “I Myself am Heav’n and Hell:"”
I dispatched my Soul into the unseen realm to decipher a message about the afterlife. Eventually my Soul came back and told me, 'I myself am both Heaven and Hell.'
The Soul's discovery that the divine and the damned are not places but states of being within oneself.