An excited Hafiz couplet is read from the flight guide. The two grail seekers speculate about the otherworldly power and speed of the mighty new craft, an unsteady speculation that continues in over-excited asides throughout. They explode into the heaven, describing its unbelievable highs, at a warp speed the craft - if not the driver - manages serenely. The suggestions of driver-intoxication eventually belie the subtle craft's serene progress. It crashes off the flight path and they cry for help from the Master.
Form and technique
A Hafiz ghazal couplet at full joyous cry is continued into a racy dialogue about where they are followed by a modern ghazal describing the sublime progress into the heaven taken at a cool fast blues. Asides speculate on their excited progress through fireworks (wishes) and, as the serenity deconstructs, express panic and cries for help.
The frenzied energy and ultimate nothingness of wishes are conveyed through the idea of fireworks. Roman candles burning at both ends; Catherine wheels whirling nowhere fast (both the steering wheel and the speeding Lotus wheels). The paradox "Stuck. A Catherine Wheelspin Lotus to Nowhere. Fast." combines again the idea of incredible speed and no actual progress - stuck fast/ nowhere fast. In the first heaven, the driver stayed focused on the Eye of the Beloved. This time Dr Who Am I gets absorbed in the unimaginably heavenly distractions and has to be saved from himself by an appearance by the Master (Gabriella's lovely sung final couplet.)
Those of a Gothic disposition might interpret '666 rockets' as a reference to the Beast in Revelation. It's whatever you want it to be, man, but do also check out the source book 'The Nothing and The Everything' where 666 refers to the number of saliks or yogis who occupy this level of spiritual advancement at any one time. The only plausible explanation for the confusion might be that Khuber in the fourth haven is king of this heaven ( and hell) and that it is masters of the second plane (heaven and hell) who are sent to regulate any misuse of powers in the altogether Apoclaypse-like fourth heaven.
The allegory
This "unimaginably heavenly" second heaven is known as Enlightenment. It is the 'heaven' we go to after death, where we passively re-experience the life we've lived in intensified proportion to how morally good and bad it's been, ie as heaven, or hell. Either way it is a purging experience, designed to absorb the lessons of the life just lived, before shaping - and embarking on - the next incarnation. Advanced souls actively ascend to this second flight of love while still alive on earth and only experience the heaven, though they can see hell and the souls in it.
lyrics
Ciguyamat kih bimaykhanish dush mast o kharab
Surush-I alam-I ghaybam cih muzhdiha dadast (Hafiz)
*How can I tell you that last night in the tavern, intoxicated and unsteady as I was, great glad tidings were brought me by the angel of the hidden world.'
I’m out of my brain with joy. Are we dead?
Alive among the dead. All they can do is watch and remember, rejoice and regret. A thousand fold. We make new things happen.
What’s that smell?
Sinners unthinking their sins. Stay clear. They can’t.
A Roman candle – both ends – a seized handful of lightning,
She fires through the heavens like light streams off an angel’s wing.
So mighty and subtle, a charge off of yin and yang,
The craft’s me, and I’m her: love-fuelled, she flies to every whim.
The Maimed King’s white-robed daughter, her eyes red with strange desire,
Steers dreamland below – wakes life from dead Earth - by wishing.
Above dreams, I see hereafter’s warp-speed joy and pain: trance
Of soul-sending bliss; agony of sins’ un-thinking.
Debt-ridden nightmares redeem themselves in galloping hells:
Thick sins in deep shit, thin in shallow - below my high living.
Six hundred and sixty six rockets shoot over like stars:
Flight paths clear of congestion and endless delaying.
It’s not sober in heaven, Calypso measures pour down;
Pure spirit unstopped by flesh; wild uncorporate singing.
I’ve pub-crawled from the plane into this heavenly city,
Tavern drinking to an Absent Friend I should be meeting.
Stuck. A Catherine Wheelspin Lotus to Nowhere. Fast. I’ve stalled
The mission, the Earth and its peril, the Master’s calling.
“O God-dazzled, leave this dream, which is heavenly shadow
Of Grail light, and follow Me where such wish-life is nothing.”
from Dr Who Am I and the Zen Trails of Hafiz (album),
released July 10, 2021
(fast blues) beatbox, bodhran, triangle, fireworks, accidentally perfect passing siren, snatches of guitar, mandolin, bass.
Gabriella Tal guests radiantly on voice and guitar.
The picture by Mark Gregory is from the stage show: Dr Who Am I adjusts to the vizor of his warp speed Formula Zen Lotus; Lt O Who Ru sings the blind Homer vision satnav.
Source books for all seven heavens are "God Speaks" by Meher Baba; "The Nothing and the Everything" by Bhau Kalchuri/ Meher Baba.
See garethcalway.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/6-degrees-of-separation-7-degrees-of.html
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