We reach Olympus/Meru, the control centre of the cosmos, but find it out of control, a shipwrecked in a Flood. The chaos caused by power-maddened human minds has reached such heights, it has overwhelmed even the moderating angels and gods. Zeus (Indra) has resigned. After a million years of crisis-managing the Earth, in the modern era of political incorrectness gone mad, he chooses instead to do what the angel Michael did - take earthly form for one lifetime and thereby achieve Liberation as God. The humming uncontrolled power we hear in this heaven is both Zeus's own danger - a human soul who attains through lifetimes of spiritual progress to the rank of Zeus has 330 million angels at his command - and the ecological, political and economic crisis of our planet.
Form and technique
Thunder and drums represent the father of the gods (Zeus the thunderer; Indra the rain god) and also the chaos of uncontrolled power. Dr Who Am I and O Who debate where they are and then receive a vision of Olympus in crisis in the form of a ghazal.
The poetic form is the Persian ghazal but the production is as for a speech in a Greek tragedy: rhythmical speech over dionysian drums in which you lose yourself to find yourself. As befits the engine of the cosmos, the unbelievable power of the gods and angels throbs throughout. The ghazal is performed as a tragic speech during which the tragic 'fall' occurs, after which the post-Zeus soul wanders blind on earth though its current storm, helpless and hopeless in a 'New Life.'
The allegory
The relentless rain is both the "subtle shape-shifting cloud" of godly/ angelic power manifesting and Noah's Flood.
This is the third of 7 heavens, the abode of the Greek and Hindu gods and angels, devas and fairies. Energy is at its peak - the unconscious but implacable and conflicting energy/ drives of humanity as personified by the gods. We are approaching complete mastery of our subtle energy or spirit, the fuel which propels our thoughts/ideas/wishes into actions in the material world. But we are also in peak danger of being mastered by it. Zeus surrenders the unbelievable power and returns to Earth the only place one can make spiritual progress - to progress beyond it.
Amid the helplessness and hopelessness with which this heaven resolves, the Master's advice is to "Aim your love ark at a peak only Lucifers 'No.' This foreshadows the absolute crisis of the next heaven, the crisis of the whole work, where Almighty power can be mastered along with one's wish for it. The love ark (as in Noah's Ark) is the trajectory of the soul's progress towards its spiritual peak. The next heaven offers the Almighty Power which caused Lucifer to Fall. "Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven" as Milton put it. The pun on 'know' and 'No' suggests his fatal/hubristic denial of the divine knowledge (Love) needed to guide this almighty power.
lyrics
Ye gods, where’s this?
Olympus. Meru. The control centre of the Cosmos. Abode of the angels and gods, devas and fairies. Only there’s a problem.
A problem?
They’ve lost control. …
Zeus serves notice, via Hermes, I can mind-read his no show:
“Earth’s off axis, mind wreaks chaos, and it mocks gods’ control!!
“Man-made death-tides,winds, quakes, burn-outs, heat, light, sound – once all
Fairy-ringed, Neptune-swayed, angel-buttressed: now they blow.
“Past my epoch, my four cycles, a million years
Hurling thunderbolts and miracles (mirror-calls), I let it go.
"Gone my long reign and its vapour’s subtle shape-shifting Cloud;
Breath of God’s shadow falling as rain, my own shadow.
“King of angels, I, yet angels and gods looking down
Pray for low birth to ascend where we high spirits go.
“Man yet king god, I return to the earth as a star;
Raise the standard of what men may become, the hero.
“Man and not god, with my lightning confined in a sword,
Earthed, to die there like a man, pass the third heaven so.
“Like St Michael, ageless angel, took one lifetime as a man
To be God the day his body died, so let me below...”
Oh, beloved, do not offer me that bliss of the gods:
Three hundred and thirty million angels who bow.
I, who loved you in dark exile on the Earth for one smile;
Power over power: where even angels fear to go.
“Shipwrecked Angel, flight deck sinking, high Olympus in flood,
Aim your love-Ark at a peak only Lucifers ‘No’.”
Cih rah mizanad in mutib-I muqam shinas
Kih dar miyan-I ghazal qul-I ashina avard (Hafiz)
“What perturbation and distress this musician with knowledge of spiritual states and stages is causing his listeners (lovers) by interpolating in the midst of his performance the words of the Divine Beloved.”
credits
from Dr Who Am I and the Zen Trails of Hafiz (album),
released July 10, 2021
Voices, thunder drums, thunder, rain, (very brief) Latin beat.
Tony Rafferty took the picture of Dr Who Am I as an Ancient Geek Zeus crowned with the tambourine of power at the stage show in a Norwich night club under St Benedict St in July 2015.
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