Energy is at its subtle and humming peak in this heaven - here we learn mastery of all the implacable and conflicting (notably masculine and feminine) energy/ drives within the human being which we personify as 'the gods'.
The third heaven is the abode of the (Greek and Hindu) gods, goddesses, angels and devas, subtle beings of irresistible beauty and immense force. Some of these are impersonal forces of the divine (often called 'angels') others are advanced human beings who have attained conscious mastery of their inner powers and operate on a par with the angels and in the highest cases - like Zeus - actually rule them ('the gods').
After a million years of crisis-managing the Earth, especially in the modern era of political incorrectness gone mad (Auschwitz, Hiroshima, climate change, the Last Trump) this Zeus wants to resign.
Remember that in the divine game we are playing, no progress can take place except on Earth in a human body. Even Zeus has eventually to take human form on earth to progress beyond the unimaginable heights of the third heaven (just as even the Archangel Michael needed one mortal life on earth - as St Michael - to ascend from the sixth heaven to God.)
By the same token, one smile from our Guide in human form on a precarious Earth (spinning towards disaster) is for our poet and composer worth all the dizzying power and glories of myriad gods and angels.
lyrics
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, quakes, winds, burn-outs, heat, light, sound – once all
Neptune-swayed, magic-spelled, angel-buttressed: now they blow.
“Past my epoch, my four cycles, a million years
Hurling thunderbolts and miracles, 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 where the archangels would know.
From Olympus, love must wing down, past a harp chord in a cloud
Of some cheap scent, past a dreamland, to this child’s play, to have worth.
The Baba Lovers are an Atlantic-transcending duo: English poet Gareth Calway and American singer-songwriter Gabriella Tal.
The Beloved is Avatar Meher Baba, whose favourite poet was Hafiz and whose favourite poetic form the ghazal (a Persian love lyric). We met in India at the Meher Pilgrim Centre in Ahmednagar in 1994 and wrote a couple of songs. We reconnected online in 2016 and wrote an album....more
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