God. The final square on the board and Nothing has changed. We are now conscious that the atma or separate soul our little Minds told us we were as we progressed through the divine game was always in reality, Paramatma, the Oversoul.
In Heaven 007, we finally go out of our Minds. All the other heavens - not to mention hell and earth - now appear as shadows or illusions of that Mind. The shadows cast behind us by the Sun we now enter like a moth into a flame. This heaven is where we always were, at the continual climax/ resolution, the endless end, the eternal consummation.
There is no point trying to understand the metaphysical ideas expressed in those two paragraphs, though it is essential to try and perfectly legitimate to enjoy their craft, grace and guile. Furious critical thinking is an essential part of our divine game. You can't play it without a Mind anymore than a boardgame without a counter. Nevertheless the ideas only make sense as a description of an experience and that experience is love. If you haven't loved, this explanation will be so much Earth-music in the ears of a Martian.
The key note of these two final ghazals (and our performance) is that God and Love are experiences utterly beyond and dialectically opposed to this world AND YET at the same time deeply present in and transformative of it. The earth is stirred, shaken and saved by the experience of love - not the jihad or crusade or preaching or even explaining and understanding of it but of the experience of it and nothing else. Without it, the world is hurtling towards destruction.
So we'd better get on with it.
lyrics
Sav bar tahira dama ha thon mire aya
Jab ankh khuli dikha apna hi gariban hai – (Asghar)
‘A hundred times I felt that I held your garment firmly in my hands;
When I opened my eyes I was amazed to discover it was my own garment I was holding.'
Illumination’s burning Eye has gone, let darkness come,
A slip between the Grail and Lip, a black hole in the sun.
In total Darkness, total Light; in Nothingness, nirvana.
Who dared to love, now lover and beloved love as one.
I lift the Grail, the Holy Grail I always was and am
The musk the deer pursued, the winging moth and flame made one!
A golden rose, a thousand suns, a blaze of brimming light
Now overflows my lip with love: the Earth is stirred and shaken.
Brings Light to Earth and Earth to Light, un-maims the Wounded King,
Unwinter the Grail Maiden’s eyes, makes Maid and May King one.
The quest’s achieved, the Earth will live, heart’s wilderness is sown
With seeds lost in the fruit it bears, the soul of all is won.
O Who of Whos, your heart has burst and pours on Winter’s Kingdom
Your cornucopic vessel’s rays: Who dared win love – has won!
*
This is God. On the highest of highs through the gulf of a tomb,
(This is God.) I’m on top of the worlds born of mind, spirit, womb.
I am not. Now the bubble has burst, there is nothing but sea:
This is God. I’m as drowned in His kiss as the bud in her bloom.
I’m in Love. All the pain in my heart’s disappeared like a dream:
This is God. I am dead to the worlds and awake to my swoon.
I am Him. Now the primal beloved and lover are one:
This is God. I’ve become Who I journeyed towards and from Whom.
Oh my love! He’s embraced me and brought me at last to himself:
This is God. Now I see there is only my Self in his room.
I’m the soul. “There’s no dark where there’s light, no unknown where one knows.”
This is God. Little mind has been razed with its search and its gloom.
O my God! You’re beyond the beyond but you’re found on the Earth.
This is Me, All in All, in the flesh: this perfection, this Home.
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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