DwayneHoover
Bluelighter
This goes for 20,000 words and is based on ancient Hindu mysticism. The language is ravishingly beautiful and seems to speak right to the core of some of the deepest psychedelic experiences, IMO.
Really had my jaw on the floor when a friend pointed it out to me. Some of the phrase-smithing is just unbelievably WHOA!
Official Text: http://www.savitribysriaurobindo.com/
About: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savitri_(book)
Excerpt from Wikipedia:
HERE'S A TINY TASTE:
Canto I - The Symbol Dawn Page 1
It was the hour before the Gods awake.
Across the path of the divine Event
The huge foreboding mind of Night, alone
In her unlit temple of eternity,
Lay stretched immobile upon Silence' marge.
Almost one felt, opaque, impenetrable,
In the sombre symbol of her eyeless muse
The abysm of the unbodied Infinite;
A fathomless zero occupied the world.
A power of fallen boundless self awake
Between the first and the last Nothingness,
Recalling the tenebrous womb from which it came,
Turned from the insoluble mystery of birth
And the tardy process of mortality
And longed to reach its end in vacant Nought.
As in a dark beginning of all things,
A mute featureless semblance of the Unknown
Repeating for ever the unconscious act,
Prolonging for ever the unseeing will,
Cradled the cosmic drowse of ignorant Force
Whose moved creative slumber kindles the suns
And carries our lives in its somnambulist whirl.
Athwart the vain enormous trance of Space,
Its formless stupor without mind or life,
A shadow spinning through a soulless Void,
Thrown back once more into unthinking dreams,
Earth wheeled abandoned in the hollow gulfs
Forgetful of her spirit and her fate.
The impassive skies were neutral, empty, still.
Then something in the inscrutable darkness stirred;
A nameless movement, an unthought Idea
Book I - The Book of Beginnings
Canto I - The Symbol Dawn Page 2
Insistent, dissatisfied, without an aim,
Something that wished but knew not how to be,
Teased the Inconscient to wake Ignorance.
A throe that came and left a quivering trace,
Gave room for an old tired want unfilled,
At peace in its subconscient moonless cave
To raise its head and look for absent light,
Straining closed eyes of vanished memory,
Like one who searches for a bygone self
And only meets the corpse of his desire.
It was as though even in this Nought's profound,
Even in this ultimate dissolution's core,
There lurked an unremembering entity,
Survivor of a slain and buried past
Condemned to resume the effort and the pang,
Reviving in another frustrate world.
An unshaped consciousness desired light
And a blank prescience yearned towards distant change.
As if a childlike finger laid on a cheek
Reminded of the endless need in things
The heedless Mother of the universe,
An infant longing clutched the sombre Vast.
Insensibly somewhere a breach began:
A long lone line of hesitating hue
Like a vague smile tempting a desert heart
Troubled the far rim of life's obscure sleep.
Arrived from the other side of boundlessness
An eye of deity peered through the dumb deeps;
A scout in a reconnaissance from the sun,
It seemed amid a heavy cosmic rest,
The torpor of a sick and weary world,
To seek for a spirit sole and desolate
Too fallen to recollect forgotten bliss.
Intervening in a mindless universe,
Its message crept through the reluctant hush
Calling the adventure of consciousness and joy
Book I - The Book of Beginnings
Canto I - The Symbol Dawn Page 3
And, conquering Nature's disillusioned breast,
Compelled renewed consent to see and feel.
A thought was sown in the unsounded Void,
A sense was born within the darkness' depths,
A memory quivered in the heart of Time
As if a soul long dead were moved to live:
But the oblivion that succeeds the fall,
Had blotted the crowded tablets of the past,
And all that was destroyed must be rebuilt
And old experience laboured out once more.
All can be done if the god-touch is there.
Really had my jaw on the floor when a friend pointed it out to me. Some of the phrase-smithing is just unbelievably WHOA!
Official Text: http://www.savitribysriaurobindo.com/
About: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savitri_(book)
Excerpt from Wikipedia:
Reviews
The Mother, who was Sri Aurobindo's spiritual collaborator said this of Savitri: "... everything is there: mysticism, occultism, philosophy, the history of evolution, the history of man, of the gods, of creation, of Nature. How the universe was created, why, for what purpose, what destiny - all is there. You can find all the answers to all your questions there. Everything is explained, even the future of man and of the evolution, all that nobody yet knows. He has described it all in beautiful and clear words so that spiritual adventurers who wish to solve the mysteries of the world may understand it more easily."
[edit]Summary
BOOK ONE (only; out of 12)
The Creator Spirit is Absent in the Creation -- There is the Spirit, the Source of creation. But in creating a universe, it withdrew Its spiritual properties (of Delight, Knowledge, Oneness, etc.). Savitri arose to bring that Divinity of the Pure Existent into the world, into the lives of men. She will do this by overcoming the limitations that exist in life, including the essential Ignorance, division, duality, conflict, pain, etc. born of creation, through her inner, spiritual quest.
Savitri Arises to Bring Divinity to the Earth -- Her Infinite Love of being is expressed through her Love for Satyavan. He however is doomed to die. She must overcome all of the ills of the earth to save him, including death itself. (Her love for him, and the threat of his death are the compulsion for Savitri to overcome the Darkness and limitations of life. Or to put it another way, the Divine person must bear the undivinity of the world to transform it.)
The King's Yogic Ascent, and Aspiration -- Savitri's father King Aswapathy is a person who is going through his own willful conscious evolution -- i.e. yoga. Though he makes an initial effort to rise, he falls back in his efforts; but out of that he develops a new strength to rise again and go even higher. Thus, though there was difficulty in his ascent to higher consciousness, he develops an Equality of being that makes him more immune from the exigencies of the lower consciousness that wants to drag him down.
Aswapathy then resumes his inner spiritual ascent, and experiences along the way a personal evolution culminating in Spiritual Transformation. Through that process, he comes to know his soul and true self within; he perceives the transcendent Spiritual reality, and feels the Force of the Divine Mother within himself. As a result, he comes to understand the deepest meaning and purpose of life, and begins to be released from the essential Ignorance and other limitations that weigh down our normal human consciousness. As a result, of his vast new awareness and experience, he aspires for the same for the world -- i.e. for the progress, evolution, and transformation of all of humanity. His daughter Savitri, has come to earth to fulfill the King's aspirations. However, she will need to do so by overcoming Satyavan's impending death.
[edit]Composition
Sri Aurobindo worked on Savitri for over twenty years, making it his literary life's work, with the earliest known draft written in 1916. Towards the beginning of the poem's composition, it was not uncommon for passages to undergo as many as ten redrafts, with many rearrangements of lines. In later years, as Sri Aurobindo's eyesight was failing, he dictated portions of the book to Nirodbaran. Just before his death, he fluently dictated lengthy passages on end with little to no correction afterwards.
The Mother, who was Sri Aurobindo's spiritual collaborator said this of Savitri: "... everything is there: mysticism, occultism, philosophy, the history of evolution, the history of man, of the gods, of creation, of Nature. How the universe was created, why, for what purpose, what destiny - all is there. You can find all the answers to all your questions there. Everything is explained, even the future of man and of the evolution, all that nobody yet knows. He has described it all in beautiful and clear words so that spiritual adventurers who wish to solve the mysteries of the world may understand it more easily."
[edit]Summary
BOOK ONE (only; out of 12)
The Creator Spirit is Absent in the Creation -- There is the Spirit, the Source of creation. But in creating a universe, it withdrew Its spiritual properties (of Delight, Knowledge, Oneness, etc.). Savitri arose to bring that Divinity of the Pure Existent into the world, into the lives of men. She will do this by overcoming the limitations that exist in life, including the essential Ignorance, division, duality, conflict, pain, etc. born of creation, through her inner, spiritual quest.
Savitri Arises to Bring Divinity to the Earth -- Her Infinite Love of being is expressed through her Love for Satyavan. He however is doomed to die. She must overcome all of the ills of the earth to save him, including death itself. (Her love for him, and the threat of his death are the compulsion for Savitri to overcome the Darkness and limitations of life. Or to put it another way, the Divine person must bear the undivinity of the world to transform it.)
The King's Yogic Ascent, and Aspiration -- Savitri's father King Aswapathy is a person who is going through his own willful conscious evolution -- i.e. yoga. Though he makes an initial effort to rise, he falls back in his efforts; but out of that he develops a new strength to rise again and go even higher. Thus, though there was difficulty in his ascent to higher consciousness, he develops an Equality of being that makes him more immune from the exigencies of the lower consciousness that wants to drag him down.
Aswapathy then resumes his inner spiritual ascent, and experiences along the way a personal evolution culminating in Spiritual Transformation. Through that process, he comes to know his soul and true self within; he perceives the transcendent Spiritual reality, and feels the Force of the Divine Mother within himself. As a result, he comes to understand the deepest meaning and purpose of life, and begins to be released from the essential Ignorance and other limitations that weigh down our normal human consciousness. As a result, of his vast new awareness and experience, he aspires for the same for the world -- i.e. for the progress, evolution, and transformation of all of humanity. His daughter Savitri, has come to earth to fulfill the King's aspirations. However, she will need to do so by overcoming Satyavan's impending death.
[edit]Composition
Sri Aurobindo worked on Savitri for over twenty years, making it his literary life's work, with the earliest known draft written in 1916. Towards the beginning of the poem's composition, it was not uncommon for passages to undergo as many as ten redrafts, with many rearrangements of lines. In later years, as Sri Aurobindo's eyesight was failing, he dictated portions of the book to Nirodbaran. Just before his death, he fluently dictated lengthy passages on end with little to no correction afterwards.
HERE'S A TINY TASTE:
Canto I - The Symbol Dawn Page 1
It was the hour before the Gods awake.
Across the path of the divine Event
The huge foreboding mind of Night, alone
In her unlit temple of eternity,
Lay stretched immobile upon Silence' marge.
Almost one felt, opaque, impenetrable,
In the sombre symbol of her eyeless muse
The abysm of the unbodied Infinite;
A fathomless zero occupied the world.
A power of fallen boundless self awake
Between the first and the last Nothingness,
Recalling the tenebrous womb from which it came,
Turned from the insoluble mystery of birth
And the tardy process of mortality
And longed to reach its end in vacant Nought.
As in a dark beginning of all things,
A mute featureless semblance of the Unknown
Repeating for ever the unconscious act,
Prolonging for ever the unseeing will,
Cradled the cosmic drowse of ignorant Force
Whose moved creative slumber kindles the suns
And carries our lives in its somnambulist whirl.
Athwart the vain enormous trance of Space,
Its formless stupor without mind or life,
A shadow spinning through a soulless Void,
Thrown back once more into unthinking dreams,
Earth wheeled abandoned in the hollow gulfs
Forgetful of her spirit and her fate.
The impassive skies were neutral, empty, still.
Then something in the inscrutable darkness stirred;
A nameless movement, an unthought Idea
Book I - The Book of Beginnings
Canto I - The Symbol Dawn Page 2
Insistent, dissatisfied, without an aim,
Something that wished but knew not how to be,
Teased the Inconscient to wake Ignorance.
A throe that came and left a quivering trace,
Gave room for an old tired want unfilled,
At peace in its subconscient moonless cave
To raise its head and look for absent light,
Straining closed eyes of vanished memory,
Like one who searches for a bygone self
And only meets the corpse of his desire.
It was as though even in this Nought's profound,
Even in this ultimate dissolution's core,
There lurked an unremembering entity,
Survivor of a slain and buried past
Condemned to resume the effort and the pang,
Reviving in another frustrate world.
An unshaped consciousness desired light
And a blank prescience yearned towards distant change.
As if a childlike finger laid on a cheek
Reminded of the endless need in things
The heedless Mother of the universe,
An infant longing clutched the sombre Vast.
Insensibly somewhere a breach began:
A long lone line of hesitating hue
Like a vague smile tempting a desert heart
Troubled the far rim of life's obscure sleep.
Arrived from the other side of boundlessness
An eye of deity peered through the dumb deeps;
A scout in a reconnaissance from the sun,
It seemed amid a heavy cosmic rest,
The torpor of a sick and weary world,
To seek for a spirit sole and desolate
Too fallen to recollect forgotten bliss.
Intervening in a mindless universe,
Its message crept through the reluctant hush
Calling the adventure of consciousness and joy
Book I - The Book of Beginnings
Canto I - The Symbol Dawn Page 3
And, conquering Nature's disillusioned breast,
Compelled renewed consent to see and feel.
A thought was sown in the unsounded Void,
A sense was born within the darkness' depths,
A memory quivered in the heart of Time
As if a soul long dead were moved to live:
But the oblivion that succeeds the fall,
Had blotted the crowded tablets of the past,
And all that was destroyed must be rebuilt
And old experience laboured out once more.
All can be done if the god-touch is there.
I also love the wordsmithing. 
