Preparing for the Miraculous

what arjuna saw: the dark side of the force 83the earth-consciousness here, a cosmic, not solely a supracosmicachievement.” And it is new “because a method hasbeen preconized for achieving this purpose which is as totaland integral as the aim set before it, viz., the total and integralchange of consciousness and nature ... I have not foundthis method (as a whole) or anything like it professed orrealized in the old yogas,” writes Sri Aurobindo. “If I had, Ishould not have wasted my time in hewing out a road andin thirty years of search and inner creation when I couldhave hastened home safely to my goal in an easy canter overpaths already blazed out, laid down, perfectly mapped,macadamized, made secure and public. Our yoga is not aretreading of old walks, but a spiritual adventure.” 17Hewing out a new road, broadening and deepening thedestiny of humankind, is the task of the Avatar. In Sri Aurobindo’swords: “The Avatar is one who comes to open theWay for humanity to a higher consciousness. ... The Divinebeing all-powerful can lift people up without bothering tocome down on earth. It is only if it is a part of the worldarrangementthat he should take upon himself the burdenof humanity and open the Way that Avatarhood has anymeaning... The Avatar is not bound to do extraordinary actions,but he is bound to give his acts or his work or whathe is – any of these or all – a significance and an effectivepower that are part of something essential to be done in thehistory of the earth and its races. ... The Avatar is necessarywhen a special work is to be done and in crises of the evolution,”as Sri Krishna himself gives Arjuna to understand,saying that he incarnates as an Avatar yuge yuge, from ageto age. 18Extraordinary actions abounded in the lives of Sri Aurobindoand the Mother, the most extraordinary being of17 Id., p. 101.18 Id., pp. 408, 409, 414, 401.