THE RAINBOW SWASTIKA - Scattered Seed Ministries

limitations, anything and everything is possible for humanity. Therefore, the material
(physical) world is actually an evil, in that it holds us back from developing our full potential.
Bailey identified the "Dark Forces" in part as materialism and the persistence in relating to
matter as real (_Externalisation of the Hierarchy_ Section II, p.74-75). Hindu yogis devote
their lives to escaping the "maya" of this life through physical deprivation and self-inflicted
suffering. So do Theosophists, in keeping with the Gnostic tradition (see Blavatsky, _The
Secret Doctrine_ I, p.70) Tibetan Buddhists try to escape it through prolonged isolation and
silent meditation. Inevitably, all who accept such a view of earthly existence see death as a
welcome escape and a helping hand in human evolution - as did Bailey (_Externalisation_ II,
p.75).
The NA doctrines most familiar to us are tailored to Western demands for a quicker and less
painful path, but their offer of "personal transformation" sets the same goal for the initiate:
escape from the limitations of this life, at least mentally if one is not ready for the physical
step. [A quick survey of popular movies of recent years will show how energetically we are
being indoctrinated to free ourselves from "the physical plane", or the material world. An
especially powerful apologetic is _The Matrix_, which a gnostic acquaintance recommended
to me as a good presentation of his belief system. And lest viewers miss the fact that they are
being preached at, in the final moments of the flick, the main character - "Neo" (Greek for
"new man"), in league with "Morpheus" (Greek for "change", also the god of dreams) - turns
into a combination of Superman and messiah and takes over the dialog. All sense of fictional
plot dissolves as he directs an old-fashioned altar call straight at the viewing audience,
inviting them to join him in this kind of "freedom... where everything is possible". The same
tactic was used with more subtletly in _The Truman Show_, where Truman ("true man")
finally catches on to his illusory "life", defies his manipulative "creator" Christoff (also named
deliberately) and steps right out of his "existence" - to the cheers of his vast audience waiting
for him on the "outside".]
We have evolved through several "root-races" (the 1st was the "Lemurian", and the 2nd the
"Atlantean", the latter dated by NA mythology as ending 26,000 years ago). We are nearing
the end of the 3rd, the "Aryan root-race" [Yes, it's the same Aryan race found in Nazi doctrine
- except they identified the location not as Atlantis but Hyperborea]. Each root-race goes
through stages which produce "subraces", representing stair-steps upward toward the next
race in which mankind acquires new attributes and abilities. According to Alice Bailey, these
ages change every 2000 years, and are reflected in the astrological signs. We are currently at
a transition stage between two ages in our "planetary evolution": about to enter the "6th
subrace" of the Aryan root. [This is only one example of the strange math which plagues New
Age history - to pass through 5 ages of Aryan race-history since Atlantis would only take
10,000 years, leaving another 16,000 unaccounted for....] To complicate human history even
further, Theosophist G. de Purucker claims that we are witnessing the birth of "the 6th
subrace of our present 5th [rather than 3rd] root-race"; according to him, the Lemurian and
Atlantean are the 3rd and 4th; root-races 1 and 2 are unidentified. He names the Aryan race as
"one of the very first subraces of our own 5th root-race" [not the root-race itself, which
remains nameless], noting that the Aryan race is declining but will rise again [revived
subraces are not mentioned by Bailey]. Meanwhile, our current subrace won't die out for
another 427,000 years, and by his "Brahmanical" calculations, a single root-race lasts not
26,000 years but "8.6 million years"! (See _The Fountain-Source of Occultism_, published by
the Theosophical Society.) [Before we laugh, we must remember that these histories - both
versions, in fact - are not attributed by NAers to confused humans, but to disembodied spirit
beings who propose to guide mankind to higher wisdom. In view of their track record on