THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 5079, 24 January 1927, Page 1

THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY

RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN MAN. LECTURE AT WELLINGTON. Under the auspices of the Theosophical Society Professor Ernest Wood, late Principal and Professor of Physics in the Hyderabad Scind College, India, who is at present lecturing in Wellington, dealt with the subject of “The New Psychology” last week. The new psychology, said the speaker, dealt witli retrain aspects of the mind that were sometimes called of an abnormal kind, which aspects came into prominence every now and then. There were various aspects of the mind that were not, perhaps, as ’familiar as were the ordinary types, of human thought. Unquestionably, lie considered, with the development of man in refinement, and culture these unfamiliar aspects of mind would increase. In the evolution o’f humanity there would be a manifestation of these powers even on a longer and larger scale. The lecturer pointed out that one of the objects of the Theosophical Society was to forward the progress of humanity. Nothing, he continued, could make more for the progress of humanity than the understanding of man of his own nature and his, own mind. Perhaps it was for this reason, he suggested, that a number of years ago the Theosophical Society added a third object to the two which had previously been held before its members —“to investigate the unexpected laws in Nature, and the powers latent in man.”

After explaining his theory by referenced to the phenomena of telepathy and dreams, Professor Wood went on to say that these extended powers o'f the mind were usually regarded as putting us into’ touch with knowledge, and with other parts' of the world which we could not reach by means of our normal senses. There was another side to the patter, however. For every faculty had two sides—a receptive side and a “power” side. Thought, as other / 'faculties, possessed a “power” side, a positive side which exercised a positive influence upon the world. This fact,, said the lecturer, was not sufficiently realised. “People do not realise,” he said, “to what an enormous extent the imagination is really a power in our lives.” It was in charatcer especially, he continued, that this power of the mind could be found at work. “What a man thinks upon, that he becomes.”