THEOSOPHICAL LECTURE

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLV, Issue 123, 28 April 1925, Page 11

THEOSOPHICAL LECTURE

"THE LIFE AFTER OEATH.” An interesting lecture was delivered on Sunday evening in the Tlieosopliica! Hall by Lt.-Col. Sinythe, D. 5.0., of Wellington, on the subject of the “Life After Death.”

The speaker drew attention to the fact that very little is generally known of the conditions which await every one of ns in the comparatively near future, and stated that this great field of the unknown could be explored and known, and that it had already been explored and much information had been given about it. The lecturer was careful to explain his reasons for believing what had been revealed in this connection. He pointed out that the man in the street was firmly convinced of the existence of X-rays, notwithstanding he knew nothing about the subject, because he relied on the statements of trained investigators. This was not unreasonable, he said, when it was realised that discoveries in science were made by man who gave long years of their lives to the study of their subject. Similarly, he said, there were trained investigators into the realms of the occult, men who had given many years to meditation and study to fit themselves; for their task, and it was therefore just as reasonable to accept their statements on this subject as to accept the pronouncements of scientists on their own particular subjects. He instanced the rates ol' vibrations which produce sound, electricity, light and X-rays, and showed that there were great gaps between these known rates of vibration which were unexplored. It was known, for instance, that there were sounds both at the top and bottom of the scale which the human ear could not detect, und that there were colours at both ends of the spectrum which a sensitized photographic plate could record which were quite imperceptible to the human eye. It was through a systematic and prolonged course of certain faculties within themselves which were capable of recording the sights and sounds in the unseen world. The message given to the world by these trained investigators is a glorious one, a message that death is not a thing to he feared by any man, but that it opens the gate to a splendid life for all. The old idea that we have this one life and then an examination (the judgment), and then perhaps are expelled from God’s school, cast out like everlasting punishment—this idea, they say, is not only unworthy of a God of love, but it is untrue. Man, they say, is given endless chances. He suffers for his mistakes, but he grows wiser because of them and he evolves through experience to perfection. The lecturer gave an interesting account of life on the other side of death as related by the investigators. He said that people frequently refuse for quite a long time to realise that they have cast off their physical bodies. Their surroundings at first on the other side are so similar to the surroundings they have left, and they themselves feel so little changed, that they do not realise what has happened. The man who has lived a debased life here does certainly have a bad time oil the other side, but not for ever. He works out his sentence on the lowest level of the after world and then is released to the next and so on until he lias worked through the seven levels of the intermediate world. Life on some of these levels is really lived m splendid conditions, far surpassing the conditious of earth life. There is no need to work for a livelihood, no necessity to eat or drink, no pain, no tiredness. The fulness of a man’s life depends there upon his inner resources. He lives in his thoughts and emotions, and the whole object of this lifo which immediately follows death is to exhaust the personal desires and selfish emotions and leave only the highest. He then dies in the world of desire as he previously died in the world of physical matter, and continues his lifo in the world of the mind which is splendid beyond comparison with its predecessors. Even this splendid life comes to an end to give place to lifo in the true Heaven world which is more than can he , inagined of splendour and joy. But in the heaven world as in the lower worlds men can only live and enjoy and serve up to his capacity, and it is the purpose of the great law of evolution to increase that capacity to perfection. For this reason the immortal spirit of man after a while renounces his splendid heaven life and of his own free will returns to the hard world 1;o reincarnate again as man, to live again through the struggle of mortal existence and by experience add to his capacity to love and to serve. By repeated incarnations with the rests of heaven life in between, man climbs tho ladder to perfection and so escapes from the wheel of births and deaths, and is free and eligible and equipped for the greater opportunities which God holds for the perfect man.