DEATH NOT A MYSTERY.

Shannon News, 11 February 1927, Page 3

DEATH NOT A MYSTERY.

On Monday evening Professor Ernest Wood, from.lndia, who has been touring New Zealand, lecturing to large audiences in Invercargill, . Dunedin, Christchurch and Wellington, stopped in Palmerston North on his way to Auckland, and lectured at the Theosophical Hall, Church Street, on the mystery of death. There was a large, and enthusiastic gathering.

Prof. Wood said that it was undesirable that any human , problems, however difficult, should be regarded as insolvable mysteries. For thousands of years men have faced their problems; they have solved many and will solve many more. We have discovered the hidden mysteries of nature, probbed her secrets and tapped her powers; we shall do the same with, re gard to the secrets of man himself. There wore already, went on the lecturer, several ideas well established bearing on the problem of life after death. First, the existence of an invisible world around us had been demonstrated in various ways. That world must be full of forms and sounds. The Professor cited the case of the German Police dogs, which obey an inaudible whistle. - When he blew this instrument, which no man can hear, the dog in another part of the house came straight to him, though he was ar stranger.

There was evidence to show that the essential part of every man belonged to this invisible world, and used the body as an instrument. The collected ideas and thoughts of man form his mind or soul in this region, and men have learned to travel in this mindbody. One night, related Prof. Wood, a Hindu Yogi, travelling in his subtle body came to his room in Madras, made himself visible and stated who he was and where he lived. Throe weeks later the Professor went to the villag'e, which was 200 miles away, found the man and stayed with him for a week.

.The survival of this part of man was claimed to be perfectly natural. This would account for the statements of all religious and psychic research authorities that after death men go through a graded series of experiences, according to their feelings and ideas acquired on earth. They first learn to sec the full significance of their sensuous attachments and so gradually get rid of them, and then they proceed to develop and perfect their better feelings and thoughts. These two grades would involve experiences-which might easily be exaggerated into the popular conceptions of Hell and Heaven.

The theory of reincarnation was the logical outcome, said Professor Wood, of this idea of the natural evolution of the human soul. The earth provided for all grades of experience, so when a man had understood the meaning of his former life and finished his. development of character on those lines he might very naturally return to birth for his next step. Here were many evidences for the support of this idea, especially the fact that human qualities, such as noble self-sacrifice which led to danger and even death, were not lost to humanity, but brought back to the new body upon reincarnation and so contributed increasingly to human progress. In conclusion, Professor Wood said that if men would more and more study these problems scientifically, new facts would assuredly come to light which ‘ would convince all that the immortality of man is a perfectly . natura^^d