THEOSOPHICAL LECTURE.

Taranaki Daily News, 19 March 1918, Page 6

THEOSOPHICAL LECTURE.

The last but one of Miss Christie's rse of lectures was delivered 011 Sunday night, to a full hall. The subject «-as "War Karma, Past, Present and Future " Karma, said the lecturer, is a Sanscrit word meaning action, and as every action has a result which in turn became a cause, we use the word karma to denote the law of cause and effect. This law is eternal, all-embracing, and unerring in its action; its activity Is co-existent with manifestations and affects each individual life as intimately and completely as if it were the only one Therefore all that comes to us, all that is ours to-day, is the rebound upon, us of our own past activities. When we realise this we are careful to do jiothis/g that we do not wish to have return fo us, and wo take all that comes M the payment of an old, or even a for-

I gotten debt of pain or pleasure, joy or sorrow. Nations and races are but inI dividuals oil a larger scale, and with them, as with us, the present is the result of the past, and the future will be what we make it tq-day. A nation is as a cell in the body of the universe, but is an important organ in the body of a planet. Look at Europe to-day plunged >nto horror, misery and bloodshed. Why? Because its people did not know of this law of Karma, and so could not profit fully from the lessons of the past. Always when a new root race and new era approaches there is a groat cataclysm or a "■•oat war. and the Karma of the wars of the past, at such times was the loss of their best soldiers, many of their nosoe-loving civilians, and the gathered lrnov,'ledge and civilisation of centuries, so tljat the oaos, or souls passing 011 to the new race had to begin all over again; onlv that the struggle through which t* ey had passed made certain powers ar.d qualities which reapneared in their now bodies and enabled them to go over the old ground more quickly, so the Karma was not all bad; it never is. The war Karma of the present is much the sanio. We of the Allies to-day havo within us the memorv of past defeat when Atlantis sank beneath the ocean which bears its name, and the dark side won. The Central Powers have as leaders the same souls who then won. and . thev still think that "Might is Eight' and power theirs to use as they will, and that- they must win, because they have the memory of past victory, and believe Cod is 011 their side. The future has in it victory for the Allies this time, not because they are notably good and jnire, but because their ideals are high, and thev wish to protect the weak and defend the oppressed; but unless Britain does for her dependencies all that she is trying to secure for Belgium she will be a woefully depleted victor, and first of all she must give her great Empire of India self-govern-ment, and do something for Ireland.